1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time
3.
Traditional Chinese characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world
4.
Standard Chinese
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Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, and its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a language with topic-prominent organization. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants, Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There exist two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan, aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, while Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters. There are many characters that are identical between the two systems, in English, the governments of China and Hong Kong use Putonghua, Putonghua Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin, while those of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, use Mandarin. The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, history and it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or common tongue/speech, was different from the Guoyu. The former was a prestige variety, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different, Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called the speech of the modern man. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai, prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the term for Standard Chinese. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca, Huayu, or language of the Chinese nation, originally simply meant Chinese language, and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name Huayu to refer to Mandarin and it also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. The term Mandarin is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire, in English, Mandarin may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the language from other northern. Chinese has long had considerable variation, hence prestige dialects have always existed. Confucius, for example, used yǎyán rather than colloquial regional dialects, rime books, which were written since the Northern and Southern dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times
5.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
6.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
7.
Romanization of Russian
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Romanization of the Russian alphabet is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic script into the Latin alphabet. Scientific transliteration, also known as the International Scholarly System, is a system that has used in linguistics since the 19th century. It is based on the Czech alphabet and formed the basis of the GOST, OST8483 was the first Soviet standard on romanization of Russian, introduced in 16 October 1935. This standard is an equivalent of GOST 16876-71 and was adopted as a standard of the COMECON. GOST7. 79-2000 System of Standards on Information, Librarianship and it is the official standard of both Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Machine readable passports is an adoption of an ICAO stadards for travel documents and it was used in Russian passports for a short period during 2010–2013. The standard was substituted in 2013 by GOST R ISO/IEC 7501-1-2013, which does not contain romanization, ISO/R9, established in 1954 and updated in 1968, was the adoption of the scientific transliteration by the International Organization for Standardization. It covers Russian and seven other Slavic languages, ISO9,1995 is the current transliteration standard from ISO. It is based on its predecessor ISO/R9,1968, which it deprecates, for Russian, the UNGEGN, a Working Group of the United Nations, in 1987 recommended a romanization system for geographical names, which was based on the 1983 version of GOST 16876-71. It may be found in some international cartographic products, American Library Association and Library of Congress romanization tables for Slavic alphabets are used in North American libraries and in the British Library since 1975. The formal, unambiguous version of the system requires some diacritics and two-letter tie characters, British Standard 2979,1958 is the main system of the Oxford University Press, and a variation was used by the British Library to catalogue publications acquired up to 1975. The BGN/PCGN system is relatively intuitive for Anglophones to read and pronounce, the portion of the system pertaining to the Russian language was adopted by BGN in 1944 and by PCGN in 1947. In Soviet international passports, transliteration was based on French rules, in 1997, with the introduction of new Russian passports, a diacritic-free English-oriented system was established by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but this system was also abandoned in 2010. In 2006, GOST52535. 1-2006 was adopted, which defines technical requirements and standards for Russian international passports, in 2010, the Federal Migratory Service of Russia approved Order No. 26, stating that all names in the passports issued after 2010 must be transliterated using GOST52535. 1-2006. The standard was abandoned in 2013, finally in 2013, Order No.320 of the Federal Migratory Service of Russia came into force. It states that all names in the passports must be transliterated using the ICAO system. This system differs from the GOST52535. 1-2006 system in two things, ц is transliterated into ts, ъ is transliterated into ie, Scholarly ¹ Some archaic letters are transcribed in different ways
8.
Kazakh language
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Kazakh belongs to the Kipchak branch of the Turkic languages. It is closely related to Nogai, Kyrgyz, and especially Karakalpak, Kazakh is also spoken by many ethnic Kazakhs through the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, and Germany. Like other Turkic languages, Kazakh is a language. The Kazakh language has its speakers spread over a vast territory from the Tian Shan to the shore of Caspian Sea. Kazakh is the state language of Kazakhstan, in which nearly 10 million speakers are reported to live. In China, more than one million ethnic Kazakhs and Kazakh speakers reside in Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang. Today, Kazakh is written in Cyrillic in Kazakhstan and Mongolia, the oldest known written records of languages closely related to Kazakh were written in the Old Turkic alphabet. However, it is not believed any of these varieties were direct predecessors of Kazakh. Modern Kazakh has historically been written using versions of the Latin, in October 2006, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Kazakhstan, brought up the topic of using the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet as the official script for Kazakh in Kazakhstan. A Kazakh government study released in September 2007 said that Kazakhstan could feasibly switch to a Latin script over a 10- to 12-year period, the transition was halted temporarily on December 13,2007, with President Nazarbayev declaring, “For 70 years the Kazakhstanis read and wrote in Cyrillic. More than 100 nationalities live in our state, thus we need stability and peace. We should be in no hurry in the issue of alphabet transformation”, Kazakh exhibits tongue-root vowel harmony, with some words of recent foreign origin as exceptions. There is also a system of rounding harmony which resembles that of Kyrgyz, the following chart depicts the consonant inventory of standard Kazakh, many of the sounds, however, are allophones of other sounds or appear only in recent loan-words. The 18 consonant phonemes listed by Vajda are in bold—since these are phonemes, their place and manner of articulation are very general. The borrowed phonemes /f/, /v/, /ɕ/, /t͡ɕ/ and /x/, only occur in recent mostly Russian borrowings, in the table, the elements left of a divide are voiceless, while those to the right are voiced. Kazakh has a system of nine phonemic vowels, three of which are diphthongs, the rounding contrast and /æ/ generally only occur as phonemes in the first syllable of a word, but do occur later allophonically, see the section on harmony below for more information. According to Vajda, the quality of vowels is actually one of neutral versus retracted tongue root. Per convention, rounded vowels are presented to the right of their unrounded counterparts, phonetic values are paired with the corresponding character in Kazakhs Cyrillic alphabet
9.
Chinese language
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Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases mutually unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language, the varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin, followed by Wu, Min, and Yue. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. Standard Chinese is a form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It is the language of China and Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six languages of the United Nations. The written form of the language, based on the logograms known as Chinese characters, is shared by literate speakers of otherwise unintelligible dialects. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is the spoken language and official in Hong Kong and Macau. It is also influential in Guangdong province and much of Guangxi, dialects of Southern Min, part of the Min group, are widely spoken in southern Fujian, with notable variants also spoken in neighboring Taiwan and in Southeast Asia. Hakka also has a diaspora in Taiwan and southeast Asia. Shanghainese and other Wu varieties are prominent in the lower Yangtze region of eastern China, Chinese can be traced back to a hypothetical Sino-Tibetan proto-language. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty, as the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have sought to promulgate a unified standard. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, in addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach, and are often also sensitive border zones. Without a secure reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan, the structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, the earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BCE in the late Shang dynasty
10.
