Zay People
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Zay People
The Zay are a small ethnic group in Ethiopia. They live on the islands of Lake Zway, south of Addis Ababa, and engage mainly in fishing. The Oromo refer to the Zay as Laqi meaning “stirrer” or “paddler”. When the Oromo first saw the Zay on their boats they did not know what they were doing and knew only the stirring motion they made with their paddles. The Zay language belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic family. It is closely related to the Silte, Harari, and Gurage languages. The Zay belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Local tradition suggests that the Zay people comprise three streams of people that populated the islands of Lake Ziway between the early 9th and the mid-17th centuries. It is believed that the Zay people spoke the ancient Harla language. The Zay economy is mainly based on subsistence agriculture and traditional fishing. The Zay people cultivate maize, sorghum, finger millet, teff, pepper and barley, and raise cattle, go ...
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Zay Language
Zay (also Lak'i, Laqi) is an Afroasiatic language of the Semitic branch spoken in Ethiopia. It is one of the Gurage languages in the Ethiopian Semitic group. The Zay language has around 5,000 speakers known as the Zay, who inhabit Gelila and the other five islands and shores of Lake Zway in the southern part of the country. Language situation Zay is an unwritten language. Most speakers are multilingual in other Gurage languages, in the Oromo language, and in Amharic. The language is geographically concentrated around Lake Zway; specifically, in Herera, Meki, Ziway, and the five islands: Fundurro Island (Famat or Getesemani Island) the smallest island; Tsedecha Island (Aysut Island), next to the biggest island; Debre-Tsion Island, the largest island; Gelila Island; and Debre Sina Island. It is an endangered language, with speakers migrating to the mainland adopting the Oromo language, and increasing use of Oromo by the younger generations on the Zay islands. Zay is 70% l ...
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Silte Language
Silt'e (also transliterated Silte) can refer to: * Silt'e people of Ethiopia; * Silt'e language, which they speak; * Silte Zone, where most live; * Silte (woreda) Silti (ስልጢ) is one of the woredas in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region of Ethiopia. It is named after a subgroup of the Silt'e people, whose homeland includes this woreda. Formerly part of the Gurage Zone, after a ref ..., a subunit of where they live. {{disambig, geo Language and nationality disambiguation pages ...
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Adal Sultanate
The Adal Sultanate, or the Adal Empire or the ʿAdal or the Bar Saʿad dīn (alt. spelling ''Adel Sultanate, ''Adal ''Sultanate'') () was a medieval Sunni Muslim Empire which was located in the Horn of Africa. It was founded by Sabr ad-Din II after the fall of the Sultanate of Ifat. The kingdom flourished circa 1415 to 1577.. The sultanate and state were established by the local inhabitants of Zeila. or the Harar plateau. At its height, the polity under Sultan Badlay controlled the territory stretching from Somaliland to the port city of Suakin in Sudan. The Adal Empire maintained a robust commercial and political relationship with the Ottoman Empire. Etymology Adal is believed to be an abbreviation of Havilah. Eidal or Aw Abdal, was the Emir of Harar in the eleventh century. In the thirteenth century, the Arab writer al-Dimashqi refers to the Adal Sultanate's capital, Zeila, by its Somali name "Awdal" ( so, "Awdal"). The modern Awdal region of Somaliland, which was p ...
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Zeila
Zeila ( so, Saylac, ar, زيلع, Zayla), also known as Zaila or Zayla, is a historical port town in the western Awdal region of Somaliland. In the Middle Ages, the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela identified Zeila (or Hawilah) with the Biblical location of Havilah. Most modern scholars identify it with the site of Avalites mentioned in the 1st-century Greco-Roman travelogue the ''Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'' and in Ptolemy, although this is disputed. The town evolved into an early Islamic center with the arrival of Muslims shortly after the Hijrah. By the 9th century, Zeila was the capital of the early Adal Kingdom and Ifat Sultanate in the 13th century; and also a capital for its successor state the Adal Sultanate, it would attain its height of prosperity a few centuries later in the 16th century. The city subsequently came under Ottoman and British protection in the 18th century. Up until recently Zeila was surrounded by a large wall with five gates: Bab al Sahil and B ...
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Artisanal Fishing
Artisanal fishing (or traditional/subsistence fishing) consists of various small-scale, low-technology, low-capital, fishing practices undertaken by individual fishing households (as opposed to commercial fishing). Many of these households are of coastal or island ethnic groups. These households make short (rarely overnight) fishing trips close to the shore. Their produce is usually not processed and is mainly for local consumption. Artisan fishing uses traditional fishing techniques such as rod and tackle, fishing arrows and harpoons, cast nets, and small (if any) traditional fishing boats. For that reason, socio-economic status of artisanal fishing community has become an interest of the authorities in recent years. Artisan fishing may be undertaken for both commercial and subsistence reasons. It contrasts with large-scale modern commercial fishing practices in that it is often less wasteful and less stressful on fish populations than modern industrial fishing. Target 14.b ...
