1.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
2.
Chechnya
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The Chechen Republic, commonly referred to as Chechnya, is a federal subject of Russia. It is located in the North Caucasus, situated in the southernmost part of Eastern Europe, the capital of the republic is the city of Grozny. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was split into two parts, the Republic of Ingushetia and the Chechen Republic, the latter proclaimed the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, which sought independence. Following the First Chechen War with Russia, Chechnya gained de facto independence as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Russian federal control was restored during the Second Chechen War. Since then there has been a reconstruction and rebuilding process, though sporadic fighting continues in the mountains. According to Leonti Mroveli, the 11th-century Georgian chronicler, the word Caucasian is derived from the Vainakh ancestor Kavkas, dr. Henry Harpending, University of Utah, supports her claims. People living in prehistoric mountain cave settlements used tools, mastered fire, traces of human settlement that date back to 40,000 BC were found near Lake Kezanoi. Cave paintings, artifacts, and other evidence indicates continuous habitation for some 8,000 years. 10, 000–8000 BCE Migration of Nakh peoples to the slopes of the Caucasus from the Fertile Crescent, Invention of agriculture, irrigation, and the domestication of animals. Pottery is known to the region, settlements made out of clay bricks discovered in the plains. In the mountains there were discovered settlements made out of stone and surrounded by walls, 4000–3000 BCE Invention of the wheel, horseback riding, metal works, dishes, armor, daggers, knives, arrow tips. The artifacts were found near Nasare-Cort, Muzhichi, Ja-E-Bortz, Abbey-Gove 900–1200 AD The kingdom in the center of the Caucasus splits into Alania, german scientist Peter Simon Pallas believed that Ingush people were the direct descendants from Alania. The Alan tribes build fortresses, castles, and defense walls locking the mountains from the invaders, part of the lowland tribes occupied by Mongols. 1500 AD First Russian involvement in the Caucasus,1558 Temryuk of Kabarda sends his emissaries to Moscow requesting help against Vainakh tribes from Ivan the Terrible. Ivan the Terrible marries Temryuks daughter Maria Temryukovna, alliance formed to gain the ground in the central Caucasus for the expanding Tsardom of Russia against stubborn Vainakh defenders. Chechnya was a nation in the Northern Caucasus that fought against foreign rule continually since the 15th century, the Chechens converted over the next few centuries to Sunni Islam, as Islam was associated with resistance to Russian encroachment. Notable in Chechen history, this particular Russo-Persian War marked the first military encounter between Imperial Russia and the Vainakh, as the Russians took control of the Caspian corridor and moved into Persian-ruled Dagestan, Peters forces ran into mountain tribes. Peter sent a force to subdue them, but the Chechens routed them
3.
Chechens
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Chechens are a Caucasian ethnic group of the Nakh peoples originating in the North Caucasus region of Eastern Europe. They refer to themselves as Vainakhs or Nokhchiy (pronounced, singular Nokhchi, Chechen and Ingush peoples are collectively known as the Vainakh. The majority of Chechens today live in the Chechen Republic, a subdivision of the Russian Federation, Chechen society has traditionally been egalitarian and organized around many autonomous local clans, called teips. The term Chechen first occurs in Arabic sources from the 8th century, according to popular tradition, the Russian term Chechen comes from the name of the village of Chechen-Aul. The word Chechen, however, occurs in Russian sources as early as 1692, the Chechen people are mainly inhabitants of Chechnya, Russian Federation. There are also significant Chechen populations in other subdivisions of Russia, outside Russia, countries with significant diaspora populations are Kazakhstan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Arab states and the 1944 Stalinist deportation in the case of Kazakhstan. Tens of thousands of Chechen refugees settled in the European Union and elsewhere as the result of the recent Chechen Wars, the Chechens are one of the Vainakh peoples, who have lived in the highlands of the North Caucasus region since prehistory. In the Middle Ages, the lowland of Chechnya was dominated by the Khazars, local culture was also subject to Byzantine and Georgian influence and some Chechens converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Gradually, Islam prevailed, although the Chechens own pagan religion was strong until the 19th century. Society was organised along feudal lines, Chechnya was devastated by the Mongol invasions of the 13th century and those of Tamerlane in the 14th. The Vainakh bear the distinction of being one of the few peoples to successfully resist the Mongols and these events were key in the shaping of the Chechen nationhood and their martial-oriented and clan-based society. The Caucasus was also a major competing area for two neighbouring empires, the Ottoman and Persian Empires. The Chechens, however, never really fell under the rule of either empire, as Russia expanded slowly southwards as early as the 16th century, clashes between Chechens and the Russians became more frequent, and it became three empires competing for the region. Notable in Chechen history, this particular Russo-Persian War marked the first military encounter between Imperial Russia and the Vainakh, sheikh Mansur led a major Chechen resistance movement in the late 18th century. Much of the campaign was led by General Yermolov who particularly disliked the Chechens, describing them as a bold, angered by Chechen raids, Yermolov resorted to a brutal policy of scorched earth and deportations, he also founded the fort of Grozny in 1818. Chechen resistance to Russian rule reached its peak under the leadership of the Dagestani leader Imam Shamil, the Chechens were finally defeated in 1861 after a bloody war that lasted for decades, during which they lost most of their entire population. In the aftermath, large numbers of refugees also emigrated or were deported to the Ottoman Empire. At least one-quarter—and perhaps half—of the entire Chechen population perished in the process, Chechen attempts to regain independence in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union have led to the first and the second war with the new Russian state, starting in 1994
4.
Language family
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A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. Linguists therefore describe the languages within a language family as being genetically related. Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000 to 8,000, depending on the precision of ones definition of language, the 2013 edition of Ethnologue catalogs just over 7,000 living human languages. A living language is one that is used as the primary form of communication of a group of people. There are also dead and extinct languages, as well as some that are still insufficiently studied to be classified. Membership of languages in a family is established by comparative linguistics. Sister languages are said to have a genetic or genealogical relationship, speakers of a language family belong to a common speech community. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, individuals belonging to other speech communities may also adopt languages from a different language family through the language shift process. Genealogically related languages present shared retentions, that is, features of the proto-language that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing, for example, Germanic languages are Germanic in that they share vocabulary and grammatical features that are not believed to have been present in the Proto-Indo-European language. These features are believed to be innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as branches of the family because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram. A family is a unit, all its members derive from a common ancestor. Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a level. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, a top-level family is often called a phylum or stock. The closer the branches are to other, the closer the languages will be related. For example, the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Romance, there is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of the phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically as opposed to horizontally. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations, thus, different sources give sometimes wildly different accounts of the number of languages within a family. Classifications of the Japonic family, for example, range from one language to nearly twenty, most of the worlds languages are known to be related to others
5.
Northeast Caucasian languages
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They are occasionally called North Caspian, as opposed to North Pontic for the Northwest Caucasian languages. Several names have been in use for this family, the most common term, Northeast Caucasian, contrasts the three established families of the Caucasus language area, Northeast Caucasian, Northwest Caucasian, and South Caucasian. This may be shortened to East Caucasian, the rare term North Caspian is only used in opposition to the use of North Pontic for the Northwest Caucasian languages. Historically, Northeast Caucasian phonemic inventories were thought to be smaller than those of the neighboring Northwest Caucasian family. However, more recent research has revealed that many Northeast Caucasian languages are much more phoneme-rich than previously believed, in addition to numerous oral obstruents, many Northeast Caucasian languages also possess a number of back consonants, including uvulars, pharyngeals, and glottal stops and fricatives. Northeast Caucasian phonology is also notable for its use of numerous secondary articulations as contrastive features, some languages also include palatalization and labialization as contrastive features. Most languages in this family contrast tense and weak consonants, tense consonants are characterized by the intensiveness of articulation, which naturally leads to a lengthening of these consonants. In contrast to the generally large consonant inventories of Northeast Caucasian languages, however, there are some exceptions to this trend, such as Chechen, which has at least twenty-eight vowels, diphthongs, and triphthongs. These languages can be characterized by strong suffixal agglutination, weak tendencies towards inflection may be noted as well. Nouns display covert nominal classification, but partially overt cases of secondary origin can be observed too, the number of noun classes in individual languages range from two to eight. Regarding grammatical number, there may be a distinction between singular and plural, plurality itself may impact the class to which a noun belongs, in some cases, a grammatical collective is seen. Many languages distinguish local versus functional cases, and to some degree also casus rectus versus casus obliquus, the inflectional paradigms are often based on partially classifying productive stem extensions (absolutive, and oblique, ergative, and genitive inflection. Localization is mostly conveyed by postpositions, but it can be partly based on preverbs. Noun phrases exhibit incomplete class agreement, group inflection with partial attributive oblique marking, most Northeast Caucasian languages exhibit an ergative–absolutive morphology. This means that objects of transitive sentences and subjects of intransitive sentences both fall into a single grammatical case known as the absolutive, subjects of transitive sentences, however, carry a different marking to indicate that they belong to a separate case, known as the ergative. This distinction can be seen in the following two Archi sentences, note that objects and subjects of intransitive sentences carry no suffix, which is represented by the null suffix, -∅. Meanwhile, agents of transitive sentences take the suffix, -mu. Blue is used to mark ergative markers, as well as, red is used to mark null morphemes, as well as transitive objects and intransitive subjects in the English translations
6.