Xiao'erjing
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It is used on occasion by many ethnic minorities who adhere to the Islamic faith in China, and formerly by their Dungan descendants in Central Asia. Soviet writing reforms forced the Dungan to replace Xiaoerjing with a Roman alphabet and later a Cyrillic alphabet, Xiaoerjing is written from right to left, as with other writing systems using the Perso-Arabic script. This makes it a true abugida, both of these practices are in contrast to the practice of omitting the short vowels in the majority of the languages for which the Arabic script has been adopted. This is possibly due to the importance of the vowel in a Chinese syllable. Xiaoerjing does not have a single, standard name, in Ningxia, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, western Shaanxi and the Northwestern provinces, the script is referred to as Xiǎoérjǐn. According to A. Kalimov, a famous Dungan linguist, the Dungan of the former Soviet Union called this script щёҗин, since the arrival of Islam during the Tang Dynasty, many Arabic or Persian speaking people migrated into China. Centuries later, these peoples assimilated with the native Han Chinese, many Chinese Muslim students attended madrasas to study Classical Arabic and the Quran. Because these students had a basic understanding of Chinese characters but would have a better command of the spoken tongue once assimilated. This was often done by writing notes in Chinese to aid in the memorization of surahs and this method was also used to write Chinese translations of Arabic vocabulary learned in the madrasas. Thus, a system of writing the Chinese language with Arabic script gradually developed and standardized to some extent, currently, the oldest known artifact showing signs of Xiaoerjing is a stone stele in the courtyard of Daxue Xixiang Mosque in Xian in the province of Shaanxi. The stele shows inscribed Quranic verses in Arabic as well as a note of the names of the inscribers in Xiaoerjing. The stele was done in the year AH740 in the Islamic calendar, some old Xiaoerjing manuscripts are preserved in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, Russia. Xiaoerjing can be divided into two sets, the Mosque system, and the Daily system, the Mosque system is the system used by pupils and imams in mosques and madrasahs. It contains much Arabic and Persian religious lexicon, and no usage of Chinese characters and this system is relatively standardised, and could be considered a true writing system. The Daily system is the used by the less educated for letters. Often simple Chinese characters are mixed in with the Arabic script, mostly discussing non-religious matters and this practice can differ drastically from person to person. The system would be devised by the writer himself, with ones own understanding of the Arabic and Persian alphabets, often, only the letters sender and the letters receiver can understand completely what is written, while being very difficult for others to read. Unlike Hui Muslims in other areas of China, Muslims of the northwest provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu had no knowledge of the Han Kitab or Classical Chinese, Xiaoerjing was used to annotate in Chinese, foreign language Islamic documents in languages like Persian
11.
Dungan language
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The Dungan language /ˈdʊŋɡɑːn/ is a Sinitic language spoken primarily Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan by the Dungan people, an ethnic group related to the Hui people of China. Although it is derived from the Central Plains Mandarin of Gansu and Shaanxi, it is written in Cyrillic and contains loanwords. The Hui of Northwestern China would normally speak the same Mandarin dialect as the Han people in the same area, the Hui traders in the bazaars would be able to use Arabic or Persian numbers when talking between themselves, to keep their communications secret from Han bystanders. While not constituting a separate language, these words, phrases and turns of speech, known as Huihui hua, served as markers of group identity. As early 20th century travellers in Northwestern China would note, the Mohammedan Chinese have to some extent a vocabulary, in the Soviet Union, a written standard of the Dungan language was developed, based on a Gansu dialect, rather than the Beijing base of Standard Chinese. The language was used in the schools in Dungan villages, the first Dungan-language newspaper was established in 1932, it continues publication today in weekly form. There is a degree of mutual intelligibility between Dungan and various Mandarin dialects. The Shaanxi and Gansu Mandarin dialects are understood by Dungans, Dungan is spoken primarily in Kyrgyzstan, with speakers in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Russia as well. The Dungan ethnic group are the descendants of refugees from China who migrated west into Central Asia, Chinese varieties usually have different classifiers for different types of nouns, with northern varieties tending to have fewer classifiers than southern ones. 個 is the only found in the Dungan language, though not the only measure word. Like other Chinese varieties, Dungan is tonal, there are two main dialects, one with 4 tones, and the other, considered standard, with 3 tones in the final position in phonetic words and 4 tones in the nonfinal position. The corresponding table compares current Dungan spelling, old Dungan spelling, pinyin, using Standard Chinese vowels as basis, each vowel and its respective current Dungan spelling is presented below, along with the old Dungan spelling, using pinyin, and IPA. Note that the correspondence between Dungan vowels and Standard Chinese vowels is not perfect, vowel constructs that can be used as independent syllable without consonants are shown in parenthesis. There are rhotacised vowels, as well as some syllables only seen in words from Russian, Kyrgyz. Furthermore, the acrolects of Dungan and Gansu/Shaanxi Mandarin have diverged due to time. During the 20th century, translators and intellectuals introduced many neologisms and calques into the Chinese language, as a result of these borrowings, the equivalent standard Chinese terms are not widely known or understood among the Dungan. The modern Dungan language is the only spoken Chinese that is written in the Cyrillic alphabet and it is a Russian-based alphabet plus five special letters, Җ, Ң, Ү, Ә, and Ў. Note The letters Ъ and Ь are only used to write Russian loanwords Dungan is unique in that it is one of the few varieties of Chinese that is not normally written using Chinese characters
12.
Mountain range
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A mountain range is a geographic area containing numerous geologically related mountains. A mountain system or system of ranges, sometimes is used to combine several geological features that are geographically related. Mountain ranges are usually segmented by highlands or mountain passes and valleys, individual mountains within the same mountain range do not necessarily have the same geologic structure or petrology. They may be a mix of different orogenic expressions and terranes, for example thrust sheets, uplifted blocks, fold mountains, most geologically young mountain ranges on the Earths land surface are associated with either the Pacific Ring of Fire or the Alpide Belt. The Andes is 7,000 kilometres long and is considered the worlds longest mountain system. The Alpide belt includes Indonesia and southeast Asia, through the Himalaya, the belt also includes other European and Asian mountain ranges. The Himalayas contain the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest, mountain ranges outside of these two systems include the Arctic Cordillera, the Urals, the Appalachians, the Scandinavian Mountains, the Altai Mountains and the Hijaz Mountains. If the definition of a range is stretched to include underwater mountains. The mountain systems of the earth are characterized by a tree structure, the sub-range relationship is often expressed as a parent-child relationship. For example, the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Blue Ridge Mountains are sub-ranges of the Appalachian Mountains, equivalently, the Appalachians are the parent of the White Mountains and Blue Ridge Mountains, and the White Mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains are children of the Appalachians. The position of mountains influences climate, such as rain or snow, when air masses move up and over mountains, the air cools producing orographic precipitation. As the air descends on the side, it warms again and is drier. Often, a shadow will affect the leeward side of a range. Mountain ranges are constantly subjected to forces which work to tear them down. Erosion is at work while the mountains are being uplifted and long after until the mountains are reduced to low hills, rivers are traditionally believed to be the principle erosive factor on mountain ranges, with their ability of bedrock incision and sediment transport. The rugged topography of a range is the product of erosion. The basins adjacent to a mountain range are filled with sediments which are buried and turned into sedimentary rock. The early Cenozoic uplift of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado provides an example and this mass of rock was removed as the range was actively undergoing uplift
13.
