1.
Paleohispanic scripts
–
The Paleohispanic scripts are the writing systems created in the Iberian peninsula before the Latin alphabet became the dominant script. Most of them are unusual in that they are rather than purely alphabetic, despite having supposedly developed, in part. Some researchers conclude that their origin may lie solely with the Phoenician alphabet, the Paleoiberian scripts are classified into three major groups, southern, northern, and Greco-Iberian, with differences both in the shapes of the glyphs and in their values. Inscriptions in the scripts have been found mainly in the southern half of the Iberian Peninsula. They represent only 5% of the inscriptions found, and mostly read from right to left and they are, the Espanca script, the Tartessian or Southwestern script, also known as South Lusitanian, the Southeastern Iberian script, also known as Meridional. Inscriptions in the scripts have been found mainly in the NE of the Iberian Peninsula. They represent 95% of the inscriptions found, and mostly read from left to right and they are, the Northeastern Iberian script, also known as Levantine, Dual variant Non-dual variant the Celtiberian script Western variant Eastern variant. This unique writing system has been called a semi-syllabary, in addition, the original format did not distinguish voiced from unvoiced plosives, so that ga stood for both /ga/ and /ka/, and da stood for both /da/ and /ta/. On the other hand, the continuants were written with simple alphabetic letters, as in Phoenician, if correct, this innovation would parallel the creation of the Latin letter G by the addition of a stroke to C, which had previously stood for both /k/ and /g/. The Tartessian script is typologically intermediate between a pure alphabet and the Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries, although the letter used to write a plosive was determined by the following vowel, as in a semi-syllabary, the following vowel was also written, as in an alphabet. This redundant typology re-emerged in a few texts of northeastern Iberian and Celtiberian scripts. The only known full Paleoiberian signary, on the undated Espanca tablet, follows the Phoenician/Greek order for the first 13 of its 27 letters, Α Β Γ Δ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ξ Π. However, the order of what appears to be /u/ directly after Τ, the obvious question about the origin and evolution of these scripts is how a purely alphabetic script was changed into, or perhaps unconsciously reinterpreted as, a partial syllabary. It may be instructive to consider an unrelated development in the evolution of the Etruscan alphabet from Greek, Greek had three letters, Γ, Κ, and Ϙ, whose sounds were not distinguished in Etruscan. Nonetheless, all three were borrowed, becoming the letters C, K, and Q. When the Etruscan alphabet was adapted to Latin, the letter C stood for both /k/ and /g/, as Etruscan had had no /g/ sound to maintain the original sound value of Greek Г. Something similar may have happened during the evolution of the Paleoiberian scripts, in Tartessian script, vowels were always written after the plosives, but they were redundant — or at nearly so — and thus it seems they were dropped when the script passed to the Iberians. Among the velar consonants, ka/ga of southeastern Iberian and the southwestern script derives from Phoenician/Greek Γ, ke/ge from Κ, Phoenician/Greek labial letter Β was the source of southwestern be, southeastern ba, the use of Π is uncertain but may have been the source of bi
Paleohispanic scripts
–
Paleohispanic scripts
Paleohispanic scripts
–
Paleohispanic languages according to inscriptions (except Aquitanian - according to
anthroponyms and theonyms used in
Latin inscriptions).
Paleohispanic scripts
–
A possible
southwestern signary (Based on Rodríguez Ramos 2000).
Paleohispanic scripts
–
Possible values of the
southeastern Iberian signary (Based on Correa 2004). Signs in red are the most debatable.
2.
Writing system
–
A writing system is any conventional method of visually representing verbal communication. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a form of information storage. The processes of encoding and decoding writing systems involve shared understanding between writers and readers of the meaning behind the sets of characters that make up a script, the general attributes of writing systems can be placed into broad categories such as alphabets, syllabaries, or logographies. Any particular system can have attributes of more than one category, in the alphabetic category, there is a standard set of letters of consonants and vowels that encode based on the general principle that the letters represent speech sounds. In a syllabary, each symbol correlates to a syllable or mora, in a logography, each character represents a word, morpheme, or other semantic units. Other categories include abjads, which differ from alphabets in that vowels are not indicated, alphabets typically use a set of 20-to-35 symbols to fully express a language, whereas syllabaries can have 80-to-100, and logographies can have several hundreds of symbols. Systems will also enable the stringing together of these groupings in order to enable a full expression of the language. The reading step can be accomplished purely in the mind as an internal process, writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, which used pictograms, ideograms and other mnemonic symbols. Proto-writing lacked the ability to capture and express a range of thoughts. Soon after, writing provided a form of long distance communication. With the advent of publishing, it provided the medium for a form of mass communication. Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that a system is always associated with at least one spoken language. In contrast, visual representations such as drawings, paintings, and non-verbal items on maps, such as contour lines, are not language-related. Some other symbols, such as numerals and the ampersand, are not directly linked to any specific language, every human community possesses language, which many regard as an innate and defining condition of humanity. However, the development of writing systems, and the process by which they have supplanted traditional oral systems of communication, have been sporadic, uneven, once established, writing systems generally change more slowly than their spoken counterparts. Thus they often preserve features and expressions which are no current in the spoken language. One of the benefits of writing systems is that they can preserve a permanent record of information expressed in a language. In the examination of individual scripts, the study of writing systems has developed along partially independent lines, thus, the terminology employed differs somewhat from field to field
Writing system
–
Writing systems
Writing system
–
Predominant national and selected regional or minority scripts
Writing system
–
Chinese characters (漢字) are morpho-syllabic. Each one represents a syllable with a distinct meaning, but some characters may have multiple meanings or pronunciations
Writing system
–
A Specimen of typefaces and styles, by
William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728
Cyclopaedia
3.
Celtiberian language
–
The longest extant Celtiberian inscriptions are those on three Botorrita plaques, bronze plaques from Botorrita near Zaragoza, dating to the early 1st century BC, labelled Botorrita I, III and IV. In the northwest was another Celtic language, Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, that was related to Celtiberian. Enough has been preserved to show that the Celtiberian language could be called Q-Celtic, for some, this has served to confirm that the legendary invasion of Ireland by the Milesians, preserved in the Lebor Gabála Érenn, actually happened. Celtiberian exhibits a fully inflected relative pronoun ios, not preserved in other Celtic languages, as in Welsh, there is an s-subjunctive, gabiseti he shall take, robiseti, auseti. Compare Umbrian ferest he/she/it shall make or Ancient Greek δείξῃ deiksēi / δείξει deiksei he/she/it shall show. Celtiberian was a Celtic language that shows the sound changes of Celtic languages such as, PIE bʰ, dʰ, gʰ > b, d, g. Celtiberian and Gaulish placename element -brigā hill, town, akro-polis < *bʰr̥ǵʰ-eh₂, nebintor they are watered < *nebʰ-i-nt-or. PIE *kʷ > ku, Celtiberian changed the PIE voiceless labiovelar kʷ to ku, on the contrary Brythonic or P-Celtic changed kʷ to p. -kue and < *kʷe, Latin -que, Osco-Umbrian -pe and, neip and not < *ne-kʷe. PIE *kw > ku, ekuo horse < *h₁ekw-os, PIE *gʷ > b, bindis who dictates with legal force, legislator < *gʷiHm-diks. Bovitos cow passage < *gʷow-ito, boustom cowshed < *gʷow-sto, PIE *gʷʰ > gu, guezonto < *gʷʰedʰ-y-ont imploring, pleading. Common Celtic *guedyo ask, plead, pray, OIr. guidid, PIE *p- > *φ- > ∅, Loss of PIE *p, e. g. ro- vs. Ozas sues acc. pl. fem. six foots, unit of measure (< *φodians < *pod-y-ans *sweks, aila stone building < *pl̥-ya, vamos higher < *uφamos < *up-m̥os, vrantiom remainder, rest < *uper-n̥tiyo. PIE *mn > un, as in Lepontic, Brittonic and Gaulish, couneso neighbour < *kom-ness-o < *Kom-nedʰ-to. PIE *pn > un, Klounia < *kleun-y-a < *kleup-ni meadow, however in Latin *pn > mn, damnum damage < *dHp-no. PIE *nm > lm, Only in Celtiberian, melmu < *men-mōn intelligence, Melmanzos gifted with mind < *men-mn̥-tyo (Cfr. Also occurs in modern Spanish, alma soul < *anma < Lat. anima, PIE *ps > *ss / s, usabituz he must excavate < *upsa-bʰiH-tōd, Useizu * < *useziu < *ups-ed-yō highest. The ethnic name contestani in latin, recall the proper name Conteso warm-hearted, in Latin epigraphy that sound its transcript with geminated, Usseiticum of the Usseitici < *Usseito < *upse-tyo. However, in Gaulish *ps > *x, Uxama, PIE *gs > *ks > *ss / s, sues six < *sweks
Celtiberian language
–
Celtiberian in the context of the
Paleohispanic languages
Celtiberian language
–
Cortono plaque. Unknown procedence.
Celtiberian language
–
Luzaga plaque (
Guadalajara).
Celtiberian language
–
Uxama
tessera (Osma,
Soria).
4.
