1.
Steganography
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Steganography is the practice of concealing a file, message, image, or video within another file, message, image, or video. The word steganography combines the Greek words steganos, meaning covered, concealed, or protected, the first recorded use of the term was in 1499 by Johannes Trithemius in his Steganographia, a treatise on cryptography and steganography, disguised as a book on magic. Generally, the messages appear to be something else, images, articles, shopping lists. For example, the message may be in invisible ink between the visible lines of a private letter. Some implementations of steganography that lack a shared secret are forms of security through obscurity, the advantage of steganography over cryptography alone is that the intended secret message does not attract attention to itself as an object of scrutiny. Plainly visible encrypted messages—no matter how unbreakable—arouse interest, and may in themselves be incriminating in countries where encryption is illegal, Steganography includes the concealment of information within computer files. In digital steganography, electronic communications may include steganographic coding inside of a layer, such as a document file, image file. Media files are ideal for steganographic transmission because of their large size, the first recorded uses of steganography can be traced back to 440 BC when Herodotus mentions two examples in his Histories. Additionally, Demaratus sent a warning about an attack to Greece by writing it directly on the wooden backing of a wax tablet before applying its beeswax surface. Wax tablets were in use then as reusable writing surfaces, sometimes used for shorthand. In his work Polygraphiae Johannes Trithemius developed his so-called Ave-Maria-Cipher that can hide information in a Latin praise of God, auctor Sapientissimus Conseruans Angelica Deferat Nobis Charitas Potentissimi Creatoris for example contains the concealed word VICIPEDIA. Steganography has been used, including in recent historical times. Known examples include, Hidden messages within wax tablet—in ancient Greece, people wrote messages on wood, Hidden messages on messengers body—also used in ancient Greece. Herodotus tells the story of a message tattooed on the head of a slave of Histiaeus, hidden by the hair that afterwards grew over it. The message allegedly carried a warning to Greece about Persian invasion plans, messages written on envelopes in the area covered by postage stamps. In the early days of the press, it was common to mix different typefaces on a printed page due to the printer not having enough copies of some letters in one typeface. Because of this, a message could be using two different typefaces, such as normal or italic. During and after World War II, espionage agents used photographically produced microdots to send information back, World War II microdots were embedded in the paper and covered with an adhesive, such as collodion
2.
Stenotype
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A stenotype, stenotype machine, shorthand machine or steno writer is a specialized chorded keyboard or typewriter used by stenographers for shorthand use. Some stenographers can reach 300 words per minute, the Web site of the California Official Court Reporters Association gives the official record for American English as 375 wpm. The stenotype keyboard has far fewer keys than a conventional alphanumeric keyboard, multiple keys are pressed simultaneously to spell out whole syllables, words, and phrases with a single hand motion. This system makes real-time transcription practical for court reporting and live closed captioning, because the keyboard does not contain all the letters of the English alphabet, letter combinations are substituted for the missing letters. There are several schools of thought on how to record sounds, such as the StenEd, Phoenix. An American shorthand machine was patented in 1879 by Miles M. Bartholomew, a French version was created by Marc Grandjean in 1909. The direct ancestor of todays stenotype was created by Ward Stone Ireland about 1913, most modern stenotype keyboards have more in common with computers than they do with typewriters or QWERTY computer keyboards. Most contain microprocessors, and many allow sensitivity adjustments for each individual key and they translate stenotype to English internally using user-specific dictionaries, and most have small display screens. They typically store a full work in non-volatile memory of some type. These factors influence the price, along with economies of scale, as of October 2013, student models, such as a Wave writer, sell for about US$1,500 and top-end models sell for approximately US$5,000. Machines that are 10 to 15 years old still resell for upwards of $350, the Open Steno Project has written free open-source software, such as Plover, and has developed cheap open-source hardware for stenography. Stenotype keys normally are made of a hard, high-luster acrylic material with no markings, the keyboard layout of the American stenotype machine is shown at the right. In home position, the fingers of the hand rest along the gap between the two main rows of keys to the left of the asterisk. These fingers are used to generate initial consonants, the fingers of the right hand lie in the corresponding position to the right of the asterisk, and are used for final consonants. The system is roughly phonetic, for example the cat would be written by a single stroke expressing the initial K, the vowel A. To enter a number, a user presses the bar at the top of the keyboard at the same time as the other keys. The illustration shows which lettered keys correspond to which digits, numbers can be chorded just like letters can. They read from left to right across the keyboard and its possible to write 137 in one stroke by pressing the number bar along with SP-P, but it takes three separate strokes to write 731
3.