Central Asia
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Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. It is also referred to as the -stans as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix -stan. Central Asias five former Soviet republics are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. It has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, the Silk Road connected Muslim lands with the people of Europe, India, and China. This crossroads position has intensified the conflict between tribalism and traditionalism and modernization, in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was predominantly Iranian, peopled by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Parthians. Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan, the idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions, historically built political geography and geoculture are two significant parameters widely used in the scholarly literature about the definitions of the Central Asia. The most limited definition was the one of the Soviet Union. This definition was also used outside the USSR during this period. However, the Russian culture has two terms, Средняя Азия and Центральная Азия. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia, the UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity and these areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan, the Tibetans and Ladakhi are also included. Insofar, most of the peoples are considered the indigenous peoples of the vast region. Central Asia is a large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains, vast deserts. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe. Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming, the Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan Mountains, 116°–118° E. Central Asia has the following geographic extremes, The worlds northernmost desert, at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, the Northern Hemispheres southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17′ N
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East Asia
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East Asia is the eastern subregion of the Asian continent, which can be defined in either geographical or ethno-cultural terms. Geographically and geopolitically, it includes China, Taiwan, Mongolia, Korea and Japan, it covers about 12,000,000 km2, or about 28% of the Asian continent, the East Asian people comprise more than 1.5 billion people. About 38% of the population of Asia and 22%, or over one fifth, the overall population density of the region is 133 inhabitants per square kilometre, about three times the world average of 45/km2. Historically, societies in East Asia have been part of the Chinese cultural sphere, major religions include Buddhism, Confucianism or Neo-Confucianism, Taoism, Chinese folk religion in China and Taiwan, Shinto in Japan, Korean shamanism in Korea. Shamanism is also prevalent among Mongolians and other populations of northern East Asia. The Chinese calendar is the root from which many other East Asian calendars are derived, Chinese Dynasties dominated the region in matters of culture, trade, and exploration as well as militarily for a very long time. There are records of tributes sent overseas from the kingdoms of Korea. There were also considerable levels of cultural and religious exchange between the Chinese and other regional Dynasties and Kingdoms, as connections began to strengthen with the Western world, Chinas power began to diminish. Around the same time, Japan solidified itself as a nation state, throughout World War II, Korea, Taiwan, much of eastern China, Hong Kong, and Vietnam all fell under Japanese control. Culturally, China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam are commonly seen as being encompassed by cultural East Asia, there are mixed debates around the world whether these countries or regions should be considered in East Asia or not. Vietnam Siberia in Russia Sovereignty issues exist over some territories in the South China Sea, however, in this context, the term Far East is often more appropriate which covers ASEAN countries and the countries in East Asia. However, being a Eurocentric term, Far East describes the geographical position in relation to Europe rather than its location within Asia. Alternatively, the term Asia Pacific Region is often used in describing East Asia and this usage, which is seen in economic and diplomatic discussions, is at odds with the historical meanings of both East Asia and Northeast Asia. The Council on Foreign Relations defines Northeast Asia as Japan and Korea, the military and economic superpower of China became the largest economy in the world in 2014, surpassing the United States of America. Currently in East Asia, trading systems are open, and zero or low duties on imports of consumer and capital goods etc. have considerably helped stimulate cost-efficiency. Free and flexible labor and other markets are important factors making for high levels of business-economic performance. East Asian populations have demonstrated highly positive work ethics, there are relatively large and fast-growing markets for consumer goods and services of all kinds. The culture of East Asia has been influenced by the civilisation of China, East Asia, as well as Vietnam, share a Confucian ethical philosophy, Buddhism, political and legal structures, and historically a common writing system
15.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
16.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
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Mongolia
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Mongolia /mɒŋˈɡoʊliə/ is a landlocked unitary sovereign state in East Asia. Its area is equivalent with the historical territory of Outer Mongolia. It is sandwiched between China to the south and Russia to the north, while it does not share a border with Kazakhstan, Mongolia is separated from it by only 36.76 kilometers. At 1,564,116 square kilometers, Mongolia is the 18th largest and it is also the worlds second-largest landlocked country behind Kazakhstan and the largest landlocked country that does not border a closed sea. The country contains very little land, as much of its area is covered by grassy steppe, with mountains to the north and west. Ulaanbaatar, the capital and largest city, is home to about 45% of the countrys population, approximately 30% of the population is nomadic or semi-nomadic, horse culture is still integral. The majority of its population are Buddhists, the non-religious population is the second largest group. Islam is the dominant religion among ethnic Kazakhs, the majority of the states citizens are of Mongol ethnicity, although Kazakhs, Tuvans, and other minorities also live in the country, especially in the west. Mongolia joined the World Trade Organization in 1997 and seeks to expand its participation in regional economic, the area of what is now Mongolia has been ruled by various nomadic empires, including the Xiongnu, the Xianbei, the Rouran, the Turkic Khaganate, and others. In 1206, Genghis Khan founded the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history. His grandson Kublai Khan conquered China to establish the Yuan dynasty, after the collapse of the Yuan, the Mongols retreated to Mongolia and resumed their earlier pattern of factional conflict, except during the era of Dayan Khan and Tumen Zasagt Khan. In the 16th century, Tibetan Buddhism began to spread in Mongolia, being led by the Manchu-founded Qing dynasty. By the early 1900s, almost one-third of the male population were Buddhist monks. After the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, Mongolia declared independence from the Qing dynasty, shortly thereafter, the country came under the control of the Soviet Union, which had aided its independence from China. In 1924, the Mongolian Peoples Republic was declared as a Soviet satellite state, after the anti-Communist revolutions of 1989, Mongolia conducted its own peaceful democratic revolution in early 1990. This led to a multi-party system, a new constitution of 1992, homo erectus inhabited Mongolia from 850,000 years ago. Modern humans reached Mongolia approximately 40,000 years ago during the Upper Paleolithic, the Khoit Tsenkher Cave in Khovd Province shows lively pink, brown, and red ochre paintings of mammoths, lynx, bactrian camels, and ostriches, earning it the nickname the Lascaux of Mongolia. The venus figurines of Malta testify to the level of Upper Paleolithic art in northern Mongolia, the wheeled vehicles found in the burials of the Afanasevans have been dated to before 2200 BC
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Kazakhstan
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Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in northern Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Kazakhstan is the worlds largest landlocked country, and the ninth largest in the world, Kazakhstan is the dominant nation of Central Asia economically, generating 60% of the regions GDP, primarily through its oil/gas industry. It also has vast mineral resources, Kazakhstan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. Kazakhstan shares borders with Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, the terrain of Kazakhstan includes flatlands, steppe, taiga, rock canyons, hills, deltas, snow-capped mountains, and deserts. Kazakhstan has an estimated 18 million people as of 2014, Given its large area, its population density is among the lowest. The capital is Astana, where it was moved in 1997 from Almaty, the territory of Kazakhstan has historically been inhabited by nomadic tribes. This changed in the 13th century, when Genghis Khan occupied the country as part of the Mongolian Empire, following internal struggles among the conquerors, power eventually reverted to the nomads. By the 16th century, the Kazakh emerged as a distinct group, the Russians began advancing into the Kazakh steppe in the 18th century, and by the mid-19th century, they nominally ruled all of Kazakhstan as part of the Russian Empire. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, and subsequent civil war, the territory of Kazakhstan was reorganised several times, in 1936, it was made the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan has worked to develop its economy, especially its dominant hydrocarbon industry. Kazakhstans 131 ethnicities include Kazakhs, Russians, Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Germans, Tatars, the Kazakh language is the state language, and Russian has equal official status for all levels of administrative and institutional purposes. The name Kazakh comes from the ancient Turkic word qaz, to wander, the name Cossack is of the same origin. The Persian suffix -stan means land or place of, so Kazakhstan can be translated as land of the wanderers. Kazakhstan has been inhabited since the Neolithic Age, the regions climate, archaeologists believe that humans first domesticated the horse in the regions vast steppes. Central Asia was originally inhabited by the Scythians, the Cuman entered the steppes of modern-day Kazakhstan around the early 11th century, where they later joined with the Kipchak and established the vast Cuman-Kipchak confederation. Under the Mongol Empire, the largest in history, administrative districts were established. These eventually came under the rule of the emergent Kazakh Khanate, throughout this period, traditional nomadic life and a livestock-based economy continued to dominate the steppe. Nevertheless, the region was the focus of ever-increasing disputes between the native Kazakh emirs and the neighbouring Persian-speaking peoples to the south, at its height the Khanate would rule parts of Central Asia and control Cumania
19.
Irtysh River
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The Irtysh River is a river in Russia, China, and Kazakhstan. It is the tributary of the Ob River. The rivers source lies in the Mongolian Altai in Dzungaria close to the border with Mongolia, the Irtyshs main tributaries include the Tobol River and the Ishim River. The Ob-Irtysh system forms a drainage basin in Asia, encompassing most of Western Siberia. The name Black Irtysh is applied by some authors, especially in Russia and Kazakhstan, to the course of the river. The term White Irtysh, in opposition to the Black Irtysh, was used in the past to refer to the Irtysh below lake Zaysan. In Kazakhstan and Russia, tankers, passenger and freight boats navigate the river during the ice-free season, Omsk, home to the headquarters of the state-owned Irtysh River Shipping Company, functions as the largest river port in Western Siberia. On the Kazakhstan section of the river there are three major hydroelectric plants, namely at Bakhtarma, Ust-Kamenogorsk and Shulbinsk. The worlds deepest lock, with a drop of 42 metres, plans exist for the construction of several more dams. Three dams have been constructed on the Chinese section of the Irtysh as well, the Keketuohai Dam, the Kalasuke Dam, in 2002, pipelines were constructed to supply water from the canal to the Ishim River and Kazakhstans capital, Astana. In the last years of the 20th century and the early 2000s, a more major project. Increased water use in China has caused significant concerns among Kazakh, opened in 1896, this is the oldest bridge on the river. Tobolsk, on the Tyumen-Surgut line As the Kuytun–Beitun Railway in Chinas Xinjiang is being extended toward Altay City, numerous highway bridges over the Irtysh exist in China, Kazakhstan, and Russia. There are no bridges of any kind on the Irtysh downstream of Tobolsk, a number of Mongol and Turkic peoples occupied the river banks for many centuries. In 657, Tang Dynasty general Su Dingfang defeated Ashina Helu, qaghan of the Western Turkic Khaganate, at the Battle of Irtysh River, helus defeat ended the Khaganate, strengthened Tang control of Xinjiang, and led to Tang suzerainty over the western Turks. The Khanate of Sibir was conquered by the Russians in the 1580s, farther east, Tara was founded in 1594, roughly at the border of the taiga belt and the steppe to the south. In the 17th century the Dzungar Khanate, formed by the Mongol Oirat people, became Russias southern neighbor, the Chinese Qing Empire conquered Dzungaria in the 1750s. Concerns were raised in Russia about the possibility of a Chinese fleet sailing from Lake Zaysan down the Irtysh, a Russian expedition visited Lake Zaysan in 1764, and concluded that such a riverine invasion would not be likely
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Ob River
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The Ob River, also Obi, is a major river in western Siberia, Russia and is the worlds seventh-longest river. It forms at the confluence of the Biya and Katun Rivers which have their origins in the Altay Mountains and it is the westernmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean. The Gulf of Ob is the worlds longest estuary, the Ob is known to the Khanty people as the As, Yag, Kolta and Yema, to the Nenets people as the Kolta or Kuay, and to the Siberian Tatars as the Umar or Omass. Possibly from Proto-Indo-Iranian *ap-, river, water, the Ob forms 25 km southwest of Biysk in Altai Krai at the confluence of the Biya and Katun rivers. Both these streams have their origin in the Altay Mountains, the Biya issuing from Lake Teletskoye, the Obs entire main course is within Russia, though its tributaries extend into Kazakhstan, China and Mongolia. The river splits into more than one arm, especially after joining the large Irtysh tributary at about 69° E, from the source of the Irtysh to the mouth of the Ob, the river flow is the longest in Russia at 5,410 kilometres. Other noteworthy tributaries are, from the east, the Tom, Chulym, Ket, Tym and Vakh rivers, and, from the west and south, the Vasyugan, Irtysh, and Sosva Rivers. The combined Ob-Irtysh system, the fourth-longest river system of Asia, is 5,410 kilometres long, the river basin of the Ob consists mostly of steppe, taiga, swamps, tundra, and semi-desert topography. The floodplains of the Ob are characterized by many tributaries and lakes. The Ob is ice-bound at southern Barnaul from early in November to near the end of April, the Ob River crosses several climatic zones. The upper Ob valley, in the south, grows grapes, melons and watermelons, the most comfortable climate for the rest on the Ob are Biysk, Barnaul, and Novosibirsk. The Ob is used mostly for irrigation, drinking water, hydroelectric energy, the navigable waters within the Ob basin reach a total length of 15,000 km. Until the early 20th century, an important western river port was Tyumen, located on the Tura River. In the eastern reaches of the Ob basin, Tomsk on the Tom River was an important terminus, Tyumen had its first steamboat in 1836, and the middle reaches of the Ob have been navigated by steamboats since 1845. Steamboats started operating on the Yenisei in 1863, on the Lena, in 1916 there were 49 steamers on the Ob,10 on the Yenesei. The Trans-Siberian Railway, once completed, provided for more direct, but the Ob river system still remained important for connecting the huge expanses of Tyumen Oblast and Tomsk Oblast with the major cities along the Trans-Siberian route, such as Novosibirsk or Omsk. A dam was built near Novosibirsk in 1956, which created the then-largest artificial lake in Siberia, the project never left the drawing board, abandoned in 1986 due to economic and environmental considerations. In its early years of operation, the Mayak plant released vast quantities of contaminated water into several small lakes near the plant
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Sayan Mountains
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The Sayan Mountains are a mountain range in southern Siberia, Russia and northern Mongolia. In the past, it served as the border between Mongolia and Russia, the Eastern Sayan extends 1,000 km from the Yenisei River at 92° E to the southwest end of Lake Baikal at 106° E. The Western Sayan forms the continuation of the Altay Mountains. This is a protected and isolated area, having been closed by the Soviet Union since 1944. While the general elevation is 2000 to 2,700 m, granites and metamorphic slates reach altitudes of over 3,000 m, with the highest being Mönkh Saridag at 3,492 m. The principal mountain passes lie 1800 to 2,300 m above the sea, for example Muztagh pass at 2,280 m, Mongol pass at 1,980 m, Tenghyz pass at 2,280 m and Obo-sarym pass at 1,860 m. At 92°E the system is pierced by the Ulug-Khem or Upper Yenisei River, the Usinsk, Oya, Tunka and Kitoi ranges. Between the breach of the Yenisei and Lake Khövsgöl at 100°30 E. the system also the name of Yerghik-taiga. The flora is on the poor, although the higher regions carry good forests of larch, pine, juniper, birch. Lichens and mosses clothe many of the boulders that are scattered over the upper slopes and its glacier tongue that flowed down to the east, to Lake Baikal, came to an end at 500 m asl. The Khamar Daban mountains were covered by an ice cap filling up the valley relief. From its valley heads, e. g. the upper Slujanka valley, the Snirsdaja-valley-outlet glacier has calved, among other outlet glaciers, at c.400 m asl into Lake Baikal. The glacial glacier snowline as altitude limit between glacier feeding area and ablation zone has run in these mountains between 1450 and 1250 m asl and this corresponds to a snowline depression of 1500 m against the current height of the snowline. Under the condition of a comparable precipitation ratio there might result from this a depression of the average annual temperature of 7.5 to 9 °C for the Last Ice Age against today. The Sayan region was apparently the origin of the economic and cultural complex of reindeer hunters-herdsmen that we now see among the various Evenki groups, the Sayan ethnic groups still live almost exclusively in the area of the Eastern Sayan mountains. The Sayan Solar Observatory is located in mountains at an altitude of 2,000 meters. Tuva -Sayan Mountains Photo of Sayan Mountains
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Gobi Desert
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The Gobi Desert is a large desert region in Asia. It covers parts of northern and northwestern China, and of southern Mongolia, the Gobi is most notable in history as part of the great Mongol Empire, and as the location of several important cities along the Silk Road. The Gobi is a rain shadow desert, formed by the Himalayan mountain range blocking rain-carrying clouds from the Indian Ocean reaching the Gobi territory, the Gobi measures over 1,600 km from southwest to northeast and 800 km from north to south. The desert is widest in the west, along the joining the Lake Bosten. It occupies an arc of land 1,295,000 km2 in area as of 2007, it is the fifth-largest desert in the world, much of the Gobi is not sandy but has exposed bare rock. The Gobi is a desert, with frost and occasionally snow occurring on its dunes. Besides being quite far north, it is located on a plateau roughly 910–1,520 metres above sea level. An average of approximately 194 millimetres of rain falls annually in the Gobi, additional moisture reaches parts of the Gobi in winter as snow is blown by the wind from the Siberian Steppes. These winds cause the Gobi to reach extremes of temperature ranging from −40 °C or −40 °F in winter to 45 °C or 113 °F in summer, the climate of the Gobi is one of great extremes, combined with rapid changes of temperature of as much as 35 °C. These can occur not only seasonally but within 24 hours, in southern Mongolia, the temperature has been recorded as low as −32.8 °C. In contrast, in Alxa, Inner Mongolia, it rises as high as 37 °C in July, average winter minimums are a frigid −25 °C while summertime temperatures are warm to hot, with highs that range up to 50 °C. Most of the falls during the summer. Hence, the icy sandstorms and snowstorms of spring and early summer plus early January, the Gobi Desert is the source of many important fossil finds, including the first dinosaur eggs. They are occasionally visited by snow leopards, brown bears, drought-adapted shrubs in the desert included gray sparrows saltwort, gray sagebrush, and low grasses such as needle grass and bridlegrass. Several large nature reserves have established in the Gobi, including Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park, Great Gobi A. The area is vulnerable to trampling by livestock and off-road vehicles, in Mongolia, grasslands have been degraded by goats, which are raised by nomadic herders as source of cashmere wool. The economic trends of livestock privatization and the collapse of the economy have caused people to return to subsistence rural lifestyles. Large copper and gold deposits located at Oyuu Tolgoi, about 80 kilometres from the Chinese border into Mongolia, are being investigated for development as mining operations
23.
