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Abstract

This pap er started as a casual reflection and was not especially scholarly in style, mainly following the 2009 Sudan Studies Association conference theme of war and peace.(1) It just sought to explore some linguistic concepts of war and peace in some Sudanese languages for which I had dictionaries at hand. I had no a priori views or hypotheses and was motivated mainly by my curiosity into Sudanese linguistics. As this survey has evolved, patterns emerged about these concepts that nudged me to look more at the context and etymology . The result is incomplete, but hopefully heuristic . A basic anthropological thought, known as the "Whorf-Sapir hypothesis," suggests that if you do not have a word for something you can't think of it, or conceptualize it or act upon up it. While this idealist philosophy should be criticized on some epistemological, historical and material grounds it is this topic that is explored in some of the very many languages of war, peace , mediation and conflict resolution in the much conflicted Sudan.(2)

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