Lord's Prayer
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The Lords Prayer is a venerated Christian prayer that, according to the New Testament, Jesus taught as the way to pray. The context of the prayer in Matthew is a discourse deploring people who pray ostentatiously, the original text of the prayer uniquely contains the word epiousios, which does not appear in any other extant classical or Koine Greek literature, and is also the only adjective in the prayer. While controversial, the most common English language translation of word is daily. The prayer concludes with deliver us from evil in Matthew, the first three of the seven petitions in Matthew address God, the other four are related to human needs and concerns. Some Christians, particularly Protestants, conclude the prayer with a doxology, underscoring the scope and foundational importance of the Lords Prayer, initial words on the topic from the Catechism of the Catholic Church teach that it is truly the summary of the whole gospel. The prayer is used by most Christian churches in their worship, with exceptions, the form is the Matthean. There are several different English translations of the Lords Prayer from Greek or Latin, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer adds it in some services but not in all. It is absent in the oldest manuscripts and is not considered to be part of the text of Matthew 6. For more information on this doxology, see Doxology, below, later scholarship demonstrated that the manuscript was actually a late addition based on Eastern liturgical tradition. Other English translations are also used, though Matthew 6,12 uses the term debts, the older English versions of the Lords Prayer uses the term trespasses, while ecumenical versions often use the term sins. The latter choice may be due to Luke 11,4, which uses the word sins, while the former may be due to Matthew 6,14, as early as the third century, Origen of Alexandria used the word trespasses in the prayer. Though the Latin form that was used in Western Europe has debita, most English-speaking Christians. The dialect of Syriac in which it is written is not the dialect that would have been spoken by Jesus of Nazareth or his followers, however, the dialects are quite similar. Thy kingdom come, This petition has its parallel in the Jewish prayer, May he establish his Kingdom during your life and during your days. In the gospels Jesus speaks frequently of Gods kingdom, but never defines the concept, when malkuth is used of God, it almost always refers to his authority or to his rule as the heavenly King. This petition looks to the establishment of Gods rule in the world in the future. This idea is frequently challenged by groups who believe that the Kingdom will come by the hands of faithful who work for a better world. These believe that Jesus commands to feed the hungry and clothe the needy are the kingdom to which he was referring, graef notes that the operative Greek word, basileia, means both kingdom and kingship, but that the English word kingdom loses this double meaning
4.
Gregg shorthand
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Gregg shorthand is a form of stenography that was invented by John Robert Gregg in 1888. Like cursive longhand, it is based on elliptical figures and lines that bisect them. Gregg shorthand is the most popular form of pen stenography in the United States, however, Gregg shorthand is still in use today. Several versions of this system were published, Anniversary, a revised and simplified form published in 1929, was so called because it was to be published on the fortieth anniversary of the system, but there was some delay in publication. Diamond Jubilee was published in 1963, which simplified the Simplified version, series 90 was published in 1978, which simplified it further. The last version was Centennial, published in 1988, with similarities to the Diamond Jubilee system earlier. Besides these main editions, which were designed for the dictation speeds expected of any system of the time. These included Greghand in 1935, and Notehand in 1960 and 1968, Gregg is often contrasted to Pitman shorthand, as the two share huge predominance over other English shorthand systems. John Robert Gregg was originally a teacher of a Duployan shorthand adaptation to English, however, he found the angular outlines of Duployan-based systems to be detrimental to speed. Gregg shorthand features cursive strokes which can be blended without obtuse angles. In addition, because the symbols of Gregg shorthand are developed especially for English rather than adapted from a French system, Gregg shorthand is a system of phonography, or a phonetic writing system, which means it records the sounds of the speaker, not the English spelling. It uses the f stroke for the /f/ sound in funnel, telephone, the image on the right shows the strokes of Gregg Shorthand Simplified. The system is written left to right and the letters are joined. Sh, Ch, and J are written downward, while t and d are written upward, X /ks/ is expressed by putting a slight backward slant on the s symbol, though a word beginning ex is just written as if spelt es. W when in the middle of a word, is notated with a dash under the next vowel. Therefore, the letter Q is usually written as k with a dash underneath the next vowel, in Anniversary and before, if z need be distinguished from s, a small tick drawn at a right angle from the s may be written to make this distinction. Many of the letters shown are also brief forms, or standard abbreviations for the most common words for increased speed in writing, for instance, instead of writing kan for can, the Gregg stenographer just writes k. These brief forms are shown on the adjacent image, there are several others not shown, however
5.
Dutch language
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It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after English and German. Dutch is one of the closest relatives of both German and English and is said to be roughly in between them, Dutch vocabulary is mostly Germanic and incorporates more Romance loans than German but far fewer than English. In both Belgium and the Netherlands, the official name for Dutch is Nederlands, and its dialects have their own names, e. g. Hollands, West-Vlaams. The use of the word Vlaams to describe Standard Dutch for the variations prevalent in Flanders and used there, however, is common in the Netherlands, the Dutch language has been known under a variety of names. It derived from the Old Germanic word theudisk, one of the first names used for the non-Romance languages of Western Europe. It literarily means the language of the people, that is. The term was used as opposed to Latin, the language of writing. In the first text in which it is found, dating from 784, later, theudisca appeared also in the Oaths of Strasbourg to refer to the Germanic portion of the oath. This led inevitably to confusion since similar terms referred to different languages, owing to Dutch commercial and colonial rivalry in the 16th and 17th centuries, the English term came to refer exclusively to the Dutch. A notable exception is Pennsylvania Dutch, which is a West Central German variety called Deitsch by its speakers, Jersey Dutch, on the other hand, as spoken until the 1950s in New Jersey, is a Dutch-based creole. In Dutch itself, Diets went out of common use - although Platdiets is still used for the transitional Limburgish-Ripuarian Low Dietsch dialects in northeast Belgium, Nederlands, the official Dutch word for Dutch, did not become firmly established until the 19th century. This designation had been in use as far back as the end of the 15th century, one of them was it reflected a distinction with Hoogduits, High Dutch, meaning the language spoken in Germany. The Hoog was later dropped, and thus, Duits narrowed down in meaning to refer to the German language. g, in English, too, Netherlandic is regarded as a more accurate term for the Dutch language, but is hardly ever used. Old Dutch branched off more or less around the same time Old English, Old High German, Old Frisian and Old Saxon did. During that period, it forced Old Frisian back from the western coast to the north of the Low Countries, on the other hand, Dutch has been replaced in adjacent lands in nowadays France and Germany. The division in Old, Middle and Modern Dutch is mostly conventional, one of the few moments linguists can detect somewhat of a revolution is when the Dutch standard language emerged and quickly established itself. This is assumed to have taken place in approximately the mid-first millennium BCE in the pre-Roman Northern European Iron Age, the Germanic languages are traditionally divided into three groups, East, West, and North Germanic. They remained mutually intelligible throughout the Migration Period, Dutch is part of the West Germanic group, which also includes English, Scots, Frisian, Low German and High German
6.