Mongolic languages
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The Mongolic languages are a group of languages spoken in East-Central Asia, mostly in Mongolia and surrounding areas plus in Kalmykia. The closest relative of the Mongolic languages appears to be the extinct language Khitan, some linguists have grouped Mongolic with Turkic, Tungusic, and possibly Koreanic and Japonic as part of the controversial Altaic family, but this has been widely discredited. In another classificational approach, there is a tendency to call Central Mongolian a language consisting of Mongolian proper, Oirat and Buryat, within Mongolian proper, they then draw a distinction between Khalkha on the one hand and Southern Mongolian on the other hand. A less common subdivision of Central Mongolian is to divide it into a Central dialect, an Eastern dialect, a Western dialect, and a Northern dialect. Another problem lies in the comparability of terminology as Western linguists use language and dialect, while Mongolian linguists use the Grimmian trichotomy language, dialect. Proto-Mongolic, the language of the modern Mongolic languages, is very close to Middle Mongol, the language spoken at the time of Genghis Khan. Most features of modern Mongolic languages can thus be reconstructed from Middle Mongol, an exception would be the voice suffix like -caga- do together, which can be reconstructed from the modern languages but is not attested in Middle Mongol. One can speculate that the languages of Donghu, Wuhuan, the closest relative of the languages traced back to Proto-Mongolic appears to be the medieval Khitan language. Khitan has been described as Para-Mongolic, not part of the Mongolic family, once again on the Tabgač language. Ethnic map of Mongolia Monumenta Altaica grammars, texts, dictionaries and bibliographies of Mongolian and other Altaic languages
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Turkic languages
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The Turkic languages are a language family of at least thirty-five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples from Southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China. Turkic languages are spoken as a language by some 170 million people. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish, spoken mainly in Anatolia and the Balkans, characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family. Apparent similarities with the Uralic languages family even caused these families to be regarded as one for a time under the hypothesis of Ural-Altaic languages. Turkic languages are languages, have vowel harmony, extensive agglutination by means of suffixes, and lack of grammatical articles, noun classes. Subject–object–verb word order is universal within the family, the geographical distribution of Turkic-speaking peoples across Eurasia ranges from the North-East of Siberia to Turkey in the West, since the Ottoman era. The two groups shared a religion, Tengrism, and there exists a multitude of evident loanwords between Turkic languages and Mongolic languages, although the loans were bidirectional, today Turkic loanwords constitute the largest foreign component in Mongolian vocabulary. The most famous of these loanwords include lion, gold, the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects, written during the 11th century AD by Kaşgarlı Mahmud of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, constitutes an early linguistic treatment of the family. The Compendium is the first comprehensive dictionary of the Turkic languages and it mainly pertains to the Southwestern branch of the family. The earliest records of the language spoken by Volga Bulgars, the parent to todays Chuvash language, are dated to the 13th–14th centuries AD. With the Turkic expansion during the Early Middle Ages, Turkic languages, in the course of just a few centuries, spread across Central Asia, various terminologies from the Turkic languages have passed into Persian, Hindustani, Russian, Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Arabic. This has obscured the historical developments within each language and/or language group, the modern genetic classification schemes for Turkic are still largely indebted to Samoilovich. It is not clear when two major types of Turkic can be assumed to have actually diverged. With less certainty, the Southwestern, Northwestern, Southeastern and Oghur groups may further be summarized as West Turkic, the following isoglosses are traditionally used in the classification of the Turkic languages, Rhoticisation, e. g. in the last consonant of the word for nine *toqqız. This separates the Oghur branch, which exhibits /r/, from the rest of Turkic, in this case, rhoticisation refers to the development of *-/r/, *-/z/, and *-/d/ to /r/, *-/k/, *-/kh/ in this branch. See Antonov and Jacques on the debate concerning rhotacism and lambdacism in Turkic and this separates Khalaj as a peripheral language. The following table is based upon the classification presented by Lars Johanson The following is a brief comparison of cognates among the basic vocabulary across the Turkic language family. Also, there may be shifts in the meaning from one language to another, in some cases the form given is found only in some dialects of the language, or a loanword is much more common
25.
