Joseph-Émile Baeteman (September 29, 1880 – 1938) was a French missionary and religious writer. He wrote a

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged Alphabetical order, alphabetically (or by Semitic root, consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical-and-stroke sorting, radical an ...

Amharic Amharic is an Ethio-Semitic language, which is a subgrouping within the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. It is spoken as a first language by the Amhara people, and also serves as a lingua franca for all other metropolitan populati ...

(''Dictionnaire amarigna-français'') that was a pioneer work and became standard for the study of that language.

Life

Joseph Baeteman was born in 1880 in Corbigny,

Nièvre Nièvre () is a department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, central-east France. Named after the river Nièvre, it had a population of 204,452 in 2019.Troyes Troyes () is a Communes of France, commune and the capital of the Departments of France, department of Aube in the Grand Est region of north-central France. It is located on the Seine river about south-east of Paris. Troyes is situated within ...

and

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, where he joined the

Lazarists The Congregation of the Mission (), abbreviated CM and commonly called the Vincentians or Lazarists, is a Catholic society of apostolic life of pontifical right for men founded by Vincent de Paul. It is associated with the Vincentian Family, ...

. In 1905 he went to

Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...

for teaching, but he returned to

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

during

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, in which he served at the front. In 1919 he returned to Ethiopia, to Gəwala. Around 1920 he founded the Lazarist mission of Mändida, which he left in 1929 due to illness. He then returned to France and wrote several spiritual writings.See Smidt 2003.

The ''Dictionnaire''

In 1929, Baeteman published his Amharic dictionary. It was printed in

Dire Dawa Dire Dawa (; , meaning"where the Dir (clan), Dir hit his spear into the ground" or "The true Dir", , Harari language, Harari: ድሬዳዋ, lit. "Plain of Medicine"; ) is a city in eastern Ethiopia near the Somali Region and Oromia, Oromo borde ...

(east

) and dedicated to

Haile Selassie I Haile Selassie I (born Tafari Makonnen or ''Ethiopian aristocratic and court titles#Lij, Lij'' Tafari; 23 July 189227 August 1975) was Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. He rose to power as the Ethiopian aristocratic and court titles, Rege ...

, who was then still

Negus ''Negus'' is the word for "king" in the Ethiopian Semitic languages and a Ethiopian aristocratic and court titles, title which was usually bestowed upon a regional ruler by the Ethiopian Emperor, Negusa Nagast, or "king of kings," in pre-1974 Et ...

Tafāri Makwennen. The dictionary comprises more than 1000 pages and includes around 1000 proverbs, from a collection made by the Lazarist Jean-Baptiste Coulbeaux. It was based on many sources, including collections of vocabulary made by the Ethiopian Lazarist ''abba'' Tesfa Sellassie Welde Gerima.See Baeteman 1929, pp. i-vii; Smidt 2003.

Works

* 1922: ''Formation de la jeune fille''. 3rd ed. Évreux : Poussin. * 1923: ''Grammaire amarigna''. Addis-Abéba (

Addis Ababa Addis Ababa (; ,) is the capital city of Ethiopia, as well as the regional state of Oromia. With an estimated population of 2,739,551 inhabitants as of the 2007 census, it is the largest city in the country and the List of cities in Africa b ...

): Imprimerie A. Desvages. * 1927: ''Courtes méditations sur la doctrine chrétienne''. Luçon: S. Pacteau. * 1929: ''Dictionnaire amarigna-français, suivi d'un vocabulaire français-amarigna''. Dire-Daoua (

): Imprimerie Saint Lazare. * 1929: (ed.) Jean-Baptiste Coulbeaux, ''Histoire politique et religieuse d'Abyssinie depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à l'avénement de Ménélick II''. Paris. * 1930: ''Au pays du roi Ménélick, Croquis noirs''. Lyon: Librairie catholique E. Vitte. * 1931: ''Les Lazaristes en Abyssinie 1839-1930''. Louvain: Xaveriana. * 1931: ''Ames Éthiopiennes''. Louvain: Xaveriana.

References

* Collard, Maurice (1942). ''Coeur d'apôtre, Joseph Baeteman''. Paris. * Grébaut, Sylvain (1930). "J. Baeteman, Dictionnaire amarigna-français", in: ''Aethiops, Bulletin Gəʿəz'' 3/2, pp. 31–32. * Prévost, M. & J.-Ch. Roman d'Amat (eds.), ''Dictionnaire de Biographie française'' (Paris 1942), vol. 4, pp. 1176f. * Smidt, Wolbert (2003). "Baeteman, Joseph-Émile", in: S. Uhlig et al. (eds.), ''Encyclopaedia Aethiopica'' Vol. 1: A-C (Wiesbadn: Harrassowitz), pp. 434a-435a.

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Baeteman, Joseph-Emile 1880 births 1938 deaths 20th-century French Roman Catholic priests