Cursive
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Cursive, is any style of penmanship in which some characters are written joined together in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster. Formal cursive is generally joined, but casual cursive is a combination of joins, the writing style can be further divided as looped, italic, or connected. The cursive method is used with a number of alphabets due to its improved writing speed, in some alphabets, many or all letters in a word are connected sometimes making a word two single complex strokes. Cursive is any style of penmanship in which the symbols of the language are written in a conjoined and/or flowing manner and this writing style is distinct from printscript using block letters, in which the letters of a word are unconnected and in Roman/Gothic letterform rather than joined-up script. Not all cursive copybooks join all letters, formal cursive is generally joined, in the Arabic, Syriac, Latin, and Cyrillic alphabets, many or all letters in a word are connected, sometimes making a word one single complex stroke. In Hebrew cursive and Roman cursive, the letters are not connected, in Maharashtra there is a version of Cursive called Modi In looped cursive penmanship, some ascenders and descenders have loops which provide for joins. Cursive italic penmanship—derived from chancery cursive—uses non-looped joins or no joins, in italic cursive, there are no joins from g, j, q or y, and a few other joins are discouraged. Italic penmanship became popular in the 15th-century Italian Renaissance, the term italic as it relates to handwriting is not to be confused with italic typed letters that slant forward. Many, but not all, letters in the handwriting of the Renaissance were joined, the origins of the cursive method is associated with practical advantages of writing speed and infrequent pen lifting to accommodate the limitations of the quill. Quills are fragile, easily broken, and will spatter unless used properly, steel dip pens followed quills, they were sturdier, but still had some limitations. The individuality of the provenance of a document was a factor also, the term cursive derives from the 18th century Italian corsivo from Medieval Latin cursivus, which literally means running. This term in turn derives from Latin currere, Modi is a script used to write the Marathi language, which is the primary language spoken in the state of Maharashtra, India. There are at least two different theories concerning its origin, modI was an official script used to write Marathi until the 20th century when the Balbodh style of the Devanagari script was promoted as the standard writing system for Marathi. Although Modi was primarily used to write Marathi, other such as Urdu, Kannada, Gujarati, Rajasthani, Hindi. In Bengali cursive script the letters are more likely to be more curvy in appearance than in standard Bengali handwriting, also, the horizontal supporting bar on each letter runs continuously through the entire word, unlike in standard handwriting. Roman cursive is a form of handwriting used in ancient Rome and it is customarily divided into old cursive, and new cursive. New Roman cursive, also called minuscule cursive or later Roman cursive, the Greek alphabet has had several cursive forms in the course of its development. In antiquity, a form of handwriting was used in writing on papyrus
7.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
8.
Autocomplete
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Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In graphical user interfaces, users can press the tab key to accept a suggestion or the down arrow key to accept one of several. Autocomplete speeds up human-computer interactions when it predicts the word a user intends to enter after only a few characters have been typed into a text input field. It works best in domains with a number of possible words. Many autocomplete algorithms learn new words after the user has written them a few times, and can suggest alternatives based on the learned habits of the individual user. The need to speed is noted by the fact that people who use speech generating devices generally produce speech at a rate that is less than 10% as fast as people who use oral speech. But the function is very useful for anybody who writes text. Autocomplete or word completion works so that when the writer writes the first letter or letters of a word, if the word he intends to write is included in the list he can select it, for example by using the number keys. If the word that the user wants is not predicted, the writer must enter the letter of the word. At this time, the choice is altered so that the words provided begin with the same letters as those that have been selected. When the word that the user wants appears it is selected, in another form of word prediction, words most likely to follow the just written one are predicted, based on recent word pairs used. Word prediction uses language modeling, where within a set vocabulary the words are most likely to occur are calculated. Along with language modeling, basic word prediction on AAC devices is often coupled with a recency model, Word prediction software often also allows the user to enter their own words into the word prediction dictionaries either directly, or by learning words that have been written. There are standalone tools that add functionality to existing applications. These programs monitor user keystrokes and suggests a list of words based on first typed letter, letMeType, freeware, is no longer developed, the author has published the source code and allows anybody to continue development. Typingaid, also freeware, is actively developed, Intellicomplete, both a freeware and payware version, works only in certain programs which hook into the intellicomplete server program. Many Autocomplete programs can also be used to create a Shorthand list and this can also quietly fix simple typing errors, such as turning teh into the. Several Autocomplete programs, standalone or integrated in text editors, based on word lists, the main advantage of context completion is the ability to predict anticipated words more precisely and even with no initial letters
9.
