1.
Unicameralism
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In government, unicameralism is the practice of having one legislative or parliamentary chamber. Thus, a parliament or unicameral legislature is a legislature which consists of one chamber or house. Unicameral legislatures exist when there is no widely perceived need for multicameralism, many multicameral legislatures were created to give separate voices to different sectors of society. Multiple chambers allowed for guaranteed representation of different social classes, ethnic or regional interests, where these factors are unimportant, in unitary states with limited regional autonomy, unicameralism often prevails. Unicameral legislatures are also common in official Communist states such as the Peoples Republic of China, similarly, many formerly Communist states, such as Ukraine, Moldova and Serbia, have retained their unicameral legislatures, though others, such as Romania and Poland, adopted bicameral legislatures. Both the former Russian SFSR and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were bicameral, the two chambers were the Soviet of Nationalities and the Soviet of the Union. The Russian Federation retained bicameralism after the dissolution of the USSR, the principal advantage of a unicameral system is more efficient lawmaking, as the legislative process is much simpler and there is no possibility of deadlock. Proponents of unicameralism have also argued that it costs, even if the number of legislators stay the same, since there are fewer institutions to maintain. There is also the risk that important sectors of society may not be adequately represented, approximately half of the worlds sovereign states are currently unicameral, including both the most populous and the least populous. Many subnational entities have unicameral legislatures, and all of the Brazilian states. In the United Kingdom, the devolved Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales, Congress of Deputies of Second Spanish Republic was unicameral between 1931 and 1936. Dissolved at the end of Spanish Civil War, the actual Spanish Parliament is bicameral, Supreme Assembly of Uzbekistan was unicameral before being replaced in 2005 by the current, bicameral Supreme Assembly. National Assembly of Cameroon was unicameral before being replaced in 2013 by the current, chamber of Peoples Representative of Equatorial Guinea was unicameral before being replaced in 2013 by the current, bicameral Parliament of Equatorial Guinea. National Assembly of Kenya was the unicameral legislature before becoming the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of Kenya in 2013. National Assembly of Ivory Coast was the unicameral legislature before becoming the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of Ivory Coast in 2016. Nebraskas state legislature is also unique in the sense that it is the state legislature that is entirely nonpartisan. In 1999, Governor Jesse Ventura proposed converting the Minnesota Legislature into a unicameral chamber. Although debated, the idea was never adopted, if those constitutional changes had been approved, Puerto Rico could have switched to a unicameral legislature as early as 2015
2.
Ajaccio
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Ajaccio is a French commune, prefecture of the department of Corse-du-Sud, and head office of the Collectivité territoriale de Corse. It is also the largest settlement on the island, Ajaccio is located on the west coast of the island of Corsica,210 nautical miles southeast of Marseille. The original city went into decline in the Middle Ages, after the Corsican Republic was declared in 1755 the Genoese continued to hold several citadels, including Ajaccio, until the French took control of the island. The inhabitants of the commune are known as Ajacciens or Ajacciennes, the most famous of these is Napoleon Bonaparte who was born in Ajaccio in 1769, and whose ancestral home, the Maison Bonaparte, is now a museum. Other dedications to him in the city include Ajaccio Napoleon Bonaparte Airport, Ajaccio is located on the west coast of the island of Corsica,210 nautical miles southeast of Marseille. The commune occupies a position at the foot of wooded hills on the northern shore of the Gulf of Ajaccio between Gravona and the pointe de la Parata and includes the îles Sanguinaires. The harbour lies to the east of the original citadel below a hill overlooking a peninsula which protects the harbour in the south where the Quai de la Citadelle and the Jettée de la Citadelle are. The modern city not only encloses the entire harbour but takes up the part of the Gulf of Ajaccio. The flow from that river is entirely consumed as the citys water supply. Many beaches and coves border its territory and the terrain is rugged in the west where the highest point is 790 m. Although the commune of Ajaccio has an area, only a small portion of this is urbanized. Therefore, the area of Ajaccio is located in the east of the commune on a narrow coastal strip forming a densely populated arc. The rest of the territory is natural with habitation of little importance, suburbanization occurs north and east of the main urban area. The original urban core, close to the old plain of Cannes was abandoned in favour of the current city which was built near the Punta della Lechia. It has undergone improvements, particularly under Napoleon, who originated the two current major structural arteries. Ajaccio experienced a boom in the 1960s, which explains why 85% of dwellings are post-1949. A dichotomy appears in the landscape between the old city and the modern buildings. Ajaccio gives the image of a city built on two different levels, the city has a Mediterranean climate which is Csa in the Köppen climate classification
3.
Corsican language
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Corsican is a Romance language within the Italo-Dalmatian subfamily. It is closely related to the Italian language and especially to its Tuscan branch and it is spoken and written on the islands of Corsica and northern Sardinia. Over the next two centuries, the use of French grew to the extent that, by the Liberation in 1945, the 20th century saw a wholesale language shift, with islanders changing their language practices to the extent that there were no monolingual Corsican speakers left by the 1960s. By 1995, an estimated 65 percent of islanders had some degree of proficiency in Corsican, one of the main sources of confusion in popular classifications is the difference between a dialect and a language. Typically it is not possible to ascertain what an author means by these terms, one of the characteristics of Italian is the retention of the -re infinitive ending as in Latin mittere, send. Such infinitival ending is lost in Corsican as well as in Tuscan, the term gallicised Corsican refers to Corsican up to about the year 1950. The term distanciated Corsican refers to an idealized Corsican from which various agents have removed French or other elements, in 40 AD, the natives of Corsica did not speak Latin. The Roman exile, Seneca the Younger, reports that both coast and interior were occupied by natives whose language he did not understand, whatever language was spoken is still visible in the toponymy or in some words, for instance in the Gallurese dialect spoken in Sardinia zerru pig. A similar situation is valid for Sardinian and Sicilian, the occupation of the island by the Vandals around the year 469 marked the end of authoritative influence by Latin speakers. If the natives of that time spoke Latin, they must have acquired it during the late empire. The two most widely spoken forms of the Corsican language are Supranacciu or Cismonticu, spoken in the Bastia and Corte area, the dialect of Ajaccio has been described as in transition. The dialects spoken at Calvi and Bonifacio are closer to the Genoese dialect, whether the two should be included either in Corsican or in Sardinian as dialects or considered independent languages is still subject of debate. On Maddalena archipelago the local dialect was brought by fishermen and shepherds from Bonifacio during immigration in the 17th and 18th centuries, though influenced by Gallurese, it has maintained the original characteristics of Corsican. There are also words of Genoese and Ponzese origin. They are thus defined as different languages from Sardinian by the Sardinian government. Only a fraction of the population at either time spoke Corsican with any fluency, the use of Corsican language over French language has been declining. In 1980 about 70 percent of the population of the island had some command of the Corsican language, in 1990 out of a total population of about 254,000 the percentage had declined to 50 percent, with only 10 percent using it as a first language. The language appeared to be in decline when the French government reversed its unsupportive stand
4.
French language
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French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth
