1.
Namibia
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Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south, although it does not border Zimbabwe, a part of less than 200 metres of the Zambezi River separates the two countries. Namibia gained independence from South Africa on 21 March 1990, following the Namibian War of Independence. Its capital and largest city is Windhoek, and it is a state of the United Nations, the Southern African Development Community, the African Union. The dry lands of Namibia were inhabited since early times by the San, Damara, since about the 14th century, immigrating Bantu peoples arrived as part of the Bantu expansion. Since then the Bantu groups in total, known as the Ovambo people, have dominated the population of the country, in the late 19th century during European colonization, the German Empire established rule over most of the territory as a protectorate in 1884. It began to develop infrastructure and farming, and maintained this German colony until 1915, after the end of World War I, in 1920 the League of Nations mandated the country to the United Kingdom, under administration by South Africa. It imposed its laws, including racial classifications and rules, from 1948, with the National Party elected to power, South Africa applied apartheid also to what was known as South West Africa. In 1878 the Cape of Good Hope had annexed the port of Walvis Bay and the offshore Penguin Islands, following continued guerrilla warfare, South Africa installed an interim administration in Namibia in 1985. Namibia obtained full independence from South Africa in 1990, but Walvis Bay and the Penguin Islands remained under South African control until 1994. Namibia has a population of 2.1 million people and a stable multi-party parliamentary democracy, Agriculture, herding, tourism and the mining industry – including mining for gem diamonds, uranium, gold, silver, and base metals – form the basis of its economy. The large, arid Namib Desert has resulted in Namibia being overall one of the least densely populated countries in the world, Namibia enjoys high political, economic and social stability. The name of the country is derived from the Namib Desert, before its independence in 1990, the area was known first as German South-West Africa, then as South-West Africa, reflecting the colonial occupation by the Germans and the South Africans. The dry lands of Namibia were inhabited since early times by San, Damara, from about the 14th century, immigrating Bantu peoples arrived during the Bantu expansion from central Africa. From the late 18th century onwards, Oorlam people from Cape Colony crossed the Orange River and their encounters with the nomadic Nama tribes were largely peaceful. The missionaries accompanying the Oorlam were well received by them, the right to use waterholes, on their way further northwards, however, the Oorlam encountered clans of the Herero at Windhoek, Gobabis, and Okahandja, who resisted their encroachment. The Nama-Herero War broke out in 1880, with hostilities ebbing only after the German Empire deployed troops to the places and cemented the status quo among the Nama, Oorlam. The first Europeans to disembark and explore the region were the Portuguese navigators Diogo Cão in 1485 and Bartolomeu Dias in 1486, like most of interior Sub-Saharan Africa, Namibia was not extensively explored by Europeans until the 19th century
2.
Angola
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Angola /æŋˈɡoʊlə/, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country in Southern Africa. It is the seventh-largest country in Africa and is bordered by Namibia to the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Zambia to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean to west. The exclave province of Cabinda has borders with the Republic of the Congo, the capital and largest city of Angola is Luanda. In the 19th century, European settlers slowly and hesitantly began to themselves in the interior. As a Portuguese colony, Angola did not encompass its present borders until the early 20th century, following resistance by groups such as the Cuamato, the Kwanyama and the Mbunda. Independence was achieved in 1975 under a communist one-party state backed by the Soviet Union, however, the country soon descended into an even lengthier civil war that lasted until 2002. It has since become a relatively stable presidential republic. Angola has vast mineral and petroleum reserves, and its economy is among the fastest growing in the world, Angolas economic growth is highly uneven, with the majority of the nations wealth concentrated in a disproportionately small sector of the population. Angola is a state of the United Nations, OPEC, African Union, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, the Latin Union. A highly multiethnic country, Angolas 25.8 million people span various tribal groups, customs, Angolan culture reflects centuries of Portuguese rule, namely in the predominance of the Portuguese language and the Catholic Church, combined with diverse indigenous influences. The name Angola comes from the Portuguese colonial name Reino de Angola, the toponym was derived by the Portuguese from the title ngola held by the kings of Ndongo. Ndongo was a kingdom in the highlands, between the Kwanza and Lukala Rivers, nominally tributary to the king of Kongo but which was seeking greater independence during the 16th century, modern Angola was populated predominantly by nomadic Khoi and San prior to the first Bantu migrations. The Khoi and San peoples were neither pastoralists nor cultivators, following a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and they were displaced by Bantu peoples arriving from the north, some of whom likely originated in northwestern Nigeria. Bantu speakers introduced the cultivation of bananas and taro, as well as large herds, to Angolas central highlands. During this time, the Bantu established a number of entities in most of what today comprises Angola. To its south lay the Kingdom of Ndongo, from which the area of the later Portuguese colony was known as Dongo. The region now known as Angola was reached by the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão in 1484, the year before, the Portuguese had established relations with the Kongo, which stretched at the time from modern Gabon in the north to the Kwanza River in the south. The Portuguese established their primary trading post at Soyo, which is now the northernmost city in Angola apart from the Cabinda exclave
3.
Botswana
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Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa. The citizens refer to themselves as Batswana, formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966. Since then, it has maintained a tradition of stable representative democracy. Botswana is topographically flat, with up to 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahari Desert and it is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, and Zimbabwe to the northeast. Its border with Zambia to the north near Kazungula is poorly defined, a mid-sized country of just over 2 million people, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated nations in the world. Around 10 percent of the lives in the capital and largest city. The economy is dominated by mining, cattle, and tourism, Botswana boasts a GDP per capita of about $18,825 per year as of 2015, which is one of the highest in Africa. Its high gross national income gives the country a modest standard of living, Botswana is a member of the African Union, the Southern African Development Community, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the United Nations. The country has been among the hardest hit by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the death rate due to AIDS or AIDS-related causes has fallen sharply from 2005 to 2013, and the number of new infections in children has also fallen. As of 2014, Botswana has the third-highest prevalence rate for HIV/AIDS, the history of Botswana starts more than 100,000 years ago, when the first humans inhabited the region. The original inhabitants of southern Africa were the Bushmen and Khoi peoples, both speak Khoisan languages and lived as hunter-gatherers. About a thousand years ago, large chiefdoms emerged that were later eclipsed by the Great Zimbabwe empire, around 1300 CE, peoples in present-day Transvaal began to coalesce into three main linguistic and political groups, including the Batswana. The Batswana, a term used also to all citizens of Botswana. Prior to European contact, the Batswana lived as herders and farmers under tribal rule, as groups broke off and moved to new land, new tribes were created. Some human development occurred before the colonial period, during the 1700s, the slave and ivory trades were expanding. To resist these pressures, Shaka, the king of the Zulu Empire, conquered tribes began to move northwest into Botswana, destroying everything in their path. In their efforts to re-establish themselves at the end of period, tribes began to exchange ivory and skins for guns with European traders. Christian missionaries sent from Europe also spread to the interior, often at the invitation of tribal chiefs who wanted guns, by 1880 every major village had a resident missionary, and their influence became permanent
4.
South Africa
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South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost country in Africa. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area and it is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere. About 80 percent of South Africans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different Bantu languages, the remaining population consists of Africas largest communities of European, Asian, and multiracial ancestry. South Africa is a multiethnic society encompassing a variety of cultures, languages. Its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the recognition of 11 official languages. The country is one of the few in Africa never to have had a coup détat, however, the vast majority of black South Africans were not enfranchised until 1994. During the 20th century, the black majority sought to recover its rights from the dominant white minority, with this struggle playing a role in the countrys recent history. The National Party imposed apartheid in 1948, institutionalising previous racial segregation, since 1994, all ethnic and linguistic groups have held political representation in the countrys democracy, which comprises a parliamentary republic and nine provinces. South Africa is often referred to as the Rainbow Nation to describe the multicultural diversity. The World Bank classifies South Africa as an economy. Its economy is the second-largest in Africa, and the 34th-largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, South Africa has the seventh-highest per capita income in Africa. However, poverty and inequality remain widespread, with about a quarter of the population unemployed, nevertheless, South Africa has been identified as a middle power in international affairs, and maintains significant regional influence. The name South Africa is derived from the geographic location at the southern tip of Africa. Upon formation the country was named the Union of South Africa in English, since 1961 the long form name in English has been the Republic of South Africa. In Dutch the country was named Republiek van Zuid-Afrika, replaced in 1983 by the Afrikaans Republiek van Suid-Afrika, since 1994 the Republic has had an official name in each of its 11 official languages. Mzansi, derived from the Xhosa noun umzantsi meaning south, is a name for South Africa. South Africa contains some of the oldest archaeological and human fossil sites in the world, extensive fossil remains have been recovered from a series of caves in Gauteng Province. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage site and has termed the Cradle of Humankind
5.
Zambia
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The capital city is Lusaka, in the south-central part of Zambia. The population is concentrated mainly around Lusaka in the south and the Copperbelt Province to the northwest, originally inhabited by Khoisan peoples, the region was affected by the Bantu expansion of the thirteenth century. After visits by European explorers in the century, Zambia became the British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia towards the end of the nineteenth century. For most of the period, Zambia was governed by an administration appointed from London with the advice of the British South Africa Company. On 24 October 1964, Zambia became independent of the United Kingdom, Kaundas socialist United National Independence Party maintained power from 1964 until 1991. Kaunda played a key role in diplomacy, cooperating closely with the United States in search of solutions to conflicts in Rhodesia, Angola. From 1972 to 1991 Zambia was a one-party state with the UNIP as the legal political party under the motto One Zambia. Kaunda was succeeded by Frederick Chiluba of the social-democratic Movement for Multi-Party Democracy in 1991, beginning a period of social-economic growth, after Mwanawasas death, Rupiah Banda presided as Acting President before being elected President in 2008. Holding office for three years, Banda stepped down after his defeat in the 2011 elections by Patriotic Front party leader Michael Sata. Sata died on 28 October 2014, the second Zambian president to die in office, Guy Scott served briefly as interim president until new elections were held on 20 January 2015, in which Edgar Lungu was elected as the sixth President. In 2010, the World Bank named Zambia one of the worlds fastest economically reformed countries, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa is headquartered in Lusaka. The territory of what is now Zambia was known as Northern Rhodesia from 1911 and it was renamed Zambia at independence in 1964. The new name of Zambia was derived from the Zambezi river, the area of modern Zambia is known to have been inhabited by the Khoisan until around AD300, when migrating Bantu began to settle around these areas. These early hunter-gatherer groups were either annihilated or absorbed by subsequent more organised Bantu groups. Archaeological excavation work on the Zambezi Valley and Kalambo Falls show a succession of human cultures, in particular, ancient camping site tools near the Kalambo Falls have been radiocarbon dated to more than 36,000 year ago. The fossil skull remains of Broken Hill Man, dated between 300,000 and 125,000 years BC, further shows that the area was inhabited by pre-historic man. The early history of tribes of modern-day Zambia can only be gleaned from knowledge passed down by successive generations through word of mouth, in the 12th century, major waves of Bantu-speaking immigrants arrived during the Bantu expansion. Among them, the Tonga people were the first to settle in Zambia and are believed to have come from the east near the big sea, by the late 12th century, more advanced kingdoms and empires had been established in most regions of modern-day Zambia
6.