Continental Celtic
–
Continental Celtic is a geographic, not a linguistic, grouping of the ancient Celtic languages. The Continental Celtic languages were spoken by the known to Roman and Greek writers as Keltoi, Celtae, Galli. These languages were spoken in an arc stretching across from Iberia in the west to the Balkans, even though Breton is spoken in continental Europe, and has been since at least the 6th century AD, it is not considered one of the Continental Celtic languages. It is a Brittonic language closely related to Cornish and Welsh, whilst it has been suggested that there is a Gaulish substratum in the Vannetais dialect the historical and linguistic evidence shows otherwise. It is evidenced in a number of inscriptions as well as place names, Gaulish or Gallic was the main language spoken in greater Gaul. This is often considered to be divided into two dialects, Cisalpine and Transalpine and it is evidenced in a number of inscriptions as well as place names and tribal names in writings of classical authors. It may have been a substratum to Breton, as noted above, classical writers say that the language is similar to that of Gaul. There is also evidence of invasion and settlement of the Ankara area by Celts from Europe, noric, which is the name given sometimes to the Celtic dialects spoken in Central and Eastern Europe. It was spoken in Austria and Slovenia, only two texts are preserved but there are plenty of known personal names and toponyms. Celtiberian or Northeastern Hispano-Celtic is the given to the language in northeast Iberia. It is attested in some 200 inscriptions as well as place names and it is distinct from the Iberian language. Gallaecian also known as Gallaic or Northwestern Hispano-Celtic, attested in a corpus of Latin inscriptions containing isolated words. It was spoken in the north west of the Iberian Peninsula, the modern term Continental Celtic is used in contrast to Insular Celtic. Instead, the group called Continental Celtic is paraphyletic and the term refers simply to non-Insular Celtic languages, since little material has been preserved in any of the Continental Celtic languages, historical linguistic analysis based on the comparative method is difficult to perform. However, other researchers see the Brittonic languages and Gaulish as forming part of a sub-group of the Celtic languages known as P-Celtic, Continental languages are all P-Celtic except for Celtiberian, which is Q-Celtic, and have had a definite influence on all the Romance languages. Italo-Celtic Ball M and Fife J, the origins of the Insular Celtic conjunct and absolute verbal endings. Flexion und Wortbildung, Akten der V. Fachtagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, the PIE stops and syllabic nasals in Celtic. In R. Beekes, A. Lubotsky, J. Weitenberg, rekonstruktion und relative Chronologie, Akten Der VIII
Continental Celtic
–
Celtic languages during the Iron Age and classical Antiquity
5.
Latin alphabet
–
The classical Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is a writing system originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. During the Middle Ages the Latin alphabet was used for writing Romance languages, direct descendants of Latin, as well as Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and these Latin alphabets may discard letters, like the Rotokas alphabet, or add new letters, like the Danish and Norwegian alphabets. Letter shapes have evolved over the centuries, including the development in Medieval Latin of lower-case and it is generally believed that the Romans adopted the Cumae alphabet, a variant of the Greek alphabet, in the 7th century BC from Cumae, a Greek colony in Southern Italy. The Ancient Greek alphabet was in turn based upon the Phoenician abjad, from then on, ⟨G⟩ represented the voiced plosive /ɡ/, while ⟨C⟩ was generally reserved for the voiceless plosive /k/. The letter ⟨K⟩ was used rarely, in a small number of words such as Kalendae. After the Roman conquest of Greece in the 1st century BC, Latin adopted the Greek letters ⟨Y⟩ and ⟨Z⟩ to write Greek loanwords, an attempt by the emperor Claudius to introduce three additional letters did not last. Thus it was during the classical Latin period that the Latin alphabet contained 23 letters, ⟨Z⟩ was given its Greek name, zeta. This scheme has continued to be used by most modern European languages that have adopted the Latin alphabet, for the Latin sounds represented by the various letters see Latin spelling and pronunciation, for the names of the letters in English see English alphabet. Diacritics were not regularly used, but they did occur sometimes, the commonest being the apex used to long vowels. However, in place of taking an apex, the i was written taller. For example, what is today transcribed Lūciī a fīliī was written ⟨lv́ciꟾ·a·fꟾliꟾ⟩ in the inscription at right, the primary mark of punctuation was the interpunct, which was used as a word divider, though it fell out of use after 200 AD. A more formal style of writing was based on Roman square capitals and it was most commonly used from about the 1st century BC to the 3rd century, but it probably existed earlier than that. It led to Uncial, a script commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin. This script evolved into the medieval scripts known as Merovingian and Carolingian minuscule, prior to that, the former had been merely allographs of the latter. With the fragmentation of power, the style of writing changed and varied greatly throughout the Middle Ages. The languages that use the Latin script today generally use letters to begin paragraphs and sentences. The rules for capitalization have changed over time, and different languages have varied in their rules for capitalization. g, alle Schwestern der alten Stadt hatten die Vögel gesehen. The Latin alphabet spread, along with the Latin language, from the Italian Peninsula to the surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire
Latin alphabet
–
The
Duenos inscription, dated to the 6th century BC, shows the earliest known forms of the
Old Latin alphabet.
Latin alphabet
–
This map shows the countries in the world that use a Latin alphabet as the sole official (or de facto official) national script in dark green. The lighter green indicates the countries that use Latin as a co-official script at the national level.
Latin alphabet
–
The apices in this first-century inscription are very light. (There is one over the ó in the first line.) The vowel I is written taller rather than taking an apex. The interpuncts are comma-shaped, an elaboration of a more typical triangular shape.
Latin alphabet
–
Jeton from
Nuremberg, ca. 1553
6.
Northeastern Iberian script
–
The northeastern Iberian script, also known as Levantine Iberian or Iberian because the Iberian script was the most frequently used, was the main means of written expression of the Iberian language. The language is also expressed by the southeastern Iberian script and the Greco-Iberian alphabet, to understand the relationship between northeastern Iberian and southeastern Iberian scripts, one should point out that they are two different scripts with different values for the same signs. However, it is clear they have an origin and the most accepted hypothesis is that northeastern Iberian script was derived from the southeastern Iberian script. Some researchers have concluded that it is linked to the Phoenician alphabet alone, in a writing system they are neither alphabets nor syllabaries, but are rather mixed scripts that are normally identified as semi-syllabaries. The basic signary contains 28 signs,5 vowels,15 syllabic and 8 consonantic, the northeastern script was very nearly deciphered in 1922 by Manuel Gómez-Moreno Martínez, who systematically linked the syllabic signs with the occlusive values. The decipherment was based on the existence of a number of coin legends that could easily be linked to ancient place names known from Roman. This system was discovered by Joan Maluquer de Motes in 1968, the simple sign represents the voiced value whilst the complex sign represents the unvoiced value. The non-dual variant is almost exclusive of the inscriptions from the 2nd. The northeastern Iberian inscriptions have been found on different object types, representing 95% of the total finds, the oldest northeastern Iberian script date to the 4th or maybe the 5th century BCE. The modern ones date from the end of the 1st century BCE or maybe the beginning of the 1st century CE, ferrer i Jané, Joan, Novetats sobre el sistema dual de diferenciació gràfica de les oclusives sordes i sonores, Palaeohispanica 5, pp. 957–982. Ferrer i Jane Joan, «Els sistemes duals de les escriptures ibèriques», Palaeohispanica 13, Gómez-Moreno, Manuel, «De Epigrafia ibérica, el plomo de Alcoy», Revista de filología española 9, pp. 34–66. Hoz, Javier de, «El nuevo plomo inscrito de Castell y el problema de las oposiciones de sonoridad en ibérico», Symbolae Ludouico Mitxelena septuagenario oblatae, Maluquer de Motes, Joan, Epigrafía prelatina de la península ibérica, Barcelona. Rodríguez Ramos, Jesús, Análisis de epigrafía íbera, Vitoria-Gasteiz, III Die iberischen Inschriften aus Spanien, Wiesbaden. Velaza, Javier, Epigrafía y lengua ibéricas, Barcelona, media related to Iberian scripts at Wikimedia Commons The levantine Iberian writing- Jesús Rodríguez Ramos
Northeastern Iberian script
–
Northeastern Iberian script in the context of
paleohispanic scripts
Northeastern Iberian script
–
A northeastern dual Iberian signary (Based on Ferrer i Jané 2005)
Northeastern Iberian script
–
A northeastern non-dual Iberian signary.
Northeastern Iberian script
–
Lead plaque from
Ullastret using the northeastern dual signary.
7.