Altaic languages
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Altaic was a proposed language family of central Eurasia and Siberia, now widely seen as discredited. Various versions included the Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic and sometimes the Korean and Japonic languages and these languages are spoken in a wide arc stretching from eastern Europe, through Central Asia to Anatolia and to the Korean Peninsula and Japanese archipelago in Northeast Asia. The group is named after the Altai mountain range in Central Asia, another view accepts Altaic as a valid family but includes in it only Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic. This view was widespread prior to the 1960s but has almost no supporters among specialists today, the expanded grouping, including Korean and sometimes Japanese, came to be known as Macro-Altaic, leading to the designation of the smaller grouping as Micro-Altaic by retronymy. Most proponents of Altaic continue to support the inclusion of Korean, Micro-Altaic includes about 66 living languages, to which Macro-Altaic would add Korean, Japanese and the Ryukyuan languages for a total of about 74. Opponents maintain that the similarities are due to interaction between the language groups concerned. The inclusion of Korean and Japanese has also criticized and disputed by other linguists. Doubt is also cast on the relationship between Turkic, Tungusic and Mongolic languages by comparisons of similarities of the proto-languages, if Altaic is a legitimate family, the similarities would get bigger in the early proto-languages. This is true for all accepted linguistic families, but an analysis of the earliest written records of Mongolic and Turkic languages shows fewer similarities rather than more. This is more easily explained by language contact and areal effect and this means that they do not share a common ancestor. Because of these facts, the existence of an Altaic family of languages is mostly seen as debunked by modern linguists. However, as has been pointed out by Alexis Manaster Ramer and Paul Sidwell, von Strahlenbergs classification was the first attempt to classify a large number of languages, some of which are Altaic. The term Altaic, as applied to a family, was introduced in 1844 by Matthias Castrén. As originally formulated by Castrén, Altaic included not only Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus, the original Altaic family thus came to be known as the Ural–Altaic. For much of the 19th and the early 20th centuries, the theory of a common Ural–Altaic family was widespread, based on shared features as vowel harmony. However, while the Ural–Altaic hypothesis can still be found in encyclopedias, atlases, for instance, it was characterized by Sergei Starostin as an idea now completely discarded. In 1857, the Austrian scholar Anton Boller suggested adding Japanese to the Ural–Altaic family, polivanov advocated the inclusion of Korean. The first volume of his work, Lautlehre, contained the first comprehensive attempt to identify regular correspondences among the systems within the Altaic language families
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South Central Siberia
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South Central Siberia, also known as Southern Siberia, is a region of Russian Siberia west of Lake Baikal and north of the Altai Mountains. In some contexts, Southern Siberia may also include parts of Central Asian countries that neighbour Russia, the map at right shows the Kemerovo Oblast which runs from the Altai Republic in the south to the Kuznetsk Alatau Mountains in the north. It is a belt of mountains with steppe on both sides, since this line makes a convenient landmark, we will look first at the Altai, then the Kuznetsk Alatau and then the west and east sides of the line. The line separates the basins of the Ob and Yenisei Rivers. At approximately 49°8′8″N 87°33′46″E, the borders of Russia, China, Mongolia, to the east, Tavan Bogd Uul in Bayan-Ölgii Province, Mongolia, marks the end of the Sino-Russian border. To the west, is Kazakhstans East Kazakhstan Province, only the Altai mountains on the Russian side of the border has been designated a UNESCO world heritage site. At the top of the X is the Altai Republic and it contains the central knot to the Altai Mountains. The area is mountainous and still has few good roads. It was inhabited by various Turkic groups who became the Altay people. As the surrounding steppes filled with Russians, many of the lowland Turks were Russified or retreated to the mountains and it only came under definitive Russian control in the 1860s. The M52 highway runs northwest from here, north of the Altai is the 400 km projection of forested mountains which bends slightly to the west at the tip. It is called the Abakan Range in the south and Kuznetsk Alatau in the north, the name comes from the Blacksmith Tatars or Shors, who were notable metal workers. The Russians reached the area as early as 1618, the Abakans, Kuznetsk Alatau and the Kuznetsk form the Kemerovo Oblast with its mostly Russian population. The Salair Ridge extends northwest from the Abakans forming a sort to thumb, between the thumb and the fingers is the steppe of the Kuznetsk Depression, which contains the large Kuznetsk Basin coal fields. Tom River drains the east side of the basin and joins the Ob River north of Tomsk, the town of Novokuznetsk was founded in 1618 To the west of this is the agricultural steppe of the Altai Krai with its Russian population. Here Katun River and Biya Rivers join to form the Ob River, further west, between the Ob and Irtysh River are the Baraba steppe in the north and the Kalunda Steppe in the south. To the east, between the Kuznetsk Alatau and the Sayans, is the steppe of the Minusinsk Depression, the Yenisei River flows north through its center. The Abakan River flows from the base of the north and slightly east to the Yenisei at Abakan town
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Lake Kucherla
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Lake Kucherla is located in the Altai Mountains and Katun Nature Reserve of Siberia. Together with Lake Teletskoye, Belukha Mountain and the Ukok Plateau it forms a natural UNESCO World Heritage Site entitled Golden Mountains of Altai, the lake is surrounded by alpine meadows and peaks over 3,000 metres high. It is situated at the height of 1,790 metres above sea level. The lake area is 3 square kilometres and it is up to 54.8 meters deep. The lake is popular with tourists and holds a stock of grayling, Golden Mountains of Altai, Word Heritage
28.
Belukha Mountain
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Belukha Mountain, located in the Katun Mountains, is the highest peak of the Altai Mountains in Russia. It is part of the World Heritage Site entitled Golden Mountains of Altai, Belukha is a three-peaked mountain massif that rises along the border of Russia and Kazakhstan, just a few tens of miles north of the point where this border meets with the border of China. There are several glaciers on the mountain, including Belukha Glacier. Of the two peaks, the peak is higher than the western peak. Belukha was first climbed in 1914 by the Tronov brothers, most ascents of the eastern peak follow the same southern route as that taken in the first ascent. Though the Altai is lower in elevation than other Asian mountain groups, it is very remote, a team of scientists, traveled to this remote glacier in the summer of 2001 to assess the feasibility of studying the glacier and extracting ice cores at the site. A Swiss-Russian team also worked on the glacier in 2001, research was carried out from 2001 to 2003, glaciological observations were made, and both shallow cores and cores to bedrock were extracted and analyzed. Based on tritium analysis to date, the cores may contain as much as 3–5,000 years of climatic. Since 2008, one is required to apply for a border zone permit in order to be allowed into the area. Altai Reserve The Belukha Mountain pictures Altai Photo - Mountain pictures
29.
Siberia
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Siberia is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has historically been a part of Russia since the 17th century, the territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. It stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the borders of Mongolia. With an area of 13.1 million square kilometres, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russias land area and this is equivalent to an average population density of about 3 inhabitants per square kilometre, making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth. If it were a country by itself, it would still be the largest country in area, the origin of the name is unknown. Some sources say that Siberia originates from the Siberian Tatar word for sleeping land, another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sirtya, a folk, which spoke a language that later evolved into the Ugric languages. This ethnic group was assimilated to the Siberian Tatar people. The modern usage of the name was recorded in the Russian language after the Empires conquest of the Siberian Khanate, a further variant claims that the region was named after the Xibe people. The Polish historian Chycliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the word for north. He said that the neighbouring Chinese, Arabs and Mongolians would not have known Russian and he suggests that the name is a combination of two words, su and bir. The region is of significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch. Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs, Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a rhinoceros from the Kolyma River. The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earths geological history. They continued for a million years and are considered a cause of the Great Dying about 250 million years ago. At least three species of human lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago, H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, the last was determined in 2010, by DNA evidence, to be a new species. Siberia was inhabited by different groups of such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians. The Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan of Old Great Bulgaria in 630, the Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was established in the late 15th century, turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century
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Snow-line
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The climatic snow line is the point above which snow and ice cover the ground throughout the year. The actual snow line may seasonally be significantly lower, the interplay of altitude and latitude affects the precise placement of the snow line at a particular location. At or near the equator, it is situated at approximately 4,500 meters above sea level. In addition, the location to the nearest coastline can influence the altitude of the snow line. A higher altitude is necessary to lower the temperature further against the surroundings. Furthermore, large-scale oceanic currents such as the North Atlantic Current can have significant affects over large areas, the highest mountain in the world below the snow line is Ojos del Salado. Compare the usage of snow line indicating the boundary between snow and non-snow, Frost line Frost line Glacier High Alps Ice cap climate Tree line Charlesworth J. K. With special reference to its glaciation, vol. I, london, Edward Arnold Ltd,700 pp. Flint, R. F. New York, xiii+553+555 pp. Kalesnik, S. V, uchpedgiz, Leningrad,328 pp. Tronov, M. V. Voprosy svyazi mezhdu klimatom i oledeneniem, izdatelstvo Tomskogo Universiteta, Tomsk,202 pp. Wilhelm, F. Schnee- und Gletscherkunde, De Gruyter, Berlin,414 pp
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Mountain pass
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A mountain pass is a route through a mountain range or over a ridge. At lower elevations it may be called a hill pass, the highest vehicle-accessible pass in the world appears to be Mana Pass, located in the Himalayas on the border between India and China. Mountain passes make use of a gap, saddle or col, a topographic saddle is analogous to the mathematical concept of a saddle surface, with a saddle point marking the highest point between two valleys and the lowest point along a ridge. On a topographic map, passes are characterized by lines with an hourglass shape. Passes are often found just above the source of a river, a pass may be very short, consisting of steep slopes to the top of the pass, or may be a valley many kilometres long, whose highest point might only be identifiable by surveying. Roads have long been built – and more recently railways – through passes, some high and rugged passes may have tunnels bored underneath to allow faster traffic flow throughout the year. The top of a pass is frequently the only ground in the area. If a national border follows a mountain range, a pass over the mountains is typically on the border, and there may be a control or customs station. For instance Argentina and Chile share the worlds third-longest international border,5,300 kilometres long, the border runs north-south along the Andes mountains, with a total of 42 mountain passes. On a road over a pass, it is customary to have a roadside sign giving the name of the pass. As well as offering relatively easy travel between valleys, passes also provide a route between two mountain tops with a minimum of descent. As a result, it is common for tracks to meet at a pass, passes traditionally were places for trade routes, communications, cultural exchange, military expeditions etc. A typical example is the Brenner pass in the Alps, some mountain passes above the tree line have problems with snow drift in the winter. This might be alleviated by building the road a few meters above the ground, there are many words for pass in the English-speaking world. In the United States, pass is very common in the West, the gap is common in the southern Appalachians, notch in parts of New England. Scotland has the Gaelic term bealach, while Wales has the similar bwlch, the roads at Mana Pass at 5,610 metres and Marsimik La at 5,582 metres, on and near the China-India border respectively, appear to be worlds two highest motorable passes. Media related to Mountain passes at Wikimedia Commons
32.