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
7.
Dialect continuum
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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
8.
Sub-Saharan Africa
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Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. According to the UN, it consists of all African countries that are fully or partially located south of the Sahara and it contrasts with North Africa, whose territories are part of the League of Arab states within the Arab world. Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros and Mauritania are geographically in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Sahel is the transitional zone between the Sahara and the tropical savanna and forest-savanna mosaic to the south. The Sahara pump theory explains how flora and fauna left Africa to penetrate the Middle East, African pluvial periods are associated with a wet Sahara phase during which larger lakes and more rivers existed. Geographers historically divided the region into several distinct ethnographic sections based on each areas respective inhabitants, commentators in Arabic in the medieval period used the general term bilâd as-sûdân for the vast Sudan region, or sometimes extending from the coast of West Africa to Western Sudan. Its equivalent in Southeast Africa was Zanj, which was situated in the vicinity of the Great Lakes region. The geographers drew an explicit distinction between the Sudan region and its analogue Zanj, from the area to their extreme east on the Red Sea coast in the Horn of Africa. In modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea was Al-Habash or Abyssinia, which was inhabited by the Habash or Abyssinians, Sub-Saharan Africa has a wide variety of climate zones or biomes. South Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in particular are considered Megadiverse countries, the Sahel shoots across all of Africa at a latitude of about 10° to 15° N. Countries that include parts of the Sahara Desert proper in their territories and parts of the Sahel in their southern region include Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad. The Sahel has a hot semi-arid climate, South of the Sahel, there is a belt of savanna, widening to include most of South Sudan and Ethiopia in the east. The Serengeti ecosystem is located in northwestern Tanzania and extends to southwestern Kenya, the Kalahari Basin includes the Kalahari Desert surrounded by a belt of semi-desert. The Bushveld is a tropical ecoregion of Southern Africa. The Karoo is a semi-desert in western South Africa and this occurred 10 million to 5 million years ago. By 3 million years ago several australopithecine hominid species had developed throughout southern, eastern and they were tool users rather than tool manufacturers. The tools were classed as Oldowan, roughly 1.8 million years ago, Homo ergaster first appeared in the fossil record in Africa. From Homo ergaster, Homo erectus evolved 1.5 million years ago, some of the earlier representatives of this species were small-brained and used primitive stone tools, much like H. habilis. The brain later grew in size, and H. erectus eventually developed a complex stone tool technology called the Acheulean
9.
Tsodilo
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The Tsodilo Hills are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, consisting of rock art, rock shelters, depressions, and caves. It gained its WHS listing in 2001 because of its religious and spiritual significance to local peoples. UNESCO estimates that there are over 4500 rock paintings at the site, the site consists of a few main hills known as the Child Hill, the Female Hill, and the Male Hill. These hills are of cultural and spiritual significance to the San People of the Kalahari. The highest is 1,400 metres AMSL and this is one of the highest points in Botswana. The four hills are described as the Male, this is the highest, the Female, Child. There is a campsite between the two largest hills, with showers and toilets. The hills can be reached via a graded dirt road and are about 40 km from Shakawe. Also by the campsite is a small museum, People have used the Tsodilo Hills for painting and ritual for thousands of years. UNESCO estimates that the hills contain 500 individual sites representing thousands of years of human habitation, the hills rock art has been linked to the local hunter gatherers. It is believed that ancestors of the San created some of the paintings at Tsodilo, there is evidence that Bantu peoples were responsible for some of the artworks at the hills. Some of the paintings have been dated to be as early as 24,000 years before present, Rhino Cave is located at the North end of the Female Hill and has two main walls where paintings are located. The white rhino painting which the cave is named for is located on the north wall, excavations of the cave floor turned up many lithic materials from. While the cave lacks ostrich egg shell, bone artifacts, pottery or iron, charcoal found during excavations has been dated to the African Iron Age, the Later Stone Age, and the Middle Stone Age. Artifacts, mostly stone, from the LSA were made from materials such as quartz. MSA artifacts from the cave are mostly prepared projectile points, the points are typically found in various stages of production, some have been abandoned and some are finished. The paintings at Rhino Cave are mostly located on the North wall, around the rhino and the giraffe are various paintings, mostly in red, of geometrics. On the opposite wall, the cave is host to grooves and they may have been created using hammer stones or grindstones from the LSA period, which have been found at Tsodilo
10.
Okavango Delta
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The Okavango Delta in Botswana is a very large, swampy inland delta formed where the Okavango River reaches a tectonic trough in the central part of the endorheic basin of the Kalahari. All the water reaching the Delta is ultimately evaporated and transpired, each year approximately 11 cubic kilometers of water spreads over the 6, 000-15,000 km2 area. Some flood-waters drain into Lake Ngami, the Moremi Game Reserve, a National Park, is on the eastern side of the Delta. The scale and magnificence of the Okavango Delta helped it secure a position as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa, on 22 June 2014, the Okavango Delta became the 1000th site to be officially inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. The area was part of Lake Makgadikgadi, an ancient lake that mostly dried up by the early Holocene. Although the Okavango Delta is widely believed to be the worlds largest inland delta, in Africa alone there are two larger similar geological features, the Sudd on the Nile in South Sudan, and the Inner Niger Delta in Mali. The Okavango is produced by seasonal flooding, the Okavango River drains the summer rainfall from the Angola highlands and the surge flows 1,200 kilometres in approximately one month. The waters then spread over the 250 km by 150 km area of the delta over the four months. The high temperature of the delta causes rapid transpiration and evaporation, the delta is very flat, with less than 2 metres variation in height across its 15,000 km2. Every year, approximately 11 cubic kilometres of water flow into the delta, approximately 60% is consumed through transpiration by plants, 36% by evaporation, 2% percolates into the aquifer system, and 2% flows into Lake Ngami. This turgid outflow means that the delta is unable to flush out the minerals carried by the river and is liable to become increasingly salty, water salinity is reduced by salt collecting around plant roots as most of the incoming water is transpired by plants. Peat fires might contribute to deposit salt into layers below the surface, the low salinity of the water also means that the floods do not greatly enrich the floodplain with nutrients. Trees and grasses grow in the sand around the edges of the islands that have not become too salty yet, approximately 70% of the islands began as termite mounds, where a tree then takes root on the mound of earth. Chief’s Island, the largest island in the delta, was formed by a line which uplifted an area over 70 km long and 15 km wide. Historically it was reserved as a hunting area for the chief. It now provides the area for much of the resident wildlife when the waters rise. The Deltas profuse greenery is not the result of a wet climate, rather, the average annual rainfall is 450mm and most of it falls between December and March in the form of heavy afternoon thunderstorms. December to February are hot wet months with temperatures as high as 40 °C, warm nights
11.
Hunter-gatherer
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A hunter-gatherer is a human living in a society in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, in contrast to agricultural societies, which rely mainly on domesticated species. Hunting and gathering was humanitys first and most successful adaptation, occupying at least 90 percent of human history, following the invention of agriculture, hunter-gatherers who did not change have been displaced or conquered by farming or pastoralist groups in most parts of the world. Only a few contemporary societies are classified as hunter-gatherers, and many supplement their activity with horticulture and/or keeping animals. In the 1970s, Lewis Binford suggested that humans were obtaining food via scavenging. Early humans in the Lower Paleolithic lived in forests and woodlands, which allowed them to collect seafood, eggs, nuts, and fruits besides scavenging. Rather than killing large animals for meat, according to this view and this hypothesis does not necessarily contradict the scavenging hypothesis, both subsistence strategies could have been in use – sequentially, alternating or even simultaneously. It remained the only mode of subsistence until the end of the Mesolithic period some 10,000 years ago and this specialization of work also involved creating specialized tools such as, fishing nets, hooks, and bone harpoons. The transition into the subsequent Neolithic period is defined by the unprecedented development of nascent agricultural practices. Agriculture originated and spread in different areas including the Middle East, Asia, Mesoamerica. Forest gardening was also being used as a production system in various parts of the world over this period. Forest gardens originated in prehistoric times along jungle-clad river banks and in the wet foothills of monsoon regions, in the gradual process of families improving their immediate environment, useful tree and vine species were identified, protected and improved, whilst undesirable species were eliminated. Eventually superior introduced species were selected and incorporated into the gardens, many groups continued their hunter-gatherer ways of life, although their numbers have continually declined, partly as a result of pressure from growing agricultural and pastoral communities. Many of them reside in the world, either in arid regions or tropical forests. Areas that were available to hunter-gatherers were—and continue to be—encroached upon by the settlements of agriculturalists. In the resulting competition for use, hunter-gatherer societies either adopted these practices or moved to other areas. In addition, Jared Diamond has blamed a decline in the availability of wild foods, as the number and size of agricultural societies increased, they expanded into lands traditionally used by hunter-gatherers. As a result of the now near-universal human reliance upon agriculture, archaeologists can use evidence such as stone tool use to track hunter-gatherer activities, including mobility. Most hunter-gatherers are nomadic or semi-nomadic and live in temporary settlements, mobile communities typically construct shelters using impermanent building materials, or they may use natural rock shelters, where they are available
12.