Iberian scripts
–
The Iberian scripts are the Paleohispanic scripts that were used to represent the extinct Iberian language. Most of them are very unusual in that they are semi-syllabic rather than purely alphabetic. The oldest Iberian inscriptions date to the 4th or possibly the 5th century BCE, and it was used mainly in Alicante and Murcia. The northeastern Iberian script is known simply as the Iberian script. These have been mainly in the northeastern quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula, mostly along the coast from Languedoc-Roussillon to Alicante. The southeastern Iberian script is poorly attested, and there are gaps in the records, There are no positively identified symbols for /gu/, /do/. Unlike the northeastern Iberian script the decipherment of the southeastern Iberian script is not still closed, the southeastern inscriptions have been found mainly in the southeastern quadrant of Iberia, Eastern Andalusia, Murcia, Albacete, Alicante, and Valencia. If correct, this innovation would parallel the creation of the Latin letter G from C by the addition of a stroke and that is, in written Iberian, ga displayed no resemblance to ge, and bi had no connection to bo. This possibly unique writing system is called a semi-syllabary, the southeastern script was written right to left, as was the Phoenician alphabet, whereas the northeastern script reversed this to left to right, as in the Greek alphabet. The relation between the northeastern and southeastern Iberian scripts is not straightforward and it appears that either the glyphs themselves were changed, or that they assumed new values. For example, southern /e/ derives from Phoenician/Greek Ο, whereas northern /e/ resembles Phoenician/Greek Ε, however, it is clear that they had a common origin, and the most commonly accepted hypothesis is that the northeastern script derives from the southeastern script. Some researchers conclude that their origin lies solely with the Phoenician alphabet. Iberian language Paleohispanic scripts Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula Anderson, correa, José Antonio, «Los semisilabarios ibéricos, algunas cuestiones», ELEA4, pp. 75–98. Correa, José Antonio, «Representación gráfica de la oposición de sonoridad en las oclusivas ibéricas », AIΩN14, ferrer i Jané, Joan Novetats sobre el sistema dual de diferenciació gràfica de les oclusives sordes i sonores, Palaeohispanica 5, pp. 957–982. Gómez-Moreno, Manuel, «De Epigrafia ibérica, el plomo de Alcoy», Revista de filología española 9, hoz, Javier de, «La escritura greco-ibérica», Veleia 2–3, pp. 285–298. Hoz, Javier de, «El nuevo plomo inscrito de Castell y el problema de las oposiciones de sonoridad en ibérico», Symbolae Ludouico Mitxelena septuagenario oblatae, maluquer de Motes, Joan, Epigrafía prelatina de la península ibérica, Barcelona. Rodríguez Ramos, Jesús, Análisis de Epigrafía Íbera, Vitoria-Gasteiz 2004, rodríguez Ramos, Jesús, «La escritura ibérica meridional», Zephyrus 55, pp. 231–245. Untermann, Jürgen, Monumenta Linguarum Hispanicarum, Wiesbaden, II Die iberischen Inschriften aus Sudfrankreicht
Iberian scripts
–
Iberian scripts in the context of Paleohispanic scripts
Iberian scripts
–
The Iberian language in the context of
Paleohispanic languages. Light green (along the Mediterranean coast) is the
Iberian language, dark grey (mainly southern Portugal) is the
Tartessian language, dark blue (central Spain) is the
Celtiberian language, light blue (mainly northern Portugal) is the
Lusitanian language, and dark green (Eastern
Pyrenees) is the
Aquitanian language.
Iberian scripts
–
The proposed 'dual' variant of northeastern Iberian (Based on Ferrer i Jané 2005)
Iberian scripts
–
Lead plaque from
Ullastret using the dual signary
8.
Greco-Iberian alphabet
–
The inscriptions that use the Greco-Iberian alphabet had been found mainly in Alicante and Murcia and the direction of the writing is left to right. To represent the second rhotic rho gets an additional stroke, eta is used instead of epsilon to represent /e/. The only letter not found in the variant of the Greek alphabet is sampi. The letter forms are petroglyphic since the writing surface affords angular glyphs with straight lines, hoz, Javier de, «La escritura greco-ibérica», Veleia 2–3, pp. 285–298. Hoz, Javier de, «Epigrafía griega de occidente y escritura greco-ibérica», Los griegos en España, Rodríguez Ramos, Jesús, «Introducció a l’estudi de les inscripcions ibèriques», Revista de la Fundació Privada Catalana per l’Arqueologia ibèrica,1, pp. 13–144. III Die iberischen Inschriften aus Spanien, Wiesbaden, velaza, Javier, Epigrafía y lengua ibéricas, Barcelona. The Greek-Iberian writing- Jesús Rodríguez Ramos Detailed map of the Pre-Roman Peoples of Iberia
Greco-Iberian alphabet
–
Paleohispanic scripts
Greco-Iberian alphabet
–
Lead plaque from la Serreta (
Alcoi).
Greco-Iberian alphabet
–
A Greco-Iberian alphabet
9.
Stop consonant
–
In phonetics, a stop, also known as a plosive or oral occlusive, is a consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the blade or body, lips. The terms stop, occlusive, and plosive are often and inaccurately used interchangeably, linguists who distinguish them may not agree on the distinction being made. The terms refer to different features of the consonant, stop refers to the airflow that is stopped. Occlusive refers to the articulation, which occludes the vocal tract, Plosive refers to the release burst of the consonant. Therefore, a plosive is a stop that is released, typically into an open speech sound such as a vowel. It is inaccurate to call a stop an plosive. Either occlusive or stop may be used as a term covering the other together with nasals. That is, occlusive may be defined as oral occlusives plus nasal occlusives, Ladefoged and Maddieson prefer to restrict stop to oral occlusives. They say, what we call simply nasals are called nasal stops by some linguists and we avoid this phrase, preferring to reserve the term stop for sounds in which there is a complete interruption of airflow. In addition, they use plosive for a stop, stops in their usage include ejective and implosive consonants. If a term such as plosive is used for oral obstruents, in other cases, however, it may be the word plosive that is restricted to the glottal stop. Note that, generally speaking, stops do not have plosion, in English, for example, there are stops with no audible release, such as the /p/ in apt. However, pulmonic stops do have plosion in other environments, in Ancient Greek, the term for stop was ἄφωνον, which means unpronounceable, voiceless, or silent, because stops could not be pronounced without a vowel. This term was calqued into Latin as mūta, and from there borrowed into English as mute, for more information on the Ancient Greek terms, see Ancient Greek phonology § Terminology. All languages in the world have stops, and most have at least the voiceless stops, however, there are exceptions, Colloquial Samoan lacks the coronal, and several North American languages, such as the northern Iroquoian and southern Iroquoian languages, lack the labial. Formal Samoan has only one word with velar, colloquial Samoan conflates /t/, ni‘ihau Hawaiian has for /k/ to a greater extent than Standard Hawaiian, but neither distinguish a /k/ from a /t/. It may be accurate to say that Hawaiian and colloquial Samoan do not distinguish velar
Stop consonant
10.
Consonants
–
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
Consonants
–
The letter
T, the most common consonant letter in English.
11.
Vowels
–
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, with two competing definitions. There is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis and this contrasts with consonants, such as the English sh, which have a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. In the other, phonological definition, a vowel is defined as syllabic, a phonetically equivalent but non-syllabic sound is a semivowel. In oral languages, phonetic vowels normally form the peak of many to all syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and coda. Some languages allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, the word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning vocal. In English, the vowel is commonly used to mean both vowel sounds and the written symbols that represent them. The phonetic definition of vowel does not always match the phonological definition, the approximants and illustrate this, both are produced without much of a constriction in the vocal tract, but they occur at the onset of syllables. A similar debate arises over whether a word like bird in a dialect has an r-colored vowel /ɝ/ or a syllabic consonant /ɹ̩/. The American linguist Kenneth Pike suggested the terms vocoid for a vowel and vowel for a phonological vowel, so using this terminology. Nonetheless, the phonetic and phonemic definitions would still conflict for the syllabic el in table, or the syllabic nasals in button, daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the features of tongue height, tongue backness and roundedness. These three parameters are indicated in the schematic quadrilateral IPA vowel diagram on the right, there are additional features of vowel quality, such as the velum position, type of vocal fold vibration, and tongue root position. This conception of vowel articulation has been known to be inaccurate since 1928, Peter Ladefoged has said that early phoneticians. Thought they were describing the highest point of the tongue, and they were actually describing formant frequencies. The IPA Handbook concedes that the quadrilateral must be regarded as an abstraction. Vowel height is named for the position of the tongue relative to either the roof of the mouth or the aperture of the jaw. However, it refers to the first formant, abbreviated F1. Height is defined by the inverse of the F1 value, The higher the frequency of the first formant, however, if more precision is required, true-mid vowels may be written with a lowering diacritic. Although English contrasts six heights in its vowels, they are interdependent with differences in backness and it appears that some varieties of German have five contrasting vowel heights independently of length or other parameters
Vowels
–
X-rays of Daniel Jones' [i, u, a, ɑ].
12.
