1.
English articles
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Articles in the English language are the definite article the and the indefinite articles a and an. The most common determiners are the articles the and a, which specify the presence or absence of definiteness of the noun, other possible determiners include words like this, my, each and many – see English determiners. There are also cases where no determiner is required, as in the sentence John likes fast cars, or the sentence Bob likes cool trains. The definite article the is used when the referent of the phrase is assumed to be unique or known from the context. For example, in the sentence The boy with glasses was looking at the moon, it is assumed that in the context the reference can only be to one boy, the indefinite article a or an is used only with singular, countable nouns. It indicates that the referent of the phrase is one unspecified member of a class. For example, the sentence An ugly man was smoking a pipe does not refer to any specifically known ugly man or pipe, no article is used with plural or uncountable nouns when the referent is indefinite. However, in situations, the determiner some is often added. Additionally, articles are not normally used, in phrases that contain other determiners, although one can combine articles with certain other determiners, as in the many issues. With pronouns, although again certain combinations are possible, preceding noun phrases consisting of a clause or infinitive phrase. If it is required to be concise, e. g. in headlines, signs, labels, for example, rather than The mayor was attacked, a newspaper headline might say just Mayor attacked. For more information on usage, see the sections Definite article § Notes. For more cases where no article is used, see Zero article in English, in most cases, the article is the first word of its noun phrase, preceding all other adjectives and modifiers. The little old red bag held a big surprise. There are a few exceptions, however, Certain determiners, such as all, the determiner such and exclamative what precede the indefinite article. When adjectives are qualified by quite, the word quite often precedes the indefinite article, see also English determiners § Combinations of determiners and Determiners and adjectives. The only definite article in English is the word the, denoting person or thing already mentioned, under discussion, implied, the is the most commonly used word in the English language, accounting for 7% of all words. The can be used with both singular and plural nouns, with nouns of any gender, and with nouns that start with any letter and this is different from many other languages which have different articles for different genders and/or numbers
2.
Word
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In linguistics, a word is the smallest element that can be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content. This contrasts deeply with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning, a word may consist of a single morpheme, or several, whereas a morpheme may not be able to stand on its own as a word. A complex word will typically include a root and one or more affixes, words can be put together to build larger elements of language, such as phrases, clauses, and sentences. The term word may refer to a word or to a written word. Spoken words are made up of units of sound called phonemes, the difficulty of deciphering a word depends on the language. Dictionaries categorize a languages lexicon into lemmas and these can be taken as an indication of what constitutes a word in the opinion of the writers of that language. The most appropriate means of measuring the length of a word is by counting its syllables or morphemes, when a word has multiple definitions or multiple senses, it may result in confusion in a debate or discussion. Leonard Bloomfield introduced the concept of Minimal Free Forms in 1926, words are thought of as the smallest meaningful unit of speech that can stand by themselves. However, some words are not minimal free forms as they make no sense by themselves. Some semanticists have put forward a theory of so-called semantic primitives or semantic primes, according to this theory, semantic primes serve as the basis for describing the meaning, without circularity, of other words and their associated conceptual denotations. In the Minimalist school of theoretical syntax, words are construed as bundles of features that are united into a structure with form. For example, the word koalas has semantic features, category features, number features, phonological features, the task of defining what constitutes a word involves determining where one word ends and another word begins—in other words, identifying word boundaries. There are several ways to determine where the boundaries of spoken language should be placed, Potential pause, A speaker is told to repeat a given sentence slowly. The speaker will tend to insert pauses at the word boundaries, however, this method is not foolproof, the speaker could easily break up polysyllabic words, or fail to separate two or more closely linked words. Indivisibility, A speaker is told to say a sentence out loud, thus, I have lived in this village for ten years might become My family and I have lived in this little village for about ten or so years. These extra words will tend to be added in the boundaries of the original sentence. However, some languages have infixes, which are put inside a word, similarly, some have separable affixes, in the German sentence Ich komme gut zu Hause an, the verb ankommen is separated. Phonetic boundaries, Some languages have rules of pronunciation that make it easy to spot where a word boundary should be
3.
Noun
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A noun is a word that functions as the name of some specific thing or set of things, such as living creatures, objects, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas. Linguistically, a noun is a member of a large, open part of whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause. Lexical categories are defined in terms of the ways in which their members combine with other kinds of expressions, the syntactic rules for nouns differ from language to language. In English, nouns are words which can occur with articles and attributive adjectives. Word classes were described by Sanskrit grammarians from at least the 5th century BC, in Yāskas Nirukta, the noun is one of the four main categories of words defined. The Ancient Greek equivalent was ónoma, referred to by Plato in the Cratylus dialog, the term used in Latin grammar was nōmen. All of these terms for noun were also words meaning name, the English word noun is derived from the Latin term, through the Anglo-Norman noun. The word classes were defined partly by the forms that they take. In Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, for example, nouns are categorized by gender and inflected for case, because adjectives share these three grammatical categories, adjectives are placed in the same class as nouns. Similarly, the Latin nōmen includes both nouns and adjectives, as originally did the English word noun, the two types being distinguished as nouns substantive and nouns adjective, many European languages use a cognate of the word substantive as the basic term for noun. Nouns in the dictionaries of languages are demarked by the abbreviation s. or sb. instead of n. which may be used for proper nouns or neuter nouns instead. In English, some authors use the word substantive to refer to a class that includes both nouns and noun phrases. It can also be used as a counterpart to attributive when distinguishing between a noun being used as the head of a phrase and a noun being used as a noun adjunct. For example, the knee can be said to be used substantively in my knee hurts. Nouns have sometimes been defined in terms of the categories to which they are subject. Such definitions tend to be language-specific, since nouns do not have the categories in all languages. Nouns are frequently defined, particularly in contexts, in terms of their semantic properties. Nouns are described as words that refer to a person, place, thing, event, substance, quality, quantity, however this type of definition has been criticized by contemporary linguists as being uninformative
4.
English grammar
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English grammar is the way in which meanings are encoded into wordings in the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences, There are historical, social, cultural and regional variations of English. Divergences from the described here occur in some dialects of English. There are differences in grammar between the forms of British, American, and Australian English, although these are minor compared with the differences in vocabulary. Eight word classes or parts of speech are commonly distinguished in English, nouns, determiners, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions. Interjections are another class, but these are not described here as they do not form part of the clause. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs form open classes – word classes that readily accept new members, such as the noun celebutante, the others are considered to be closed classes. For example, it is rare for a new pronoun to enter the language, English words are not generally marked for word class. It is not usually possible to tell from the form of a word which class it belongs to except, to some extent, on the other hand, some words belong to more than one word class. For example, run can serve as either a verb or a noun, lexemes may be inflected to express different grammatical categories. The lexeme run has the forms runs, ran, runny, runner, words in one class can sometimes be derived from those in another. This has the potential to rise to new words. The noun aerobics has recently given rise to the adjective aerobicized, a phrase typically serves the same function as a word from some particular word class. For example, my good friend Peter is a phrase that can be used in a sentence as if it were a noun. Similarly, adjective phrases and adverb phrases function as if they were adjectives or adverbs, Nouns form the largest English word class. There are many common suffixes used to form nouns from other nouns or from other types of words, such as -age, -hood, Nouns are also often created by conversion of verbs or adjectives, as with the words talk and reading. Unlike in many related languages, English nouns do not have grammatical gender, Nouns are sometimes classified semantically as proper nouns and common nouns or as concrete nouns and abstract nouns. A grammatical distinction is made between count nouns such as clock and city, and non-count nouns such as milk and decor
5.