Dictation machine
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A dictation machine is a sound recording device most commonly used to record speech for later playback or to be typed into print. It includes digital voice recorders and tape recorders, the name Dictaphone is a trademark of the company of the same name, but has also become a common term for all dictation machines, as a genericized trademark. Alexander Graham Bell and his two associates took Edisons tinfoil phonograph and modified it considerably to make it reproduce sound from wax instead of tinfoil. They began their work at Bells Volta Laboratory in Washington, D. C. in 1879, Edison had invented the phonograph in 1877, but the fame bestowed on him for this invention — sometimes called his most original — was not due to its efficiency. By 1881 the Volta associates had succeeded in improving an Edison tinfoil machine to some extent, wax was put in the grooves of the heavy iron cylinder, and no tinfoil was used. The basic distinction between the Edisons first phonograph patent, and the Bell and Tainter patent of 1886 was the method of recording. Tainter received a patent for a tube assembly machine to automatically produce the coiled cardboard tubes. Besides being far easier to handle, the wax recording medium also allowed for lengthier recordings, the numerous improvements allowed for a sound quality that was significantly better than Edisons machine. Shortly after Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, the first device for recording sound, in 1877, some early phonographs were indeed used this way, but this did not become common until the mass production of reusable wax cylinders in the late 1880s. The differentiation of office dictation devices from other early phonographs, which commonly had attachments for making ones own recordings, was gradual, the machine marketed by the Edison Records company was trademarked as the Ediphone. Following the invention of the tube in 1906, electric microphones gradually replaced the purely acoustical recording methods of earlier dictaphones by the late 1930s. This was later replaced by magnetic tape recording, Digital dictation became possible in the 1990s, as falling computer memory prices made possible pocket-sized digital voice recorders that stored sound on computer memory chips without moving parts. Many early 21st-century digital cameras and smartphones have this capability built in, as of 2014 the technology is not robust enough to replace human transcription in most cases. Despite the advances in technology, analog media are widely used in dictation recording for their flexibility, permanence. Phonograph cylinder Gray Audograph SoundScriber Dictabelt Compact Cassette Mini-Cassette Microcassette Digital dictation Digital pen Speech recognition Volta Laboratory and Bureau
10.
Samuel Pepys
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Samuel Pepys FRS was an administrator of the navy of England and Member of Parliament who is most famous for the diary that he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man. Pepys had no experience, but he rose to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and King James II through patronage, hard work, and his talent for administration. His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalisation of the Royal Navy, the detailed private diary that Pepys kept from 1660 until 1669 was first published in the 19th century and is one of the most important primary sources for the English Restoration period. It provides a combination of personal revelation and eyewitness accounts of events, such as the Great Plague of London, the Second Dutch War. Pepys was born in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street, London on 23 February 1633, the son of John Pepys, a tailor and his great uncle Talbot Pepys was Recorder and briefly Member of Parliament for Cambridge in 1625. His fathers first cousin Sir Richard Pepys was elected MP for Sudbury in 1640, appointed Baron of the Exchequer on 30 May 1654, Pepys was the fifth of eleven children, but child mortality was high and he was soon the oldest survivor. He was baptised at St Brides Church on 3 March, Pepys did not spend all of his infancy in London, for a while, he was sent to live with nurse Goody Lawrence at Kingsland, just north of the city. In about 1644, Pepys attended Huntingdon Grammar School before being educated at St Pauls School, London and he attended the execution of Charles I in 1649. In 1650, he went to Cambridge University, having received two exhibitions from St Pauls School and a grant from the Mercers Company. In October, he was admitted as a sizar to Magdalene College, he moved there in March 1651, later in 1654 or early in 1655, he entered the household of another of his fathers cousins, Sir Edward Montagu, who was later created 1st Earl of Sandwich. From a young age, Pepys suffered from stones in his urinary tract – a condition from which his mother and brother John also later suffered. He was almost never without pain, as well as other symptoms, by the time of his marriage, the condition was very severe. In 1657 Pepys decided to undergo surgery, not an option, as the operation was known to be especially painful. Nevertheless, Pepys consulted surgeon Thomas Hollier and, on 26 March 1658, Pepys stone was successfully removed and he resolved to hold a celebration on every anniversary of the operation, which he did for several years. However, there were long-term effects from the operation, the incision on his bladder broke open again late in his life. The procedure may have left him sterile, though there is no evidence for this. In mid-1658 Pepys moved to Axe Yard, near the modern Downing Street and he worked as a teller in the Exchequer under George Downing. On 1 January 1660, Pepys began to keep a diary and he recorded his daily life for almost ten years
11.
Parthenon
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The Parthenon is a former temple, on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their patron. Construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Empire was at the peak of its power and it was completed in 438 BC although decoration of the building continued until 432 BC. It is the most important surviving building of Classical Greece, generally considered the zenith of the Doric order and its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art. The Parthenon is regarded as an symbol of Ancient Greece, Athenian democracy and western civilization. The Greek Ministry of Culture is currently carrying out a programme of restoration and reconstruction to ensure the stability of the partially ruined structure. The Parthenon itself replaced a temple of Athena, which historians call the Pre-Parthenon or Older Parthenon. The temple is aligned to the Hyades. While a sacred building dedicated to the patron goddess, the Parthenon was actually used primarily as a treasury. For a time, it served as the treasury of the Delian League, in the final decade of the sixth century AD, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. After the Ottoman conquest, it was turned into a mosque in the early 1460s, on 26 September 1687, an Ottoman ammunition dump inside the building was ignited by Venetian bombardment. The resulting explosion damaged the Parthenon and its sculptures. From 1800 to 1803, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin removed some of the sculptures with the alleged permission of the Ottoman Empire. These sculptures, now known as the Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon Marbles, were sold in 1816 to the British Museum in London, since 1983, the Greek government has been committed to the return of the sculptures to Greece. The Liddell–Scott–Jones Greek–English Lexicon states that this room was the western cella of the Parthenon, jamauri D. Christopher Pelling asserts that Athena Parthenos may have constituted a discrete cult of Athena, intimately connected with, but not identical to, that of Athena Polias. According to this theory, the name of the Parthenon means the temple of the virgin goddess and it has also been suggested that the name of the temple alludes to the maidens, whose supreme sacrifice guaranteed the safety of the city. Parthénos has also applied to the Virgin Mary, Parthénos Maria. The first instance in which Parthenon definitely refers to the building is found in the writings of the 4th century BC orator Demosthenes. In 5th-century building accounts, the structure is simply called ho naos, because the Parthenon was dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, it has sometimes been referred to as the Temple of Minerva, the Roman name for Athena, particularly during the 19th century
12.
