Sebat Bet Gurage language

Sebat Bet ("Seven houses") is an Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Ethiopia.

Overview

A Gurage tongue, Sebat Bet is divided into several dialects. The latter are spoken in the western Gurage Zone:

Notes

Further reading

External links

Language

Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics.

Questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought. 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure, Noam Chomsky and William C. Stokoe.

Estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends on a partly arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, in graphic writing, braille, or whistling. This is because human language is modality-independent. Depending on philosophical perspectives regarding the definition of language and meaning, when used as a general concept, "language" may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of rules that makes up these systems, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings. Oral and sign languages contain a phonological system that governs how symbols are used to form sequences known as words or morphemes, and a syntactic system that governs how words and morphemes are combined to form phrases and utterances.

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka (/sriːˈlɑːŋkə, -ˈlæŋkə/ or ⁱ/ʃriː-/;Sinhalese - ශ්‍රී ලංකාව, Tamil Ilaṅkai), officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka and known from the beginning of British colonial rule until 1972 as Ceylon (/sᵻˈlɒnˌ seɪ-ˌ siː-/), is an island country in South Asia near south-east India.

Sri Lanka has maritime borders with India to the northwest and the Maldives to the southwest. Its documented history spans 3,000 years, with evidence of pre-historic human settlements dating back to at least 125,000 years. Its geographic location and deep harbours made it of great strategic importance from the time of the ancient Silk Road through to World War II.

A diverse and multicultural country, Sri Lanka is home to many religions, ethnic groups, and languages. In addition to the majority Sinhalese, it is home to large groups of Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils, Moors, Burghers, Malays, Kaffirs and the aboriginal Vedda. Sri Lanka has a rich Buddhist heritage, and the first known Buddhist writings of Sri Lanka, the Pāli Canon, dates back to the Fourth Buddhist council in 29 BC. The country's recent history has been marred by a thirty-year civil war which decisively ended when Sri Lankan military defeated Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009.

Tamil Eelam

Tamil Eelam (Tamil: தமிழீழம் tamiḻ īḻam, generally rendered outside Tamil-speaking areas as தமிழ் ஈழம்) is a proposed independent state that Tamils in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora aspire to create in the north and east of Sri Lanka. Tamil Eelam has no official status or recognition by world states though sections of the Eelam were under de facto control of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for most of the 2000s. The name is derived from the ancient Tamil name for Sri Lanka, Eelam.

History

Ancient period

Evidence of a settlement of people with burial practices similar to that found in the Tamil Nadu region in India and further North was excavated at megalithic burial sites at Pomparippu in the western coast and in Kathiraveli in the eastern coast. These are dated between 2nd century BC and 2nd century AD. Although it is not known when ethnic Tamils first settled in Sri Lanka. Tamil royal dynasties in this period are known to have patronized Tamil Saivite culture in the east that paralleled the growth of the community in the area, and by the 6th century, a special coastal route by boat was functioning to the Koneswaram temple of Trincomalee and Thirukkovil Sithira Velayutha Swami Kovil in Batticaloa. It wasn't until the 13th century that there was firm evidence of the rise of a significant Tamil Hindu social formation in the Jaffna Peninsula, the Jaffna Kingdom, in the aftermath of the collapse of the classical Sinhala Dry Zone civilisations. By the 11th and 12th centuries AD the upper half of the eastern province had a large Tamil community.