A and an
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Articles in the English language are the definite article the and the indefinite articles a and an. The most common determiners are the articles the and a, which specify the presence or absence of definiteness of the noun, other possible determiners include words like this, my, each and many – see English determiners. There are also cases where no determiner is required, as in the sentence John likes fast cars, or the sentence Bob likes cool trains. The definite article the is used when the referent of the phrase is assumed to be unique or known from the context. For example, in the sentence The boy with glasses was looking at the moon, it is assumed that in the context the reference can only be to one boy, the indefinite article a or an is used only with singular, countable nouns. It indicates that the referent of the phrase is one unspecified member of a class. For example, the sentence An ugly man was smoking a pipe does not refer to any specifically known ugly man or pipe, no article is used with plural or uncountable nouns when the referent is indefinite. However, in situations, the determiner some is often added. Additionally, articles are not normally used, in phrases that contain other determiners, although one can combine articles with certain other determiners, as in the many issues. With pronouns, although again certain combinations are possible, preceding noun phrases consisting of a clause or infinitive phrase. If it is required to be concise, e. g. in headlines, signs, labels, for example, rather than The mayor was attacked, a newspaper headline might say just Mayor attacked. For more information on usage, see the sections Definite article § Notes. For more cases where no article is used, see Zero article in English, in most cases, the article is the first word of its noun phrase, preceding all other adjectives and modifiers. The little old red bag held a big surprise. There are a few exceptions, however, Certain determiners, such as all, the determiner such and exclamative what precede the indefinite article. When adjectives are qualified by quite, the word quite often precedes the indefinite article, see also English determiners § Combinations of determiners and Determiners and adjectives. The only definite article in English is the word the, denoting person or thing already mentioned, under discussion, implied, the is the most commonly used word in the English language, accounting for 7% of all words. The can be used with both singular and plural nouns, with nouns of any gender, and with nouns that start with any letter and this is different from many other languages which have different articles for different genders and/or numbers
6.
Old English
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Old English or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest historical form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably in the mid 5th century, Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. As the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in England, their language replaced the languages of Roman Britain, Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, Old English had four main dialects, associated with particular Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Mercian, Northumbrian, Kentish and West Saxon. It was West Saxon that formed the basis for the standard of the later Old English period, although the dominant forms of Middle. The speech of eastern and northern parts of England was subject to strong Old Norse influence due to Scandinavian rule, Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, and its closest relatives are Old Frisian and Old Saxon. Like other old Germanic languages, it is different from Modern English. Old English grammar is similar to that of modern German, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs have many inflectional endings and forms. The oldest Old English inscriptions were using a runic system. Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion. While indicating that the establishment of dates is a process, Albert Baugh dates Old English from 450 to 1150, a period of full inflections. Perhaps around 85 per cent of Old English words are no longer in use, Old English is a West Germanic language, developing out of Ingvaeonic dialects from the 5th century. It came to be spoken over most of the territory of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which became the Kingdom of England and this included most of present-day England, as well as part of what is now southeastern Scotland, which for several centuries belonged to the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Other parts of the island – Wales and most of Scotland – continued to use Celtic languages, Norse was also widely spoken in the parts of England which fell under Danish law. Anglo-Saxon literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century, the oldest surviving text of Old English literature is Cædmons Hymn, composed between 658 and 680. There is a corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries. The Old English Latin alphabet was introduced around the 9th century, with the unification of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms by Alfred the Great in the later 9th century, the language of government and literature became standardised around the West Saxon dialect. In Old English, typical of the development of literature, poetry arose before prose, a later literary standard, dating from the later 10th century, arose under the influence of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, and was followed by such writers as the prolific Ælfric of Eynsham. This form of the language is known as the Winchester standard and it is considered to represent the classical form of Old English
7.
Saxons
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The Saxons were a group of Germanic tribes first mentioned as living near the North Sea coast of what is now Germany, in the late Roman empire. They were soon mentioned as raiding and settling in many North Sea areas, as well as pushing south inland towards the Franks. Significant numbers settled in parts of Great Britain in the early Middle Ages. Many Saxons however remained in Germania, where they resisted the expanding Frankish Empire through the leadership of the semi-legendary Saxon hero, the Saxons earliest area of settlement is believed to have been Northern Albingia, an area approximately that of modern Holstein. This general area also included the probable homeland of the Angles, Saxons, along with the Angles and other continental Germanic tribes, participated in the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain during and after the 5th century. The British-Celtic inhabitants of the isles tended to refer to all of these collectively as Saxons. It is unknown how many Saxons migrated from the Continent to Britain, the Saxons may have derived their name from seax, a kind of knife for which they were known. The seax has a symbolic impact in the English counties of Essex and Middlesex. Their names, along with those of Sussex and Wessex, contain a remnant of the word Saxon. The Elizabethan era play Edmund Ironside suggests the Saxon name derives from the Latin saxa, Their names discover what their natures are, More hard than stones, in the Celtic languages, the words designating English nationality derive from the Latin word Saxones. The most prominent example, a loanword in English, is the Scottish Gaelic Sassenach and it derives from the Scottish Gaelic Sasunnach meaning, originally, Saxon, from the Latin Saxones. Scots- or Scottish English-speakers in the 21st century usually use it as a term for an English person. The Oxford English Dictionary gives 1771 as the date of the earliest written use of the word in English. Sasanach, the Irish word for an Englishman, has the same derivation, as do the words used in Welsh to describe the English people, Cornish terms the English Sawsnek, from the same derivation. In the 16th century Cornish-speakers used the phrase Meea navidna cowza sawzneck to feign ignorance of the English language, England in Scottish Gaelic is Sasainn. Other examples include the Welsh Saesneg, Irish Sasana, Breton saoz, and Cornish Sowson, Sowsnek, the label Saxons was also applied to German settlers who migrated during the 13th century to southeastern Transylvania. From Transylvania, some Saxons migrated to neighbouring Moldavia, as the name of the town, Sas-cut, sascut is located in the part of Moldavia that is today part of Romania. The Finns and Estonians have changed their usage of the term Saxony over the centuries to denote now the country of Germany
8.