Nakh languages
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The Nakh languages are a small family of languages spoken chiefly by the Nakh peoples, in Russia, in Georgia, and in the Chechen diaspora. The Nakh languages were classified as an independent North-Central Caucasian family. They are believed to have split off some 5, 000–6,000 years ago, Vainakh languages, a dialect continuum with two literary languages, Chechen – approximately 1,330,000 speakers. Bats or Batsbi – approximately 3,420, spoken mostly in Zemo-Alvani, not mutually intelligible with Chechen or Ingush. In initial position, Bats ejectives correspond to Vainakh ejectives, a similar change has taken place in some of the other Dagestanian languages. Many obscure ancient languages or peoples have been postulated by scholars of the Caucasus as Nakh, none of these have been confirmed, most are classified as Nakh on the basis of placenames. The Èrsh language, language of the Èrs who inhabited Northern Armenia and this is considered to be more or less confirmed as Nakh. They were assimilated eventually, and their language was replaced by Georgian or Azeri, the language of the Malkhs in the North Caucasus, who lived in modern day Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay–Cherkessia, and once briefly conquered Ubykhia and Abkhazia. Those who stayed behind were either wiped out or assimilated, the language of the Kakh, old inhabitants of Kakheti and Tusheti in Eastern Georgia. The Kakh apparently called themselves Kabatsas and their territory Kakh-Batsa and they may or may not be ancestral to the modern Bats, and they may or may not be closely related to them. They were assimilated by the Kartlians to speak Georgian, gligvs, a mysterious people in the North Caucasus attributed by Georgian historians to be a Nakh people. They may be ancestral to the Ingush, but the term used by Georgians consistently for the Ingush is Kist, the language of the Tsanars in historical Georgia is thought by many historians to be Nakh, based on place names, geographic location, and other such information. The language of the Dvals is thought to be Nakh by many historians, the Dvals were assimilated by the Georgians and conquered by the Ossetes in the north. It is thought that Dval did not go fully extinct until the 18th century, djavashvili and Giorgi Melikishvili the Urartuan state of Supani was occupied by the ancient Nakh tribe Tzov, whose state is called Tsobena in ancient Georgian historiography. The Tzov/Tsov language was the dominant language spoken by its people, tsov and its relatives in the area may have contributed to the Hurro-Urartian substratum in the Armenian language. Languages of the Caucasus Northeast Caucasian languages Alarodian languages Proto-Nakh basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database
7.
Writing system
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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
8.
Cyrillic script
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The Cyrillic script /sᵻˈrɪlɪk/ is a writing system used for various alphabets across eastern Europe and north and central Asia. It is based on the Early Cyrillic, which was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the alphabet for their national languages. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the official script of the European Union, following the Latin script. Cyrillic is derived from the Greek uncial script, augmented by letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet and these additional letters were used for Old Church Slavonic sounds not found in Greek. The script is named in honor of the two Byzantine brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who created the Glagolitic alphabet earlier on, modern scholars believe that Cyrillic was developed and formalized by early disciples of Cyril and Methodius. In the early 18th century the Cyrillic script used in Russia was heavily reformed by Peter the Great, the new form of letters became closer to the Latin alphabet, several archaic letters were removed and several letters were personally designed by Peter the Great. West European typography culture was also adopted, Cyrillic script spread throughout the East and South Slavic territories, being adopted for writing local languages, such as Old East Slavic. Its adaptation to local languages produced a number of Cyrillic alphabets, capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts. Yeri was originally a ligature of Yer and I, iotation was indicated by ligatures formed with the letter І, Ꙗ, Ѥ, Ю, Ѩ, Ѭ. Sometimes different letters were used interchangeably, for example И = І = Ї, there were also commonly used ligatures like ѠТ = Ѿ. The letters also had values, based not on Cyrillic alphabetical order. The early Cyrillic alphabet is difficult to represent on computers, many of the letterforms differed from modern Cyrillic, varied a great deal in manuscripts, and changed over time. Few fonts include adequate glyphs to reproduce the alphabet, the Unicode 5.1 standard, released on 4 April 2008, greatly improves computer support for the early Cyrillic and the modern Church Slavonic language. In Microsoft Windows, Segoe UI is notable for having complete support for the archaic Cyrillic letters since Windows 8, the development of Cyrillic typography passed directly from the medieval stage to the late Baroque, without a Renaissance phase as in Western Europe. Late Medieval Cyrillic letters show a tendency to be very tall and narrow. Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, mandated the use of westernized letter forms in the early 18th century, over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the script. The development of some Cyrillic computer typefaces from Latin ones has also contributed to the visual Latinization of Cyrillic type, Cyrillic uppercase and lowercase letter forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography
9.
Latin script
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Latin script is used as the standard method of writing in most Western and Central European languages, as well as in many languages in other parts of the world. Latin script is the basis for the largest number of alphabets of any writing system and is the most widely adopted writing system in the world, Latin script is also the basis of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The 26 most widespread letters are the contained in the ISO basic Latin alphabet. The script is either called Roman script or Latin script, in reference to its origin in ancient Rome, in the context of transliteration, the term romanization or romanisation is often found. Unicode uses the term Latin as does the International Organization for Standardization, the numeral system is called the Roman numeral system, and the collection of the elements, Roman numerals. The numbers 1,2,3. are Latin/Roman script numbers for the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, the Latin alphabet spread, along with Latin, from the Italian Peninsula to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The Latin script also came into use for writing the West Slavic languages and several South Slavic languages, the speakers of East Slavic languages generally adopted Cyrillic along with Orthodox Christianity. The Serbian language uses both scripts, with Cyrillic predominating in official communication and Latin elsewhere, as determined by the Law on Official Use of the Language and Alphabet. As late as 1500, the Latin script was limited primarily to the languages spoken in Western, Northern, the Orthodox Christian Slavs of Eastern and Southeastern Europe mostly used Cyrillic, and the Greek alphabet was in use by Greek-speakers around the eastern Mediterranean. The Arabic script was widespread within Islam, both among Arabs and non-Arab nations like the Iranians, Indonesians, Malays, and Turkic peoples, most of the rest of Asia used a variety of Brahmic alphabets or the Chinese script. It is used for many Austronesian languages, including the languages of the Philippines, Latin letters served as the basis for the forms of the Cherokee syllabary developed by Sequoyah, however, the sound values are completely different. In the late 19th century, the Romanians returned to the Latin alphabet, under French rule and Portuguese missionary influence, a Latin alphabet was devised for the Vietnamese language, which had previously used Chinese characters. In 1928, as part of Mustafa Kemal Atatürks reforms, the new Republic of Turkey adopted a Latin alphabet for the Turkish language, kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Iranian-speaking Tajikistan, and the breakaway region of Transnistria kept the Cyrillic alphabet, chiefly due to their close ties with Russia. In the 1930s and 1940s, the majority of Kurds replaced the Arabic script with two Latin alphabets, although the only official Kurdish government uses an Arabic alphabet for public documents, the Latin Kurdish alphabet remains widely used throughout the region by the majority of Kurdish-speakers. In 2015, the Kazakh government announced that the Latin alphabet would replace Cyrillic as the system for the Kazakh language by 2025. In the course of its use, the Latin alphabet was adapted for use in new languages, sometimes representing phonemes not found in languages that were written with the Roman characters. These new forms are given a place in the alphabet by defining an alphabetical order or collation sequence, a digraph is a pair of letters used to write one sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters in sequence. Examples are ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ng⟩, ⟨rh⟩, ⟨sh⟩ in English, a trigraph is made up of three letters, like the German ⟨sch⟩, the Breton ⟨c’h⟩ or the Milanese ⟨oeu⟩
10.