Bantu languages
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The Bantu languages, technically the Narrow Bantu languages, constitute a traditional branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of present-day Cameroon, that is, in the regions commonly known as Central Africa, Southeast Africa, and Southern Africa. Parts of the Bantu area include languages from other language families, the Bantu language with the largest total number of speakers is Swahili, however, the majority of its speakers know it as a second language. According to Ethnologue, there are over 180 million L2 speakers, other major languages include Zulu with 27 million speakers and Shona with about 11 million speakers. Ethnologue separates the largely mutually intelligible Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, which, the Bantu languages descend from a common Proto-Bantu language, which is believed to have been spoken in what is now Cameroon in West Africa. This Bantu expansion came to dominate Sub-Saharan Africa east of Cameroon, the technical term Bantu, meaning human beings or simply people, was first used by Wilhelm Bleek, as this is reflected in many of the languages of this group. Bleek, and later Carl Meinhof, pursued extensive studies comparing the structures of Bantu languages. In recent times, the distinctiveness of Narrow Bantu as opposed to the other Southern Bantoid groups has been called into doubt, a coherent classification of Narrow Bantu will likely need to exclude many of the Zone A and perhaps Zone B languages. There is no true genealogical classification of the Bantu languages, the most widely used classification, the alphanumeric coding system developed by Guthrie, is mainly geographic. The two groups have described as having mirror-image tone systems, where Northwest Bantu has a high tone in a cognate, Central Bantu languages generally have a low tone. Northwest Bantu is clearly not a coherent family, but even for Central Bantu the evidence is lexical, another attempt at a detailed genetic classification to replace the Guthrie system is the 1999 Tervuren proposal of Bastin, Coupez, and Mann. This has been criticized for sowing confusion in one of the few ways to distinguish Bantu languages. Nurse & Philippson evaluate many proposals for low-level groups of Bantu languages, glottolog has incorporated many of these into their classification. The languages that share Dahls Law may also form a valid group, the infobox at right lists these together with various low-level groups that are fairly uncontroversial, though they continue to be revised. The development of a rigorous genealogical classification of many branches of Niger–Congo, Guthrie reconstructed both the phonemic inventory and the vocabulary of Proto-Bantu. The most prominent grammatical characteristic of Bantu languages is the use of affixes. Each noun belongs to a class, and each language may have several numbered classes, the class is indicated by a prefix that is part of the noun, as well as agreement markers on verb and qualificative roots connected with the noun. Plural is indicated by a change of class, with a change of prefix
13.
Tswana language
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The Tswana language, Setswana, is a language spoken in southern Africa by about five million people. Tswana is a language and lingua franca of Botswana. The two South African provinces with largest number of speakers are Gauteng Province and North West Province, until 1994, South African Tswana people were notionally citizens of Bophuthatswana, one of the bantustans of the apartheid regime. The first European to describe the Tswana language was the German traveller H. Lichtenstein and he mistakenly regarded Tswana as a dialect of the Xhosa language, and the name he used for the language Beetjuana may also have covered the Northern- and Southern Sotho languages. In the following years he published other books of the Bible. Masego was the first to speak the language, the first grammar of the Tswana language was published in 1833 by the missionary James Archbell, although it was modelled on a Xhosa grammar. The first grammar of Tswana which regarded it as a language from Xhosa was published by the French missionary E. Casalis in 1841. He changed his mind later, and in a publication from 1882 he noted that the Northern-, in 1876 the South African intellectual and linguist Solomon Plaatje was born, and he became one of the first writers to extensively write in and about the Tswana language. The vowel inventory of Tswana can be seen below, some dialects have two additional vowels, the close-mid vowels /e/ and /o/. The consonant inventory of Tswana can be seen below, the consonant /d/ is merely an allophone of /l/, when the latter is followed by the vowels /i/ or /u/. Tswana also has three click consonants, but these are used in interjections or ideophones, and tend only to be used by the older generation. The three click consonants are the dental click /ǀ/, orthographically ⟨c⟩, the lateral click /ǁ/, orthographically ⟨x⟩, there are some minor dialectal variations among the consonants between speakers of Tswana. For instance, /χ/ is realised as either /x/ or /h/ by many speakers, /f/ is realised as /h/ in most dialects, and /tɬ/ and /tɬʰ/ are realised as /t/ and /tʰ/ in northern dialects. Stress is fixed in Tswana and thus falls on the penult of a word. The syllable on which the falls is lengthened. Tswana has two tones, high and low, although the latter has a wider distribution in words than the former. Tones are not marked orthographically which may lead to ambiguity, if a syllable bears a high tone, the following two syllables will also get high tones, unless they are at the end of the word. The nine classes and their respective prefixes can be seen below, some nouns may be found in several classes
14.
Missionary
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A missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to proselytize and/or perform ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development. The word mission originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin missionem, meaning act of sending or mittere, meaning to send. The word was used in light of its usage, in the Latin translation of the Bible. The term is most commonly used for Christian missions, but can be used for any creed or ideology, a Christian missionary can be defined as one who is to witness across cultures. The Lausanne Congress of 1974, defined the term, related to Christian mission as, Missionaries can be found in many countries around the world. Jesus instructed the apostles to make disciples of all nations and this verse is referred to by Christian missionaries as the Great Commission and inspires missionary work. The New Testament-era missionary outreach of the Christian church from the time of St Paul expanded throughout the Roman Empire and beyond to Persia, in 596, Pope Gregory the Great sent the Gregorian Mission into England. In their turn, Christians from Ireland and from Britain became prominent in converting the inhabitants of central Europe, about the same time, missionaries such as Francis Xavier as well as other Jesuits, Augustinians, Franciscans, and Dominicans started moving into Asia and the Far East. The Portuguese sent missions into Africa and these are some of the most well-known missions in history. While some missions accompanied imperialism and oppression, others were relatively peaceful, contemporary Christian missionaries argue that working for justice forms a constitutive part of preaching the Gospel, and observe the principles of inculturation in their missionary work. Over time, the Vatican gradually established a church structure in the mission areas, often starting with special jurisdictions known as apostolic prefectures. The two 9th-century saints Cyril and Methodius had extensive success in central Europe. The Byzantines expanded their work in Ukraine after a mass baptism in Kiev in 988. The Serbian Orthodox Church had its origins in the conversion by Byzantine missionaries of the Serb tribes when they arrived in the Balkans in the 7th century, Orthodox missionaries also worked successfully among the Estonians from the 10th to the 12th centuries, founding the Estonian Orthodox Church. The Russian St. Nicholas of Japan took Eastern Orthodoxy to Japan in the 19th century, the Russian Orthodox Church also sent missionaries to Alaska beginning in the 18th century, including Saint Herman of Alaska, to minister to the Native Americans. Quaker publishers of truth visited Boston and other mid-17th century colonies, the Danish government began the first organized Protestant mission work through its College of Missions, established in 1714. This funded and directed Lutheran missionaries such as Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg in Tranquebar, India and he also got to know a slave from the Danish colony in the West Indies. Within thirty years, Moravian missionaries had become active on every continent, and they are famous for their selfless work, living as slaves among the slaves and together with the Native Americans, the Delaware and Cherokee Indian tribes
15.
Western culture
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The term also applies beyond Europe, to countries and cultures whose histories are strongly connected to Europe by immigration, colonization, or influence. For example, Western Culture includes countries in the Americas and Australasia, whose language, before the Cold War era, the traditional Western viewpoint identified Western Civilization with the Western Christian countries and culture. Ancient Greece is considered the birthplace of Western culture, with the worlds first democratic system of government and major advances in philosophy, science, Greece was followed by Rome, which made key contributions in law, government, engineering and political organization. European culture developed with a range of philosophy, medieval scholasticism, and mysticism. Rational thinking developed through an age of change and formation, with the experiments of the Enlightenment. More often an ideology is what will be used to categorize it as a Western society. There is some disagreement about what nations should or should not be included in the category, many parts of the Eastern Roman Empire are considered Western today but were Eastern in the past. Since the context is highly biased and context-dependent, there is no agreed definition what the West is and it is difficult to determine which individuals fit into which category and the East–West contrast is sometimes criticized as relativistic and arbitrary. Globalism has spread Western ideas so widely that almost all cultures are, to some extent. Stereotyped views of the West have been labeled Occidentalism, paralleling Orientalism—the term for the 19th-century stereotyped views of the East, as Europe discovered the wider world, old concepts adapted. The area that had formerly considered the Orient became the Near East, as the interests of the European powers interfered with Meiji Japan and Qing China for the first time. Thus, the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895 occurred in the Far East, the Greeks contrasted themselves to their Eastern neighbors, such as the Trojans in Iliad, setting an example for later contrasts between east and west. In the Middle Ages, the Near East provided a contrast to the West, concepts of what is the West arose out of legacies of the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. Later, ideas of the west were formed by the concepts of Latin Christendom, Western culture is neither homogeneous nor unchanging. As with all cultures, it has evolved and gradually changed over time. Nevertheless, it is possible to follow the evolution and history of the West, and appreciate its similarities and differences, its borrowings from, and contributions to, other cultures of humanity. Nevertheless, the Greeks felt they were the most civilized and saw themselves as something between the wild barbarians of most of Europe and the soft, slavish Middle-Easterners. In the meantime, however, Greece, under Alexander, had become a capital of the East, the Celts also created some significant literature in the ancient world whenever they were given the opportunity
16.
Khoisan languages
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The Khoisan languages are the languages of Africa that have click consonants but do not belong to other language families. For much of the 20th century they were thought to have a relationship with each other. Ethnically, their speakers are the Khoikhoi and the San, two languages of east Africa, those of the Sandawe and Hadza, are also called Khoisan, although their speakers are ethnically neither Khoikhoi nor San. Before the Bantu expansion, Khoisan languages, or languages like them, were spread throughout southern and eastern Africa. They are currently restricted to the Kalahari Desert, primarily in Namibia and Botswana, most of the languages are endangered, and several are moribund or extinct. Language use is quite strong among the 20,000 speakers of Naro, Khoisan languages are best known for their use of click consonants as phonemes. These are typically written with such as ǃ and ǂ. Clicks are quite versatile as consonants, as they involve two articulations of the tongue which can operate partially independently, consequently, the languages with the greatest numbers of consonants in the world are Khoisan. The Juǀʼhoan language has 48 click consonants, among nearly as many non-click consonants, strident and pharyngealized vowels, the ǃXóõ and ǂHõã languages are even more complex. Grammatically, the southern Khoisan languages are generally fairly analytic, having several inflectional morphemes, Khoisan was proposed as one of the four families of African languages in Greenbergs classification. Westphal is known for his rejection of the Khoisan language family. Bonny Sands concluded that the family is not demonstrable with current evidence, dimmendaal summarized the general view with, it has to be concluded that Greenbergs intuitions on the genetic unity of Khoisan could not be confirmed by subsequent research. Today, the few scholars working on these languages treat the three as independent language families that cannot or can no longer be shown to be genetically related. Starostin accepts a relationship between Sandawe and Khoi is plausible, as is one between Tuu and Kxa, but sees no indication of a relationship between two groups or with Hadza. The putative branches of Khoisan are often considered independent families, in the absence of a demonstration that they are related according to the comparative method. See Khoe languages for speculations on the history of the region. With about 800 speakers in Tanzania, Hadza is no longer seen as a Khoisan language, genetically, the Hadza people are unrelated to the Khoisan peoples of Southern Africa, and their closest relatives may be among the Pygmies of Central Africa. Sandawe is not related to Hadza, despite their proximity, the Khoe family is both the most numerous and diverse family of Khoisan languages, with seven living languages and over a quarter million speakers
17.