Modern Scots
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Modern Scots comprises the varieties of Scots traditionally spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster from 1700. Throughout its history, Modern Scots has been undergoing a process of language attrition and this process of language contact has accelerated rapidly since widespread access to mass media in English and increased population mobility became available after the Second World War. It has recently taken on the nature of language shift towards Scottish English, sometimes also termed language change. By the end of the twentieth century Scots was at a stage of language death over much of Lowland Scotland. Residual features of Scots are often regarded as slang, the varieties of Modern Scots are generally divided into five dialect groups, Insular Scots – spoken in Orkney and Shetland. Northern Scots – Spoken north of the Firth of Tay, North Northern – spoken in Caithness, Easter Ross and the Black Isle. Mid Northern – spoken in Moray, Buchan and Aberdeenshire, South Northern – spoken in east Angus and the Mearns. Central Scots – spoken in the Central Lowlands and South west Scotland, North East Central – spoken north of the Forth, in south east Perthshire and west Angus. South West Central – spoken in west Dumfriesshire, Kirkcudbrightshire and Wigtownshire and it is also known as the border tongue or border Scots. Ulster Scots – spoken primarily by the descendants of Scottish settlers in Ulster, particularly counties Antrim, Down, the southern extent of Scots may be identified by the range of a number of pronunciation features which set Scots apart from neighbouring English dialects. Like many languages across borders there is a continuum between Scots and the Northumbrian dialect, both descending from early northern Middle English. The Scots pronunciation of come contrasts with in Northern English, the Scots –English / cognate group can be found in a small portion of north Cumbria with the southern limit stretching from Bewcastle to Longtown and Gretna. The Scots pronunciation of wh as becomes English south of Carlisle but remains in Northumberland, but Northumberland realises “r” as, often called the burr, which is not a Scots realisation. The greater part of the valley of the Esk and the whole of Liddesdale have been considered to be northern English dialects by some, as well as the main dialects, Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow have local variations on an Anglicised form of Central Scots. In Aberdeen, Mid Northern Scots is spoken by a minority, due to their being roughly near the border between the two dialects, places like Dundee and Perth can contain elements and influences of both Northern and Central Scots. Currently, there is no standard orthography for modern Scots. During the 15th and 16th centuries, when Scots was a state language, however, by the beginning of the 18th century, Scots was beginning to be regarded as a rustic dialect of English, rather than a national language. Scots poet Allan Ramsay embarked on large-scale anglicisation of Scots spelling, writers also began using the apologetic apostrophe, to mark missing English letters
9.
Norman language
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Norman is a Romance language which can be classified as one of the Oïl languages along with Picard and Walloon. The name Norman-French is sometimes used to not only the Norman language. For the most part, the forms of Norman and modern French are intercomprehensible. Norman is spoken in mainland Normandy in France where it has no official status and it is taught in a few colleges near Cherbourg-Octeville. In the Channel Islands, the Norman language has developed separately, Jèrriais and Guernésiais are recognized as regional languages by the British and Irish governments within the framework of the British–Irish Council. Sercquiais is in fact a descendant of the 16th century Jèrriais used by the colonists from Jersey who settled the then uninhabited island. The last first language speakers of Auregnais, the dialect of Norman spoken on Alderney, died during the 20th century, the dialect of Herm also lapsed, at an unknown date. An isogloss termed the Joret line separates the northern and southern dialects of the Norman language, there are also dialectal differences between western and eastern dialects. Three different standardized spellings are used, continental Norman, Jèrriais and these represent the different developments and particular literary histories of the varieties of Norman. Norman may therefore be described as a pluricentric language, the Anglo-Norman dialect of Norman was a language of administration in England following the Norman conquest of England in 1066. This left a legacy of Law French in the language of English courts, in Ireland, Norman remained strongest in the area of south-east Ireland, where the Hiberno-Normans invaded in 1169. Norman is still in use for very formal legal purposes in the UK, such as when the monarch gives Royal Assent to an Act of Parliament using the phrase. The Norman conquest of southern Italy also brought the language to Sicily and the part of the Italian Peninsula. See, Norman French and French influence on Sicilian, literature in Norman ranges from early Anglo-Norman literature through the 19th-century Norman literary renaissance to modern writers. Today, the Norman language is strongest in the accessible areas of the former Duchy of Normandy, the Channel Islands and the Cotentin Peninsula in the west. In time, the communities converged, so that Normandy continued to form the name of the region while the original Normans became assimilated by the Gallo-Romance people, later when conquering England, the Norman rulers in England would eventually assimilate, thereby adopting the speech of the local English. However, in cases, the élites contributed elements of their own language to the newly enriched languages that developed in the territories. In Normandy, the new Norman language inherited vocabulary from Old Norse, the influence on phonology is more disputed, although it is argued that the retention of aspirated /h/ and /k/ in Norman is due to Norse influence
10.
Consonant
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In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. For example, the sound spelled th in this is a different consonant than the th sound in thin, the word consonant comes from Latin oblique stem cōnsonant-, from cōnsonāns sounding-together, a calque of Greek σύμφωνον sýmphōnon. Dionysius Thrax calls consonants sýmphōna pronounced with because they can only be pronounced with a vowel, the word consonant is also used to refer to a letter of an alphabet that denotes a consonant sound. The 21 consonant letters in the English alphabet are B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, Z, and usually W and Y. The letter Y stands for the consonant /j/ in yoke, the vowel /ɪ/ in myth, the vowel /i/ in funny, and the diphthong /aɪ/ in my. W always represents a consonant except in combination with a letter, as in growth, raw, and how. In some other languages, such as Finnish, y represents a vowel sound. Such syllables may be abbreviated CV, V, and CVC and this can be argued to be the only pattern found in most of the worlds languages, and perhaps the primary pattern in all of them. However, the distinction between consonant and vowel is not always clear cut, there are consonants and non-syllabic vowels in many of the worlds languages. One blurry area is in segments variously called semivowels, semiconsonants, on one side, there are vowel-like segments that are not in themselves syllabic, but form diphthongs as part of the syllable nucleus, as the i in English boil. On the other, there are approximants that behave like consonants in forming onsets, some phonologists model these as both being the underlying vowel /i/, so that the English word bit would phonemically be /bit/, beet would be /bii̯t/, and yield would be phonemically /i̯ii̯ld/. Likewise, foot would be /fut/, food would be /fuu̯d/, wood would be /u̯ud/, the other problematic area is that of syllabic consonants, segments articulated as consonants but occupying the nucleus of a syllable. Other languages use fricative and often trilled segments as syllabic nuclei, as in Czech and several languages in Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Mandarin, they are historically allophones of /i/, and spelled that way in Pinyin. Ladefoged and Maddieson call these fricative vowels and say that they can usually be thought of as syllabic fricatives that are allophones of vowels and that is, phonetically they are consonants, but phonemically they behave as vowels. Many Slavic languages allow the trill and the lateral as syllabic nuclei, in languages like Nuxalk, it is difficult to know what the nucleus of a syllable is, or if all syllables even have nuclei. If the concept of syllable applies in Nuxalk, there are consonants in words like /sx̩s/ seal fat. Miyako in Japan is similar, with /f̩ks̩/ to build and /ps̩ks̩/ to pull, each spoken consonant can be distinguished by several phonetic features, The manner of articulation is how air escapes from the vocal tract when the consonant or approximant sound is made. Manners include stops, fricatives, and nasals, the place of articulation is where in the vocal tract the obstruction of the consonant occurs, and which speech organs are involved
11.
Part of speech
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A part of speech is a category of words which have similar grammatical properties. Commonly listed English parts of speech are noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, interjection, the term form class is also used, although this has various conflicting definitions. Word classes may be classified as open or closed, open classes acquire new members constantly, while closed classes acquire new members infrequently, almost all languages have the word classes noun and verb, but beyond these there are significant variations in different languages. This variation in the number of categories and their identifying properties means that needs to be done for each individual language. Nevertheless, the labels for each category are assigned on the basis of universal criteria, the classification of words into lexical categories is found from the earliest moments in the history of linguistics. The ancient work on the grammar of the Tamil language, Tolkāppiyam, dated variously between the 1st and 10th centuries AD, classifies Tamil words as peyar, vinai, idai, and uri. A century or two after the work of Nirukta, the Greek scholar Plato wrote in his Cratylus dialog that, sentences are, I conceive, a combination of verbs and nouns. Aristotle added another class, conjunctions, which included not only the words known today as conjunctions, the Latin grammarian Priscian modified the above eightfold system, excluding article, but adding interjection. The Latin names for the parts of speech, from which the corresponding modern English terms derive, were nomen, verbum, participium, pronomen, praepositio, adverbium, the category nomen included substantives as well as adjectives. This is reflected in the older English terminology noun substantive and noun adjective, later the adjective became a separate class, and the English word noun came to be applied to substantives only. For discussion see the sections below, English words have been classified into eight or nine parts of speech, Noun a word or lexical item denoting any abstract or concrete entity, a person, place, thing, idea, or quality. Nouns can also be classified as count nouns or non-count nouns, the most common part of the speech, they are called naming words. Pronoun a substitute for a noun or noun phrase, pronouns make sentences shorter and clearer since they replace nouns. Adjective a modifier of a noun or pronoun, adjectives make the meaning of another word more precise. Verb a word denoting an action, occurrence, or state of being, without a verb a group of words cannot be a clause or sentence. Adverb a modifier of an adjective, verb, or other adverb, preposition a word that relates words to each other in a phrase or sentence and aids in syntactic context. Prepositions show the relationship between a noun or a pronoun with another word in the sentence, conjunction a syntactic connector, links words, phrases, or clauses. Conjunctions connect words or group of words Interjection an emotional greeting or exclamation, interjections express strong feelings and emotions
12.
Adjective
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In linguistics, an adjective is a describing word, the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified. Adjectives are one of the English parts of speech, although historically they were classed together with the nouns, certain words that were traditionally considered to be adjectives, including the, this, my, etc. are today usually classed separately, as determiners. Adjective comes from Latin adjectīvum additional, a calque of Ancient Greek, in the grammatical tradition of Latin and Greek, because adjectives were inflected for gender, number, and case like nouns, they were considered a subtype of noun. The words that are typically called nouns were then called substantive nouns. The terms noun substantive and noun adjective were formerly used in English, in English, attributive adjectives usually precede their nouns in simple phrases, but often follow their nouns when the adjective is modified or qualified by a phrase acting as an adverb. For example, I saw three kids, and I saw three kids happy enough to jump up and down with glee. Predicative adjectives are linked via a copula or other linking mechanism to the noun or pronoun they modify, for example, happy is an adjective in they are happy. Nominal adjectives act almost as nouns, One way this can happen is if a noun is elided and an attributive adjective is left behind. In the sentence, I read two books to them, he preferred the sad book, but she preferred the happy, happy is a nominal adjective, short for happy one or happy book. Another way this can happen is in phrases like out with the old, in with the new, where the old means, that which is old or all that is old, and similarly with the new. In such cases, the adjective functions either as a noun or as a plural count noun, as in The meek shall inherit the Earth. Adjectives feature as a part of speech in most languages, in some languages, the words that serve the semantic function of adjectives may be categorized together with some other class, such as nouns or verbs. Such an analysis is possible for the grammar of Standard Chinese, different languages do not always use adjectives in exactly the same situations. For example, where English uses to be hungry, Dutch and French use honger hebben, similarly, where Hebrew uses the adjective זקוק zaqūq, English uses the verb to need. In languages which have adjectives as a class, they are usually an open class. However, Bantu languages are known for having only a small closed class of adjectives. Many languages, including English, distinguish between adjectives, which qualify nouns and pronouns, and adverbs, which mainly modify verbs, adjectives, not all languages have exactly this distinction and many languages, including English, have words that can function as both. For example, in English fast is an adjective in a fast car, in Dutch and German, adjectives and adverbs are usually identical in form and many grammarians do not make the distinction, but patterns of inflection can suggest a difference, Eine kluge neue Idee
13.
Grammatical case
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Case is a special grammatical category whose value reflects the grammatical function performed by a noun, pronoun, adjective, participle or numeral in a phrase, clause, or sentence. In some languages, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, determiners, participles, prepositions, numerals, articles and their modifiers take different inflected forms depending on what case they are in. Distinctions can be seen with the pronouns, forms such as I, he and we are used in the role of subject, whereas forms such as me, him. A language may have a number of different cases, commonly encountered cases include nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive. A role that one of these languages marks by case will often be marked in English using a preposition, as a language evolves, cases can merge, a phenomenon formally called syncretism. More formally, case has been defined as a system of marking dependent nouns for the type of relationship they bear to their heads, cases should be distinguished from thematic roles such as agent and patient. They are often related, and in languages such as Latin several thematic roles have an associated case. Languages having cases often exhibit free word order, because thematic roles are not required to be marked by position in the sentence. The English word case used in this sense comes from the Latin casus, the Latin word is a calque of the Greek πτῶσις, ptôsis, lit. falling, fall. The sense is that all cases are considered to have fallen away from the nominative. This picture is reflected in the word declension, from Latin declinere, to lean. The equivalent to case in several other European languages also derives from casus, including cas in French, caso in Spanish, the Finnish equivalent is sija, which can also mean position or support. Although not very prominent in modern English, cases featured much more saliently in Old English and other ancient Indo-European languages, such as Latin, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit. Among modern languages, cases still feature prominently in most of the Balto-Slavic languages, with most having six to eight cases, as well as Icelandic, German and Modern Greek, in German, cases are mostly marked on articles and adjectives, and less so on nouns. Case is based fundamentally on changes to the noun to indicate the role in the sentence. This is not how English works, where word order and prepositions are used to achieve this, Modern English has largely abandoned the inflectional case system of Indo-European in favor of analytic constructions. The personal pronouns of Modern English retain morphological case more strongly than any other word class, for other pronouns, and all nouns, adjectives, and articles, grammatical function is indicated only by word order, by prepositions, and by the genitive clitic -s. The oblique case, used for the direct or indirect object of a verb, for the object of a preposition, for an absolute disjunct, the genitive case, used for a grammatical possessor
14.
French language
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French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth
15.
Irish language
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Irish, also referred to as Gaelic or Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people. Irish enjoys constitutional status as the national and first official language of the Republic of Ireland and it is also among the official languages of the European Union. The public body Foras na Gaeilge is responsible for the promotion of the language throughout the island of Ireland and it has the oldest vernacular literature in Western Europe. The fate of the language was influenced by the power of the English state in Ireland. Elizabethan officials viewed the use of Irish unfavourably, as being a threat to all things English in Ireland and its decline began under English rule in the 17th century. In the latter part of the 19th century, there was a decrease in the number of speakers. Irish-speaking areas were hit especially hard, by the end of British rule, the language was spoken by less than 15% of the national population. Since then, Irish speakers have been in the minority, efforts have been made by the state, individuals and organisations to preserve, promote and revive the language, but with mixed results. Around the turn of the 21st century, estimates of native speakers ranged from 20,000 to 80,000 people. In the 2011 Census, these numbers had increased to 94,000 and 1.3 million, there are several thousand Irish speakers in Northern Ireland. It has been estimated that the active Irish-language scene probably comprises 5 to 10 per cent of Irelands population, there has been a significant increase in the number of urban Irish speakers, particularly in Dublin. In Gaeltacht areas, however, there has been a decline of the use of Irish. Údarás na Gaeltachta predicted that, by 2025, Irish will no longer be the language in any of the designated Gaeltacht areas. Survey data suggest that most Irish people think highly of Irish as a marker of identity. It has also argued that newer urban groups of Irish speakers are a disruptive force in this respect. In An Caighdeán Oifigiúil the name of the language is Gaeilge, before the spelling reform of 1948, this form was spelled Gaedhilge, originally this was the genitive of Gaedhealg, the form used in Classical Irish. Older spellings of this include Gaoidhealg in Classical Irish and Goídelc in Old Irish, the modern spelling results from the deletion of the silent dh in the middle of Gaedhilge, whereas Goidelic languages, used to refer to the language family including Irish, comes from Old Irish
16.