Plateau
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Plateaus can be formed by a number of processes, including upwelling of volcanic magma, extrusion of lava, and erosion by water and glaciers. Magma rises from the mantle, causing the ground to swell upward, in way, large, flat areas of rock are uplifted. Plateaus can also be built up by lava spreading outward from cracks, plateaus can also be formed by the erosional processes of glaciers on mountain ranges, leaving them sitting between the mountain ranges. Water can also erode mountains and other landforms down into plateaus, volcanic plateaus are produced by volcanic activity. The Columbia Plateau in the northwestern United States is an example, dissected plateaus are highly eroded plateaus cut by rivers and broken by deep narrow valleys. Plateaus are classified according to their surrounding environment, intermontane plateaus are the highest in the world, bordered by mountains. The Tibetan Plateau is one such plateau, Piedmont plateaus are bordered on one side by mountains and on the other by a plain or a sea. The Piedmont Plateau of the Eastern United States between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic Coastal Plain is an example, continental plateaus are bordered on all sides by plains or oceans, forming away from the mountains. The Tibetan plateau covers approximately 2,500,000 km2, the plateau is sufficiently high enough to reverse the Hadley cell convection cycles and to drive the monsoons of India towards the south. The second-highest plateau is the Deosai Plateau of the Deosai National Park at an elevation of 4,114 m. It is located in the Astore and Skardu districts of Gilgit-Baltistan, Deosai means the land of giants. The park protects an area of 3,000 km2 and it is known for its rich flora and fauna of the Karakoram-West Tibetan Plateau alpine steppe ecoregion. In spring it is covered by sweeps of wildflowers and a variety of butterflies. The highest point in Deosai is Deosai Lake, or Sheosar Lake from the Shina language meaning Blind lake near the Chilim Valley. The lake lies at an elevation of 4,142 m, one of the highest lakes in the world, and is 2.3 km long,1.8 km wide, and 40 m deep on average. Some other major plateaus in Asia are, Armenian Highlands, Iranian plateau, Anatolian Plateau, Mongolian Plateau, and the Deccan Plateau. This polar ice cap is so massive that the echolocation sound measurements of ice thickness have shown that parts of the Antarctic dry land surface have been pressed below sea level. Thus, if that same ice cap were removed, the large areas of the frozen white continent would be flooded by the surrounding Antarctic Ocean or Southern Ocean
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Ukok Plateau
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Ukok Plateau is a remote and pristine grasslands area located in the heart of southwestern Siberia, the Altai Mountains region of Russia near the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The plateau is recognized as part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site entitled Golden Mountains of Altai as an important environmental treasure and it provides a habitat for many of the worlds endangered species including one of its least studied predatory animals, the snow leopard. Other endangered species protected there include the mountain sheep, the steppe eagle. Currently the Ukok Plateau is being threatened by plans for a gas pipeline between China and Russia and it is also being threatened by a proposal to build a road through it as well as overuse of the steppe by ranchers. The Mongolian word uheg - literally means elongated cabinet, box, according to the oral testimony of S. Umurzakova Ukok in Kyrgyz used to refer to flat-topped mountains, ie plateaus. The Ukok Plateau is the plain located between South-Altai and Sailugem and ridges at a height of 2, 200–2,500 m above sea level. There are 500–600 m high mountain peaks that tower above the plateau, the highest peak on the plateau is the mountain knot of Tavan-Bogdo-Ula where the highest mountain is Khüiten Peak that reaches 4,374 m above sea level. This is the second highest peak in Siberia after Belukha Mountain, the present-day eastern Altai-Sayan region areas of Ukok-Sailiugem could be considered the closest analogy to the ancient mammoth steppe environment. Many ancient Bronze Age tomb mounds have been found in the area and have associated with the Pazyryk culture which closely resembled that of the legendary Scythian people to the west. The term kurgen is in usage to describe such log-barrow burials. Excavations of this site have continued to yield notable archaeological finds, one famous finding is known as the Ice Maiden, excavated by Russian archaeologist Natalia Polosmak. The Ice Maiden and other finds were located just within a disputed strip of land between Russia and China. The residents of the Altai Republic are demanding the return of the artifacts from their current location in Novosibirsk. The Ukok plateau is linked to the world by heavy-going dirt roads through the Ukok, Ulan-Daba, Teplyi kluch. The Teplyi kluch pass is at an altitude of 2,907 m, one may get to these passes from Kosh-Agach village, which is easily reachable owing to a relatively improved M52 highway. Southward, beyond Kosh-Agach, the way becomes impassable for common means of transport, however, even they could become stuck in swamp mud in the Kalguty river valley, especially after a sunny day when frozen soil begins thawing. For most of the year the passes are snow-covered and avalanche-prone, during the short summer season all the slopes are prone to solifluction. S. I. Rudenko, Kultura naseleniia Gornogo Altaia v skifskoe vremia translated as Frozen Tombs of Siberia, The Pazyryk Burials of Iron Age Horsemen, M. W
34.