Arabic script
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The Arabic script is a writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic, dialects of Mandinka, Central Kurdish, Luri, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, and others. Until the 16th century, it was used to write some texts in Spanish. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by the number of countries using it, the Arabic script is written from right to left in a cursive style. In most cases the letters transcribe consonants, or consonants and a few vowels, the script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Qurʼān, the holy book of Islam. It is also the basis for the tradition of Arabic calligraphy, the Arabic script has been adopted for use in a wide variety of languages besides Arabic, including Persian, Malay and Urdu which are not Semitic. Such adaptations may feature altered or new characters to represent phonemes that do not appear in Arabic phonology, the modified version of the Arabic script originally devised for use with Persian is known as the Perso-Arabic script by scholars. In the cases of Bosnian, Kurdish, Kashmiri, and Uyghur writing systems, the Arabic script can therefore be used in both abugida and abjad, although it is often strongly, erroneously connected to the latter. Use of the Arabic script in West African languages, especially in the Sahel, to a certain degree the style and usage tends to follow those of the Maghreb. Additional diacritics have come into use to facilitate writing of sounds not represented in the Arabic language, the term ʻAjamī, which comes from the Arabic root for foreign, has been applied to Arabic-based orthographies of African languages. There is evidence that writing Arabic in this set of letters influenced the style of modern Arabic script. After this initial period, Garshuni writing has continued to the present day among some Syriac Christian communities in the Arabic-speaking regions of the Levant, Kazakh in China Kurdish in Northern Iraq and Northwest Iran. It is mainly used in Sri Lanka and the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu for religious purposes, arwi language is the language of Tamil Nadu Muslims. Malayalam language represented by Arabic script variant is known as Arabi Malayalam, the script has particular letters to represent the peculiar sounds of Malayalam. This script is used in madrasas of the South Indian state of Kerala. It is similar to Chittagonian language in neighboring Bangladesh and sometimes using the Roman script. Malay in the Arabic script known as Jawi, in some cases it can be seen in the signboards of shops or market stalls. In addition, some television programming uses Jawi, such as announcements, advertisements, news, social programs, Berber languages have often been written in an adaptation of the Arabic alphabet. The use of the Arabic alphabet, as well as the competing Latin, West Africa Zarma language of the Songhay family
11.
Georgian scripts
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The Georgian scripts are the three writing systems used to write the Georgian language, Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri and Mkhedruli. Although the systems differ in appearance, all three are unicase, their letters share the names and alphabetical order, and are written horizontally from left to right. Of the three scripts, Mkhedruli was the civilian royal script of the Kingdom of Georgia mostly used for the royal charters, originally consisting of 38 letters, Georgian is presently written in a 33-letter alphabet, as five letters are currently obsolete in that language. The number of Georgian letters used in other Kartvelian languages varies, the Mingrelian language uses 36,33 of which are current Georgian letters, one obsolete Georgian letter, and two additional letters specific to Mingrelian and Svan. That same obsolete letter, plus a letter borrowed from Greek, are used in writing the Laz language, Georgian scripts were granted the national status of cultural heritage in Georgia in 2015 and inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2016. The first version of the script attested is Asomtavruli which dates back to at least the 5th century, most scholars link the creation of the Georgian script to the process of Christianization of Iberia, a core Georgian kingdom of Kartli. The alphabet was therefore most probably created between the conversion of Iberia under King Mirian III and the Bir el Qutt inscriptions of 430 and it was first used for translation of the Bible and other Christian literature into Georgian, by monks in Georgia and Palestine. This account is now considered legendary, and is rejected by scholarly consensus, a point of contention among scholars is the role played by Armenian clerics in that process. Other scholars quote Koryuns claims without taking a stance on its validity, many agree, however, that Armenian clerics, if not Mashtots himself, must have played a role in the creation of the Georgian script. Another controversy regards the main influences at play in the Georgian alphabet, as scholars have debated whether it was inspired more by the Greek alphabet, or by Semitic alphabets such as Aramaic. Recent historiography focuses on greater similarities with the Greek alphabet than in the other Caucasian writing systems, most notably the order, some scholars have also suggested as a possible inspiration for particular letters certain pre-Christian Georgian cultural symbols or clan markers. Asomtavruli is the oldest Georgian script, the name Asomtavruli means capital letters, from aso letter and mtavari principal/head. It is also known as Mrgvlovani rounded, from mrgvali round, despite its name, this capital script is unicameral, just like the modern Georgian script, Mkhedruli. The oldest Asomtavruli inscriptions found so far date from the 5th century and are Bir el Qutt, from the 9th century, Nuskhuri script starting becoming dominant, and the role of Asomtavruli was reduced. However, epigraphic monuments of the 10th to 18th centuries continued to be written in Asomtavruli script, Asomtavruli in this later period became more decorative. In the majority of 9th-century Georgian manuscripts which were written in Nuskhuri script, Asomtavruli was used for titles, although, some manuscripts written completely in Asomtavruli can be found until the 11th century. In early Asomtavruli, the letters are of equal height, in most Asomtavruli letters, straight lines are horizontal or vertical and meet at right angles. The only letter with acute angles is Ⴟ, there have been various attempts to explain this exception
12.
Dagestan
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The Republic of Dagestan, also spelled Daghestan, is a federal subject of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region. Its capital and largest city is Makhachkala, located at the center of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea. With a population of 2,910,249, Dagestan is very diverse and Russias most heterogeneous republic, with none of its several dozen ethnicities. Largest among these ethnicities are the Avar, Dargin, Kumyk, Lezgian, Laks, Azerbaijani, Tabasaran, ethnic Russians comprise about 3. 6% of Dagestans total population. Russian is the official language and the lingua franca among the ethnicities. Dagestan has been a scene of Islamic insurgency, occasional outbreaks of separatism, according to International Crisis Group, the militant Islamist organization Shariat Jamaat is responsible for much of the violence. The word Dagestan is of Turkish and Persian origin, dağ means mountain in Turkish and -stan is a Persian suffix meaning land. Some areas of Dagestan were known as Albania, Avaria, the name Dagestan referred to Dagestan Oblast during 1860 to 1920, corresponding to the southeastern part of the present-day Republic. It is the southernmost part of Russia, and is bordered on its side by the Caspian Sea. Major rivers include, Sulak River Samur River Terek River Vladas River Ccenter River Dagestan has about 405 kilometers of coast line on the Caspian Sea, most of the Republic is mountainous, with the Greater Caucasus Mountains covering the south. The highest point is the Bazardüzü/Bazardyuzyu peak at 4,470 meters on the border with Azerbaijan, the southernmost point of Russia is located about seven kilometers southwest of the peak. Other important mountains are Diklosmta, Gora Addala Shukgelmezr and Gora Dyultydag, Dagestan is rich in oil, natural gas, coal, and many other minerals. The climate is hot and dry in the summer but the winters are harsh in the mountain areas, Average January temperature, +2 °C Average July temperature, +26 °C Average annual precipitation,250 to 800 mm. Dagestan is administratively divided into forty-one districts and ten cities/towns. The districts are subdivided into nineteen urban-type settlements, and 363 rural okrugs. In the first few centuries AD, Caucasian Albania became a vassal, with the advent of the Sassanian Empire, it became a satrapy within the vast domains of the empire. In later antiquity, it was a few times fought over by the Roman Empire, over the centuries, to a relatively large extent, the peoples within the Dagestan territory converted to Christianity alongside Zoroastrianism. In the 5th century AD, the Samian peregrinations took place from Ukraine to this land, during the Sassanian era, southern Dagestan became a bastion of Iranian culture and civilisation, with its centre at Derbent, and a policy of Persianisation can be traced over many centuries. In 664, the Persians were succeeded in Derbent by the Arabs, by the 15th century, Albanian Christianity had died away, leaving a 10th-century church at Datuna as the sole monument to its existence
13.
International Phonetic Alphabet
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The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators. The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of language, phones, phonemes, intonation. IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a letter, or with a letter plus diacritics. Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription, thus, /t/ is less specific than, occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 letters,52 diacritics and these are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA. In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, for example, the sound was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the digraph ⟨ch⟩ in French. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, the idea of making the IPA was first suggested by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by Alexander John Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the International Phonetic Association Kiel Convention in 1989, a minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for mid central vowels and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap, apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces. Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology were created in 1990, the general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound, although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, as do hard, finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as selectiveness. These are organized into a chart, the chart displayed here is the chart as posted at the website of the IPA. The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet, for this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither, for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a question mark
14.
Specials (Unicode block)
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Specials is a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, five are assigned as of Unicode 9, U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character U+FFFE <noncharacter-FFFE> not a character. FFFE and FFFF are not unassigned in the sense. They can be used to guess a texts encoding scheme, since any text containing these is by not a correctly encoded Unicode text. The replacement character � is a found in the Unicode standard at codepoint U+FFFD in the Specials table. It is used to indicate problems when a system is unable to render a stream of data to a correct symbol and it is usually seen when the data is invalid and does not match any character, Consider a text file containing the German word für in the ISO-8859-1 encoding. This file is now opened with an editor that assumes the input is UTF-8. The first and last byte are valid UTF-8 encodings of ASCII, therefore, a text editor could replace this byte with the replacement character symbol to produce a valid string of Unicode code points. The whole string now displays like this, f�r, a poorly implemented text editor might save the replacement in UTF-8 form, the text file data will then look like this, 0x66 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD 0x72, which will be displayed in ISO-8859-1 as f�r. Since the replacement is the same for all errors this makes it impossible to recover the original character, a better design is to preserve the original bytes, including the error, and only convert to the replacement when displaying the text. This will allow the text editor to save the original byte sequence and it has become increasingly common for software to interpret invalid UTF-8 by guessing the bytes are in another byte-based encoding such as ISO-8859-1. This allows correct display of both valid and invalid UTF-8 pasted together, Unicode control characters UTF-8 Mojibake Unicodes Specials table Decodeunicodes entry for the replacement character
15.