Alphabets
–
An alphabet is a standard set of letters that is used to write one or more languages based upon the general principle that the letters represent phonemes of the spoken language. This is in contrast to other types of writing systems, such as syllabaries and logographies, the Proto-Canaanite script, later known as the Phoenician alphabet, is the first fully phonemic script. Thus the Phoenician alphabet is considered to be the first alphabet, the Phoenician alphabet is the ancestor of most modern alphabets, including Arabic, Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and possibly Brahmic. Under a terminological distinction promoted by Peter T. Daniels, an alphabet is a script that represents both vowels and consonants as letters equally. In this narrow sense of the word the first true alphabet was the Greek alphabet, in other alphabetic scripts such as the original Phoenician, Hebrew or Arabic, letters predominantly or exclusively represent consonants, such a script is also called an abjad. A third type, called abugida or alphasyllabary, is one where vowels are shown by diacritics or modifications of consonantal letters, as in Devanagari. The Khmer alphabet is the longest, with 74 letters, there are dozens of alphabets in use today, the most popular being the Latin alphabet. Many languages use modified forms of the Latin alphabet, with additional letters formed using diacritical marks, while most alphabets have letters composed of lines, there are also exceptions such as the alphabets used in Braille. Alphabets are usually associated with an ordering of letters. This makes them useful for purposes of collation, specifically by allowing words to be sorted in alphabetical order and it also means that their letters can be used as an alternative method of numbering ordered items, in such contexts as numbered lists and number placements. The English word alphabet came into Middle English from the Late Latin word alphabetum, the Greek word was made from the first two letters, alpha and beta. The names for the Greek letters came from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet, aleph, which also meant ox, and bet, in the alphabet song in English, the term ABCs is used instead of the word alphabet. Knowing ones ABCs, in general, can be used as a metaphor for knowing the basics about anything, the history of the alphabet started in ancient Egypt. These glyphs were used as guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections. Based on letter appearances and names, it is believed to be based on Egyptian hieroglyphs and this script had no characters representing vowels, although originally it probably was a syllabary, but unneeded symbols were discarded. An alphabetic cuneiform script with 30 signs including three that indicate the vowel was invented in Ugarit before the 15th century BC. This script was not used after the destruction of Ugarit, the Proto-Sinaitic script eventually developed into the Phoenician alphabet, which is conventionally called Proto-Canaanite before ca.1050 BC. The oldest text in Phoenician script is an inscription on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram and this script is the parent script of all western alphabets
Alphabets
–
Edward Bernard 's "Orbis eruditi", comparing all known alphabets as of 1689.
Alphabets
–
Writing systems
Alphabets
–
A Specimen of
typeset fonts and
languages, by
William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728
Cyclopaedia.
Alphabets
–
Codex Zographensis in the
Glagolitic alphabet from Medieval
Bulgaria
13.
Syllabaries
–
A syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or moras which make up words. This loosely corresponds to shallow orthographies in alphabetic writing systems, most syllabaries only feature one or two kinds of syllabograms and form other syllables by graphemic rules. Otherwise they are synthetic, if they vary by onset, rime, nucleus or coda, or systematic, some scholars, e. g. Daniels, reserve the general term for analytic syllabaries and invent other terms as necessary. Some system provides katakana language conversion, in addition, the undecoded Cretan Linear A is also believed by some to be a syllabic script, though this is not proven. Chinese characters, the script used for Sumerian, Akkadian and other languages. They are therefore referred to as logosyllabic. The contemporary Japanese language uses two syllabaries together called kana, namely hiragana and katakana, which were developed around 700. They are mainly used to some native words and grammatical elements, as well as foreign words. Because Japanese uses mainly CV syllables, a syllabary is well suited to write the language, as in many syllabaries, however, vowel sequences and final consonants are written with separate glyphs, so that both atta and kaita are written with three kana, あった and かいた. It is therefore called a moraic writing system. Languages that use syllabaries today tend to have simple phonotactics, with a predominance of monomoraic syllables, few syllabaries have glyphs for syllables that are not monomoraic, and those that once did have simplified over time to eliminate that complexity. For example, the Vai syllabary originally had separate glyphs for syllables ending in a coda, the modern script has been expanded to cover all moras, but at the same time reduced to exclude all other syllables. g. Ko-no-so for Κνωσός Knōsos, pe-ma for σπέρμα sperma, the Cherokee syllabary generally uses dummy vowels for coda consonants, but also has a segmental grapheme for /s/, which can be used both as a coda and in an initial /sC/ consonant cluster. The languages of South Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as the Ethiopian Semitic languages, have a type of alphabet called an abugida or alphasyllabary, in the 19th century these systems were called syllabics, a term which has survived in the name of Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. In a true syllabary there may be graphic similarity between characters that share a common consonant or vowel sound, but it is not systematic or close to regular. For example, the characters for ke, ka, and ko in Japanese hiragana have no similarity to indicate their common k sound, compare abugida, where each grapheme typically represents a syllable but where characters representing related sounds are all similar graphically. For example, in Devanagari, an abugida, the characters for ke, ka and ko are के, का and को respectively. English, along many other Indo-European languages like German and Russian, allows for complex syllable structures
Syllabaries
–
Writing systems
14.
Semi-syllabaries
–
A semi-syllabary is a writing system that behaves partly as an alphabet and partly as a syllabary. The term has traditionally been extended to abugidas, but for the purposes of this article it will be restricted to scripts where some characters are alphabetic and others are syllabic. The Paleohispanic semi-syllabaries are a family of scripts developed in the Iberian Peninsula at least from the 5th century BCE – possibly from the 7th century, some researchers conclude that their origin lies solely with the Phoenician alphabet, while others believe the Greek alphabet also had a role. In the syllabic portions of the scripts, each stop-consonant sign stood for a different combination of consonant and vowel, so that the written form of ga displayed no resemblance to ge. The Tartessian or Southwestern script had a special behaviour, although the letter used to write a stop consonant was determined by the following vowel, some scholars treat Tartessian as a redundant semi-syllabary, others treat it as a redundant alphabet. One of these is zhuyin, a script devised for transcribing certain varieties of Chinese. Zhuyin includes several systems, such as Mandarin Phonetic Symbols for Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols for Taiwanese Hokkien and Hakka, zhuyin is not divided into consonants and vowels, but into onsets and rimes. Initial consonants and medials are alphabetic, but the nucleus and coda are combined as in syllabaries and that is, a syllable like kan is written k-an, and kwan is written k-u-an, the vowel is not written distinct from a final consonant. The modern Bamum script is essentially CV-syllabic, but doesnt have enough glyphs for all the CV syllables of the language, the rest are written by combining CV and V glyphs, making these effectively alphabetic. Correa, José Antonio, «Del alfabeto fenicio al semisilabario paleohispánico», Palaeohispanica 5, ferrer i Jané, Joan, «Novetats sobre el sistema dual de diferenciació gràfica de les oclusives sordes i sonores», Palaeohispanica 5, pp. 957–982. Rodríguez Ramos, Jesús, «La lectura de las inscripciones sudlusitano-tartesias», Faventia 22/1, Iberian Epigraphy – Jesús Rodríguez Ramos
Semi-syllabaries
–
A
northeastern non-dual Iberian semi-syllabary.
15.
Phoenician alphabet
–
The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, is the oldest verified alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad consisting of 22 letters, all consonants and it was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia. The Phoenician alphabet is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs and it became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was derived from Phoenician. Another derivative script is the Aramaic alphabet, which was the ancestor of the modern Arabic script, the Modern Hebrew script is a stylistic variant of the Aramaic script. The Greek alphabet was derived from Phoenician. Phoenician was usually written from right to left, although there are texts written in boustrophedon. The earliest known inscriptions are the so-called Proto-Sinaitic script sporadically attested in the Sinai and in Canaan in the late Middle. The script was not widely used until the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the 13th and 12th centuries BC, the Phoenician alphabet is a direct continuation of the Proto-Canaanite script of the Bronze Age collapse period. Beginning in the 9th century BC, adaptations of the Phoenician alphabet -- such as Greek, Old Italic, Anatolian, and the Paleohispanic scripts -- were very successful. This simple system contrasted with the scripts in use at the time, such as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Another reason for its success was the trading culture of Phoenician merchants. Phoenician inscriptions have been found in sites at a number of former Phoenician cities and colonies around the Mediterranean, such as Byblos. Later finds indicate earlier use in Egypt, Phoenician had long-term effects on the social structures of the civilizations that came in contact with it. As mentioned above, the script was the first widespread phonetic script and its simplicity not only allowed it to be used in multiple languages, but it also allowed the common people to learn how to write. The Phoenician alphabet was first uncovered in the 17th century, and it was at first believed that the script was a direct variation of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This idea was popular due to the recent decipherment of hieroglyphs. However, scholars could not find any link between the two writing systems, nor to hieratic or cuneiform, the theories of independent creation ranged from the idea of a single man conceiving it, to the Hyksos people forming it from corrupt Egyptian
Phoenician alphabet
–
Phoenician alphabet
16.