Ancient Greece
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Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th-9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and this was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the end of the Mediterranean Sea. Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a influence on ancient Rome. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Classical Antiquity in the Mediterranean region is considered to have begun in the 8th century BC. Classical Antiquity in Greece is preceded by the Greek Dark Ages and this period is succeeded, around the 8th century BC, by the Orientalizing Period during which a strong influence of Syro-Hittite, Jewish, Assyrian, Phoenician and Egyptian cultures becomes apparent. The end of the Dark Ages is also dated to 776 BC. The Archaic period gives way to the Classical period around 500 BC, Ancient Periods Astronomical year numbering Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details The history of Greece during Classical Antiquity may be subdivided into five major periods. The earliest of these is the Archaic period, in which artists made larger free-standing sculptures in stiff, the Archaic period is often taken to end with the overthrow of the last tyrant of Athens and the start of Athenian Democracy in 508 BC. It was followed by the Classical period, characterized by a style which was considered by observers to be exemplary, i. e. classical, as shown in the Parthenon. This period saw the Greco-Persian Wars and the Rise of Macedon, following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period, during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East. This period begins with the death of Alexander and ends with the Roman conquest, Herodotus is widely known as the father of history, his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato, most of these authors were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than those of many other cities. Their scope is limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic history, ignoring economic. In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. The Lelantine War is the earliest documented war of the ancient Greek period and it was fought between the important poleis of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Both cities seem to have suffered a decline as result of the long war, a mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century BC, shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC
13.
Hellenistic period
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It is often considered a period of transition, sometimes even of decadence or degeneration, compared to the enlightenment of the Greek Classical era. The Hellenistic period saw the rise of New Comedy, Alexandrian poetry, the Septuagint, Greek science was advanced by the works of the mathematician Euclid and the polymath Archimedes. The religious sphere expanded to include new gods such as the Greco-Egyptian Serapis, eastern deities such as Attis and Cybele, the Hellenistic period was characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization which established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa. This resulted in the export of Greek culture and language to new realms. Equally, however, these new kingdoms were influenced by the cultures, adopting local practices where beneficial, necessary. Hellenistic culture thus represents a fusion of the Ancient Greek world with that of the Near East, Middle East and this mixture gave rise to a common Attic-based Greek dialect, known as Koine Greek, which became the lingua franca through the Hellenistic world. Scholars and historians are divided as to what event signals the end of the Hellenistic era, Hellenistic is distinguished from Hellenic in that the first encompasses the entire sphere of direct ancient Greek influence, while the latter refers to Greece itself. The word originated from the German term hellenistisch, from Ancient Greek Ἑλληνιστής, from Ἑλλάς, Hellenistic is a modern word and a 19th-century concept, the idea of a Hellenistic period did not exist in Ancient Greece. Although words related in form or meaning, e. g, the major issue with the term Hellenistic lies in its convenience, as the spread of Greek culture was not the generalized phenomenon that the term implies. Some areas of the world were more affected by Greek influences than others. The Greek population and the population did not always mix, the Greeks moved and brought their own culture. While a few fragments exist, there is no surviving historical work which dates to the hundred years following Alexanders death. The works of the major Hellenistic historians Hieronymus of Cardia, Duris of Samos, the earliest and most credible surviving source for the Hellenistic period is Polybius of Megalopolis, a statesman of the Achaean League until 168 BC when he was forced to go to Rome as a hostage. His Histories eventually grew to a length of forty books, covering the years 220 to 167 BC, another important source, Plutarchs Parallel Lives though more preoccupied with issues of personal character and morality, outlines the history of important Hellenistic figures. Appian of Alexandria wrote a history of the Roman empire that includes information of some Hellenistic kingdoms, other sources include Justins epitome of Pompeius Trogus Historiae Philipicae and a summary of Arrians Events after Alexander, by Photios I of Constantinople. Lesser supplementary sources include Curtius Rufus, Pausanias, Pliny, in the field of philosophy, Diogenes Laertius Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is the main source. Ancient Greece had traditionally been a collection of fiercely independent city-states. After the Peloponnesian War, Greece had fallen under a Spartan hegemony, in which Sparta was pre-eminent but not all-powerful
14.