Unicode
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Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems. As of June 2016, the most recent version is Unicode 9.0, the standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium. Unicodes success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread, the standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java, and the. NET Framework. Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings, the most commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16 and the now-obsolete UCS-2. UTF-8 uses one byte for any ASCII character, all of which have the same values in both UTF-8 and ASCII encoding, and up to four bytes for other characters. UCS-2 uses a 16-bit code unit for each character but cannot encode every character in the current Unicode standard, UTF-16 extends UCS-2, using one 16-bit unit for the characters that were representable in UCS-2 and two 16-bit units to handle each of the additional characters. Many traditional character encodings share a common problem in that they allow bilingual computer processing, Unicode, in intent, encodes the underlying characters—graphemes and grapheme-like units—rather than the variant glyphs for such characters. In the case of Chinese characters, this leads to controversies over distinguishing the underlying character from its variant glyphs. In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique code point—a number, in other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way and leaves the visual rendering to other software, such as a web browser or word processor. This simple aim becomes complicated, however, because of concessions made by Unicodes designers in the hope of encouraging a more rapid adoption of Unicode, the first 256 code points were made identical to the content of ISO-8859-1 so as to make it trivial to convert existing western text. For other examples, see duplicate characters in Unicode and he explained that he name Unicode is intended to suggest a unique, unified, universal encoding. In this document, entitled Unicode 88, Becker outlined a 16-bit character model, Unicode could be roughly described as wide-body ASCII that has been stretched to 16 bits to encompass the characters of all the worlds living languages. In a properly engineered design,16 bits per character are more than sufficient for this purpose, Unicode aims in the first instance at the characters published in modern text, whose number is undoubtedly far below 214 =16,384. By the end of 1990, most of the work on mapping existing character encoding standards had been completed, the Unicode Consortium was incorporated in California on January 3,1991, and in October 1991, the first volume of the Unicode standard was published. The second volume, covering Han ideographs, was published in June 1992, in 1996, a surrogate character mechanism was implemented in Unicode 2.0, so that Unicode was no longer restricted to 16 bits. The Microsoft TrueType specification version 1.0 from 1992 used the name Apple Unicode instead of Unicode for the Platform ID in the naming table, Unicode defines a codespace of 1,114,112 code points in the range 0hex to 10FFFFhex. Normally a Unicode code point is referred to by writing U+ followed by its hexadecimal number, for code points in the Basic Multilingual Plane, four digits are used, for code points outside the BMP, five or six digits are used, as required. Code points in Planes 1 through 16 are accessed as surrogate pairs in UTF-16, within each plane, characters are allocated within named blocks of related characters
16.
Jordan
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Jordan, officially The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is an Arab kingdom in Western Asia, on the East Bank of the Jordan River. Jordan is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the east and south, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north, Israel, Palestine and the Dead Sea to the west, Jordan is strategically located at the crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe. The capital, Amman, is Jordans most populous city as well as the countrys economic, what is now Jordan has been inhabited by humans since the Paleolithic period. Three stable kingdoms emerged there at the end of the Bronze Age, Ammon, Moab, later rulers include the Nabataean Kingdom, the Roman Empire, and the Ottoman Empire. After the Great Arab Revolt against the Ottomans in 1916 during World War I, the Emirate of Transjordan was established in 1921 by the then Emir Abdullah I and became a British protectorate. In 1946, Jordan became an independent state known as The Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. Jordan captured the West Bank, which it later lost in 1967, during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Jordan is a founding member of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and is one of two Arab states to have signed a peace treaty with Israel. The country is a monarchy, but the king holds wide executive and legislative powers. Jordan is a relatively-small, semi-arid, almost-landlocked country with a population numbering at 9.5 million, Sunni Islam, practiced by around 92% of the population, is the dominant religion in Jordan. It coexists with an indigenous Christian minority, Jordan is considered to be among the safest of Arab countries in the Middle East, and has avoided long-term terrorism and instability. The kingdom is also a refuge to thousands of Iraqi Christians fleeing the Islamic State, while Jordan continues to accept refugees, the recent large influx from Syria placed substantial strain on national resources and infrastructure. Jordan is classified as a country of high human development with a middle income economy. The Jordanian economy, one of the smallest economies in the region, is attractive to foreign investors based upon a skilled workforce, the country is a major tourist destination, and also attracts medical tourism due to its well developed health sector. Nonetheless, a lack of resources, large flow of refugees. Jordan is named after the Jordan River, where Jesus is said to have been baptized, the origin of the rivers name is debated, but the most common explanation is that it derives from the word yarad, found in Hebrew, Aramaic, and other Semitic languages. Others regard the name as having an Indo-Aryan origin, combining the words yor and don, another theory is that it is from the Arabic root word wrd, as in people coming to a major source of water. The name Jordan appears in an ancient Egyptian papyrus called Papyrus Anastasi I, the lands of modern-day Jordan were historically called Transjordan, meaning beyond the Jordan River. The name was Arabized into Al-Urdunn during the Muslim conquest of the Levant, during crusader rule, it was called Oultrejordain
17.
Central Asia
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Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. It is also referred to as the -stans as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix -stan. Central Asias five former Soviet republics are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. It has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, the Silk Road connected Muslim lands with the people of Europe, India, and China. This crossroads position has intensified the conflict between tribalism and traditionalism and modernization, in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was predominantly Iranian, peopled by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Parthians. Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan, the idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions, historically built political geography and geoculture are two significant parameters widely used in the scholarly literature about the definitions of the Central Asia. The most limited definition was the one of the Soviet Union. This definition was also used outside the USSR during this period. However, the Russian culture has two terms, Средняя Азия and Центральная Азия. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia, the UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity and these areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan, the Tibetans and Ladakhi are also included. Insofar, most of the peoples are considered the indigenous peoples of the vast region. Central Asia is a large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains, vast deserts. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe. Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming, the Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan Mountains, 116°–118° E. Central Asia has the following geographic extremes, The worlds northernmost desert, at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, the Northern Hemispheres southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17′ N
18.
Kazakhstan
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Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in northern Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Kazakhstan is the worlds largest landlocked country, and the ninth largest in the world, Kazakhstan is the dominant nation of Central Asia economically, generating 60% of the regions GDP, primarily through its oil/gas industry. It also has vast mineral resources, Kazakhstan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. Kazakhstan shares borders with Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, the terrain of Kazakhstan includes flatlands, steppe, taiga, rock canyons, hills, deltas, snow-capped mountains, and deserts. Kazakhstan has an estimated 18 million people as of 2014, Given its large area, its population density is among the lowest. The capital is Astana, where it was moved in 1997 from Almaty, the territory of Kazakhstan has historically been inhabited by nomadic tribes. This changed in the 13th century, when Genghis Khan occupied the country as part of the Mongolian Empire, following internal struggles among the conquerors, power eventually reverted to the nomads. By the 16th century, the Kazakh emerged as a distinct group, the Russians began advancing into the Kazakh steppe in the 18th century, and by the mid-19th century, they nominally ruled all of Kazakhstan as part of the Russian Empire. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, and subsequent civil war, the territory of Kazakhstan was reorganised several times, in 1936, it was made the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan has worked to develop its economy, especially its dominant hydrocarbon industry. Kazakhstans 131 ethnicities include Kazakhs, Russians, Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Germans, Tatars, the Kazakh language is the state language, and Russian has equal official status for all levels of administrative and institutional purposes. The name Kazakh comes from the ancient Turkic word qaz, to wander, the name Cossack is of the same origin. The Persian suffix -stan means land or place of, so Kazakhstan can be translated as land of the wanderers. Kazakhstan has been inhabited since the Neolithic Age, the regions climate, archaeologists believe that humans first domesticated the horse in the regions vast steppes. Central Asia was originally inhabited by the Scythians, the Cuman entered the steppes of modern-day Kazakhstan around the early 11th century, where they later joined with the Kipchak and established the vast Cuman-Kipchak confederation. Under the Mongol Empire, the largest in history, administrative districts were established. These eventually came under the rule of the emergent Kazakh Khanate, throughout this period, traditional nomadic life and a livestock-based economy continued to dominate the steppe. Nevertheless, the region was the focus of ever-increasing disputes between the native Kazakh emirs and the neighbouring Persian-speaking peoples to the south, at its height the Khanate would rule parts of Central Asia and control Cumania
19.
