Cursing And Blessing In Ethiopia

. INTRODUCTION
Cursing and Blessing, as a means of social regulation, trace back their origin to the formation of society. Both cursing and blessing are social in their purpose since they serve as a means of exclusion and inclusion of relations respectively and influence the social environment through mental processes like speech and thought. Deviations from the highly and positively valued form of behavior and the fundamental values in either their forms of linguistic expressions or in their symbolic representation and concrete form of expressions in all relevant area of interactions by individuals or groups of whatever persuasion as judged harmful to the promotion of whole or to any of its part leads to disapproval, which can be followed

A curse may similarly be said to come about because of a spell or prayer, curse or revilement, or other inconvenience by enchantment or witchcraft, asking that a divine being, common drive, or soul convey setback to somebody. (Prince, 1994:13)
From past to present, curse words have been existed universally from country to country and culture to culture. Some curse words have altered their meaning over time. Moreover, some modern curse words weren 't considered so offensive centuries ago ( Wenbo, etal 2014:1)
Cursing and blessing are strongly tied with the tradition and day today activities of the Ethiopian societies in general and among the Amhara Ethnic group in particular. Especially blessing is considered as part and parcel of their lives.. In daily life, blessing is far more prominent then cursing. People often bless both in the private sphere of the household as well as at communal level. The Amhara have negative sentiment towards cursing. They frequently use to say that “our societal norms and religious values don’t support cursing”. However, they curse those people that are swerved from the social norms, those who commit horrible deeds covertly, individuals or countries who are considered to be the adversaries of Ethiopia, those who try to confront their customs, those creatures that are presupposed to be anti- development and

In principle, blessings and cursing are given according to seniority. In the private sphere, the household head and herd owner is the one who blesses. In the public sphere, the eldest age-set of a generation blesses the younger ones. The relation between the curser and the cursed and the direction in which curse takes could be one of chronological, hence the elderly as against the young; or biological, as in parents and children; or the social, as in the case of lord or king –subject relationships. In all such cases the curse emanates from the one who is positive, and moves towards the other, who is negative, for the feature value of ‘power’ in its generalized sense (Baye ,1998:386).

Informal curses might be expressed by anyone, even children, but their effectiveness depends on the relative age and relation between curser and cursed, as well as the curser 's intention and attitude. Usually, the curse of older people and particularly of the grandparents is greatly feared and was even more so in the not distant past (Corinn 1989: 640, Molvaer, 1995:97)
1.1 Brief Ethnography of the Amhara Ethnic