Ancient Rome
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In its many centuries of existence, the Roman state evolved from a monarchy to a classical republic and then to an increasingly autocratic empire. Through conquest and assimilation, it came to dominate the Mediterranean region and then Western Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa and it is often grouped into classical antiquity together with ancient Greece, and their similar cultures and societies are known as the Greco-Roman world. Ancient Roman civilisation has contributed to modern government, law, politics, engineering, art, literature, architecture, technology, warfare, religion, language and society. Rome professionalised and expanded its military and created a system of government called res publica, the inspiration for modern republics such as the United States and France. By the end of the Republic, Rome had conquered the lands around the Mediterranean and beyond, its domain extended from the Atlantic to Arabia, the Roman Empire emerged with the end of the Republic and the dictatorship of Augustus Caesar. 721 years of Roman-Persian Wars started in 92 BC with their first war against Parthia and it would become the longest conflict in human history, and have major lasting effects and consequences for both empires. Under Trajan, the Empire reached its territorial peak, Republican mores and traditions started to decline during the imperial period, with civil wars becoming a prelude common to the rise of a new emperor. Splinter states, such as the Palmyrene Empire, would divide the Empire during the crisis of the 3rd century. Plagued by internal instability and attacked by various migrating peoples, the part of the empire broke up into independent kingdoms in the 5th century. This splintering is a landmark historians use to divide the ancient period of history from the pre-medieval Dark Ages of Europe. King Numitor was deposed from his throne by his brother, Amulius, while Numitors daughter, Rhea Silvia, because Rhea Silvia was raped and impregnated by Mars, the Roman god of war, the twins were considered half-divine. The new king, Amulius, feared Romulus and Remus would take back the throne, a she-wolf saved and raised them, and when they were old enough, they returned the throne of Alba Longa to Numitor. Romulus became the source of the citys name, in order to attract people to the city, Rome became a sanctuary for the indigent, exiled, and unwanted. This caused a problem for Rome, which had a large workforce but was bereft of women, Romulus traveled to the neighboring towns and tribes and attempted to secure marriage rights, but as Rome was so full of undesirables they all refused. Legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins, after a long time in rough seas, they landed at the banks of the Tiber River. Not long after they landed, the men wanted to take to the sea again, one woman, named Roma, suggested that the women burn the ships out at sea to prevent them from leaving. At first, the men were angry with Roma, but they realized that they were in the ideal place to settle. They named the settlement after the woman who torched their ships, the Roman poet Virgil recounted this legend in his classical epic poem the Aeneid
15.
Freedman
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A freedman or freedwoman is a former slave who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, slaves were freed either by manumission or emancipation, a fugitive slave is one who escaped slavery by fleeing. Rome differed from Greek city-states in allowing freed slaves to become plebeian citizens, the act of freeing a slave was called manumissio, from manus, hand, and missio, the act of releasing. After manumission, a slave who had belonged to a Roman citizen enjoyed not only freedom from ownership. A slave who had acquired libertas was known as a libertus in relation to his former master, as a social class, freed slaves were liberti, though later Latin texts used the terms libertus and libertini interchangeably. Libertini were not entitled to public office or state priesthoods. During the early Empire, however, freedmen held key positions in the government bureaucracy, any future children of a freedman would be born free, with full rights of citizenship. The Claudian Civil Service set a precedent whereby freedmen could be used as servants in the Roman bureaucracy. In addition, Claudius passed legislation concerning slaves, including a law stating that sick slaves abandoned by their owners became freedmen if they recovered, the emperor was criticized for using freedmen in the Imperial Courts. Some freedmen enjoyed enormous success and became quite wealthy, the brothers who owned House of the Vettii, one of the biggest and most magnificent houses in Pompeii, are thought to have been freedmen. A freedman who became rich and influential might still be looked down on by the aristocracy as a vulgar nouveau riche. Trimalchio, a character in the Satyricon of Petronius, is a caricature of such a freedman, for centuries Arab slave traders took and transported an estimated 10 to 15 million sub-Saharan Africans to slavery in North Africa and the Middle East. They also enslaved Europeans from coastal areas and the Balkans, many Arabs took women slaves as concubines in their harems. In the patrilineal societies, mixed-race children of concubines and Arab men were considered free and were given inheritance rights related to their fathers property. In the United States, the freedmen and freedwomen refer chiefly to former slaves emancipated during and after the American Civil War, by the Emancipation Proclamation. Slaves freed before the war, usually by individual manumissions, often in wills, were referred to as Free Negroes or free blacks. There were numerous such families formed in the Upper South before the Revolution, for the first two decades after the Revolution, thousands of slaves were freed in the Upper South, and most northern states abolished slavery, some on a gradual basis. In Louisiana and other areas of the former New France, free people of color were classified in French as gens de couleur libres and they were born to African or African-European mothers and white fathers of mixed-race African and French or other European ancestry
16.
Cicero
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Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, politician, lawyer, orator, political theorist, consul, and constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy family of the Roman equestrian order. According to Michael Grant, the influence of Cicero upon the history of European literature, Cicero introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy and created a Latin philosophical vocabulary distinguishing himself as a translator and philosopher. Though he was an orator and successful lawyer, Cicero believed his political career was his most important achievement. During the chaotic latter half of the 1st century BC marked by civil wars, following Julius Caesars death, Cicero became an enemy of Mark Antony in the ensuing power struggle, attacking him in a series of speeches. His severed hands and head were then, as a revenge of Mark Antony. Petrarchs rediscovery of Ciceros letters is often credited for initiating the 14th-century Renaissance in public affairs, humanism, according to Polish historian Tadeusz Zieliński, the Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, and only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity. Cicero was born in 106 BC in Arpinum, a hill town 100 kilometers southeast of Rome and his father was a well-to-do member of the equestrian order and possessed good connections in Rome. However, being a semi-invalid, he could not enter public life, although little is known about Ciceros mother, Helvia, it was common for the wives of important Roman citizens to be responsible for the management of the household. Ciceros brother Quintus wrote in a letter that she was a thrifty housewife, Ciceros cognomen, or personal surname, comes from the Latin for chickpea, cicer. Plutarch explains that the name was given to one of Ciceros ancestors who had a cleft in the tip of his nose resembling a chickpea. However, it is likely that Ciceros ancestors prospered through the cultivation. Romans often chose down-to-earth personal surnames, the family names of Fabius, Lentulus, and Piso come from the Latin names of beans, lentils. Plutarch writes that Cicero was urged to change this name when he entered politics. During this period in Roman history, cultured meant being able to speak both Latin and Greek, Cicero used his knowledge of Greek to translate many of the theoretical concepts of Greek philosophy into Latin, thus translating Greek philosophical works for a larger audience. It was precisely his broad education that tied him to the traditional Roman elite, according to Plutarch, Cicero was an extremely talented student, whose learning attracted attention from all over Rome, affording him the opportunity to study Roman law under Quintus Mucius Scaevola. Ciceros fellow students were Gaius Marius Minor, Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the latter two became Ciceros friends for life, and Pomponius would become, in Ciceros own words, as a second brother, with both maintaining a lifelong correspondence. Cicero wanted to pursue a career in politics along the steps of the Cursus honorum
17.