Zambezi
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The Zambezi is the fourth-longest river in Africa, the longest east-flowing river in Africa and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. The area of its basin is 1,390,000 square kilometres, the Zambezis most noted feature is Victoria Falls. Other notable falls include the Chavuma Falls at the border between Zambia and Angola, and Ngonye Falls, near Sioma in Western Zambia, there is also a smaller power station at Victoria Falls. The area around the source is a monument, forest reserve. Eastward of the source, the watershed between the Congo and Zambezi basins is a belt of high ground, running nearly east-west. This distinctly cuts off the basin of the Lualaba from that of the Zambezi, in the neighborhood of the source the watershed is not as clearly defined, but the two river systems do not connect. The region drained by the Zambezi is a vast broken-edged plateau 900–1200 m high, composed in the interior of metamorphic beds. Coal is also found in the district just below Victoria Falls, gold-bearing rocks occur in several places. The river flows to the south-west into Angola for about 240 kilometres, then is joined by tributaries such as the Luena. It turns south and develops a floodplain, with extreme variation between the dry and rainy seasons. It enters dense evergreen Cryptosepalum dry forest, though on its western side, where it re-enters Zambia it is nearly 400 metres wide in the rainy season and flows rapidly, with rapids ending in the Chavuma Falls, where the river flows through a rocky fissure. The river drops about 400 metres in elevation from its source at 1,500 metres to the Chavuma Falls at 1,100 metres, in a distance of about 400 kilometres. From this point to the Victoria Falls, the level of the basin is very uniform, the first of its large tributaries to enter the Zambezi is the Kabompo River in the north-western province of Zambia. A major advantage of the Kabompo River was irrigation, civilization was built on farming, and the surplus of crops. The savanna through which the river has flowed gives way to a wide floodplain, a little farther south is the confluence with the Lungwebungu River. This is the beginning of the Barotse Floodplain, the most notable feature of the upper Zambezi, for more than 200 km downstream the annual flood cycle dominates the natural environment and human life, society and culture. Eighty kilometres further down, the Luanginga, which with its tributaries drains an area to the west. A few kilometres higher up on the east the main stream is joined in the season by overflow of the Luampa/Luena system
18.
Bantu expansion
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The Bantu expansion is the name for a postulated millennia-long series of migrations of speakers of the original proto-Bantu language group. The primary evidence for this expansion has been linguistic, namely that the languages spoken in Sub-Equatorial Africa are remarkably similar to each other, the Bantu traveled in two waves, the first across the Congo forest region. The linguistic core of the Bantu family of languages, a branch of the Niger–Congo language family, was located in the region of Cameroon. The expansion eventually reached South Africa, probably as early as AD300 and they believed that the expansion was caused by the development of agriculture, the making of ceramics, and the use of iron, which permitted new ecological zones to be exploited. In 1966 Roland Oliver published an article presenting these correlations as a reasonable hypothesis, the hypothesized Bantu expansion pushed out or assimilated the hunter-forager proto-Khoisan, who formerly inhabited Southern Africa. In Eastern and Southern Africa, Bantu speakers may have adopted livestock husbandry from other unrelated Cushitic-, herding practices reached the far south several centuries before Bantu-speaking migrants did. Archaeological, linguistic, genetic, and environmental evidence all support the conclusion that the Bantu expansion was a significant human migration, the Niger–Congo family comprises a huge group of languages spread throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. The Benue–Congo branch includes the Bantu languages, which are found throughout Central, Southern, a characteristic feature of most Niger–Congo languages, including the Bantu languages, is their use of tone. They generally lack case inflection, but grammatical gender is characteristic, the root of the verb tends to remain unchanged, with either particles or auxiliary verbs expressing tenses and moods. For example, in a number of languages the infinitival is the auxiliary designating the future, a typical trait in the Niger-Kordofanian family as a group is the division of nouns. This has been juxtaposed with the system of the Indo-European languages. Before the expansion of farming and pastoralist African peoples, Southern Africa was populated by hunter-gatherers and it is thought that Central African Pygmies and Bantus branched out from a common ancestral population c.70,000 years ago. Many Batwa groups speak Bantu languages, however, a portion of their vocabulary is not Bantu in origin. Much of this vocabulary is botanical, deals with honey collecting and it has been proposed that this is the remnant of an independent western Batwa language. The Hadza and Sandawe-speaking populations in Tanzania comprise the other modern hunter-forager remnant in Africa, parts of what now is present-day Kenya and Tanzania were also primarily inhabited by agropastoralist Afro-Asiatic speakers from the Horn of Africa followed by a later wave of Nilo-Saharan herders. It seems likely that the expansion of the Bantu-speaking people from their region in West Africa began around 1000 BCE. Although early models posited that the speakers were both iron-using and agricultural, archaeology has shown that they did not use iron until as late as 400 BCE. It is clear there were human populations in the region at the time of the expansion
19.
Xhosa language
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The Xhosa language is a Bantu language with click consonants and one of the official languages of South Africa. It is spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, or about 18% of the South African population, like most other Bantu languages, Xhosa is a tonal language, the same sequence of consonants and vowels can have different meanings, depending on intonation. Xhosa has two tones, high and low, Xhosa is written with the Latin alphabet. Three letters are used to indicate the basic clicks, c for dental clicks, x for lateral clicks, tones are not normally indicated in writing. Xhosa is the southernmost branch of Nguni languages, which include Swazi, Northern Ndebele, there is some mutual intelligibility with other Nguni languages, all of which share many linguistic features. Nguni languages are, in turn, part of the larger group of Bantu languages. Xhosa is the most widely distributed African language in South Africa, Xhosa is the second most common home language in South Africa as a whole. A minority of Xhosa speakers lives in Quthing District, Lesotho, maho lists Mpondo, Xesibe, Bomwana, Gaika, Gcaleka, Thembu, Mpondomise, Ndlambe, and Hlubi. Hlubi is the dialect in the former Ciskei, there is the more distinct Hlubi language further north, where Xhosa meets Sotho. Xhosa has an inventory of ten vowels, and, all occurring both long and short, they are written a, e, i, o and u. Xhosa is a language with two inherent, phonemic tones, low and high. Tones are rarely marked in the language, but they can be indicated a, á, â, ä. Xhosa is rich in uncommon consonants, besides pulmonic egressive sounds, which are found in all spoken languages, it has 18 clicks. Also, Xhosa has ejectives and an implosive, although 15 of the clicks also occur in Zulu, they are used less frequently than in Xhosa. The first six are dental clicks, made with the tongue on the back of the teeth, the next six are lateral, made by the tongue at the sides of the mouth, and they are similar to the sound used to call horses. The last six are alveolar, made with the tip of the tongue at the roof of the mouth, and they sound somewhat like a cork pulled from a bottle. The following table lists the consonant phonemes of the language, with the pronunciation in IPA on the left and the orthography on the right, Two additional consonants, Two additional consonants, and, are found in borrowings. Two additional consonants, and, are found in loans, an additional consonant, is found in loans. In addition to the affricate, the spelling tsh may also be used for either of the aspirated affricates
20.
Zulu language
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Zulu is the language of the Zulu people, with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken language in South Africa. It became one of South Africas 11 official languages in 1994, according to Ethnologue, it is the second most widely spoken of the Bantu languages, after Shona. Like many other Bantu languages, it is written with the Latin alphabet, even in English, the language is often referred to by using its native form, isiZulu. Zulu migrant populations have taken it to adjacent regions, especially Zimbabwe, Xhosa, the predominant language in the Eastern Cape, is often considered mutually intelligible with Zulu. Maho lists four dialects, central KwaZulu-Natal Zulu, northern Transvaal Zulu, eastern coastal Qwabe, the Zulu, like Xhosa and other Nguni people, have lived in South Africa for a long time. The Zulu language possesses several click sounds typical of Southern African languages, the Nguni people have coexisted with other Southern tribes like the San and Khoi. Zulu, like most indigenous Southern African languages, was not a written language until the arrival of missionaries from Europe, the first grammar book of the Zulu language was published in Norway in 1850 by the Norwegian missionary Hans Schreuder. The first written document in Zulu was a Bible translation that appeared in 1883, in 1901, John Dube, a Zulu from Natal, created the Ohlange Institute, the first native educational institution in South Africa. He was also the author of Insila kaShaka, the first novel written in Zulu, another pioneering Zulu writer was Reginald Dhlomo, author of several historical novels of the 19th-century leaders of the Zulu nation, U-Dingane, U-Shaka, U-Mpande, U-Cetshwayo and U-Dinizulu. Other notable contributors to Zulu literature include Benedict Wallet Vilakazi and, more recently, the written form of Zulu was controlled by the Zulu Language Board of KwaZulu-Natal. This board has now disbanded and superseded by the Pan South African Language Board which promotes the use of all eleven official languages of South Africa. English, Dutch and later Afrikaans had been the official languages used by all South African governments before 1994. However, in the Kwazulu bantustan the Zulu language was widely used, all education in the country at the high-school level was in English or Afrikaans. Since the demise of apartheid in 1994, Zulu has been enjoying a marked revival, zulu-language television was introduced by the SABC in the early 1980s and it broadcasts news and many shows in Zulu. Zulu radio is very popular and newspapers such as isoLezwe, Ilanga and UmAfrika in the Zulu language are available, mainly available in Kwazulu-Natal province, in January 2005 the first full-length feature film in Zulu, Yesterday, was nominated for an Oscar. South African matriculation requirements no longer specify which South African language needs to be taken as a second language, and some people have made the switch to learning Zulu. However people taking Zulu at high-school level overwhelmingly take it as a first language, according to statistics, in the 1994 film The Lion King, in the Circle of Life song, the phrases Ingonyama nengw enamabala, Nans ingonyama bakithi Baba and Siyonqoba were used
21.
Phonology
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Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic organization of sounds in languages. Phonology also includes the study of equivalent organizational systems in sign languages, the word phonology can also refer to the phonological system of a given language. This is one of the systems which a language is considered to comprise, like its syntax. Phonology is often distinguished from phonetics, note that this distinction was not always made, particularly before the development of the modern concept of the phoneme in the mid 20th century. The word phonology comes from Ancient Greek φωνή, phōnḗ, voice, sound, according to Clark et al. it means the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use. The history of phonology may be traced back to the Ashtadhyayi, Baudouin de Courtenays work, though often unacknowledged, is considered to be the starting point of modern phonology. He also worked on the theory of alternations, and may have had an influence on the work of Saussure according to E. F. K. Koerner. An influential school of phonology in the period was the Prague school. One of its members was Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy, whose Grundzüge der Phonologie. Directly influenced by Baudouin de Courtenay, Trubetzkoy is considered the founder of morphophonology, Trubetzkoy also developed the concept of the archiphoneme. Another important figure in the Prague school was Roman Jakobson, who was one of the most prominent linguists of the 20th century, in 1968 Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle published The Sound Pattern of English, the basis for generative phonology. In this view, phonological representations are sequences of segments made up of distinctive features and these features were an expansion of earlier work by Roman Jakobson, Gunnar Fant, and Morris Halle. The features describe aspects of articulation and perception, are from a fixed set. There are at least two levels of representation, underlying representation and surface phonetic representation, ordered phonological rules govern how underlying representation is transformed into the actual pronunciation. An important consequence of the influence SPE had on phonological theory was the downplaying of the syllable, furthermore, the generativists folded morphophonology into phonology, which both solved and created problems. Natural phonology is a based on the publications of its proponent David Stampe in 1969. In this view, phonology is based on a set of phonological processes that interact with one another, which ones are active. Rather than acting on segments, phonological processes act on distinctive features within prosodic groups, prosodic groups can be as small as a part of a syllable or as large as an entire utterance
22.
