Language
According to the 14th century historian Al-Umari, the people of Ifat spoke "Abyssinian and Arabic". J.D. Fage suggests that the 'Abyssinian' in this assertion denotes an Ethio-Semitic language.
However, the 19th century Ethiopian historian Asma Giyorgis suggests that the Walashma themselves spoke Arabic, which is similar to Ge'ez.
Read more about this topic: Ifat Sultanate
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“English general and singular terms, identity, quantification, and the whole bag of ontological tricks may be correlated with elements of the native language in any of various mutually incompatible ways, each compatible with all possible linguistic data, and none preferable to another save as favored by a rationalization of the native language that is simple and natural to us.”
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