Uvs Lake
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Uvs Lake is a highly saline lake in an endorheic basin - Uvs Nuur Basin in Mongolia with a small part in Russia. It is the largest lake in Mongolia by surface area, covering 3,350 km² at 759 m above sea level, the northeastern tip of the lake is situated in the Tuva Republic of the Russian Federation. The largest settlement near the lake is Ulaangom and this shallow and very saline body of water is a remainder of a huge saline sea which covered a much larger area several thousand years ago. The name Uvs Nuur derives from subsen, a Mongolian word referring to the bitter dregs left behind in the making of airag, and nuur, the name is a reference to the lakes salty, undrinkable water. Uvs Lake has a length of 84 km and a width of 79 km and its basin is separated from the rest of the Great Lakes Depression by the Khan Khökhii ridge. However, it is not a lake as some mistakenly think. The main feeding rivers are the Baruunturuun, Nariin gol, and Tes from Khangai Mountains in the east, the very large catchment area with no exit results in highly saline water, primarily due to sulphate and sodium ions. The lake freezes over from October to May, in summer, it exhibits a temperature gradient from 25 °C at the surface to 19 °C at the bottom. 29 different species of fish are known from Uvs Lake, and one of them, all of the lake and many parts of its surroundings have been declared protected sites. The UNESCO is using the designation Uvs Lake site as a term to summarize twelve separate clusters of protected sites. The Uvs Lake is the basin for the Uvs Lake Basin. The border between Mongolia and Russia runs through the northern periphery of the basin, here the worlds most northern desert meets the worlds most southern tundra zone. Apart from the Uvs Lake, the basin comprises several smaller lakes, as these lakes lie to the north of other inland seas of Central Asia, they are of key importance for waterfowl migration. Since the basin spans the boundary between Siberia and Central Asia, temperatures may vary from −58 °C in winter to 47 °C in summer. Despite its harsh climate, the depression is home to 173 bird species and 41 mammal species, including the endangered snow leopard, argali. The population density is low here, the lack of industry and the reliance of the inhabitants on traditional ways such as nomadic pasturing have little impact on the landscape and allow the ecosystem to remain relatively pristine. In 2003, the UNESCO listed the Uvs Lake Basin as a natural World Heritage Site and this transboundary patrimony is one of the largest sites inscribed in the World Heritage List to date
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Khyargas Nuur
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Khyargas Lake is a salt lake in Khyargas district, Uvs Province, Western Mongolia. Some sources are using different Khyargas Lake statistics values, Water level,1,035.29 m Surface area,1,481.1 km² Average depth,50.7 m Volume,75.2 km³. The Khyargas Lake National Park is based on the lake and this protected area was established in 2000 and covers about 3,328 km². It also includes a freshwater Airag Lake
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Tannu-Ola mountains
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It extends in an east-west direction and curves along the Mongolian border. Its highest peak reaches 2,930 m, the northern slopes are part of the watershed of the Yenisei River, facing the western Sayan Mountains. The eastern end touches the large watershed of the Selenge River in Mongolia, the foothills of the southern slopes cross into Mongolian territory. They form the limits of a large basin of steppes that extends south to the Mongolian Altay Mountains. The western end is located near the northern Altay Mountains in the Russian Altai Republic, tuva Depression Uvs Nuur Basin Ubsunur Hollow Biosphere Reserve
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Glacier
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A glacier is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight, it forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. Glaciers slowly deform and flow due to stresses induced by their weight, creating crevasses, seracs and they also abrade rock and debris from their substrate to create landforms such as cirques and moraines. Glaciers form only on land and are distinct from the much thinner sea ice, between 35°N and 35°S, glaciers occur only in the Himalayas, Andes, Rocky Mountains, a few high mountains in East Africa, Mexico, New Guinea and on Zard Kuh in Iran. Glaciers cover about 10 percent of Earths land surface, continental glaciers cover nearly 13,000,000 km2 or about 98 percent of Antarcticas 13,200,000 km2, with an average thickness of 2,100 m. Greenland and Patagonia also have huge expanses of continental glaciers, Glacial ice is the largest reservoir of fresh water on Earth. Within high altitude and Antarctic environments, the temperature difference is often not sufficient to release meltwater. A large piece of compressed ice, or a glacier, appears blue as large quantities of water appear blue and this is because water molecules absorb other colors more efficiently than blue. The other reason for the color of glaciers is the lack of air bubbles. Air bubbles, which give a color to ice, are squeezed out by pressure increasing the density of the created ice. The word Glaceon is a loanword from French and goes back, via Franco-Provençal, to the Vulgar Latin glaciārium, derived from the Late Latin glacia, the processes and features caused by or related to glaciers are referred to as glacial. The process of establishment, growth and flow is called glaciation. The corresponding area of study is called glaciology, Glaciers are important components of the global cryosphere. Glaciers are categorized by their morphology, thermal characteristics, and behavior, cirque glaciers form on the crests and slopes of mountains. A glacier that fills a valley is called a valley glacier, a large body of glacial ice astride a mountain, mountain range, or volcano is termed an ice cap or ice field. Ice caps have a less than 50,000 km2 by definition. Glacial bodies larger than 50,000 km2 are called ice sheets or continental glaciers, several kilometers deep, they obscure the underlying topography. Only nunataks protrude from their surfaces, the only extant ice sheets are the two that cover most of Antarctica and Greenland. They contain vast quantities of water, enough that if both melted, global sea levels would rise by over 70 m
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Tomsk
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Tomsk is a city and the administrative center of Tomsk Oblast in Russia, located on the Tom River. One of the oldest towns in Siberia, Tomsk celebrated its 410th anniversary in 2014, Tomsk originated with a decree from Tsar Boris Godunov in 1604 after Toian, the Tatar duke of Eushta, asked for the Tsars protection against Kirghiz bandits. Toian ceded the land for the fortress to the Tsar, the new status brought development and the city grew quickly. In time, Novosibirsk would surpass Tomsk in importance, in the mid-19th century one fifth of the citys residents were exiles. However, within a few years, the city would be reinvented as the center of Siberia with the establishment of Tomsk State University. By World War II, every resident of the city was a student. After the October Revolution of 1917 the city became a center of the White movement, led by Anatoly Pepelyayev and Maria Bochkareva. After the victory of the Red Army in the 1920s, Soviet authorities incorporated Tomsk into the West Siberian Krai, like many Siberian cities, Tomsk became the new home for many factories relocated out of the war zone from 1941. The resulting growth of the city led the Soviet government to establish the new Tomsk Oblast, during the Cold War Tomsk became one of many designated closed cities, which outsiders and, in particular, foreigners, could not visit. Tomsk-7 received municipal status in 1956 and was renamed Seversk in 1992, as a municipal division, Tomsk City Under Oblast Jurisdiction is incorporated as Tomsk Urban Okrug. Tomsk is divided into four city districts, Kirovsky, Leninsky, Oktyabrsky, Tomsk has a humid continental climate barely escaping a subarctic classification. The annual average temperature is +0.87 °C, winters are severe and lengthy, and the lowest recorded temperature was −55 °C in January 1931. However, the temperature in January is between −21 °C and −13 °C. The average temperature in July is +18.7 °C, the total annual rainfall is 568 millimeters. In 2006, Tomsk experienced what might have been its first recorded winds of hurricane force, Tomsk is governed by a mayor and a 33-member Duma. The current mayor, appointed in 2013, is Ivan Klyain, of the 33 members,16 are elected from the eight double mandate districts while 17 are chosen from party lists. In the October 2005 local elections, United Russia was expected to cruise to a victory, however. There are three powerstations in the city, TEC-1 GRES-2 TEC-3 Tomsk consumes more energy than it produces
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Biya River
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The Biya River is a river in the Altai Republic and Altai Krai in Russia. It forms the Ob River as it joins the Katun River, the Biya River is 301 km long, the area of its drainage basin is 37,000 km2. It flows out of the Teletskoye Lake, the river freezes up during the mid-November to early December. It breaks up in the early or mid-April, the Biya River is navigable up to the town of Biysk. The maximum depth of river is 28 feet
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Katun River
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The Katun River is a river in the Altai Republic and the Altai Krai of Russia. It forms the Ob River as it joins the Biya River some 19 kilometres southwest of Biysk, the Katun River is 688 kilometres long, and its drainage basin covers 60,900 square kilometres. It originates in the Katun glaciers on the slope of Belukha Mountain. The river freezes up in late November or early December and breaks up in early or mid-April, the Katun River has a few tributaries, Argut River, Chuya River, Koksa River and Sema River. There are numerous buildings, holiday camps and various guest houses in the pine forest near the village
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Kropotkin, Peter; Bealby, John Thomas (1911). "Altai". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 758–759. Authorities cited:
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