Tironian notes
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Tironian notes is a system of shorthand invented by Tiro, Marcus Tullius Ciceros slave and personal secretary, and later his freedman. Tiros system consisted of about 4,000 abstract symbols that were extended in classical times to 5,000 signs, during the medieval period, Tiros notation system was taught in European monasteries and was extended to about 13,000 signs. Tironian notes declined after 1100 but were still in use in the 17th century. Tironian notes can be themselves composites of simpler Tironian notes, the resulting compound still being far shorter than the word it replaces and this accounts in part for the large number of attested Tironian notes, and for the wide variation in estimates of the total number of Tironian notes. Further, the sign can have other variant forms, leading to the same issue. Nicknamed the father of stenography by historians, Tiro was a slave, the only systematized form of abbreviation in Latin at the time was used for legal notations, but it was deliberately abstruse and only accessible to people with specialized knowledge. Otherwise shorthand was improvised for note-taking or writing personal communications and these notations would not have been understood outside of closed circles, Tironian notes, also known as Tironian shorthand, consisted of abbreviations with Latin letters, abstract symbols contrived by Tiro, and symbols borrowed from Greek shorthand. Tiros notes represented prepositions, truncated words, contractions, syllables, according to Di Renzo, Tiro then combined these mixed signs like notes in a score to record not just phrases, but, as Cicero marvels in a letter to Atticus, whole sentences. Dio Cassius attributes the invention of shorthand to Maecenas, and states that he employed his freedman Aquila in teaching the system to numerous others. Isidore of Seville, however, details another version of the history of the system, ascribing the invention of the art to Quintus Ennius. Isidore states that Tiro brought the practice to Rome, but only used Tironian notes for prepositions, there are no surviving copies of Tiros original manual and code, so modern knowledge is on biographical records and copies of Tironian tables from the medieval period. There is evidence that Tiro taught his system to Cicero and his other scribes, on many of the oldest Tironian tables, lines from this speech were frequently used as examples, leading scholars to theorize it was originally transcribed using Tironian shorthand. Scholars also believe that in preparation for speeches, Tiro drafted outlines in shorthand that Cicero used as notes while speaking. In the 15th century Johannes Trithemius, abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Sponheim, discovered the notae Benenses, a psalm, Tironian notes are still used today, particularly, the Tironian et, used in Ireland and Scotland to mean and, and in the z of viz. In blackletter texts it was used in the abbreviation ⟨⁊c. ⟩ = etc. still throughout the 19th century, the Tironian et can look very similar to an r rotunda, ⟨ꝛ⟩, depending on the typeface. In Old English manuscripts, the Tironian et served as both a phonetic and morphological place holder, for instance a Tironian et between two words would be phonetically pronounced ond and would mean and. However, if the Tironian et followed the letter s, then it would be phonetically pronounced sond and this additional function of a phonetic as well as a conjunction placeholder has escaped formal Modern English, for example, one may not spell the word sand as s&. This practice was distinct from the use of &c. for etc. where the & is interpreted as the Latin word et
18.
Latin
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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
19.
Fall of the Western Roman Empire
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The Fall of the Western Roman Empire was the process of decline in the Western Roman Empire in which it failed to enforce its rule, and its vast territory was divided into several successor polities. Increasing pressure from barbarians outside Roman culture also contributed greatly to the collapse, the reasons for the collapse are major subjects of the historiography of the ancient world and they inform much modern discourse on state failure. Relevant dates include 117 CE, when the Empire was at its greatest territorial extent, irreversible major territorial loss, however, began in 376 with a large-scale irruption of Goths and others. In 395, after winning two destructive civil wars, Theodosius I died, leaving a field army and the Empire, still plagued by Goths. Invading barbarians had established their own power in most of the area of the Western Empire, while its legitimacy lasted for centuries longer and its cultural influence remains today, the Western Empire never had the strength to rise again. The Fall is not the only unifying concept for these events, the Fall of the Western Roman Empire was the process of decline in the Western Roman Empire in which it failed to enforce its rule. The Fall is not the only unifying concept for these events, for Dio Cassius, the accession of the emperor Commodus in 180 CE marked the descent from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron. Gibbon started his story in 98 and Theodor Mommsen regarded the whole of the period as unworthy of inclusion in his Nobel Prize-winning History of Rome. Arnold J. Toynbee and James Burke argue that the entire Imperial era was one of decay of institutions founded in republican times. Gibbon gave a formulation of reasons why the Fall happened. He began a controversy about the role of Christianity, but he gave great weight to other causes of internal decline. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious, and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, alexander Demandt enumerated 210 different theories on why Rome fell, and new ideas have emerged since. Historians still try to analyze the reasons for loss of control over a vast territory. Comparison has also made with the Han Empire in China. At least from the time of Henri Pirenne, scholars have described continuity of culture and of political legitimacy, Pirenne postponed the demise of classical civilization to the 8th century. The more recent formulation of a period characterized as Late Antiquity emphasizes the transformations of ancient to medieval worlds within a cultural continuity. In recent decades archaeologically-based argument even extends the continuity in material culture, observing the political reality of lost control, but also the cultural and archaeological continuities, the process has been described as a complex cultural transformation, rather than a fall
20.