Language shift
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Language shift, also known as language transfer or language replacement or language assimilation, is the process whereby a speech community of a language shifts to speaking another language. Often, languages that are perceived to be higher status stabilise or spread at the expense of other languages that are perceived by their own speakers to be lower-status. For prehistory, Forster et al. and Forster and Renfrew observe that there is a correlation of language shift with intrusive male Y chromosomes but not necessarily with intrusive female mtDNA. They conclude that technological innovation or military prowess causes immigration of at least some males, the process whereby a community of speakers of one language becomes bilingual in another language, and gradually shifts allegiance to the second language is called assimilation. When a linguistic community ceases to use their language, language death is said to occur. The rate of assimilation is the percentage of individuals with a mother tongue who speak another language more often in the home. The data are used to measure the use of a language in the lifetime of a person. In the context of the Indo-European migrations, it has noted that small groups can change a larger cultural area. Michael Witzel refers to Ehret’s model which stresses the osmosis, or a ball, or Mallory’s Kulturkugel. According to Ehret, ethnicity and language can shift with relative ease in small societies, due to the cultural, economic, the group bringing new traits may initially be small, contributing features that can be fewer in number than those of the already local culture. The emerging combined group may then initiate a recurrent, expansionist process of ethnic, ethnohistorical cases demonstrate that small elite groups have successfully imposed their languages in non-state situations. Anthony gives the example of the Luo-speaking Acholi in northern Uganda in the 17th and 18th century, anthony notes that elite recruitment may be a suitable term for this system. Historical examples for status shift are the early Welsh and Lutheran Bible translations, leading to the liturgical languages Welsh, in the course of the 19th century, this number dropped significantly. By 1920, already a third of the population of the area had shifted to German as their language of communication. After the Carinthian Plebiscite in the 1920s, and especially after World War II, in the same region, today only some 13% of the people still speaks Slovene, while more than 85% of the population speaks German. The figures for the region are equally telling, in 1818, around 35% of the population of Carinthia spoke Slovene, by 1910. These changes were almost entirely the result of a shift in the population, with emigration. Despite the withdrawal of Belarus from the USSR proclaimed in 1991, according to a study done by the Belarusian government in 2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home, and Belarusian is used by only 11. 9% of Belarusians
23.
Caprivi Strip
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Caprivi is bordered by the Okavango, Kwando, Chobe and Zambezi rivers. Its largest settlement is the town of Katima Mulilo and it went through a civil war from 1994–1999. The strip is divided between the eastern Zambezi Region and the western Kavango East Region. Inhabitants of the Caprivi Strip speak a number of African languages, mostly members of the Bantu language family, with speakers of Hukwe, the Bantu languages include Yeyi, Mbukushu, Gciriku, Fwe, Totela, and Subiya. Perhaps a majority in the Caprivi Strip, especially in the town of Katima Mulilo. Many also speak some English and Afrikaans, the area is rich in wildlife and has mineral resources. Of particular interest to the government of Namibia is that it gives access to the Zambezi River, within Namibia the Caprivi Strip provides significant habitat for the critically endangered Wild African Dog, Lycaon pictus. It is a corridor for African elephant moving from Botswana and Namibia into Angola, Zambia, National Parks found in the Caprivi Strip are Bwabwata National Park, Mudumu National Park and Nkasa Rupara National Park. Local communities have organised themselves into communal area conservancies and community forests, people work closely with the Namibian Government to jointly manage natural resources through several programmes set up between the Namibian Government and various donors. Caprivi was named after German Chancellor Leo von Caprivi, who negotiated the acquisition of the land in an 1890 exchange with the United Kingdom, the river later proved unnavigable and unaccessable to the Indian Ocean due to Victoria Falls. The annexation was a part of the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty, in which Germany gave up its interest in Zanzibar in return for the Caprivi Strip and the island of Heligoland in the North Sea. In the late 20th century, the Caprivi Strip attracted attention as Namibia, the core of the territorial dispute concerned which channel of the Chobe River was the thalweg, the bona fide international boundary. This was important, as, depending on the decision, an island would fall into national territory. In December 1999, the International Court of Justice ruled that the main channel, the Caprivi Strip is of politico-strategic military importance. Namibian armed forces quashed the attempt at secession within a few days, the parentage and development of Lozi. Journal of African Languages and Literature,11, 127–149, painted Hunting Dog, Lycaon pictus, GlobalTwitcher. com, ed. N. Stromberg
24.
Damara people
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The Damara, plural Damaran are an ethnic group who make up 8. 5% of Namibias population. They speak the Khoekhoe language and the majority live in the regions of Namibia. They have no cultural relationship with any of the other tribes anywhere else in Africa. Their name in their own language is the Daman, the name Damaqua stems from the addition of the Khoekhoe suffix -qua/khwa meaning people. Prior to 1870 the hunter-gatherer Damaran occupied most of central Namibia, they practiced pastoralism with sheep and cattle, the Damaran were also copper-smiths known for their ability to melt copper, and made ornaments, jewelry, knives and spear heads out of iron. The Damaran just like the Sān believed in communal ownership of land, not for one to own good grazing land and the other to scavenge for land but that everyone live in harmony. It was for this reason that many were displaced when the Nama, thereafter the Damara were dominated by the Namaqua and the Herero, most living as servants in their households. In 1960, the South African government forced the Damara into the bantustan of Damaraland, about half of their numbers still occupy Damaraland. The supreme deity of the Damaran is ǁGamab, also referred to as ǁGammāb, ǁGauna, ǁGaunab and he lives in a high heaven, even above the heaven of the stars. ǁGamab, from ǁGam, Khoekhoe, water, and mā, Khoekhoe, give is provider of the water and thus associated with the clouds, thunder, lightning. He ensured the annual renewal of nature being the cycle of the seasons and supplied game animals to the ǃgarob, one of his chief responsibilities is to warrant the growth of crops. ǁGamab is also the God of Death, directing the fate of mankind and he shoots arrows at humans from his place above the skies and those struck fall ill and die. After death, the souls of the dead make their way to village in the heaven above stars. Then he offers them a drink from a bowl of liquid fat to drink, ǁGamabs arch-enemy is the evil ǁGaunab. Oral tradition has it that the Damaran came to Namibia from ǁKhaus through ǃĀǂkhib centuries ago, the Damaran initially settled between Huriǂnaub and ǃGûǁōb, before entering what later-on centuries long after became known as ǀNaweǃhūb. Oral and written records have it that intruders, reportedly under the leadership of a certain Mukumbi invaded that area in 1600. The Damaran dispersed in splinter groups as a result of the aftermath of this battle wherein the then Damara Gaob, Gaob ǀNarimab succumbed due to injuries sustained in the battle. The Damara, besides the ǀGowanîn, splinter groups then settled all over the country in areas where there was an abundant water and shelter in the form of mountains
25.
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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University of Namibia
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The University of Namibia is a national research university located in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. UNAM is one of the best public universities in Africa, having ranked within the Top 40 of tertiary institutions on the continent in the past 10 years. The University of Namibia is the institution in the world to offer a doctorate in the study of the Khoekhoe language. The ground breaking ceremony was conducted by Sam Nujoma, the then Chancellor of the University of Namibia at Ongwediva on 17 November 2007, the ceremony took place on a 13-hectare plot of land that had been donated to UNAM by the Ongwediva Town Council. In January 2008, the National Planning Commission approved funding for construction of Phase 1 of the new Faculty of Engineering, construction work began in April 2008 with emphasis on lecture rooms, staff offices, laboratories, IT facilities, student hostels, staff houses and other support facilities. It was the completion of facilities that enabled the first batch of students to be admitted in the FOET. Notable academics at the University of Namibia have included Bience Gawanas, Nico Horn, André du Pisani, Dorian Haarhoff and it has been reported that UNAMs lecturers have been exchanging marks for sexual favours from students and exchanging money for doing their assignments. This has resulted in serious academic degradation and a matter of concern for Namibian government and UNAM management to investigate
27.
Click consonant
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Clicks are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa. Examples familiar to English-speakers are the tsk. tsk. or tut-tut used to express disapproval or pity, used to spur on a horse, and the clip-clop. Sound children make with their tongue to imitate a horse trotting, technically, clicks are obstruents articulated with two closures in the mouth, one forward and one at the back. The enclosed pocket of air is rarefied by an action of the tongue. Click consonants occur at five places of articulation. IPA represents a click by placing the assigned symbol for the place of click articulation adjacent to a symbol for a sound at the rear place of articulation. The IPA symbols are used in writing most Khoisan languages, but Bantu languages such as Zulu typically use Latin ⟨c⟩, ⟨x⟩ and ⟨q⟩ for dental, lateral, the easiest clicks for English speakers are the dental clicks written with a single pipe, ǀ. They are all sharp squeaky sounds made by sucking on the front teeth, a simple dental click is used in English to express pity or to shame someone, and sometimes to call an animal, and is written tsk. in American English and tut. in British English. Curiously, in Italian this sound means no used as an answer to a direct question, next most familiar to English speakers are the lateral clicks written with a double pipe, ǁ. They are also sounds, though less sharp than ǀ. A simple lateral click is made in English to get a horse moving, then there are the labial clicks, written with a bulls eye, ʘ. These are lip-smacking sounds, but without the pursing of the found in a kiss. The above clicks sound like affricates, in that they involve a lot of friction, the other two families are more abrupt sounds that do not have this friction. Like a cork being pulled from an empty bottle and these sounds can be quite loud. Finally, the clicks, ǂ, are made with a flat tongue. Clicks occur in all three Khoisan language families of southern Africa, where they may be the most numerous consonants, to a lesser extent they occur in three neighbouring groups of Bantu languages—which borrowed them, directly or indirectly, from Khoisan. These sounds occur not only in borrowed vocabulary, but have spread to native Bantu words as well, some creolized varieties of Afrikaans, such as Oorlams, retain clicks in Khoekhoe words. Three languages in East Africa use clicks, Sandawe and Hadza of Tanzania, and Dahalo and it is thought the latter may remain from an episode of language shift
28.
West Africa
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West Africa, also called Western Africa and the West of Africa, is the westernmost subregion of Africa. Early human settlers from northern Holocene societies arrived in West Africa around 12,000 B. C, sedentary farming began in, or around the fifth millennium B. C, as well as the domestication of cattle. By 1500 B. C, ironworking technology allowed an expansion of productivity. Northern tribes developed walled settlements and non-walled settlements that numbered at 400, in the forest region, Iron Age cultures began to flourish, and an inter-region trade began to appear. The desertification of the Sahara and the change of the coast cause trade with upper Mediterranean peoples to be seen. Local leather, cloth, and gold also contributed to the abundance of prosperity for many of the following empires. Also, based on the archaeology of city of Kumbi Saleh in modern-day Mauritania, three great kingdoms were identified in Bilad al-Sudan by the ninth century. They included Ghana, Gao and Kanem, the Sosso Empire sought to fill the void, but was defeated by the Mandinka forces of Sundiata Keita, founder of the new Mali Empire. In the 15th century, the Songhai would form a new dominant state based on Gao, in the Songhai Empire, under the leadership of Sonni Ali, further east, Oyo arose as the dominant Yoruba state and the Aro Confederacy as a dominant Igbo state in modern-day Nigeria. The Kingdom of Nri was a West African medieval state in the present-day southeastern Nigeria, the Kingdom of Nri was unusual in the history of world government in that its leader exercised no military power over his subjects. The kingdom existed as a sphere of religious and political influence over a third of Igboland, the Eze Nri managed trade and diplomacy on behalf of the Nri people, and possessed divine authority in religious matters. The Oyo Empire was a Yoruba empire of what is today Western, established in the 15th century, the Oyo Empire grew to become one of the largest West African states. It rose through the organizational skills of the Yoruba, wealth gained from trade. The Benin Empire was an empire located in what is now southern Nigeria. Its capital was Edo, now known as Benin City, Edo and it should not be confused with the modern-day country called Benin, formerly called Dahomey. The Benin Empire was one of the oldest and most highly developed states in the hinterland of West Africa. Olfert Dapper, a Dutch writer, describing Benin in his book Description of Africa and its craft was the most adored and treasured bronze casting in the history of Africa. It was annexed by the British Empire in 1897 during the invasion, in the early 19th century, a series of Fulani reformist jihads swept across Western Africa
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Central Africa
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Central Africa is the core region of the African continent which includes Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda. All of the states in the UN subregion of Middle Africa, plus those otherwise commonly reckoned in Central Africa, since its independence in 2011, South Sudan has also been commonly included in the region. The Central African Federation, also called the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, was made up of what are now the nations of Malawi, Zambia and these states are now typically considered part of Southern Africa. Archeological finds in Central Africa have been discovered dating back over 100,000 years, according to Zangato and Holl, there is evidence of iron-smelting in the Central African Republic and Cameroon that may date back to 3000 to 2500 BCE. Extensive walled settlements have recently found in Northeast Nigeria, approximately 60 km southwest of Lake Chad dating to the first millennium BCE. Trade and improved agricultural techniques supported more sophisticated societies, leading to the civilizations of Sao, Kanem, Bornu, Shilluk, Baguirmi. Around 1000 BCE, Bantu migrants had reached the Great Lakes Region in Central Africa, halfway through the first millennium BCE, the Bantu had also settled as far south as what is now Angola. The Sao civilization flourished from ca. the sixth century BCE to as late as the sixteenth century CE in northern Central Africa, the Sao lived by the Chari River south of Lake Chad in territory that later became part of Cameroon and Chad. They are the earliest people to have clear traces of their presence in the territory of modern Cameroon. Today, several groups of northern Cameroon and southern Chad. Sao artifacts show that they were skilled workers in bronze, copper, finds include bronze sculptures and terra cotta statues of human and animal figures, coins, funerary urns, household utensils, jewelry, highly decorated pottery, and spears. The largest Sao archaeological finds have been south of Lake Chad. The Kanem-Bornu Empire was centered in the Chad Basin and it was known as the Kanem Empire from the 9th century CE onward and lasted as the independent kingdom of Bornu until 1900. The history of the Empire is mainly known from the Royal Chronicle or Girgam discovered in 1851 by the German traveller Heinrich Barth, Kanem rose in the 8th century in the region to the north and east of Lake Chad. The Kanem empire went into decline, shrank, and in the 14th century was defeated by Bilala invaders from the Lake Fitri region, the Kanuri people led by the Sayfuwa migrated to the west and south of the lake, where they established the Bornu Empire. By the late 16th century the Bornu empire had expanded and recaptured the parts of Kanem that had been conquered by the Bulala, satellite states of Bornu included the Damagaram in the west and Baguirmi to the southeast of Lake Chad. The Shilluk Kingdom was centered in South Sudan from the 15th century from along a strip of land along the bank of White Nile. The capital and royal residence was in the town of Fashoda, the kingdom was founded during the mid-fifteenth century CE by its first ruler, Nyikang
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Nigeria
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Its coast in the south lies on the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean. It comprises 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, where the capital, Nigeria is officially a democratic secular country. Modern-day Nigeria has been the site of numerous kingdoms and tribal states over the millennia, the modern state originated from British colonial rule beginning in the 19th century, and the merging of the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and Northern Nigeria Protectorate in 1914. The British set up administrative and legal structures whilst practising indirect rule through traditional chiefdoms, Nigeria became a formally independent federation in 1960, and plunged into a civil war from 1967 to 1970. Nigeria is often referred to as the Giant of Africa, owing to its large population, with approximately 184 million inhabitants, Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and the seventh most populous country in the world. Nigeria has one of the largest populations of youth in the world, Nigeria is divided roughly in half between Christians, who live mostly in the southern part of the country, and Muslims in the northern part. A minority of the population practise religions indigenous to Nigeria, such as native to the Igbo. As of 2015, Nigeria is the worlds 20th largest economy, worth more than $500 billion and $1 trillion in terms of nominal GDP and it overtook South Africa to become Africas largest economy in 2014. The 2013 debt-to-GDP ratio was 11 percent, Nigeria is a member of the MINT group of countries, which are widely seen as the globes next BRIC-like economies. It is also listed among the Next Eleven economies set to become among the biggest in the world, Nigeria is a founding member of the African Union and a member of many other international organizations, including the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations and OPEC. The name Nigeria was taken from the Niger River running through the country and this name was coined in the late 19th century by British journalist Flora Shaw, who later married Lord Lugard, a British colonial administrator. The origin of the name Niger, which applied only to the middle reaches of the Niger River, is uncertain. The word is likely an alteration of the Tuareg name egerew n-igerewen used by inhabitants along the middle reaches of the river around Timbuktu prior to 19th-century European colonialism. The Nok civilisation of Northern Nigeria flourished between 500 BC and AD200, producing life-sized terracotta figures which are some of the earliest known sculptures in Sub-Saharan Africa, further north, the cities Kano and Katsina have a recorded history dating to around 999 AD. Hausa kingdoms and the Kanem-Bornu Empire prospered as trade posts between North and West Africa, the Kingdom of Nri of the Igbo people consolidated in the 10th century and continued until it lost its sovereignty to the British in 1911. Nri was ruled by the Eze Nri, and the city of Nri is considered to be the foundation of Igbo culture, Nri and Aguleri, where the Igbo creation myth originates, are in the territory of the Umeuri clan. Members of the clan trace their lineages back to the patriarchal king-figure Eri, in West Africa, the oldest bronzes made using the lost-wax process were from Igbo Ukwu, a city under Nri influence. The Yoruba kingdoms of Ife and Oyo in southwestern Nigeria became prominent in the 12th and 14th centuries, the oldest signs of human settlement at Ifes current site date back to the 9th century, and its material culture includes terracotta and bronze figures
31.