Greek alphabet
–
It is the ancestor of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. In its classical and modern forms, the alphabet has 24 letters, Modern and Ancient Greek use different diacritics. In standard Modern Greek spelling, orthography has been simplified to the monotonic system, examples In both Ancient and Modern Greek, the letters of the Greek alphabet have fairly stable and consistent symbol-to-sound mappings, making pronunciation of words largely predictable. Ancient Greek spelling was generally near-phonemic, among consonant letters, all letters that denoted voiced plosive consonants and aspirated plosives in Ancient Greek stand for corresponding fricative sounds in Modern Greek. This leads to groups of vowel letters denoting identical sounds today. Modern Greek orthography remains true to the spellings in most of these cases. The following vowel letters and digraphs are involved in the mergers, Modern Greek speakers typically use the same, modern, in other countries, students of Ancient Greek may use a variety of conventional approximations of the historical sound system in pronouncing Ancient Greek. Several letter combinations have special conventional sound values different from those of their single components, among them are several digraphs of vowel letters that formerly represented diphthongs but are now monophthongized. In addition to the three mentioned above, there is also ⟨ου⟩, pronounced /u/, the Ancient Greek diphthongs ⟨αυ⟩, ⟨ευ⟩ and ⟨ηυ⟩ are pronounced, and respectively in voicing environments in Modern Greek. The Modern Greek consonant combinations ⟨μπ⟩ and ⟨ντ⟩ stand for and respectively, ⟨τζ⟩ stands for, in addition, both in Ancient and Modern Greek, the letter ⟨γ⟩, before another velar consonant, stands for the velar nasal, thus ⟨γγ⟩ and ⟨γκ⟩ are pronounced like English ⟨ng⟩. There are also the combinations ⟨γχ⟩ and ⟨γξ⟩ and these signs were originally designed to mark different forms of the phonological pitch accent in Ancient Greek. The letter rho, although not a vowel, also carries a rough breathing in word-initial position, if a rho was geminated within a word, the first ρ always had the smooth breathing and the second the rough breathing leading to the transiliteration rrh. The vowel letters ⟨α, η, ω⟩ carry an additional diacritic in certain words, the iota subscript. This iota represents the former offglide of what were originally long diphthongs, ⟨ᾱι, ηι, ωι⟩, another diacritic used in Greek is the diaeresis, indicating a hiatus. In 1982, a new, simplified orthography, known as monotonic, was adopted for use in Modern Greek by the Greek state. Although it is not a diacritic, the comma has a function as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό. There are many different methods of rendering Greek text or Greek names in the Latin script, the form in which classical Greek names are conventionally rendered in English goes back to the way Greek loanwords were incorporated into Latin in antiquity. In this system, ⟨κ⟩ is replaced with ⟨c⟩, the diphthongs ⟨αι⟩ and ⟨οι⟩ are rendered as ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ respectively, and ⟨ει⟩ and ⟨ου⟩ are simplified to ⟨i⟩ and ⟨u⟩ respectively
Greek alphabet
–
Dipylon inscription, one of the oldest known samples of the use of the Greek alphabet, c. 740 BC
Greek alphabet
–
Early Greek alphabet on pottery in the
National Archaeological Museum of Athens
Greek alphabet
–
A 16th-century edition of the New Testament, printed in a renaissance typeface by
Claude Garamond
Greek alphabet
–
A page from the
Codex Argenteus, a 6th-century bible manuscript in Gothic
17.
Celtiberians
–
The Celtiberians were a group of Celts inhabiting the central-eastern Iberian Peninsula during the final centuries BC. They were explicitely mentioned as being Celts by several classic authors and these tribes spoke the Celtiberian language and wrote it by adapting the Iberian alphabet. Archaeologically, many elements link Celtiberians with Celts in Central Europe, there is no complete agreement on the exact definition of Celtiberians among classical authors, nor modern scholars. The Ebro river clearly divides the Celtiberian areas from non-Indoeuropean speaking peoples, on the other directions, the demarcation is less clear. Most scholars include the Arevaci, Pellendones, Belli, Titti and Lusones as Celtiberian tribes, strabo just saw the Celtiberians as a branch of the Celti. Settlements of circular huts survived until Roman times across the north of Iberia, from Northern Portugal, Asturias and Galicia through Cantabria and northern Leon to the Ebro River. Celtic presence in Iberia likely dates to as early as the 6th century BC, archaeological finds identify the culture as continuous with the culture reported by Classical writers from the late 3rd century onwards. There, when Greek and Roman geographers and historians encountered them, the dominant tribe were the Arevaci, who dominated their neighbors from powerful strongholds at Okilis and who rallied the long Celtiberian resistance to Rome. Other Celtiberians were the Belli and Titti in the Jalón valley, many late Celtiberian oppida are still occupied by modern towns, inhibiting archaeology. Metalwork stands out in Celtiberian archaeological finds, partly from its nature, emphasizing Celtiberian articles of warlike uses, horse trappings. The two-edged sword adopted by the Romans was previously in use among the Celtiberians, and Latin lancea, Celtiberian culture was increasingly influenced by Rome in the two final centuries BC. These civitates as the Roman historians called them, could make and break alliances, as surviving inscribed hospitality pacts attest, the old clan structures lasted in the formation of the Celtiberian armies, organized along clan-structure lines, with consequent losses of strategic and tactical control. The Celtiberians were the most influential group in Iberia when the Mediterranean powers started its conquest. In 220 BC, the Punic army was attacked when preparing to cross the Tagus river by a coalition of Vaccei, Carpetani and Olcades. After the conflict, Rome took possession of the Punic empire in Spain, tiberius Sempronius Gracchus spent the years 182 to 179 pacifying the Celtiberians, however, conflicts between various semi-independent bands of Celtiberians continued. The Sertorian War,80 –72 BC, marked the last formal resistance of the Celtiberian cities to Roman domination, the Celtiberian presence remains on the map of Spain in hundreds of Celtic place-names. The archaeological recovery of Celtiberian culture commenced with the excavations of Numantia, a Roman army auxiliary unit, the Cohors I Celtiberorum, is known from Britain, attested by 2nd century AD discharge diplomas. Center for Celtic Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee,6, The Celts in the Iberian Peninsula, 571–605
Celtiberians
–
Territory of the
Celtiberi tribe with the probable locations of its sub-groups
Celtiberians
–
Ethnology of the Iberian Peninsula c. 200 BC, based on the map by Portuguese archeologist Luís Fraga
Celtiberians
–
Bronze Celtiberian
fibula representing a warrior (3rd–2nd century BC)
Celtiberians
–
Botorrita plaque: one of four bronze plates with inscriptions.
18.
Nasal consonant
–
Examples of nasals in English are and, in words such as nose and mouth. Nasal occlusives are nearly universal in human languages, there are also other kinds of nasal consonants in some languages. Nearly all nasal consonants are nasal occlusives, in which air escapes through the nose but not through the mouth, the oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound. Rarely, non-occlusive consonants may be nasalized, most nasals are voiced, and in fact, the nasal sounds and are among the most common sounds cross-linguistically. Voiceless nasals occur in a few such as Burmese, Welsh, Icelandic. In terms of acoustics, nasals are sonorants, which means that they do not significantly restrict the escape of air, however, nasals are also obstruents in their articulation because the flow of air through the mouth is blocked. This duality, a sonorant airflow through the nose along with an obstruction in the mouth, for example, nasals tend to pattern with other sonorants such as and, but in many languages, they may develop from or into stops. Acoustically, nasals have bands of energy at around 200 and 2,000 Hz.1, ^ The symbol ⟨n⟩ is commonly used to represent the dental nasal as well, rather than ⟨n̪⟩, as it is rarely distinguished from the alveolar nasal. Examples of languages containing nasal occlusives, The voiced retroflex nasal is is a sound in Languages of India. Many Germanic languages, including German, Dutch, English and Swedish, as well as varieties of Chinese such as Mandarin and Cantonese, have, tamil has a six-fold distinction between, and. Catalan, Occitan, Spanish, and Italian have, as phonemes, nevertheless, in several American dialects of Spanish, there is no palatal nasal but only a palatalized nasal, as in English canyon. In Brazilian Portuguese and Angolan Portuguese, written ⟨nh⟩, is pronounced as, a nasal palatal approximant. Semivowels in Portuguese often nasalize before and always after nasal vowels, resulting in, what would be coda nasal occlusives in other West Iberian languages is only slightly pronounced before dental consonants. Outside this environment the nasality is spread over the vowel or become a nasal diphthong, the Mapos Buang language of New Guinea has an unusual three-way dorsal distinction between, and uvular. The presence of on a level is extremely rare cross-lingually, especially when the language also has other phonemic dorsal nasals present as in the case of Mapos Buang. The term nasal occlusive is generally abbreviated to nasal, however, there are also nasalized fricatives, nasalized flaps, nasal glides, and nasal vowels, as in French, Portuguese, and Polish. In the IPA, nasal vowels and nasalized consonants are indicated by placing a tilde over the vowel or consonant in question, French sang, a few languages have phonemic voiceless nasal occlusives. Among them are Icelandic, Faroese, Burmese, Jalapa Mazatec, Kildin Sami, Welsh, iaai of New Caledonia has an unusually large number of them, with /m̥ m̥ʷ n̪̊ ɳ̊ ɲ̊ ŋ̊/, along with a number of voiceless approximants
Nasal consonant
19.