Te Rauparaha
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Te Rauparaha was a Māori rangatira and war leader of the Ngāti Toa tribe who took a leading part in the Musket Wars. He was influential in the sale of land to the New Zealand Company and was a participant in the Wairau Affray in Marlborough. From 1807, muskets became the weapon of choice and partly changed the character of tribal warfare, in 1819 Te Rauparaha joined with a large war party of Ngāpuhi led by Tāmati Wāka Nene, they probably reached Cook Strait before turning back. Led by Te Rauparaha they began a retreat or migration southwards, conquering hapu. This campaign ended with Ngāti Toa controlling the southern part of the North Island and particularly the strategically placed Kapiti Island, which became the tribal stronghold for a period. Crossing in a flotilla of war canoes under cover of darkness and this decisive victory left Te Rauparaha and the Ngāti Toa able to dominate Kapiti and the adjacent mainland. Following the Battle of Wairoa Te Rauparaha began a series of almost annual campaigns into the South Island with the object in part of seizing the sources of the valuable mineral greenstone. Between 1827 and 1831 he was able to extend the control of Ngati Toa and his base for these sea-based raids remained Kapiti. During this period Pākehā whaling stations established in the region with Te Rauparahas encouragement. Some Māori women married Pākehā whalers and a lucrative trade of supplies for muskets was established, thereby increasing Te Rauparahas mana. By the early 1830s Te Rauparaha had defeated a branch of the Rangitane iwi in the Wairau Valley, Te Rauparaha married his daughter Te Rongo to an influential whaling captain Captain John William Dundas Blenkinsop to whom he sold land in the Wairau Valley for a whaling station. It is uncertain if Te Rauparaha understood the implications of the deed of sale that he signed. Te Rauparaha then hired the brig Elizabeth, captained by John Stewart, to himself and approximately 100 warriors to Akaroa Harbour with the aim of attacking the local tribe. Hidden below deck Te Rauparaha and his men captured the Ngai Tahu chieftain Tamaiharanui, his wife, several hundred of the Ngai Tahu were killed both on the Elizabeth and during a surprise landing the next morning. During the voyage back to Kapiti the chief strangled his own daughter Nga Roimata, Te Rauparaha was incensed and following their arrival at Kapiti the parents and other prisoners were killed, Tamaiharanui after prolonged torture. The last years of Te Rauparahas life saw the most dramatic changes, on 16 October 1839 the New Zealand Company expedition commanded by Col William Wakefield arrived at Kapiti. They were seeking to buy vast areas of land with a view to forming a permanent European settlement, Te Rauparaha sold them some land in the area that became known later as Nelson and Golden Bay. On 19 June of that year, he signed another copy of the treaty, Te Rauparaha soon became alarmed at the flood of British settlers and refused to sell any more of his land
17.
Ukraine
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Ukraine is currently in territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014 but which Ukraine and most of the international community recognise as Ukrainian. Including Crimea, Ukraine has an area of 603,628 km2, making it the largest country entirely within Europe and it has a population of about 42.5 million, making it the 32nd most populous country in the world. The territory of modern Ukraine has been inhabited since 32,000 BC, during the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture, with the powerful state of Kievan Rus forming the basis of Ukrainian identity. Following its fragmentation in the 13th century, the territory was contested, ruled and divided by a variety of powers, including Lithuania, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. A Cossack republic emerged and prospered during the 17th and 18th centuries, two brief periods of independence occurred during the 20th century, once near the end of World War I and another during World War II. Before its independence, Ukraine was typically referred to in English as The Ukraine, following independence, Ukraine declared itself a neutral state. Nonetheless it formed a limited partnership with the Russian Federation and other CIS countries. In the 2000s, the government began leaning towards NATO, and it was later agreed that the question of joining NATO should be answered by a national referendum at some point in the future. Former President Viktor Yanukovych considered the current level of co-operation between Ukraine and NATO sufficient, and was against Ukraine joining NATO and these events formed the background for the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, and the War in Donbass in April 2014. On 1 January 2016, Ukraine applied the economic part of the Deep, Ukraine has long been a global breadbasket because of its extensive, fertile farmlands and is one of the worlds largest grain exporters. The diversified economy of Ukraine includes a heavy industry sector, particularly in aerospace. Ukraine is a republic under a semi-presidential system with separate powers, legislative, executive. Its capital and largest city is Kiev, taking into account reserves and paramilitary personnel, Ukraine maintains the second-largest military in Europe after that of Russia. Ukrainian is the language and its alphabet is Cyrillic. The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodoxy, which has strongly influenced Ukrainian architecture, literature, there are different hypotheses as to the etymology of the name Ukraine. According to the older and most widespread hypothesis, it means borderland, while more recently some studies claim a different meaning, homeland or region. The Ukraine now implies disregard for the sovereignty, according to U. S. ambassador William Taylor. Neanderthal settlement in Ukraine is seen in the Molodova archaeological sites include a mammoth bone dwelling
18.
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26,1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and that evening at 7,32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag. Previously, from August to December, all the individual republics, the week before the unions formal dissolution,11 republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol formally establishing the CIS and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR also signalled the end of the Cold War, on the other hand, only the Baltic states have joined NATO and the European Union. Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on March 11,1985, Gorbachev, aged 54, was the youngest member of the Politburo. His initial goal as general secretary was to revive the Soviet economy, the reforms began with personnel changes of senior Brezhnev-era officials who would impede political and economic change. On April 23,1985, Gorbachev brought two protégés, Yegor Ligachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, into the Politburo as full members. He kept the power ministries happy by promoting KGB Head Viktor Chebrikov from candidate to full member and this liberalisation, however, fostered nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the Soviet Union. Under Gorbachevs leadership, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1989 introduced limited competitive elections to a new central legislature, in May 1985, Gorbachev delivered a speech in Leningrad advocating reforms and an anti-alcohol campaign to tackle widespread alcoholism. Prices of vodka, wine, and beer were raised in order to make these drinks more expensive and a disincentive to consumers, unlike most forms of rationing intended to conserve scarce goods, this was done to restrict sales with the overt goal of curtailing drunkenness. Gorbachevs plan also included billboards promoting sobriety, increased penalties for public drunkenness, however, Gorbachev soon faced the same adverse economic reaction to his prohibition as did the last Tsar. The disincentivization of alcohol consumption was a blow to the state budget according to Alexander Yakovlev. Alcohol production migrated to the market, or through moonshining as some made bathtub vodka with homegrown potatoes. The purpose of these reforms, however, was to prop up the centrally planned economy, unlike later reforms. The latter, disparaged as Mr Nyet in the West, had served for 28 years as Minister of Foreign Affairs, gromyko was relegated to the largely ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, as he was considered an old thinker. In the fall of 1985, Gorbachev continued to bring younger, at the next Central Committee meeting on October 15, Tikhonov retired from the Politburo and Talyzin became a candidate. Finally, on December 23,1985, Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party replacing Viktor Grishin, Gorbachev continued to press for greater liberalization. The CTAG Helsinki-86 was founded in July 1986 in the Latvian port town of Liepāja by three workers, Linards Grantiņš, Raimonds Bitenieks, and Mārtiņš Bariss and its name refers to the human-rights statements of the Helsinki Accords
19.
Sudan
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Sudan, also known as North Sudan since South Sudans independence and officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northern Africa. It is the third largest country in Africa, the River Nile divides the country into eastern and western halves. Before the Sudanese Civil War, South Sudan was part of Sudan, Sudan was home to numerous ancient civilizations, such as the Kingdom of Kush, Kerma, Nobatia, Alodia, Makuria, Meroë and others, most of which flourished along the Nile. During the pre-dynastic period Nubia and Nagadan Upper Egypt were identical, by virtue of its proximity to Egypt, the Sudan participated in the wider history of the Near East inasmuch as it was Christianized by the 6th century, and Islamized in the 15th. As a result of Christianization, the Old Nubian language stands as the oldest recorded Nilo-Saharan language, Sudan was the largest country in Africa and the Arab world until 2011, when South Sudan separated into an independent country, following an independence referendum. Sudan is now the third largest country in Africa and also the third largest country in the Arab world and its capital is Khartoum, the political, cultural and commercial centre of the nation. It is a representative democratic federal republic. The politics of Sudan are regulated by an organization called the National Assembly. The Sudanese legal system is based on Islamic law, the countrys place name Sudan is a name given to a geographical region to the south of the Sahara, stretching from Western Africa to eastern Central Africa. The name derives from the Arabic bilād as-sūdān, or the lands of the Blacks, during the fifth millennium BC migrations from the drying Sahara brought neolithic people into the Nile Valley along with agriculture. The population that resulted from this cultural and genetic mixing developed social hierarchy over the centuries become the Kingdom of Kush at 1700 BC. The Kingdom of Kush was an ancient Nubian state centered on the confluences of the Blue Nile and White Nile, and the Atbarah River and it was established after the Bronze Age collapse and the disintegration of the New Kingdom of Egypt, centered at Napata in its early phase. After King Kashta invaded Egypt in the eighth century BC, the Kushite kings ruled as pharaohs of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt for a century before being defeated and driven out by the Assyrians. At the height of their glory, the Kushites conquered an empire that stretched from what is now known as South Kordofan all the way to the Sinai, pharaoh Piye attempted to expand the empire into the Near East, but was thwarted by the Assyrian king Sargon II. Sennacheribs successor Esarhaddon went further, and invaded Egypt itself, deposing Taharqa, Taharqa fled back to his homeland where he died two years later. Egypt became an Assyrian colony, however, king Tantamani, after succeeding Taharqa, Esarhaddon died while preparing to leave the Assyrian capital of Nineveh in order to eject him. However, his successor Ashurbanipal sent an army into southern Egypt and routed Tantamani. During Classical Antiquity, the Nubian capital was at Meroë, in ancient Greek geography, the Meroitic kingdom was known as Ethiopia
20.
Republic of the Congo
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The Republic of the Congo, also known as the Congo Republic, West Congo, Congo-Brazzaville or simply Congo, is a country located in Central Africa. The region was dominated by Bantu-speaking tribes, who built trade links leading into the Congo River basin, Congo-Brazzaville was formerly part of the French colony of Equatorial Africa. Upon independence in 1960, the colony of French Congo became the Republic of the Congo. The Peoples Republic of the Congo was a Marxist–Leninist one-party state from 1970 to 1991, Bantu-speaking peoples who founded tribes during the Bantu expansions largely displaced and absorbed the earliest inhabitants of the region, the Pygmy people, about 1500 BC. Several Bantu kingdoms—notably those of the Kongo, the Loango, the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão reached the mouth of the Congo in 1484. Commercial relationships quickly grew between the inland Bantu kingdoms and European merchants who traded various commodities, manufactured goods, the area north of the Congo River came under French sovereignty in 1880 as a result of Pierre de Brazzas treaty with King Makoko of the Bateke. This Congo Colony became known first as French Congo, then as Middle Congo in 1903, in 1908, France organized French Equatorial Africa, comprising Middle Congo, Gabon, Chad, and Oubangui-Chari. The French designated Brazzaville as the federal capital, economic development during the first 50 years of colonial rule in Congo centered on natural-resource extraction. The methods were brutal, construction of the Congo–Ocean Railroad following World War I has been estimated to have cost at least 14,000 lives. During the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, Brazzaville functioned as the capital of Free France between 1940 and 1943. The Brazzaville Conference of 1944 heralded a period of reform in French colonial policy. Congo benefited from the expansion of colonial administrative and infrastructure spending as a result of its central geographic location within AEF. It also received a local legislature after the adoption of the 1946 constitution that established the Fourth Republic, during these reforms, Middle Congo became known as the Republic of the Congo in 1958 and published its first constitution in 1959. Antagonism between the pro-Opangault Mbochis and the pro-Youlou Balalis resulted in a series of riots in Brazzaville in February 1959, the Republic of the Congo received full independence from France on 15 August 1960. Fulbert Youlou ruled as the countrys first president until labour elements, the Congolese military took charge of the country briefly and installed a civilian provisional government headed by Alphonse Massamba-Débat. Resentment and bitterness between the Baali and the Mbochi peoples brought upheaval in Brazzaville, the French army arrived to quell the turmoil. New elections took place in April 1959, by the time the Congo became independent, Jacques Opangault, the former opponent of Youlou, agreed to serve under him. Youlou became the first President of the Republic of the Congo, since the political tension was so high in Pointe-Noire, Youlou moved the capital to Brazzaville
21.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
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The Democratic Republic of the Congo, also known as DR Congo, DRC, DROC, East Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo is a country located in Central Africa. From 1971 to 1997 it was named, and is still called, Zaire. It is the second-largest country in Africa by area and eleventh largest in the world, the Congolese Civil Wars, which began in 1996, brought about the end of Mobutu Sese Sekos 32-year reign and devastated the country. These wars ultimately involved nine African nations, multiple groups of UN peacekeepers and twenty armed groups, besides the capital, Kinshasa, the other major cities, Lubumbashi and Mbuji-Mayi, are both mining communities. DR Congos largest export is raw minerals, with China accepting over 50% of DRCs exports in 2012, as of 2015, according to the Human Development Index, DR Congo has a low level of human development, ranking 176 out of 187 countries. The country was known officially as the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 27 October 1971, in 1992, the Sovereign National Conference voted to change the name of the country to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but the change was not put into practice. The countrys name was restored by former president Laurent-Désiré Kabila following the fall of longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, some historians think that Bantu peoples began settling in the extreme northwest of Central Africa at the beginning of the 5th century and then gradually started to expand southward. Their propagation was accelerated by the transition from Stone Age to Iron Age techniques, the people living in the south and southwest were mostly San Bushmen and hunter-gatherer groups, whose technology involved only minimal use of metal technologies. The development of tools during this time period revolutionized agriculture. This led to the displacement of the groups in the east and southeast. The 10th century marked the expansion of the Bantu in West-Central Africa. Rising populations soon made intricate local, regional and foreign commercial networks that traded mostly in salt, iron. Belgian exploration and administration took place from the 1870s until the 1920s and it was first led by Sir Henry Morton Stanley, who undertook his explorations under the sponsorship of King Leopold II of Belgium. The eastern regions of the precolonial Congo were heavily disrupted by constant slave raiding, mainly from Arab–Swahili slave traders such as the infamous Tippu Tip, Leopold had designs on what was to become the Congo as a colony. Leopold formally acquired rights to the Congo territory at the Conference of Berlin in 1885 and he named it the Congo Free State. Leopolds rėgime began various infrastructure projects, such as construction of the railway ran from the coast to the capital of Leopoldville. Nearly all such projects were aimed at making it easier to increase the assets which Leopold. In the Free State, colonists brutalized the local population into producing rubber, for which the spread of automobiles, rubber sales made a fortune for Leopold, who built several buildings in Brussels and Ostend to honor himself and his country
22.