Cameroon
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Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Cameroons coastline lies on the Bight of Biafra, part of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean. French and English are the languages of Cameroon. The country is referred to as Africa in miniature for its geological and cultural diversity. Natural features include beaches, deserts, mountains, rainforests, the country is well known for its native styles of music, particularly makossa and bikutsi, and for its successful national football team. Early inhabitants of the territory included the Sao civilisation around Lake Chad, portuguese explorers reached the coast in the 15th century and named the area Rio dos Camarões, which became Cameroon in English. Fulani soldiers founded the Adamawa Emirate in the north in the 19th century, Cameroon became a German colony in 1884 known as Kamerun. After World War I, the territory was divided between France and the United Kingdom as League of Nations mandates, the Union des Populations du Cameroun political party advocated independence, but was outlawed by France in the 1950s, leading to the Cameroonian Independence War. It waged war on French and UPC militant forces until 1971, in 1960, the French-administered part of Cameroon became independent as the Republic of Cameroun under President Ahmadou Ahidjo. The southern part of British Cameroons federated with it in 1961 to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon, the federation was abandoned in 1972. The country was renamed the United Republic of Cameroon in 1972, Cameroon enjoys relatively high political and social stability. This has permitted the development of agriculture, roads, railways, nevertheless, large numbers of Cameroonians live in poverty as subsistence farmers. Power lies firmly in the hands of the president since 1982, Paul Biya. The English-speaking territories of Cameroon have grown increasingly alienated from the government, politicians and civil society in English-speaking regions have called for greater decentralization and even complete separation or independence from the former French-governed territories. The territory of present-day Cameroon was first settled during the Neolithic Era, the longest continuous inhabitants are groups such as the Baka. From here, Bantu migrations into eastern, southern, and central Africa are believed to have originated about 2,000 years ago, the Sao culture arose around Lake Chad c. AD500 and gave way to the Kanem and its successor state, kingdoms, fondoms, and chiefdoms arose in the west. Portuguese sailors reached the coast in 1472 and they noted an abundance of the ghost shrimp Lepidophthalmus turneranus in the Wouri River and named it Rio dos Camarões, which became Cameroon in English
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Southern Africa
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Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics, and including several countries. The term southern Africa or Southern Africa, generally includes Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, from a political perspective the region is said to be unipolar with South Africa as a first regional power. It is not used in political, economic or human geography contexts because this definition cuts Mozambique in two, the Southern African Development Community was established in 1980 to facilitate co-operation in the region. Comoros, Madagascar, Malawi, Mayotte, Mauritius, Mozambique, Réunion, Seychelles, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania, though more commonly reckoned in Central and Eastern Africa, respectively, are occasionally included in Southern Africa as they are SADC members. The terrain of Southern Africa is varied, ranging from forest, the region has both low-lying coastal areas, and mountains. While colonialism has left its mark on the development over the course of history, today poverty, corruption, the pursuit of economic and political stability is an important part of the regions goals, as demonstrated by the SADC. In terms of strength, South Africa is by far the dominant power of the region. South Africas GDP alone is many times greater than the GDPs of all countries in the region. Southern Africa has a diversity of ecoregions including grassland, bushveld, karoo, savannah. It has complex Plateaus that create massive mountain structures along the South African border, there are numerous environmental issues in Southern Africa, including air pollution and desertification. Southern Africa is home to cultures and people. It was once populated by San, Khoikhoi and Pygmies in widely dispersed concentrations, the process of colonization and settling resulted in a significant population of European and Asian descent in many southern African countries. These factors vary from country to country, for example, the Democratic Republic of Congo has favourable climatic and physical conditions, but performs far below its capacity in food provision due to political instability and poor governance. The Republic of South Africa is a food producer and exporter in the region. However this data might not fully capture the reality of a region with high urban populations, urban food security has been noted as an emerging area of development concern in the region, with recent data showing high levels of food insecurity amongst low-income households. In South Africa for example, while over 50% experience hunger, there is only limited data on the other Southern African countries. History of Southern Africa Sub-Saharan Africa Southern Africa
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Syntax
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In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, specifically word order. The term syntax is used to refer to the study of such principles and processes. The goal of many syntacticians is to discover the syntactic rules common to all languages, in mathematics, syntax refers to the rules governing the behavior of mathematical systems, such as formal languages used in logic. The word syntax comes from Ancient Greek, σύνταξις coordination, which consists of σύν syn, together, and τάξις táxis, a basic feature of a languages syntax is the sequence in which the subject, verb, and object usually appear in sentences. Over 85% of languages usually place the subject first, either in the sequence SVO or the sequence SOV, the other possible sequences are VSO, VOS, OVS, and OSV, the last three of which are rare. In the West, the school of thought came to be known as traditional grammar began with the work of Dionysius Thrax. For centuries, work in syntax was dominated by a known as grammaire générale. This system took as its premise the assumption that language is a direct reflection of thought processes and therefore there is a single. It became apparent that there was no such thing as the most natural way to express a thought, the Port-Royal grammar modeled the study of syntax upon that of logic. Syntactic categories were identified with logical ones, and all sentences were analyzed in terms of Subject – Copula – Predicate, initially, this view was adopted even by the early comparative linguists such as Franz Bopp. The central role of syntax within theoretical linguistics became clear only in the 20th century, there are a number of theoretical approaches to the discipline of syntax. One school of thought, founded in the works of Derek Bickerton, sees syntax as a branch of biology, other linguists take a more Platonistic view, since they regard syntax to be the study of an abstract formal system. Yet others consider syntax a taxonomical device to reach broad generalizations across languages, the hypothesis of generative grammar is that language is a structure of the human mind. The goal of grammar is to make a complete model of this inner language. This model could be used to all human language and to predict the grammaticality of any given utterance. This approach to language was pioneered by Noam Chomsky, most generative theories assume that syntax is based upon the constituent structure of sentences. Generative grammars are among the theories that focus primarily on the form of a sentence and this complex category is notated as instead of V. NP\S is read as a category that searches to the left for an NP and outputs a sentence. The category of verb is defined as an element that requires two NPs to form a sentence
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Zambezi Region
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The Zambezi Region, until 2013 known as the Caprivi Region, is one of the 14 regions of Namibia, located in the extreme north-east of the country. It is largely concurrent with the Caprivi Strip and takes its name from the Zambezi River that runs along its border, the terrain is mostly made up of swamps, floodplains, wetlands and woodland. In addition to the Zambezi River, the strip also holds the Cuando and Kwando River, tributaries of the river here go by different names, including the Linyata and the Chobe. The provinces far east is where the Cuando meets the Zambezi, the Zambezi Region is almost entirely surrounded by foreign countries. Its only domestic border is a connection in the west with Kavango East. In the northwest, it borders the Cuando Cubango Province of Angola, in the north, it borders the Western Province of Zambia. In the south, it borders the North-West District of Botswana, the Namibia-Zambia-Botswana tripoint lies less than 100 metres from the Zimbabwe border and as such Namibia is sometimes erroneously thought to border Zimbabwe. The region is home to 450 animal species, including elephants, the Caprivi strip is also a prime bird-watching area, with almost 70 percent of bird species found in Namibia being recorded here. Bwabwata National Park is 6,100 square kilometres and extends for about 180 km from the Kavango River River in the west to the Kwando River in the east, deciduous woodlands are dominated by trees such as wild seringa, copalwood and Zambezi teak. Animals likely to be seen are elephant, roan and kudu, as many as 339 bird species have been recorded in the west of the Zambezi Region. The wild and little visited Mamili National Park is Namibias equivalent of the Okavango Delta, the focal points of the 320 km2 national park are Nkasa and Lupala, two large islands in the Kwando/Linyati river. During the dry season the islands can be reached by road but after the rains 80% of the area becomes flooded, mudumu National Park is a vast 1,000 km2 expanse of dense savannah and mopane woodland with the Kwando River at its western border. The park is home to populations of sitatunga and red lechwe while spotted neck otter, hippo. Animals to be encountered are elephant, buffalo, roan, sable, kudu, impala, oribi, zebra, until the end of the 19th century, the area was known as Itenge, and it was under the rule of the Lozi kings. In the late 19th century the strip of land was administered as part of the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, the German Empire in 1890 laid claim to the British-administered island of Zanzibar, Britain objected and the dispute was settled at the Berlin Conference later that year. On 1 July 1890, the British acquired Zanzibar and Germany acquired the territory became known as the Caprivi Strip. Caprivi was named after German Chancellor Leo von Caprivi, who negotiated the land in an 1890 exchange with the United Kingdom. Leo von Caprivi arranged for the Caprivi strip to be annexed to German South West Africa in order to give Germany access to the Zambezi River as part of the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty
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Okavango River
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The Okavango River is a river in southwest Africa. It is the fourth-longest river system in southern Africa, running southeastward for 1,600 km and it begins in Angola, where it is known by the Portuguese name Rio Cubango. Further south it forms part of the border between Angola and Namibia, and then flows into Botswana, draining into the Moremi Game Reserve. Before it enters Botswana, the river drops four metres, across the full 1.2 km-width of the river, in a series of known as Popa Falls, visible when the river is low. Discharging to a basin, the Okavango does not have an outlet to the sea. Instead, it empties into a swamp in the Kalahari Desert, part of the rivers flow fills Lake Ngami. Noted for its wildlife, the Okavango area contains Botswanas Moremi Game Reserve, during colder periods in Earths history, a part of the Kalahari was a massive lake, known as Lake Makgadikgadi. In this time, the Okavango would have one of its largest tributaries. Both Namibia and Botswana experience drought and as a result of this, Namibia has built a water canal, measuring about 300 km long, and has proposed a project to build a 250 km pipeline to divert water from the river into Namibia to help relieve the drought. Botswana, however uses the Okavango Delta for both income and a water source. The Department of Water Affairs in Botswana has submitted that 97% of the water in the river is lost through evaporation, so the country cannot afford to lose any extra water. Namibia, in turn, has argued that it will only divert half a percent of the flow. Every wet season, Angola receives three times more rainfall than Botswana, discharging a higher than usual flow into the Okavango, although the summer rains fall in Angola in January, they take a whole month to travel the first 1,000 km of the Okavango River. And then they take a four months to filter through the plants. As a result, the flood is at its biggest sometime between June and August, during Botswana’s dry winter months, and the delta swells to three times its permanent size, attracting animals from miles around and creating one of Africa’s greatest concentrations of wildlife. At its widest point in a big flood year the seasonal swamp stretches to 150 km across from east to west, and one of the factors that leads to the ever changing nature of the Delta is the flatness of the area. In very wet years, a part of the flow may extend along the Magweggana River and enter the Zambezi river
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Forced displacement
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Forced displacement or forced migration is the coerced movement of a person or persons away from their home or home region and it often connotes violent coercion. Someone who has experienced forced displacement is a migrant, a displaced person, rarely also a displacee, or if it is within the same country. In some cases the forced migrant can also become a refugee, a specific form of forced displacement is population transfer, which is a coherent policy to move unwanted persons, for example, as an attempt at ethnic cleansing. Forced displacement has accompanied persecution, as well as war, throughout history but has only become a topic of serious study. The concept of forced displacement envelopes demographic movements like flight, evacuation, displacement, however this thought has been questioned, especially by Marxians, who argue that in most cases migrants have little or no choice. In such a scenario, migration becomes more of a strategy, as natural disasters often cause the loss of money, homes. For example, Hurricane Katrina resulted in displacement of almost the population of New Orleans, leaving the community and government with several economic. Biological, physical or chemical change in ecosystem, Migration can also occur as a result of slow-onset climate change, such as desertification or sea-level rise, of deforestation or land degradation. Man-made disasters can also cause forced migration, examples are industrial accidents and especially accidents that involve radioactivity, such as in Chernobyl or Fukushima. An elaboration of such migrants is given by Essam El-Hinnawi, Migrants who are able to return to their original habitat once the disruption is over, Migrants who seek better living conditions due to deterioration of environmental conditions in their present habitat, such as soil fertility. In the middle of the 19th century, for example, Ireland experienced a famine never before seen in the country’s history. War, civil war, political repression or religious conflicts, Some migrants are impelled to cross national borders by war or persecution, due to political, social, ethnic and these immigrants may be considered refugees if they apply for asylum in the receiving country. It has been associated with the construction of dams for hydroelectric power and irrigation purposes but also appears due to many other activities, such as mining. The best-known recent example of such development-induced displacement may be resulting from the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China. This type of forced migration disproportionately affects low income earners and ethnic minorities, according to estimates, between 90 and 100 million people were forced to leave their homes due to development projects in the 1990s. Human trafficking and human smuggling, Migrants displaced through deception or coercion with purpose of their exploitation fall under this category, the data on such forced migration are limited since the activities involved are clandestine in nature. While migration of this nature is well covered for male migrants, the International Labour Organization considers trafficking an offence against labor protection and denies them the opportunity of utilizing their resources for their country. ILO’s Multilateral Framework includes principle no, slavery, Historys greatest forced migration was the Middle Passage of the Atlantic slave trade during the 15th through the 19th centuries
37.