Vowel
–
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, with two competing definitions. There is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis and this contrasts with consonants, such as the English sh, which have a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. In the other, phonological definition, a vowel is defined as syllabic, a phonetically equivalent but non-syllabic sound is a semivowel. In oral languages, phonetic vowels normally form the peak of many to all syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and coda. Some languages allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, the word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning vocal. In English, the vowel is commonly used to mean both vowel sounds and the written symbols that represent them. The phonetic definition of vowel does not always match the phonological definition, the approximants and illustrate this, both are produced without much of a constriction in the vocal tract, but they occur at the onset of syllables. A similar debate arises over whether a word like bird in a dialect has an r-colored vowel /ɝ/ or a syllabic consonant /ɹ̩/. The American linguist Kenneth Pike suggested the terms vocoid for a vowel and vowel for a phonological vowel, so using this terminology. Nonetheless, the phonetic and phonemic definitions would still conflict for the syllabic el in table, or the syllabic nasals in button, daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the features of tongue height, tongue backness and roundedness. These three parameters are indicated in the schematic quadrilateral IPA vowel diagram on the right, there are additional features of vowel quality, such as the velum position, type of vocal fold vibration, and tongue root position. This conception of vowel articulation has been known to be inaccurate since 1928, Peter Ladefoged has said that early phoneticians. Thought they were describing the highest point of the tongue, and they were actually describing formant frequencies. The IPA Handbook concedes that the quadrilateral must be regarded as an abstraction. Vowel height is named for the position of the tongue relative to either the roof of the mouth or the aperture of the jaw. However, it refers to the first formant, abbreviated F1. Height is defined by the inverse of the F1 value, The higher the frequency of the first formant, however, if more precision is required, true-mid vowels may be written with a lowering diacritic. Although English contrasts six heights in its vowels, they are interdependent with differences in backness and it appears that some varieties of German have five contrasting vowel heights independently of length or other parameters
Vowel
–
X-rays of Daniel Jones' [i, u, a, ɑ].
Vowel
20.
Lateral consonant
–
A lateral is an l-like consonant in which the airstream proceeds along the sides of the tongue, but it is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. Most commonly, the tip of the tongue makes contact with the teeth or the upper gum just behind the teeth. The most common laterals are approximants and belong to the class of liquids, plosives are never lateral, but they may have lateral release. The distinction is meaningless for nasals and for consonants articulated in the throat, consonants are not necessarily lateral or central. Some, such as Japanese r, are not defined by centrality, English has one lateral phoneme, the lateral approximant /l/, which in many accents has two allophones. One, found before vowels as in lady or fly, is called clear l, in some languages, like Albanian, those two sounds are different phonemes. East Slavic languages contrast and but do not have, in many British accents, dark may undergo vocalization through the reduction and loss of contact between the tip of the tongue and the alveolar ridge, becoming a rounded back vowel or glide. This process turns tell into something like, as must have happened with talk or walk at some stage, in central and Venice dialects of Venetian, intervocalic /l/ has turned into a semivocalic, so that the written word ła bała is pronounced. The orthography uses the letter ł to represent this phoneme, many aboriginal Australian languages have a series of three or four lateral approximants, as do various dialects of Irish. In Adyghe and some Athabaskan languages like Hän, both voiceless and voiced alveolar lateral fricatives occur, but there is no approximant, many of these languages also have lateral affricates. Some languages have palatal or velar voiceless lateral fricatives or affricates, such as Dahalo and Zulu, however, appropriate symbols are easy to make by adding a lateral-fricative belt to the symbol for the corresponding lateral approximant. Also, a diacritic may be added to the approximant. Nearly all languages with such lateral obstruents also have the approximant, however, there are a number of exceptions, many of them located in the Pacific Northwest area of the United States. For example, Tlingit has /tɬ, tɬʰ, tɬʼ, ɬ, ɬʼ/, other examples from the same area include Nuu-chah-nulth and Kutenai, and elsewhere, Chukchi and Kabardian. Standard Tibetan has a lateral approximant, usually romanized as lh. A uvular lateral approximant has been reported to occur in some speakers of American English, pashto has a retroflex lateral flap. There are a number of lateral click consonants,17 occur in. Xóõ. Lateral trills are also possible, but they do not occur in any known language and they may be pronounced by initiating or with an especially forceful airflow
Lateral consonant
21.
Sibilants
–
Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English words sip, zip, ship, chip, and jump, and the second consonant in vision. The symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet used to denote the sibilant sounds in words are. More specifically, the sounds, as in chip and jump, are affricates, Sibilants have a characteristically intense sound, which accounts for their paralinguistic use in getting ones attention. In the alveolar hissing sibilants and, the back of the forms a narrow channel to focus the stream of air more intensely. With the hushing sibilants, such as English, and, the tongue is flatter, because all sibilants are also stridents, the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. However, the terms do not mean the same thing, the English stridents are /f, v, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ/. The English sibilants are a high pitched subset of the stridents. The English sibilants are /s, z, ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, /f/ and /v/ are stridents, but not sibilants, because they are lower in pitch. Non-sibilant fricatives and affricates produce their characteristic sound directly with the tongue or lips etc. however, there is a great deal of variety among sibilants as to tongue shape, point of contact on the tongue, and point of contact on the upper side of the mouth. For example, a laminal denti-alveolar grooved sibilant occurs in Polish, the main distinction is the shape of the tongue. Most sibilants have a running down the centerline of the tongue that helps focus the airstream. Because of the prominence of these sounds, they are the most common and they occur in English, where they are denoted with a letter s or z, as in soon or zone. Alveolo-palatal, with a convex, V-shaped tongue, and highly palatalized and these sounds occur in English, where they are denoted with letter combinations such as sh, ch, g, j or si, as in shin, chin, gin and vision. Retroflex, with a flat or concave tongue, and no palatalization and these sounds occur in a large number of varieties, some of which also go by other names. The subapical palatal or true retroflex sounds are the very dullest, the latter three post-alveolar types of sounds are often known as hushing sounds because of their quality, as opposed to the hissing alveolar sounds. The alveolar sounds in fact occur in several varieties, in addition to the sound of English s, Palatalized. Palatalized alveolars are transcribed e. g. and occur in Russian, lisping, Alveolar sibilants made with the tip of the tongue near the upper teeth have a softer sound reminiscent of the lisping sound of English think. In these dialects, the sibilant is the normal pronunciation of the letters s and z, as well as c before i or e
Sibilants
–
voiceless alveolar sibilant
22.
Voice (phonetics)
–
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterise speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. It can also refer to a classification of sounds that tend to be associated with vocal cord vibration. That is the primary use in phonology to describe phonemes or in phonetics to describe phones. At the articulatory level, a sound is one in which the vocal cords vibrate. For example, voicing accounts for the difference between the pair of sounds associated with the English letters s and z, the two sounds are transcribed as and to distinguish them from the English letters, which have several possible pronunciations, depending on the context. If one places the fingers on the box, one can feel a vibration while zzzz is pronounced. In most European languages, with an exception being Icelandic, vowels. When used to classify speech sounds, voiced and unvoiced are merely used to group phones and phonemes together for the purposes of classification. The International Phonetic Alphabet has distinct letters for many voiceless and voiced pairs of consonants, in addition, there is a diacritic for voicedness, ⟨◌̬⟩. Diacritics are typically used with letters for prototypically voiceless sounds, in Unicode, the symbols are encoded U+032C ◌̬ COMBINING CARON BELOW and U+0325 ◌̥ COMBINING RING BELOW. For the example, ₍s̬₎ could be an with voicing in the middle, partial voicing can also be indicated in the normal IPA with transcriptions like and. The distinction between the use of voice and the phonological use rests on the distinction between phone and phoneme. The difference is best illustrated by a rough example, the English word nods is made up of a sequence of phonemes, represented symbolically as /nɒdz/, or the sequence of /n/, /ɒ/, /d/, and /z/. Each symbol is a representation of a phoneme. That awareness is an inherent part of speakers mental grammar that allows them to recognise words, however, phonemes are not sounds in themselves. Rather, phonemes are, in a sense, converted to phones before being spoken. The /z/ phoneme, for instance, can actually be pronounced as either the phone or the phone since /z/ is frequently devoiced, even in fluent speech, the sequence of phones for nods might be transcribed as or, depending on the presence or strength of this devoicing. While the phone has articulatory voicing, the phone does not have it, what complicates the matter is that for English, consonant phonemes are classified as either voiced or voiceless even though it is not the primary distinctive feature between them
Voice (phonetics)
23.
Ebro
–
The Ebro or Ebre is one of the most important rivers on the Iberian Peninsula. It is the second longest river in the Iberian peninsula after the Tagus, the source of the river Ebro is in Fontibre, from the Latin words Fontes Iberis, source of the Ebro. Close by is the big artificial lake Embalse del Ebro created by the damming of the river, the upper Ebro rushes through rocky gorges in Burgos Province. Karst geological processes shaped the landscape of layers of carbonate rock of extensive limestone bedrock formed in an ancient seabed. Aragonite, a named for Aragon, attests to the fact that carbonates are abundant in the central Ebro Valley. The valley expands and the Ebros flow then becomes slower as its volume increases. There, larger tributaries flowing from the Central Pyrenees and the Iberian System discharge large amounts of water, as it flows through Zaragoza the Ebro, is already a sizeable river. There, the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar stands next to the Ebro, the soils in most of the valley are primarily poor soils, calcareous, pebbly, stony, and sometimes salted with saltwater endorheic lagoons. The semi-arid interior of the Ebro Valley has either drought summers and it is covered with chaparral vegetation. Summers are hot and winters are cold, the dry summer season has temperatures of more than 35 °C, occasionally reaching over 40 °C. In winter, the temperatures drop below 0 °C. In some areas the vegetation depends heavily on moisture produced by condensation fogs and it is a continental Mediterranean climate with extreme temperatures. There are many ground frosts on clear nights, and sporadic snowfalls, the biomes are diverse in these Mediterranean climate zones, Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub. Hinterlands are particularly distinctive on account of extensive sclerophyll shrublands known as maquis, the dominant species are Quercus coccifera and Quercus ilex. These trees form monospecific communities or communities integrated with Pinus, Mediterranean buckthorns, Myrtus, Chamaerops humilis, junipers, Pistacia, Rosmarinus, Thymus, etc. The mountain vegetation is mostly coniferous forests that are drought adapted and their presence is related to the marine origin of the Ebro valley and the extensive marine deposits in the same area. After reaching Catalonia, the Ebro Valley narrows, and the river becomes constrained by mountain ranges, massive dams have been built in this area, such as the dams at Mequinenza, Riba-roja, Flix. In the final section of its course the river bends southwards, the massive calcareous cliffs of the Serra de Cardó range constrain the river during this last stretch, separating the Ebro Valley from the Mediterranean coastal area
Ebro
–
The Ebro River in Zaragoza
Ebro
–
Watershed of the Ebro
Ebro
–
The source of the Ebro in
Fontibre.