Kyrgyzstan
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Kyrgyzstan, officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west and southwest, Tajikistan to the southwest and its capital and largest city is Bishkek. Kyrgyzstans recorded history spans over 2,000 years, encompassing a variety of cultures and empires, ethnic Kyrgyz make up the majority of the countrys 5.7 million people, followed by significant minorities of Uzbeks and Russians. Kyrgyz is closely related to other Turkic languages, although Russian remains widely spoken and is the official language, the majority of the population are non-denominational Muslims. In addition to its Turkic origins, Kyrgyz culture bears elements of Persian, Mongolian and Russian influence. Kyrgyz is believed to have derived from the Turkic word for forty, in reference to the forty clans of Manas. Literally, Kyrgyz means We are forty, at the time, in the early 9th century AD, the Uyghurs dominated much of Central Asia, Mongolia, and parts of Russia and China. King, Scythians were early settlers in present-day Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz state reached its greatest expansion after defeating the Uyghur Khaganate in 840 A. D. From the 10th century the Kyrgyz migrated as far as the Tian Shan range, in the twelfth century the Kyrgyz dominion had shrunk to the Altay Range and Sayan Mountains as a result of the Mongol expansion. With the rise of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century, the Kyrgyz peacefully became a part of the Mongol Empire in 1207. The descent of the Kyrgyz from the autochthonous Siberian population is confirmed on the hand by the recent genetic studies. Issyk Kul Lake was a stopover on the Silk Road, a route for traders, merchants. Kyrgyz tribes were overrun in the 17th century by the Mongols, in the century by the Manchurian Qing Dynasty. In the late century, the majority part of what is today Kyrgyzstan was ceded to Russia through two treaties between China and Russia. The territory, then known in Russian as Kirghizia, was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1876. The Russian takeover was met with numerous revolts against Tsarist authority, in addition, the suppression of the 1916 rebellion against Russian rule in Central Asia caused many Kyrgyz later to migrate to China. Soviet power was established in the region in 1919. On 5 December 1936, the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic was established as a republic of the Soviet Union
20.
Georgia (country)
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Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. The capital and largest city is Tbilisi, Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 square kilometres, and its 2016 population is about 3.72 million. Georgia is a unitary, semi-presidential republic, with the government elected through a representative democracy, during the classical era, several independent kingdoms became established in what is now Georgia. The kingdoms of Colchis and Iberia adopted Christianity in the early 4th century, a unified Kingdom of Georgia reached the peak of its political and economic strength during the reign of King David IV and Queen Tamar in the 12th and early 13th centuries. Thereafter the kingdom declined and eventually disintegrated under hegemony of various powers, including the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire. Russian rule over Georgia was eventually acknowledged in various treaties with Iran. Since the establishment of the modern Georgian republic in April 1991, post-communist Georgia suffered from civil, the countrys Western orientation soon led to the worsening of relations with Russia, culminating in the brief Russo-Georgian War in August 2008. Georgia is a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and it contains two de facto independent regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which gained limited international recognition after the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Georgia and a part of the international community consider the regions to be part of Georgias sovereign territory under Russian military occupation. Georgia probably stems from the Persian designation of the Georgians – gurğān, in the 11th and 12th centuries adapted via Syriac gurz-ān/gurz-iyān, starting with the Persian word gurğ/gurğān, the word was later adopted in numerous other languages, including Slavic and West European languages. This term itself might have established through the ancient Iranian appellation of the near-Caspian region. The self-designation used by ethnic Georgians is Kartvelebi, the medieval Georgian Chronicles present an eponymous ancestor of the Kartvelians, Kartlos, a great-grandson of Japheth. However, scholars agree that the word is derived from the Karts, the name Sakartvelo consists of two parts. Its root, kartvel-i, specifies an inhabitant of the core central-eastern Georgian region of Kartli, ancient Greeks and Romans referred to early western Georgians as Colchians and eastern Georgians as Iberians. Today the full, official name of the country is Georgia, before the 1995 constitution came into force the countrys name was the Republic of Georgia. The territory of modern-day Georgia was inhabited by Homo erectus since the Paleolithic Era, the proto-Georgian tribes first appear in written history in the 12th century BC. The earliest evidence of wine to date has found in Georgia. In fact, early metallurgy started in Georgia during the 6th millennium BC, the classical period saw the rise of a number of early Georgian states, the principal of which was Colchis in the west and Iberia in the east
21.
Ingush language
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Ingush is a Northeast Caucasian language spoken by about 500,000 people, known as the Ingush, across a region covering the Russian republics of Ingushetia and Chechnya. Ingush and Chechen, together with Bats, constitute the Nakh branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family, Ingush is spoken by about 413,000 people, primarily across a region in the Caucasus covering parts of Russia, primarily Ingushetia and Chechnya. Speakers can also be found in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Belgium, Norway, Turkey, Ingush is, alongside Russian, an official language of Ingushetia, a federal subject of Russia. Ingush became a language with an Arabic-based writing system at the beginning of the 20th century. After the October Revolution it first used a Latin alphabet, which was replaced by Cyrillic. The diphthongs are иэ /ie/, уо /uo/, оа /oɑ/, ий /ij/, эи /ei/, ои /oi/, уи /ui/, ов /ow/, Ingush is a nominative–accusative language in its syntax, though it has ergative morphology. The most recent and in-depth analysis of the shows eight cases, nominative, ergative, genitive, dative, allative, instrumental, lative. -uo is the only productive form, -z appears with personal names, kin terms, and other nouns referring to humans. -aa occurs with some declensions and is productive in colloquial use. Allomorph after vowels The choice of -azh vs. -ii is lexically determined for the nominative, like many Northeast Caucasian languages, Ingush uses a vigesimal system, where numbers lower than twenty are counted as in a base-ten system, but higher decads are base-twenty. Note that four and its derivatives begin with noun-class marker, d- is merely the default value. In Ingush, for main clauses, other than episode-initial and other all-new ones, the verb, or the finite part of a compound verb or analytic tense form, follows the first word or phrase in the clause. Muusaa vy hwuona telefon jettazh Musa V. PROG 2sg. DAT telephone striking Musa is telephoning you
22.
Kist people
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The Kists are a Chechen subethnos in Georgia. They primarily live in the Pankisi Gorge, in the eastern Georgian region of Kakheti, the Kist peoples origins can be traced back to their ancestral land in lower Chechnya. In the 1830s and 1870s they migrated to the eastern Georgian Pankisi Gorge, around the same region of Georgia, there is also a related but still different community of Northeast Caucasian origin called Bats. In 1886, a total of 2,314 Kists were recorded as living in Georgia, in the Russian Imperial Census of 1897, there were 2,502 Chechens living in Georgia, of which 2,397 lived in the Tionetskiy District. In the Soviet Census of 1939, the number of Chechens living in Georgia was recorded at 2,533 people, currently there are six Kist villages in Pankisi, Duisi, Dzibakhevi, Jokolo, Shua Khalatsani, Omalo, and Birkiani. Relationships between the local Ossetians and Georgians and between the Kists and Ossetians have become tense, but remains largely peaceful as of today, the Ossetian inhabitants are sympathetic to the Chechen refugees, whom they see as protecting them against oppression by the Kists. The Ossetians feel pressured by the Kists and have been leaving their villages in the Pankisi Gorge to resettle in Northern Ossetia, because they often cannot sell their properties, they leave behind cultivated lands and houses built over many generations. Kists and Chechen refugees have settled in abandoned houses. In this manner, the Ossetian villages of Dumasturi, Kvemo Khalatsani, in 1788 George Ellis wrote about Kisti, This nation extends from the highest ridge of Caucasus, along the Sundsha rivulets. They are bounded to the west by the little Cabarda, to the east by the Tartars and Lesguis, the different tribes of this restless and turbulent nation are generally at variance with each other, and with all their neighbours. In footnote, Their religion is very simple, but has traces of Christianity. They believe in one God, whom they call Dailé, but have no saints or religious persons and they celebrate Sunday, not by any religious ceremony, but by resting from labour. They have a fast in spring, and another in summer and they observe no ceremonies either at births or deaths. They allow of poligamy, and eat pork, one kind of sacrifice is usual among them, at certain times a sheep is killed by a person who seems to be considered as a kind of priest, as he is obliged to live in a state of celibacy. His habitation is in the mountains, near an old stone church, under the church is a vault that contains certain old books, which, however, no one ever attempts to approach. Güldenstädt was prevented by the weather from visiting this church, the early history of the Kist people is not well known and there are few sources mentioning their traditions, culture and history. One of the greatest Georgian poets Vazha-Pshavela dedicated his epic Aluda Ketelauri and The Host, based on religious and cultural difference, both Caucasian nations were engaged in fierce fighting. Vazha-Pshavela celebrates heroism of both nations and underlines the senselessness of their conflict, during the Second World War, the Kists were the only Chechens in the Soviet Union who were not deported by Stalin in 1944
23.