31 Battalion (SWATF)
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31 Battalion was a light infantry battalion in the South African Army and in later years became part of the SWATF. The majority of this stem from two San tribes, namely the Khwe and. Xun. 31 Battalion started out as Alpha Group in 1974 and it was renamed 31 Battalion in 1975. 31 Battalion was initially headquartered at Alpha Base and later Omega Base, the South West Africa Territory Force SWATF renumbered battalion numbers according to their geographical positioning on the border. The prefix 10 pertained to battalions operating to the west of the Kavango River,20 to the Kavango or central region and 70 to the eastern region, under this system,31 Battalion was renamed 201 Battalion in 1980. Two companies of 201 Battalion were always in the bush for six-week tours, after the bush tour, these companies returned to Omega and their place would be taken by the other half of the battalion. At least half of the battalion would be on operations at all times, during Operation Savannah in Angola, members were deployed in a conventional role as Battle-Group Alpha, part of Task Force Zulu, and advanced approximately 2,000 kilometers in a month. Some of the San were trained as parachutists and served as Recces behind enemy lines, others were attached to various units as trackers and guides. This involved dangerous behind-the-line incursions-such as in the bush looking for SWAPO bases or arm caches, or gathering information and these operations required stealth, steady nerves, and well-trained, disciplined troops. To be successful, their presence would have to remain undetected by SWAPO or by SWAPO sympathizers, the Battalion reverted to its 31 Battalion name in 1989 when it transferred back to the SADF. UN Resolution 435 called on South Africa to reduce its forces in Namibia to 12,000 before the start of any peace process, several thousand San, fearing reprisal or intimidation, left for South Africa with the SADF. The soldiers of 31 Battalion and their families were settled near Schmidtsdrif in the Northern Cape, sunday,7 March 1993,31 Battalion was disbanded at a public ceremony in the Cape Province. About 1000 soldiers were transferred to units in the Northern Cape
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South African Defence Force
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The South African Defence Force comprised the South African armed forces from 1957 until 1994. Shortly before the state reconstituted itself as a republic in 1961, the former Union Defence Force was officially succeeded by the SADF, the SADF, in turn, was superseded by the South African National Defence Force in 1994. The military was composed of white South Africans, who alone were subject to conscription. However, Asians and Coloured citizens with mixed ancestry were eligible to serve as volunteers, units such as the 32 Battalion incorporated many black volunteers. Conscription was opposed by such as the End Conscription Campaign. During apartheid, armed SADF troops were used in quelling opposition to minority rule, SADF personnel were also deployed during the related South African Border and Namibian independence conflicts. Before 1957, the Union of South Africa had relied on small standing cadres for defence, during the Second World War the Union Defence Force initially fielded only 3,353 full-time soldiers, with another 14,631 active in reserve roles. These troops were not prepared to fight in Europe proper, as they had hitherto been trained only in light infantry tactics. However, Jan Christiaan Smuts proved remarkably resourceful in raising 345,049 men for operations, South African soldiers went on to distinguish themselves as far abroad as Italy. After 1957, the new South African Defence Force was faced with an upsurge in African nationalism. In 1963 its total strength stood at around 25,000 men, by 1977, the United Nations was imposing arms sanctions on the republic due to its controversial policy of racial apartheid. SADF units fought in the Angolan Civil War during Operation Savannah and were active alongside Rhodesian Security Forces during the Rhodesian Bush War. Further enlargement and modernisation of the armed forces continued under former defence minister Pieter Willem Botha and this was partially justified as a new structure intended to turn back a total onslaught on the republic from abroad. In 1984, at least 6,000 such insurgents were being trained and armed by Tanzania, Ethiopia, the Soviet Union, in general the struggle went badly for South Africas opponents. Mozambique provided support and shelter to ANC operatives, in retaliation South African units launched massive counterstrikes which the security forces were in no position to block. Military aircraft and special forces deployed across Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho. 30,000 South African military personnel were posted on the Namibian border by late 1985, sWAPOs MPLA allies, with the backing of the Cuban army, were often unable to protect them. These raids reflected the SADFs talent for combating rural insurgency, major guerrilla camps were always chief targets, whether on foreign or domestic soil
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South African Border War
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It was fought between the South African Defence Force and the Peoples Liberation Army of Namibia, an armed wing of the South West African Peoples Organisation. The South African Border War resulted in some of the largest battles on the African continent since World War II and was intertwined with the Angolan Civil War. Fighting broke out between PLAN and the South African authorities in August 1966, between 1975 and 1988 the SADF staged massive conventional raids into Angola and Zambia to eliminate PLANs forward operating bases. It also deployed specialist counter-insurgency units such as Koevoet and 32 Battalion trained to carry out external reconnaissance, South African tactics became increasingly aggressive as the conflict progressed. The SADFs incursions produced Angolan casualties and occasionally resulted in collateral damage to economic installations regarded as vital to the Angolan economy. Beginning in 1984, regular Angolan units under Soviet command were confident enough to confront the SADF and their positions were also bolstered by thousands of Cuban troops. PLAN launched its final campaign in late March 1989. South West Africa received formal independence as the Republic of Namibia a year later, despite being largely fought in neighbouring states, the South African Border War had a phenomenal cultural and political impact on South African society. It remains an integral theme in contemporary South African literature at large and Afrikaans-language works in particular, various names have been applied to the undeclared conflict waged by South Africa in Angola and Namibia from the mid 1960s to the late 1980s. Border War entered public discourse in South Africa during the late 1970s, due to the covert nature of most South African Defence Force operations inside Angola, the term was favoured as a means of omitting any reference to clashes on foreign soil. Where tactical aspects of various engagements were discussed, military historians simply identified the conflict as the bush war, the South West African Peoples Organisation has described the South African Border War as the Namibian War of National Liberation and the Namibian Liberation Struggle. In the Namibian context it is commonly referred to as the Namibian War of Independence. However, these terms have been criticised for ignoring the wider implications of the war and the fact that PLAN was based in. Namibia was governed as German South West Africa, a colony of the German Empire, until World War I, when it was invaded and occupied by Allied forces under General Louis Botha. Following the Armistice of 11 November 1918, a system was imposed by the League of Nations to govern African and Asian territories held by Germany. Nevertheless, the bestowal of a mandate by the League of Nations did not confer full sovereignty, in principle mandating countries were only supposed to hold these former colonies in trust for their inhabitants, until they were sufficiently prepared for their own self-determination. Under these terms, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand were granted the German Pacific islands, and it soon became apparent the South African government had interpreted the mandate as a veiled annexation. According to Smuts, this annexation in all but in name
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Schmidtsdrift
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Schmidtsdrift is a town in Pixley ka Seme District Municipality in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Situated 80 km west of Kimberley, it was originally a ford across the Vaal River which is now bridged on the route from Kimberley to Campbell. The history of Schmidtsdrift has been traced back to 1827 when it was declared Crown Trust Land, occupied by the Tswana-speaking Batlhaping and it was scheduled as the Schmidtsdrift Native Reserve in terms of the 1913 Natives Land Act. The threat of relocation in the 1950s forced some of the Griqua families to identify as Batlhaping, becoming known as the Kleinfonteintjie community and those Griqua who did not align themselves with the Batlhaping were forcibly removed subsequently. Ultimately the ‘black spot’ removal policy saw more than 1000 Tswana households removed in 1968, the former Schmidtsdrift farms continued to be state land. The South African Defence Force Infantry Battalion acquired use of it in 1974, after Namibias independence in 1990 members of the 31 Battalion consisting of. Xun and Khwe, were settled in a tent town near to Schmidtsdrift. They had been recruited by the South African Army in northern Namibia to fight against SWAPO, in 2003 most of the. Xun and Khwe community relocated to Platfontein outside Kimberley following the successful landclaim on Schmidtsdrift by the erstwhile Batlhaping inhabitants. The town hosts an eponymous diamond mine, 80% owned by Lonrho Mining, in June 2008 an 18.39 carat diamond was discovered at the mine. Pomfret, North West, a town which hosts a large population of South African Army veterans
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Kimberley, Northern Cape
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Kimberley is the largest and capital city of the Northern Cape Province of South Africa. It is located approximately 110 km east of the confluence of the Vaal, the city has considerable historical significance due to its diamond mining past and the siege during the Second Boer War. Notable personalities such as Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato made their fortunes here, Kimberley was the first city in the Southern Hemisphere and the second in the world after Philadelphia to integrate electric street lights into its infrastructure on Sept.2,1882. The first Stock Exchange in Africa was also built in Kimberley, in 1866, Erasmus Jacobs found a small brilliant pebble on the banks of the Orange River, on the farm De Kalk leased from local Griquas, near Hopetown, which was his fathers farm. He showed the pebble to his father who sold it, the pebble was purchased from Jacobs by Schalk van Niekerk, who later sold it. It proved to be a 21. 25-carat diamond, and became known as the Eureka, three years later, in 1869, an 83. 5-carat diamond, which became known as the Star of South Africa, was found nearby. This diamond was sold by van Niekerk for £11,200, Henry Richard Giddy recounted how Esau Damoense, the cook for prospector Fleetwood Rawstones Red Cap Party, found diamonds in 1871 on Colesberg Kopje after he was sent there to dig as punishment. Rawstorne took the news to the diggings of the De Beer brothers — his arrival there sparking off the famous New Rush which. Within a month 800 claims were cut into the hillock which were worked frenetically by two to three thousand men, as the land was lowered so the hillock became a mine – in time, the world-renowned Kimberley Mine. The Cape Colony, Transvaal, Orange Free State and the Griqua leader Nikolaas Waterboer all laid claim to the diamond fields, the Free State Boers in particular wanted the area as it lay inside the natural borders created by Orange and Vaal Rivers. Following the mediation that was overseen by the governor of Natal, the Keate Award went in favour of Waterboer, consequently, the territory known as Griqualand West was proclaimed on 27 October 1871. Colonial Commissioners arrived in New Rush on 17 November 1871 to exercise authority over the territory on behalf of the Cape Governor. Digger objections and minor riots led to Governor Barklys visit to New Rush in September the following year, Richard Southey would arrive as Lieutenant-Governor of the intended Crown Colony in January 1873. Months passed however without any sign of the proclamation or of the new constitution and provision for representative government. The delay was in London where Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Kimberley, insisted that before electoral divisions could be defined, the places had to receive decent and intelligible names. His Lordship declined to be in any way connected with such a vulgarism as New Rush and as for the Dutch name, the matter was passed to Southey who gave it to his Colonial Secretary J. B. Currey. Roberts writes that when it came to renaming New Rush, proved himself a worthy diplomat and he made quite sure that Lord Kimberley would be able both to spell and pronounce the name of the main electoral division by, as he says, calling it after His Lordship. New Rush became Kimberley, by Proclamation dated 5 July 1873, digger sentiment was expressed in an editorial in the Diamond Field newspaper when it stated we went to sleep in New Rush and waked up in Kimberley, and so our dream was gone
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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