The Gambia
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The Gambia, officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa that is entirely surrounded by Senegal except for its coastline on the Atlantic Ocean at its western end. It is the smallest country in mainland Africa, the Gambia is situated on either side of the Gambia River, the nations namesake, which flows through the centre of The Gambia and empties into the Atlantic Ocean. Its area is 10,689 square kilometres with a population of 1,882,450 at the April 2013 census, Banjul is the Gambian capital, and the largest cities are Serekunda and Brikama. Later, on 25 May 1765, The Gambia was made a part of the British Empire when the government formally assumed control, in 1965, The Gambia gained independence under the leadership of Dawda Jawara, who ruled until Yahya Jammeh seized power in a bloodless 1994 coup. Adama Barrow became The Gambias third president in January 2017, after defeating Jammeh in December 2016 elections, Jammeh initially refused to accept the results, which triggered a constitutional crisis and military intervention by the Economic Community of West African States, resulting in his exile. The Gambias economy is dominated by farming, fishing, and especially tourism, in 2008, about a third of the population lived below the international poverty line of US$1.25 per day. The name Gambia is derived from the Mandinka term Kambra/Kambaa, meaning Gambia river, upon independence as a Commonwealth realm, the country used the name The Gambia. Following the proclamation of a republic in 1970, the name of the country became Republic of The Gambia. The administration of Yahya Jammeh changed the name to Islamic Republic of The Gambia in December 2015. On 29 January 2017 the new President Adama Barrow said the name will go back to Republic of The Gambia. Arab traders provided the first written accounts of the Gambia area in the ninth and tenth centuries, during the tenth century, Muslim merchants and scholars established communities in several West African commercial centres. Both groups established trans-Saharan trade routes, leading to an export trade in slaves, gold and ivory. At the beginning of the 14th century, most of what is today called Gambia was part of the Mali Empire, the Portuguese reached this area by sea in the mid-15th century, and began to dominate overseas trade. In 1588, the claimant to the Portuguese throne, António, Prior of Crato, letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I confirmed the grant. In 1618, King James I of England granted a charter to an English company for trade with the Gambia, between 1651 and 1661, some parts of the Gambia were under the rule of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, and were bought by Prince Jacob Kettler. The British Empire occupied the Gambia when an expedition led by Augustus Keppel landed there following the Capture of Senegal in 1758. The 1783 First Treaty of Versailles gave Great Britain possession of the Gambia River and this was finally ceded to the United Kingdom in 1856. As many as three million slaves may have taken from this general region during the three centuries that the transatlantic slave trade operated
23.
Moscow Kremlin
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It is the best known of the kremlins and includes five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Kremlin Wall with Kremlin towers. Also within this complex is the Grand Kremlin Palace, the complex serves as the official residence of the President of the Russian Federation. It had previously used to refer to the government of the Soviet Union. Kremlinology refers to the study of Soviet and Russian politics, the site has been continuously inhabited by Finno-Ugric peoples since the 2nd century BC. Vyatichi built a structure on the hill where the Neglinnaya River flowed into the Moskva River. Up to the 14th century, the site was known as the grad of Moscow, the word Kremlin was first recorded in 1331. The grad was greatly extended by Prince Yuri Dolgorukiy in 1156, destroyed by the Mongols in 1237, dmitri Donskoi replaced the oak walls with a strong citadel of white limestone in 1366–1368 on the basic foundations of the current walls, this fortification withstood a siege by Khan Tokhtamysh. Dmitris son Vasily I resumed construction of churches and cloisters in the Kremlin, the newly built Annunciation Cathedral was painted by Theophanes the Greek, Andrei Rublev, and Prokhor in 1406. The Chudov Monastery was founded by Dmitris tutor, Metropolitan Alexis, while his widow, Eudoxia and it was during his reign that three extant cathedrals of the Kremlin, the Deposition Church, and the Palace of Facets were constructed. The highest building of the city and Muscovite Russia was the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, built in 1505–08, the Kremlin walls as they now appear were built between 1485 and 1495. Spasskie gates of the wall bear a dedication in Latin praising Petrus Antonius Solarius for the design. After construction of the new walls and churches was complete. The Kremlin was separated from the merchant town by a 30-meter-wide moat. The same tsar also renovated some of his grandfathers palaces, added a new palace and cathedral for his sons, and endowed the Trinity metochion inside the Kremlin. The metochion was administrated by the Trinity Monastery and boasted the graceful tower church of St. Sergius, during the Time of Troubles, the Kremlin was held by the Polish forces for two years, between 21 September 1610 and 26 October 1612. The Kremlins liberation by the army of prince Dmitry Pozharsky. During his reign and that of his son Alexis, the eleven-domed Upper Saviour Cathedral, Armorial Gate, Terem Palace, Amusement Palace, following the death of Alexis, the Kremlin witnessed the Moscow Uprising of 1682, from which czar Peter barely escaped. As a result, both of them disliked the Kremlin, three decades later, Peter abandoned the residence of his forefathers for his new capital, Saint Petersburg
24.
Boris Yeltsin
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Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was a Soviet and Russian politician and the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999. Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the reforms as one of Gorbachevs most powerful political opponents. During the late 1980s, Yeltsin had been a member of the Politburo, no one had resigned from the Politburo before. This act branded Yeltsin as a rebel and led to his rise in popularity as an anti-establishment figure, on 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet. However, Yeltsin never recovered his popularity after a series of economic. He vowed to transform Russias socialist economy into a capitalist market economy and implemented economic shock therapy, price liberalization, due to the sudden total economic shift, a majority of the national property and wealth fell into the hands of a small number of oligarchs. The well-off millionaire and billionaire oligarchs likened themselves to 19th century robber barons, in October 1993, troops loyal to Yeltsin stopped an armed uprising outside of the parliament building, leading to a number of deaths. Yeltsin then scrapped the existing Russian constitution, banned political opposition, on 31 December 1999, under enormous internal pressure, Yeltsin announced his resignation, leaving the presidency in the hands of his chosen successor, then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Yeltsin left office widely unpopular with the Russian population, Yeltsin kept a low profile after his resignation, though he did occasionally publicly criticise his successor. Yeltsin died of heart failure on 23 April 2007. Boris Yeltsin was born in the village of Butka, Talitsky District, Sverdlovsk, USSR, growing up in rural Sverdlovsk, he studied at the Ural State Technical University, and began his career in the construction industry. In 1934 Nikolai Yeltsin was convicted of anti-Soviet agitation and sentenced to hard labour in a gulag for three years, Nikolai remained unemployed for a period of time and then worked again in construction. His mother, Klavdiya Vasilyevna Yeltsina, worked as a seamstress, Boris studied at Pushkin High School in Berezniki. In 1949 he was admitted to the Ural Polytechnic Institute in Sverdlovsk, majoring in construction, the subject of his degree paper was Construction of a Mine Shaft. From 1955 to 1957 he worked as a foreman with the building trust Uraltyazhtrubstroy, from 1957 to 1963 he worked in Sverdlovsk, and was promoted from construction site superintendent to chief of the Construction Directorate with the Yuzhgorstroy Trust. In 1963 he became chief engineer, and in 1965 head of the Sverdlovsk House-Building Combine, responsible for sewerage and he joined the ranks of the CPSU nomenklatura in 1968 when he was appointed head of construction with the Sverdlovsk Regional Party Committee. In 1975 he became secretary of the committee in charge of the regions industrial development. In 1976 the Politburo of the CPSU promoted him to the post of the first secretary of the CPSU Committee of Sverdlovsk Oblast, Yeltsin was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 17 March 1961 to 13 July 1990, and a nomenklatura member from 1968
25.
Portuguese language
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Portuguese is a Romance language and the sole official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola, and São Tomé and Príncipe. It also has co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Portuguese is part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, and has kept some Celtic phonology. Portuguese is also termed the language of Camões, after Luís Vaz de Camões, one of the greatest literary figures in the Portuguese language and author of the Portuguese epic poem, the museum is the first of its kind in the world. In 2015 the museum was destroyed in a fire, but there are plans to reconstruct it, when the Romans arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BCE, they brought the Latin language with them, from which all Romance languages descend. Between 409 CE and 711 CE, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, Portuguese evolved from the medieval language, known today by linguists as Galician-Portuguese, Old Portuguese or Old Galician, of the northwestern medieval Kingdom of Galicia. It is in Latin administrative documents of the 9th century that written Galician-Portuguese words and this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese, which lasted from the 9th century until the 12th-century independence of the County of Portugal from the Kingdom of León, by then reigning over Galicia. In the first part of the Galician-Portuguese period, the language was used for documents. For some time, it was the language of preference for poetry in Christian Hispania. Portugal became an independent kingdom in 1139, under King Afonso I of Portugal, in the second period of Old Portuguese, in the 15th and 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Africa, Asia and the Americas. The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century, some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal. The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, Most literate Portuguese speakers were also literate in Latin, and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing—and eventually speech—in Portuguese. Portuguese is the language of the majority of people in Brazil and Portugal, perhaps 75% of the population of Angola speaks Portuguese natively, and 85% are fluent. Just over 40% of the population of Mozambique are native speakers of Portuguese, Portuguese is also spoken natively by 30% of the population in Guinea-Bissau, and a Portuguese-based creole is understood by all. No data is available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, there are also significant Portuguese speaking immigrant communities in many countries including Andorra, Bermuda, Canada, France, Japan, Jersey, Namibia, Paraguay, Macau, Switzerland, Venezuela. In some parts of former Portuguese India, namely Goa and Daman and Diu, in 2014, an estimated 1,500 students were learning Portuguese in Goa. Equatorial Guinea made an application for full membership to the CPLP in June 2010. In 2011, Portuguese became its official language and, in July 2014. Portuguese is a subject in The school curriculum in Uruguay
26.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
27.
Catalan language
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Catalan is a Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin and named after the medieval Principality of Catalonia, in northeastern modern Spain and adjoining parts of France. It is the national and only language of Andorra, and a co-official language of the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands. It also has status in the commune of Alghero, situated on the northwestern coast of the island of Sardinia. All these territories are often called Catalan Countries. 4% with Catalan and 47. 5% only Spanish, in order to integrate newcomers, the Generalitat de Catalunya spends part of its annual budget on the promotion of the use of Catalan in Catalonia and in other territories. Catalan evolved from Vulgar Latin in the Middle Ages around the eastern Pyrenees, during the Low Middle Ages it saw a golden age as the literary and dominant language of the Crown of Aragon, and was widely used all over the Mediterranean. The union of Aragon with the territories of Spain in 1479 marked the start of the decline of the language. In 1659 Spain ceded Northern Catalonia to France, and Catalan was banned in both states in the early 18th century, 19th-century Spain saw a Catalan literary revival, which culminated in the 1913 orthographic standardization, and the official status of the language during the Second Spanish Republic. However, the Francoist dictatorship banned the use of Catalan in schools and in the public administration, there is no parallel in Europe for such a large, bilingual, non-state speech community. Catalan dialects are relatively uniform, and are mutually intelligible and they are divided into two blocks, Eastern and Western, differing mostly in pronunciation. The terms Catalan and Valencian are two varieties of the same language, there are two institutions regulating the two standard varieties, the Institute of Catalan Studies in Catalonia and the Valencian Academy of the Language in the Valencian Community. Catalan shares many traits with its neighboring Romance languages, thus, the similarities are naturally most notable with eastern Occitan. Nouns have two genders, and two numbers, pronouns additionally can have a neuter gender, and some are also inflected for case and politeness, and can be combined in very complex ways. Verbs are split in several paradigms and are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect, mood, in terms of pronunciation, Catalan has many words ending in a wide variety of consonants and some consonant clusters, in contrast with many other Romance languages. The word Catalan derives from the territory of Catalonia, itself of disputed etymology, in English, the term referring to a person first appears in the mid 14th century as Catelaner, followed in the 15th century as Catellain. It is attested a language name since at least 1652, Catalan can be pronounced as /ˈkætəlæn/, /kætəˈlæn/ or /ˈkætələn/. The endonym is pronounced /kə. təˈɫa/ in the Eastern Catalan dialects, in the Valencian Community, the term valencià is frequently used instead. The names Catalan and Valencian are two names for the same language, see also status of Valencian below. By the 9th century, Catalan had evolved from Vulgar Latin on both sides of the end of the Pyrenees, as well as the territories of the Roman province of Hispania Tarraconensis to the south
28.
Spanish language
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Spanish —also called Castilian —is a Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain, with hundreds of millions of native speakers around the world. It is usually considered the worlds second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese and it is one of the few languages to use inverted question and exclamation marks. Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Beginning in the early 16th century, Spanish was taken to the colonies of the Spanish Empire, most notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa, Oceania, around 75% of modern Spanish is derived from Latin. Greek has also contributed substantially to Spanish vocabulary, especially through Latin, Spanish vocabulary has been in contact from an early date with Arabic, having developed during the Al-Andalus era in the Iberian Peninsula. With around 8% of its vocabulary being Arabic in origin, this language is the second most important influence after Latin and it has also been influenced by Basque as well as by neighboring Ibero-Romance languages. It also adopted words from languages such as Gothic language from the Visigoths in which many Spanish names and surnames have a Visigothic origin. Spanish is one of the six languages of the United Nations. It is the language in the world by the number of people who speak it as a mother tongue, after Mandarin Chinese. It is estimated more than 437 million people speak Spanish as a native language. Spanish is the official or national language in Spain, Equatorial Guinea, speakers in the Americas total some 418 million. In the European Union, Spanish is the tongue of 8% of the population. Spanish is the most popular second language learned in the United States, in 2011 it was estimated by the American Community Survey that of the 55 million Hispanic United States residents who are five years of age and over,38 million speak Spanish at home. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the language of the whole Spanish State in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas. Article III reads as follows, El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado, las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas. Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State, the other Spanish languages as well shall be official in their respective Autonomous Communities. The Spanish Royal Academy, on the hand, currently uses the term español in its publications. Two etymologies for español have been suggested, the Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary derives the term from the Provençal word espaignol, and that in turn from the Medieval Latin word Hispaniolus, from—or pertaining to—Hispania
29.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