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Subsistence Agriculture
Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements, with little or no surplus. Planting decisions occur principally with an eye toward what the family will need during the coming year, and only secondarily toward market prices. Tony Waters, a professor of sociology, defines "subsistence peasants" as "people who grow what they eat, build their own houses, and live without regularly making purchases in the marketplace." Despite the self-sufficiency in subsistence farming, most subsistence farmers also participate in trade to some degree. Although their amount of trade as measured in cash is less than that of consumers in countries with modern complex markets, they use these markets mainly to obtain goods, not to generate income for food; these goods are typically not necessary for survival and may include sugar ...
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Harla
The Harla, also known as Harala, or Arla, are an extinct ethnic group that once inhabited Djibouti, Ethiopia and northern Somalia. They spoke the now-extinct Harla language, which belonged to either the Cushitic or Semitic branches of the Afroasiatic family. There are existing books like "The Book of Obligations" () in Old Harari written roughly 500 years ago, when Hararis were referred to as "Harla" at that time as attested to in the ''Conquest of Abyssinia''. History The Harla are credited by the present-day inhabitants of parts of Djibouti, Ethiopia, and northern Somalia with having constructed various historical sites. Although now mostly lying in ruins, these structures include stone necropoleis, store pits, mosques and houses. Cave drawings are also attributed to the Harla. Tradition states one of Harla's main towns was Metehara and the area between Harar and Dire Dawa is still referred to as Harla. The Harla inhabited Tchertcher and various other areas in the Horn of Af ...
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Gurage Languages
The Gurage languages (Gurage: ጉራጌ), also known as Guragie, is a dialect-continuum language, which belong to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by the Gurage people, who inhabit the Gurage Zone within the larger multi-ethnic Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region in central Ethiopia. Overview The Gurage dialects form what is collectively called ''Guragigna'' or Guragigna. Almost all of the dialects are intelligible with other dialects indicating that they have organic relationships as well as indicating that they originated from a proto-Gurage language. Guragigna and its dialects belong to the Southern subdivision of the Ethiopian Semitic languages within the Afroasiatic family. All the Gurage subgroups (Northern, Western, and Eastern Gurage) belong to South Ethiopic. East Gurage is related to Harari and Gafat, while Northern and Western Gurage are related to each other. All Guragigna languages and dialects are written w ...
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Harari Language
Harari is an Ethiopian Semitic language spoken by the Harari people of Ethiopia. According to the 2007 Ethiopian census, it is spoken by 25,810 people. Most of its speakers are multilingual in Amharic and/or Eastern Oromo. Harari is closely related to the Eastern Gurage languages, Zay, and Silt'e, all of whom are linked to the now extinct Semitic Harla language. Locals or natives of Harar refer to it as ''Gēy Sinan'' or ''Gēy Ritma'' "language of the City" (''Gēy'' is the word for how Harari speakers refer to Harar, whose name is an exonym). Harari was originally written with a version of the Arabic script, then the Ethiopic script was adopted to write the language. Some Harari speakers in diaspora write their language with the Latin alphabet. Vowels /æ, a, e, ai, ɪ, i/ Grammar Nouns Number Wolf Leslau discusses Harari–East Gurage phonology and grammar: The noun has two numbers, Singular and Plural. The affix -ač changes singulars into plurals: : abōč, a man; ...
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Afroasiatic Languages
The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic subregions of Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahara/Sahel. With the exception of its Semitic branch, all branches of the Afroasiatic family are exclusively native to the African continent. Afroasiatic languages have over 500 million native speakers, which is the fourth-largest number of native speakers of any language family (after Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, and Niger–Congo). The phylum has six branches: Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Semitic, and Omotic. The most widely spoken modern Afroasiatic language or dialect continuum by far is Arabic, a ''de facto'' group of distinct language varieties within the Semitic branch. The languages that evolved from Proto-Arabic have around 313 million na ...
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Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church ( am, የኢትዮጵያ ኦርቶዶክስ ተዋሕዶ ቤተ ክርስቲያን, ''Yäityop'ya ortodoks täwahedo bétäkrestyan'') is the largest of the Oriental Orthodox Churches. One of the few Christian churches in sub-Saharan Africa originating before European colonization of the continent, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church dates back to the acceptance of Christianity by the Kingdom of Aksum in 330, and has between 36 million and 49.8 million adherents in Ethiopia. It is a founding member of the World Council of Churches. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is in Communion (Christian), communion with the other Oriental Orthodox churches (the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, and the Syriac Orthodox Church). The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church had been administratively part of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexan ...
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Semitic Languages
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis. Semitic languages occur in written form from a very early historical date in West Asia, with East Semitic Akkadian and Eblaite texts (written in a script adapted from Sumerian cuneiform) appearing from the 30th century BCE and the 25th century BCE in Mesopotamia and the north eastern Levant respectively. The only earlier attested languages are Sumerian and Elamite (2800 BCE to 550 BCE), both language isolates, and Egyptian (a sister branch of the Afroasiatic family, related to the ...
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