Ebro
–
The Ebro River delta from space
24.
Tagus
–
The Tagus is the longest river in the Iberian Peninsula. It is 1,007 km long,716 km in Spain,47 km along the border between Portugal and Spain and 275 km in Portugal, where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean near Lisbon and it drains an area of 80,100 square kilometers. The Tagus is highly utilized for most of its course, several dams and diversions supply drinking water to most of central Spain, including Madrid, and Portugal, while dozens of hydroelectric stations create power. Between dams it follows a very constricted course, but after Almourol it enters a vast alluvial valley prone to flooding, at its mouth is a large estuary on which the port city of Lisbon is situated. The source of the Tagus is the Fuente de García, in the Frías de Albarracín municipal term, Montes Universales, Sistema Ibérico, all its major tributaries enter the Tagus from the right bank. The main cities it passes through are Aranjuez, Toledo, Talavera de la Reina and Alcántara in Spain, the first notable city on the Tagus is Sacedón. Below Aranjuez it receives the flow of the Jarama, Henares, Algodor. Below Toledo it receives the Guadarrama River, above Talavera de la Reina it receives the Alberche. There is a canal and aqueduct between the Tagus and the Segura, the estuary is protected by the Tagus Estuary Natural Reserve. There is the largest bridge across the river, the Vasco da Gama Bridge, the Port of Lisbon, located at its mouth, is one of Europes busiest. The lower Tagus is on a fault line, slippage along it has caused numerous earthquakes, the major ones being those of 1309,1531 and 1755. The Pepper Wreck, properly the wreck of the Nossa Senhora dos Mártires, is a shipwreck located and excavated at the mouth of the Tagus between 1996 and 2001, the river had strategic value to the Spanish and Portuguese empires, as it guarded the approach to Lisbon. For example, in 1587, Sir Francis Drake briefly approached the river after his raid at Cadiz. A major river, the Tagus is brought to mind in the songs, a popular fado song in Lisbon notes that while people get older, the Tagus remains young. The author, Fernando Pessoa, wrote a poem that begins, but the Tagus is not more beautiful than the river that flows through my village. Richard Crashaws poem Saint Mary Magdalene, or the Weeper refers to the Golden Tagus as wanting Mary Magdalenes silver tears, in classical poetry the Tagus was famous for its gold-bearing sands. List of rivers of Spain List of rivers of Portugal
Tagus
–
View of Tagus River in
Toledo, Spain
Tagus
–
Path of the Tagus through the Iberian Peninsula
Tagus
–
The Tagus near
Vila Velha de Ródão, close to the Spanish border
25.
Douro
–
The Douro is one of the major rivers of the Iberian Peninsula, flowing from its source near Duruelo de la Sierra in Soria Province across northern-central Spain and Portugal to its outlet at Porto. The Latinized name Durius, likely came from the Celtic tribes that inhabited the area before Roman times, in modern Welsh, dŵr is water, as well as dour in modern Breton with cognate dobhar in Irish. In Roman times, the river was personified as a god, the Douro vinhateiro, an area of the Douro Valley in Portugal long devoted to vineyards, has been designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Traditionally, the wine was taken down river in boats called rabelos, to be stored in barrels in cellars in Vila Nova de Gaia. In the 1950s and 1960s, dams were built along the river, now Port wine is transported in tanker trucks. In 1998, Portugal and Spain signed the Albufeira Convention, an agreement on the sharing of trans-boundary rivers to include the Douro, Tagus, the convention superseded an original agreement on the Douro, signed in 1927, that was expanded in 1964 and 1968 to include tributaries. It is the third-longest river in the Iberian Peninsula after the Tagus and its total length is 897 kilometres, of which only sections of the Portuguese extension below the fall line are navigable, by light rivercraft. In this region, there are few tributaries of the Douro, the most important are the Pisuerga, passing through Valladolid, and the Esla, which passes through Zamora. This region is generally semi-arid plains, with wheat and in places, especially near Aranda de Duero, with vineyards. Sheep rearing is still important. For 112 kilometres, the forms part of the national border line between Spain and Portugal, in a region of narrow canyons. It formed a barrier to invasions, creating a cultural/linguistic divide. In these isolated areas, in which the Aldeadávila Dam impounds the river, there are protected areas, the International Douro Natural Park and the Arribes del Duero Natural Park. The Douro fully enters Portuguese territory just after the confluence with the Águeda River, once the Douro enters Portugal, except for Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia at the river mouth, the only population centres of any note are Foz do Tua, Pinhão and Peso da Régua. Tributaries here are small, merging into the Douro along the canyons, the most important are Côa, Tua, Sabor, Corgo, Tavora, Paiva, Tâmega, none of these small, fast-flowing rivers is navigable. The most populous cities along the Douro River are Valladolid and Zamora in Spain, the latter two are located at the mouth of the Douro at the Atlantic Ocean. In Portugal, the Douro flows through the districts of Bragança, Guarda, Viseu, Vila Real, Aveiro, Porto is the main hub city in northern Portugal. Its historic centre has designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its significant architecture
Douro
–
The river between
Porto (right) and
Vila Nova de Gaia (left), facing west
Douro
–
A 1908 image of boats along the Douro River
Douro
–
A SPOT Satellite image of the Douro River
Douro
–
The Douro in
Zamora (
Spain)
26.
Ancient Rome
–
In its many centuries of existence, the Roman state evolved from a monarchy to a classical republic and then to an increasingly autocratic empire. Through conquest and assimilation, it came to dominate the Mediterranean region and then Western Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa and it is often grouped into classical antiquity together with ancient Greece, and their similar cultures and societies are known as the Greco-Roman world. Ancient Roman civilisation has contributed to modern government, law, politics, engineering, art, literature, architecture, technology, warfare, religion, language and society. Rome professionalised and expanded its military and created a system of government called res publica, the inspiration for modern republics such as the United States and France. By the end of the Republic, Rome had conquered the lands around the Mediterranean and beyond, its domain extended from the Atlantic to Arabia, the Roman Empire emerged with the end of the Republic and the dictatorship of Augustus Caesar. 721 years of Roman-Persian Wars started in 92 BC with their first war against Parthia and it would become the longest conflict in human history, and have major lasting effects and consequences for both empires. Under Trajan, the Empire reached its territorial peak, Republican mores and traditions started to decline during the imperial period, with civil wars becoming a prelude common to the rise of a new emperor. Splinter states, such as the Palmyrene Empire, would divide the Empire during the crisis of the 3rd century. Plagued by internal instability and attacked by various migrating peoples, the part of the empire broke up into independent kingdoms in the 5th century. This splintering is a landmark historians use to divide the ancient period of history from the pre-medieval Dark Ages of Europe. King Numitor was deposed from his throne by his brother, Amulius, while Numitors daughter, Rhea Silvia, because Rhea Silvia was raped and impregnated by Mars, the Roman god of war, the twins were considered half-divine. The new king, Amulius, feared Romulus and Remus would take back the throne, a she-wolf saved and raised them, and when they were old enough, they returned the throne of Alba Longa to Numitor. Romulus became the source of the citys name, in order to attract people to the city, Rome became a sanctuary for the indigent, exiled, and unwanted. This caused a problem for Rome, which had a large workforce but was bereft of women, Romulus traveled to the neighboring towns and tribes and attempted to secure marriage rights, but as Rome was so full of undesirables they all refused. Legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins, after a long time in rough seas, they landed at the banks of the Tiber River. Not long after they landed, the men wanted to take to the sea again, one woman, named Roma, suggested that the women burn the ships out at sea to prevent them from leaving. At first, the men were angry with Roma, but they realized that they were in the ideal place to settle. They named the settlement after the woman who torched their ships, the Roman poet Virgil recounted this legend in his classical epic poem the Aeneid
Ancient Rome
–
Senātus Populus que Rōmānus
Ancient Rome
–
Roman Republic
Ancient Rome
–
According to legend,
Rome was founded in 753 BC by
Romulus and Remus, who were raised by a she-wolf.
Ancient Rome
–
This bust from the
Capitoline Museums is traditionally identified as a portrait of
Lucius Junius Brutus.