Russian Census (2010)
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The Russian Census of 2010 is the first census of the Russian Federation population since 2002 and the second after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Preparations for the census began in 2007 and it took place between October 14 and October 25, the census was originally scheduled for October 2010, but was moved to 2013 allegedly for financial reasons, although it was also speculated that political motives were influential in the decision. However, in late 2009 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that the Government of Russia allocated 10.5 billion rubles in order to conduct the census as originally scheduled, Results showed the population to stand at 142.9 million. Since the previous 2002 census, population has decreased by 2.3 million, according to the 2010 census, urban population is 105.3 million, rural population is 37.5 million. The urbanisation rate is currently 73. 7%, the median age is 38 years. The ethnic composition is dominated by Russians, demographics of Russia Russian Census 2010 final results Results of 2010 All-Russia population census Official website of the 2010 Census
24.
Arabic
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Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested
25.
Salishan languages
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The Salishan languages are a group of languages of the Pacific Northwest in North America. They are characterised by agglutinativity and syllabic consonants, for instance the Nuxalk word xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓, meaning he had had a bunchberry plant, has thirteen obstruent consonants in a row with no phonetic or phonemic vowels. The terms Salish and Salishan are used interchangeably by linguists and anthropologists studying Salishan, the name Salish or Selisch is the endonym of the Flathead Nation. Linguists later applied the name Salish to related languages in the Pacific Northwest, all Salishan languages are considered critically endangered, some extremely so, with only three or four speakers left. Those languages considered extinct are often referred to as sleeping languages, in the early 21st century, few Salish languages have more than one to 2,000 speakers. Fluent, daily speakers of almost all Salishan languages are generally over sixty years of age, Salishan languages are most commonly written using the Americanist phonetic notation to account for the various vowels and consonants that do not exist in most modern alphabets. Many groups have evolved their own uses of the Latin alphabet, however. The Salishan language family consists of twenty-three languages, below is a list of Salishan languages, dialects, and subdialects. The genetic unity among the Salish languages is evident, neighboring groups have communicated often, to the point that it is difficult to untangle the influence each dialect and language has upon others. A1969 study found that relationships are highest and closest among the Interior Division. This list is a classification that may not correspond to political divisions. In contrast to classifications made by scholars, many Salishan groups consider their particular variety of speech to be a separate language rather than a dialect. Bella Coola Kimsquit Nuxalk Kwatna Tallheo A, Lushootseed Northern Skagit Snohomish Southern Duwamish-Suquamish Puyallup Nisqually 5. Klallam Becher Bay Eastern Western 10, Northern Straits Lummi Pauquachin (AKA Saanich Samish Semiahmoo Sooke Songhees 11. Upper Chehalis Oakville Chehalis Satsop Tenino Chehalis ii, Lower Chehalis Humptulips Westport-Shoalwater Wynoochee 15. Tillamook Siletz Siletz Tillamook Garibaldi-Nestucca Nehalem A, Shuswap Eastern Kinbasket Shuswap Lake Western Canim Lake Chu Chua Deadmans Creek–Kamloops Fraser River Pavilion-Bonaparte 18. Thompson River Salish Lytton Nicola Valley Spuzzum–Boston Bar Thompson Canyon B, columbia-Moses Chelan Entiat Columbian Wenatchee 22. Colville-Okanagan Northern Quilchena & Spaxomin Arrow Lakes Penticton Similkameen Vernon Southern Colville-Inchelium Methow San Poil–Nespelem Southern Okanogan 23, Montana Salish Salish Kalispel Chewelah Kalispel Upper Pend d’Oreile Spokane Pentlatch, Nooksack, Twana, Lower Chehalis, Upper Chehalis, Cowlitz, Klallam, and Tillamook are now extinct
26.
Swedish language
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Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken natively by more than 9 million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, where it has equal legal standing with Finnish. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish, along with the other North Germanic languages, Swedish is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era. It is currently the largest of the North Germanic languages by number of speakers, Standard Swedish, spoken by most Swedes, is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties descended from the rural dialects still exist. The standard word order is, as in most Germanic languages, V2, Swedish morphology is similar to English, that is, words have comparatively few inflections. There are two genders, no cases, and a distinction between plural and singular. Older analyses posit the cases nominative and genitive and there are remains of distinct accusative and dative forms as well. Adjectives are compared as in English, and are inflected according to gender, number. The definiteness of nouns is marked primarily through suffixes, complemented with separate definite and indefinite articles, the prosody features both stress and in most dialects tonal qualities. The language has a large vowel inventory. Swedish is also notable for the voiceless velar fricative, a highly variable consonant phoneme. Swedish is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages, by many general criteria of mutual intelligibility, the Continental Scandinavian languages could very well be considered dialects of a common Scandinavian language. In the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had some changes. This language began to undergo new changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, the dialects of Old East Norse that were spoken in Sweden are called Runic Swedish while the dialects of Denmark are referred to as Runic Danish. The dialects are described as runic because the body of text appears in the runic alphabet. Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, from 1200 onwards, the dialects in Denmark began to diverge from those of Sweden. An early change that separated Runic Danish from the dialects of Old East Norse was the change of the diphthong æi to the monophthong é. This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read stain, there was also a change of au as in dauðr into a long open ø as in døðr dead
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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
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Languages of the Caucasus
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Linguistic comparison allows these languages to be classified into several language families, with little or no discernible affinity to each other. However, the languages of the Caucasus are sometimes referred to as a family of languages. Three of these families have no current members outside the Caucasus, the term Caucasian languages is generally restricted to these families, which are spoken by about 11.2 million people. Kartvelian language family with a total of about 5.2 million speakers, includes Georgian, the official language of Georgia, with four million speakers, Svan, Mingrelian and Laz. Northeast Caucasian, also called the Nakho-Dagestanian or Caspian family, with a total of about 3.8 million speakers. Includes the Chechen language with 1.5 million speakers, the Avar language with 1 million speakers, the Ingush language with 500,000 speakers, the Lezgian language with 800,000 speakers, and others. Northwest Caucasian, also called the Abkhazo-Adyghean or Pontic family, with a total of about 2.5 million speakers, includes the Kabardian language, with one million speakers. It is commonly believed that all Caucasian languages have a number of consonants. Many of these features are shared with languages that have been in the Caucasus for a long time. The most promising proposals are connections between the Northeast and Northwest Caucasian families and each other or with languages spoken in Anatolia. Linguists such as Sergei Starostin see the Northeast and Northwest families as related and propose uniting them in a single North Caucasian family and this theory excludes the South Caucasian languages, thereby proposing two indigenous language families. There are no known affinities between the South Caucasian and North Caucasian families, nevertheless, some scholars have proposed the single name Ibero-Caucasian for all the Caucasian language families, North and South, in an attempt to unify the Caucasian languages under one family. Some linguists have claimed affinities between the Northwest Caucasian family and the extinct Hattic language of central Anatolia, see the article on Northwest Caucasian languages for details. Alarodian is a connection between Northeast Caucasian and the extinct Hurro-Urartian languages of Anatolia. Linguists such as Sergei Starostin have proposed a Dené–Caucasian macrofamily, which includes the North Caucasian languages together with Basque, Burushaski, Na-Dené, Sino-Tibetan and this proposal is rejected by most linguists. Other languages historically and currently spoken in the Caucasus area can be placed into families with a wider geographical distribution. The predominant Indo-European language in the Caucasus is Armenian, spoken by the Armenians, the Ossetians, speaking the Ossetian language, form another group of around 700,000 speakers. Two dialects of Neo-Aramaic are spoken in the Caucasus, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, with around 30,000 speakers, both of these were brought to the Caucasus by ethnic Assyrians fleeing Assyrian Genocide during World War One
29.
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
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Dialect
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That happens, for example, across large parts of India or the Maghreb. Historically, it happened in various parts of Europe such as between Portugal, southern Belgium and southern Italy, and between Flanders and Austria. Leonard Bloomfield used the dialect area. It is analogous to a species in evolutionary biology. Dialect continua typically occur in long-settled agrarian populations, as innovations spread from their various points of origin as waves, in this situation, hierarchical classifications of varieties are impractical. Instead, dialectologists map variation of language features across a dialect continuum. The influential Atlas linguistique de la France pioneered the use of a trained fieldworker and these atlases typically consist of display maps, each showing local forms of a particular item at the survey locations. Secondary studies may include maps, showing the areal distribution of various variants. A common tool in these maps is an isogloss, a line separating areas where different variants of a particular feature predominate, in a dialect continuum, isoglosses for different features are typically spread out, reflecting the gradual transition between varieties. A bundle of coinciding isoglosses indicate a stronger dialect boundary, as might occur at geographical obstacles or long-standing political boundaries, in other cases, intersecting isoglosses and more complex patterns are found. Standard varieties may be developed and codified from one or more locations in a continuum, in such cases the local variety is said to be dependent on, or heteronomous with respect to, the standard variety. The Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, are cited as examples. Conversely, a defined in this way may include local varieties that are mutually unintelligible. The choice of standard is determined by a political boundary. As a results, speakers on either side of the boundary may use almost identical varieties, but treat them as dependent on different standards, the choice may be a matter of national, regional or religious identity, and may be controversial. In the Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, a standard was developed from local varieties within a continuum with Serbia to the north, the standard was deliberately based on varieties from the west of the republic that were most different from standard Bulgarian. Now known as Macedonian, it is the standard of the independent Republic of Macedonia. Europe provides several examples of dialect continua, the largest of which involve the Germanic, Romance and Slavic branches of the Indo-European language family
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Languages of Europe
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Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. This family is divided into a number of branches, including Romance, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Albanian, Celtic, Armenian, the Uralic languages, which include Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian, also have a significant presence in Europe. The Indo-European language family descended from Proto-Indo-European, believed to have spoken thousands of years ago. Indo-European languages are spoken throughout Europe, Albanian has two major dialects, Tosk Albanian and Gheg Albanian. It is spoken in Albania and Kosovo, neighboring Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, Greece, Italy and it is also widely spoken in the Albanian diaspora. Armenian has two dialects, Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian. It is spoken in Armenia, where it has official status, and is also spoken in neighboring Georgia, Iran. It is also spoken in Turkey by a small minority. The Baltic languages are spoken in Lithuania and Latvia, samogitian and Latgalian are usually considered to be dialects of Lithuanian and Latvian respectively. There are also several extinct Baltic languages, including, Galindian, Curonian, there are six living Celtic languages, spoken in areas of northwestern Europe dubbed the Celtic nations. The Germanic languages make up the predominant language family in northwestern Europe, reaching from Iceland to Sweden and from parts of the United Kingdom, there are two extant major sub-divisions, West Germanic and North Germanic. A third group, East Germanic, is now extinct, the known surviving East Germanic texts are written in the Gothic language. It is spoken in regions throughout Northern Germany and the North. It has no status in either of the two countries. Low German Low Saxon East Low German Dutch is spoken throughout the Netherlands, northern Belgium, as well as the Nord-Pas de Calais region of France, in Belgian and French contexts, Dutch is sometimes referred to as Flemish. Dutch dialects are varied and cut across national borders, in Germany it is called East Bergish. Afrikaans is spoken by South African emigrant communities in Europe, most notably in the Netherlands, Belgium, additionally, Yiddish is a Jewish language developed in Germany and shares many features of German dialects and Hebrew. The North Germanic languages are spoken in Scandinavian countries and include Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, or Elfdalian, Faroese, and Icelandic
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Voice (phonetics)
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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
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Stop consonant
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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
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Labial consonant
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Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. The two common labial articulations are bilabials, articulated using both lips, and labiodentals, articulated with the lip against the upper teeth, both of which are present in English. A third labial articulation is dentolabials, articulated with the lip against the lower teeth. Generally precluded are linguolabials, in which the tip of the contacts the posterior side of the upper lip, making them coronals, though sometimes. The most common distribution between bilabials and labiodentals is the English one, in which the stops, and, are bilabial and the fricatives, bilabial fricatives and the bilabial approximant do not exist in English, but they occur in many languages. For example, the Spanish consonant written b or v is pronounced, lip rounding, or labialization, is a common approximant-like co-articulatory feature. English /w/ is a labialized velar approximant, which is far more common than the purely labial approximant. In the languages of the Caucasus, labialized dorsals like /kʷ/ and /qʷ/ are very common, very few languages, however, make a distinction purely between bilabials and labiodentals, making labial usually a sufficient specification of a languages phonemes. One exception is Ewe, which has both kinds of fricatives, but the labiodentals are produced with greater articulatory force, while most languages make use of purely labial phonemes, a few generally lack them. Examples are Tlingit, Eyak, Wichita, and the Iroquoian languages except Cherokee, all of these languages have seen labials introduced under the influence of English. Many of these languages are transcribed with /w/ and with labialized consonants, however, it is not always clear to what extent the lips are involved in such sounds. In the Iroquoian languages, for example, /w/ involved little apparent rounding of the lips, see the Tillamook language for an example of a language with rounded consonants and vowels that do not have any actual labialization. Labialization List of phonetics topics Ladefoged, Peter, Maddieson, Ian, the Sounds of the Worlds Languages. McDorman, Richard E. Labial Instability in Sound Change, Explanations for the Loss of /p/
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Alveolar consonant
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Alveolar consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli of the superior teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated with the tip of the tongue, as in English, or with the flat of the tongue just above the tip, as in French and Spanish. The laminal alveolar articulation is often called dental, because the tip of the tongue can be seen near to or touching the teeth. The International Phonetic Alphabet does not have symbols for the alveolar consonants. Rather, the symbol is used for all coronal places of articulation that are not palatalized like English palato-alveolar sh. To disambiguate, the bridge may be used for a dental consonant, note that differs from dental in that the former is a sibilant and the latter is not. Differs from postalveolar in being unpalatalized, the bare letters, etc. cannot be assumed to specifically represent alveolars. If it is necessary to specify a consonant as alveolar, a diacritic from the Extended IPA may be used, the letters ⟨s, t, n, l⟩ are frequently called alveolar, and the language examples below are all alveolar sounds. Alveolar consonants are transcribed in the IPA as follows, The alveolar or dental consonants and are, along with, nonetheless, there are a few languages that lack them. A few languages on Bougainville Island and around Puget Sound, such as Makah, lack nasals and therefore, colloquial Samoan, however, lacks both and, but it has a lateral alveolar approximant /l/. In Standard Hawaiian, is an allophone of /k/, but /l/, in labioalveolars, the lower lip contacts the alveolar ridge. Such sounds are typically the result of a severe overbite, the Sounds of the Worlds Languages
36.