27.
Ancient Greece
–
Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th-9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and this was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the end of the Mediterranean Sea. Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a influence on ancient Rome. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Classical Antiquity in the Mediterranean region is considered to have begun in the 8th century BC. Classical Antiquity in Greece is preceded by the Greek Dark Ages and this period is succeeded, around the 8th century BC, by the Orientalizing Period during which a strong influence of Syro-Hittite, Jewish, Assyrian, Phoenician and Egyptian cultures becomes apparent. The end of the Dark Ages is also dated to 776 BC. The Archaic period gives way to the Classical period around 500 BC, Ancient Periods Astronomical year numbering Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details The history of Greece during Classical Antiquity may be subdivided into five major periods. The earliest of these is the Archaic period, in which artists made larger free-standing sculptures in stiff, the Archaic period is often taken to end with the overthrow of the last tyrant of Athens and the start of Athenian Democracy in 508 BC. It was followed by the Classical period, characterized by a style which was considered by observers to be exemplary, i. e. classical, as shown in the Parthenon. This period saw the Greco-Persian Wars and the Rise of Macedon, following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period, during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East. This period begins with the death of Alexander and ends with the Roman conquest, Herodotus is widely known as the father of history, his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato, most of these authors were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than those of many other cities. Their scope is limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic history, ignoring economic. In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. The Lelantine War is the earliest documented war of the ancient Greek period and it was fought between the important poleis of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Both cities seem to have suffered a decline as result of the long war, a mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century BC, shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC
Ancient Greece
–
The
Parthenon, a temple dedicated to
Athena, located on the
Acropolis in
Athens, is one of the most representative symbols of the culture and sophistication of the ancient Greeks.
Ancient Greece
–
Dipylon Vase of the late Geometric period, or the beginning of the Archaic period,
c. 750 BC.
Ancient Greece
–
Political geography of ancient Greece in the Archaic and Classical periods
28.
Silver
–
Silver is a metallic element with symbol Ag and atomic number 47. The symbol Ag stems from Latin argentum, derived from the Greek ὰργὀς, a soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. The metal is found in the Earths crust in the pure, free form, as an alloy with gold and other metals. Most silver is produced as a byproduct of copper, gold, lead, Silver is more abundant than gold, but it is much less abundant as a native metal. Its purity is measured on a per mille basis, a 94%-pure alloy is described as 0.940 fine. As one of the seven metals of antiquity, silver has had a role in most human cultures. Silver has long valued as a precious metal. Silver metal is used in many premodern monetary systems in bullion coins, Silver is used in numerous applications other than currency, such as solar panels, water filtration, jewelry, ornaments, high-value tableware and utensils, and as an investment medium. Silver is used industrially in electrical contacts and conductors, in specialized mirrors, window coatings, Silver compounds are used in photographic film and X-rays. Dilute silver nitrate solutions and other compounds are used as disinfectants and microbiocides, added to bandages and wound-dressings, catheters. Silver is similar in its physical and chemical properties to its two neighbours in group 11 of the periodic table, copper and gold. This distinctive electron configuration, with an electron in the highest occupied s subshell over a filled d subshell. Silver is a soft, ductile and malleable transition metal. Silver crystallizes in a cubic lattice with bulk coordination number 12. Unlike metals with incomplete d-shells, metallic bonds in silver are lacking a covalent character and are relatively weak and this observation explains the low hardness and high ductility of single crystals of silver. Silver has a brilliant white metallic luster that can take a polish. Protected silver has greater optical reflectivity than aluminium at all wavelengths longer than ~450 nm, at wavelengths shorter than 450 nm, silvers reflectivity is inferior to that of aluminium and drops to zero near 310 nm. The electrical conductivity of silver is the greatest of all metals, greater even than copper, during World War II in the US,13540 tons of silver were used in electromagnets for enriching uranium, mainly because of the wartime shortage of copper
Silver
–
Electrolytically refined silver
Silver
–
Silver 1000
oz t (~31 kg) bullion bar
Silver
–
Cessna 210 equipped with a silver iodide generator for
cloud seeding
Silver
–
A Canadian 50 cent piece from 1951, with King George the 6th on the obverse and Canada's (now former) coat of arms on the reverse. It is made of 80% silver and 20% copper.
29.
Bronze
–
These additions produce a range of alloys that may be harder than copper alone, or have other useful properties, such as stiffness, ductility, or machinability. The archeological period where bronze was the hardest metal in use is known as the Bronze Age. In the ancient Near East this began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC, with India and China starting to use bronze around the same time, everywhere it gradually spread across regions. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age starting from about 1300 BC and reaching most of Eurasia by about 500 BC, the discovery of bronze enabled people to create metal objects which were harder and more durable than previously possible. Bronze tools, weapons, armor, and building such as decorative tiles were harder and more durable than their stone. It was only later that tin was used, becoming the major ingredient of bronze in the late 3rd millennium BC. Tin bronze was superior to arsenic bronze in that the process could be more easily controlled. Also, unlike arsenic, metallic tin and fumes from tin refining are not toxic, the earliest tin-alloy bronze dates to 4500 BCE in a Vinča culture site in Pločnik. Other early examples date to the late 4th millennium BC in Africa, Susa and some ancient sites in China, Luristan, ores of copper and the far rarer tin are not often found together, so serious bronze work has always involved trade. Tin sources and trade in ancient times had a influence on the development of cultures. In Europe, a source of tin was the British deposits of ore in Cornwall. In many parts of the world, large hoards of bronze artefacts are found, suggesting that bronze also represented a store of value, in Europe, large hoards of bronze tools, typically socketed axes, are found, which mostly show no signs of wear. With Chinese ritual bronzes, which are documented in the inscriptions they carry and from other sources and these were made in enormous quantities for elite burials, and also used by the living for ritual offerings. Pure iron is soft, and the process of beating and folding sponge iron to wrought iron removes from the metal carbon. Careful control of the alloying and tempering eventually allowed for wrought iron with properties comparable to modern steel, Bronze was still used during the Iron Age, and has continued in use for many purposes to the modern day. Among other advantages, it does not rust, the weaker wrought iron was found to be sufficiently strong for many uses. Archaeologists suspect that a disruption of the tin trade precipitated the transition. The population migrations around 1200–1100 BC reduced the shipping of tin around the Mediterranean, limiting supplies, there are many different bronze alloys, but typically modern bronze is 88% copper and 12% tin
Bronze
–
Yoruba bronze head sculpture, Ife, Nigeria c. 12th century AD
Bronze
–
Bronze deer figurine dating from between the 9th and 6th centuries BC,
National Archaeological Museum of
Sofia
Bronze
–
A hoard of bronze socketed axes from the
Bronze Age found in modern Germany. This was the top tool of the period, and also seems to have been used as a store of value.
Bronze
–
Chinese Ding,
Western Zhou (1046–771 BC)
30.
Coins
–
A coin is a small, flat, round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in quantities at a mint in order to facilitate trade. They are most often issued by a government, Coins are usually metal or alloy, or sometimes made of synthetic materials. Coins made of metal are stored in large quantities as bullion coins. Other coins are used as money in transactions, circulating alongside banknotes. Usually the highest value coin in circulation is less than the lowest-value note. In the last hundred years, the value of circulation coins has occasionally been lower than the value of the metal they contain. Exceptions to the rule of face value being higher than content value also occur for some bullion coins made of copper, silver, or gold, while the Eagle, Maple Leaf, and Sovereign coins have nominal face values, the Krugerrand does not. The first coins were developed independently in Iron Age Anatolia and Archaic Greece, India, Coins spread rapidly in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, throughout Greece and Persia, and further to the Balkans. Standardized Roman currency was used throughout the Roman Empire, important Roman gold and silver coins were continued into the Middle Ages. Fiat money first arose in medieval China, with the paper money. Early paper money was introduced in Europe in the later Middle Ages, the penny was minted as a silver coin until the 17th century. The first circulating United States coins were cents, produced in 1793, Coins were an evolution of currency systems of the Late Bronze Age, where standard-sized ingots, and tokens such as knife money, were used to store and transfer value. In the late Chinese Bronze Age, standardized cast tokens were made and these were replicas in bronze of earlier Chinese currency, cowrie shells, so they were named Bronze Shell. According to Aristotle and Pollux, the first issuer of coins was Hermodike of Kyme The earliest coins are associated with Iron Age Anatolia. Early electrum coins were not standardized in weight, and in their earliest stage may have been ritual objects, such as badges or medals, issued by priests. The first Lydian coins were made of electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of silver, most of the early Lydian coins include no writing, only an image of a symbolic animal. Anatolian Artemis was the Πὀτνια Θηρῶν, whose symbol was the stag, a small percentage of early Lydian/Greek coins have a legend
Coins
–
A
Swiss ten-cent coin from 1879, similar to the oldest coins still in official use today
Coins
–
Numismatics
Coins
–
An original Celtic
Biatec coin and its replica on a former Slovak 5-
koruna coin (1993-2008)
Coins
–
An
oxhide ingot from
Crete.
Late Bronze Age metal ingots were given standard shapes, such as the shape of an "ox-hide", suggesting that they represented standardized values.
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