Postalveolar consonant
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Examples of postalveolar consonants are the English palato-alveolar consonants, as in the words shill, chill, vision, and Jill, respectively. There are a number of types of postalveolar sounds, especially among the sibilants. The three primary types are palato-alveolar, alveolo-palatal, and retroflex, the palato-alveolar and alveolo-palatal subtypes are commonly counted as palatals in phonology since they rarely contrast with true palatal consonants. The sibilant postalveolars are sometimes called hush consonants because they include the sound of English Shhh, for example, the alveolar fricative and the three postalveolar fricatives differ noticeably both in pitch and sharpness, the order corresponds to progressively lower-pitched and duller sounds. As a result, it is necessary to specify many additional subtypes, the main distinction is the shape of the tongue, which corresponds to differing degrees of palatalization. From least to most palatalized, these are retroflex, palato-alveolar, the increasing palatalization corresponds to progressively higher-pitched and sharper-sounding consonants. The alveolo-palatal consonant sounds like a strongly palatalized version of, somewhat like nourish you, palato-alveolar sounds are normally described as having a convex tongue. The front, central part of the tongue is somewhat raised compared to the tip, back and sides, for retroflex sounds, the tongue shape is either concave, or flat. For alveolo-palatal sounds, the front half of the tongue is flat and raised so that it parallels the upper surface of the mouth. Behind that is a sudden convex bend, the following table shows the three types of postalveolar sibilant fricatives defined in the IPA, A second variable is whether the contact occurs with the very tip of the tongue. With the surface just above the tip, the blade of the tongue, also, the apical-laminal distinction among palato-alveolar sounds makes little perceptible difference, both articulations, in fact, occur among English-speakers. As a result, the points of tongue contact are significant largely for retroflex sounds. Retroflex sounds can occur outside of the postalveolar region, ranging from as far back as the hard palate to as far forward as the alveolar region behind the teeth. Subapical retroflex sounds are often palatal, such sounds occur particularly in the Dravidian languages, there is an additional distinction that can be made among tongue-down laminal sounds, depending on where exactly behind the lower teeth the tongue tip is placed. A bit behind the teeth is a hollow area in the lower surface of the mouth. When the tongue tip rests in this area, there is an empty space below the tongue. When the tip of the tongue rests against the teeth, there is no sublingual cavity. However, the sibilants in Northwest Caucasian languages such as Ubykh have the tongue tip resting directly against the lower teeth rather than in the hollowed area
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Velar consonant
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Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth. They often become automatically fronted, that is partly or completely palatal before a front vowel, and retracted. Palatalised velars are sometimes referred to as palatovelars, many languages also have labialized velars, such as, in which the articulation is accompanied by rounding of the lips. There are also labial-velar consonants, which are articulated at the velum and at the lips. This distinction disappears with the approximant since labialization involves adding of a labial approximant articulation to a sound, a velar trill or tap is not possible, see the shaded boxes on the table of pulmonic consonants. The velar consonants identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are, The velar consonant is the most common consonant in human languages, the only languages recorded to lack velars may be Xavante, Tahitian, Wutung, Vanimo, Nori, and Waimiri-Atroarí. An areal feature of the Pacific Northwest coast is that historical *k became palatalized in many languages, likewise, historical *k’ has become and historical *x has become, there was no *g or *ŋ. In the Northwest Caucasian languages, historical * has also become palatalized, becoming /kʲ/ in Ubykh, in both regions the languages retain a labiovelar series as well as uvular consonants. In the languages of those families that retain plain velars, both the plain and labialized velars are pre-velar, perhaps to make them distinct from the uvulars which may be post-velar. Prevelar consonants are susceptible to palatalization, a similar system, contrasting *kʲ with *kʷ and leaving *k marginal at best, is reconstructed for Proto-Indo-European. Apart from the stop, no other velar consonant is particularly common, even the. Of course, there can be no phoneme /ɡ/ in a language that lacks voiced stops, like Mandarin Chinese, of the languages surveyed in the World Atlas of Language Structures, about 10% of languages that otherwise have /p b t d k/ are missing /ɡ/. Pirahã has both a and a phonetically, however, the does not behave as other consonants, and the argument has been made that it is phonemically /hi/, leaving Pirahã with only /ɡ/ as an underlyingly velar consonant. Hawaiian does not distinguish from, ⟨k⟩ tends toward at the beginning of utterances, before, since Hawaiian has no, and ⟨w⟩ varies between and, it is not clearly meaningful to say that Hawaiian has phonemic velar consonants. Several Khoisan languages have limited numbers or distributions of pulmonic velar consonants, khoekhoe, for example, does not allow velars in medial or final position, but in Juǀhoan velars are rare even in initial position. Normal velar consonants are dorso-velar, The dorsum of the rises to contact the velum of the roof of the mouth. In disordered speech there are also velo-dorsal stops, with the articulation, The velum lowers to contact the tongue. In the extensions to the IPA for disordered speech, these are transcribed by reversing the IPA letter for a velar consonant, velarization Place of articulation List of phonetics topics Ladefoged, Peter, Maddieson, Ian
38.
Uvular consonant
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Uvulars are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stops, fricatives, nasals, trills, or approximants, though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative is used instead. Uvular affricates can certainly be made but are rare, they occur in some southern High-German dialects, as well as in a few African, uvular consonants are typically incompatible with advanced tongue root, and they often cause retraction of neighboring vowels. Uvular consonants are found in many African and Middle-Eastern languages, most notably Arabic. In parts of the Caucasus mountains and northwestern North America, nearly every language has uvular stops, two uvular Rs are found in north-western Europe. It was once thought that they spread from northern French, the voiceless uvular stop is transcribed as in both the IPA and SAMPA. It is pronounced somewhat like the velar stop, but with the middle of the tongue further back on the velum. The voiced equivalent of, is much rarer and it is like the voiced velar stop, but articulated in the same uvular position as. Few languages use this sound, but it is found in Persian and in several Northeast Caucasian languages and it may also occur as an allophone of another uvular consonant - in Kazakh, the voiced uvular stop is an allophone of the voiced uvular fricative after the velar nasal. The voiceless uvular fricative is similar to the velar fricative. It is found instead of in some dialects of German, Spanish, uvular flaps have been reported for Kube and for the variety of Khmer spoken in Battambang. The Tlingit language of the Alaskan Panhandle has ten uvular consonants, in featural phonology, uvular consonants are most often considered to contrast with velar consonants in terms of being and. Prototypical uvulars also appear to be, since palatalized consonants are, the appearance of palatalized uvulars in a few languages such as Ubykh is difficult to account for. According to Vaux, they hold the features, the last being the distinguishing feature from a palatalized velar consonant. The uvular trill is used in dialects of French, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, as well as sometimes in Modern Hebrew. As with most trills, uvular trills are often reduced to a single contact, unlike other uvular consonants, the uvular trill is articulated without a retraction of the tongue, and therefore doesnt lower neighboring high vowels the way uvular stops commonly do. Several other languages, including Inuktitut, Abkhaz, Uyghur and some varieties of Arabic, have a voiced uvular fricative, in Lakhota the uvular trill is an allophone of the voiced uvular fricative before /i/. Uvularization Place of articulation List of phonetics topics Guttural R Ladefoged, Peter, Maddieson, the Sounds of the Worlds Languages
39.
Pharyngeal consonant
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A pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Stops and trills can be produced only at the epiglottis. When they are treated as distinct places of articulation, the term radical consonant may be used as a cover term, in many languages, pharyngeal consonants trigger advancement of neighboring vowels. Pharyngeals thus differ from uvulars, which nearly always trigger retraction, in addition, consonants and vowels may be secondarily pharyngealized. Also, strident vowels are defined by an accompanying epiglottal trill, pharyngeal/epiglottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet, *A voiced epiglottal stop may not be possible. When an epiglottal stop becomes voiced intervocalically in Dahalo, for example, phonetically, however, voiceless vs voiced affricates or off-glides are attested. ** Although traditionally placed in the row of the IPA chart, is usually an approximant. Frication is difficult to produce or to distinguish because the voicing in the glottis, the IPA symbol is ambiguous, but no language distinguishes fricative and approximant at this place of articulation. For clarity, the diacritic may used to specify that the manner is approximant. The Hydaburg dialect of Haida has a trilled epiglottal and a trilled epiglottal affricate ~, because and occur at the same Pharyngeal/Epiglottal place of articulation, the logical phonetic distinction to make between them is in manner of articulation, trill versus fricative. Edmondson et al. distinguish several subtypes of pharyngeal consonant, pharyngeal or epiglottal stops and trills are usually produced by contracting the aryepiglottic folds of the larynx against the epiglottis. That articulation has been distinguished as aryepiglottal, in pharyngeal fricatives, the root of the tongue is retracted against the back wall of the pharynx. The IPA does not have diacritics to distinguish this articulation from standard aryepiglottals, Edmonson et al. use the ad hoc, somewhat misleading, transcriptions ⟨ʕ͡ʡ⟩, there are, however, several diacritics for subtypes of pharyngeal sound among the Voice Quality Symbols. Although upper-pharyngeal stops are not found in the languages, as far as is known. In Finnish, a weak pharyngeal fricative is the realization of /h/ after the vowels /ɑ/ or /æ/ in syllable-coda position, such as star, the approximant is more common, as it is the realization of /r/ in such European languages as Danish and Swabian German. According to the theory, Proto-Indo-European might have had pharyngeal consonants. The fricatives and trills are frequently conflated with pharyngeal fricatives in literature and that was the case for Dahalo and Northern Haida, for example, and it is likely to be true for many other languages. The distinction between these sounds was recognized by IPA only in 1989, and it was little investigated until the 1990s, pharyngealization Strident vowel Ayin Heth Guttural Ladefoged, Peter, Maddieson, Ian
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Glottal consonant
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Glottal consonants are consonants using the glottis as their primary articulation. However, glottal consonants behave as consonants in many languages. For example, in Literary Arabic, most words are formed from a root C-C-C consisting of three consonants, which are inserted into templates such as /CaːCiC/ or /maCCuːC/. The glottal consonants /h/ and /ʔ/ can occupy any of the three root consonant slots, just like normal consonants such as /k/ or /n/, glottal consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet, In many languages, the fricatives are not true fricatives. This is a usage of the word. They instead represent transitional states of the glottis without a place of articulation. Is a breathy-voiced transition, and could be transcribed as, the glottal stop occurs in many languages. Often all vocalic onsets are preceded by a stop, for example in German. The Hawaiian language writes the glottal stop as the ‘okina ‘, because the glottis is necessarily closed for the glottal stop, it cannot be voiced. So-called voiced glottal stops are not full stops, but rather creaky voiced glottal approximants that may be transcribed and they occur as the intervocalic allophone of glottal stop in many languages. Gimi contrasts /ʔ/ and /ʔ̞/, corresponding to /k/ and /ɡ/ in related languages, glottalic consonant Glottalization Place of articulation Index of phonetics articles Guttural Ladefoged, Peter, Maddieson, Ian. The Sounds of the Worlds Languages