Carolingian Renaissance
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During this period, there was an increase of literature, writing, the arts, architecture, jurisprudence, liturgical reforms, and scriptural studies. The Carolingian Renaissance occurred mostly during the reigns of Carolingian rulers Charlemagne and it was supported by the scholars of the Carolingian court, notably Alcuin of York. Charlemagnes Admonitio generalis and Epistola de litteris colendis served as manifestos, the effects of this cultural revival were mostly limited to a small group of court literati. They also applied rational ideas to social issues for the first time in centuries, providing a common language, kenneth Clark was of the view that by means of the Carolingian Renaissance, Western civilization survived by the skin of its teeth. Instead of being a rebirth of new movements, the period was more an attempt to recreate the previous culture of the Roman Empire. In its earlier state of barbarousness, his kingdom had been touched at all by any such zeal. In our own time the thirst for knowledge is disappearing again, of even greater concern to some rulers was the fact that not all parish priests possessed the skill to read the Vulgate Bible. To address these problems, Charlemagne ordered the creation of schools in a known as the Charter of Modern Thought. A major part of his program of reform was to many of the leading scholars of the Christiandom of his day to his court. The Lombard Paul the Deacon was brought to court in 782 and remained until 787, theodulf of Orléans was a Spanish Goth who served at court from 782 to 797 when nominated as bishop of Orléans. Theodulf had been in competition over the standardization of the Vulgate with the chief among the Charlemagnes scholars. Alcuin was a Northumbrian monk and deacon who served as head of the Palace School from 782 to 796, after 796, he continued his scholarly work as abbot of St. Martins Monastery in Tours. Among those to follow Alcuin across the Channel to the Frankish court was Joseph Scottus, after this first generation of non-Frankish scholars, their Frankish pupils, such as Angilbert, would make their own mark. The later courts of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald had similar groups of scholars, the Irish monk Dicuil attended the former court, and the more famous Irishman John Scotus Eriugena attended the latter. One of the efforts was the creation of a standardized curriculum for use at the recently created schools. Alcuin led this effort and was responsible for the writing of textbooks, creation of word lists, another contribution from this period was the development of Carolingian minuscule, a book-hand first used at the monasteries of Corbie and Tours that introduced the use of lower case letters. A standardized version of Latin was also developed that allowed for the coining of new words while retaining the grammatical rules of Classical Latin and this Medieval Latin became a common language of scholarship and allowed administrators and travelers to make themselves understood in various regions of Europe. Carolingian art spans the roughly hundred-year period from about 800–900, although brief, it was an influential period
21.
Monastery
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A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone. A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which may be a chapel, church or temple, a monastery complex typically comprises a number of buildings which include a church, dormitory, cloister, refectory, library, balneary and infirmary. These may include a hospice, a school and a range of agricultural and manufacturing such as a barn. In English usage, the monastery is generally used to denote the buildings of a community of monks. In modern usage, convent tends to be applied only to institutions of female monastics, historically, a convent denoted a house of friars, now more commonly called a friary. Various religions may apply these terms in specific ways. The earliest extant use of the term monastērion is by the 1st century AD Jewish philosopher Philo in On The Contemplative Life, in England the word monastery was also applied to the habitation of a bishop and the cathedral clergy who lived apart from the lay community. Most cathedrals were not monasteries, and were served by canons secular, however, some were run by monasteries orders, such as York Minster. Westminster Abbey was for a time a cathedral, and was a Benedictine monastery until the Reformation. They are also to be distinguished from collegiate churches, such as St Georges Chapel, in most of this article, the term monastery is used generically to refer to any of a number of types of religious community. In the Roman Catholic religion and to some extent in certain branches of Buddhism, there is a more specific definition of the term. Buddhist monasteries are generally called vihara, viharas may be occupied by males or females, and in keeping with common English usage, a vihara populated by females may often be called a nunnery or a convent. However, vihara can also refer to a temple, in Tibetan Buddhism, monasteries are often called gompa. In Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, a monastery is called a wat, in Burma, a monastery is called a kyaung. A Christian monastery may be an abbey, or a priory and it may be a community of men or of women. A charterhouse is any monastery belonging to the Carthusian order, in Eastern Christianity, a very small monastic community can be called a skete, and a very large or important monastery can be given the dignity of a lavra. The great communal life of a Christian monastery is called cenobitic, as opposed to the life of an anchorite. In Hinduism monasteries are called matha, mandir, koil, or most commonly an ashram, jains use the Buddhist term vihara
22.
Secularization
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Secularization is the transformation of a society from close identification with religious values and institutions toward nonreligious values and secular institutions. The term secularization is also used in the context of the lifting of the restrictions from a member of the clergy. Secularization refers to the process in which religion loses social and cultural significance. As a result of secularization the role of religion in modern societies becomes restricted, in secularized societies faith lacks cultural authority, and religious organizations have little social power. Secularization has many levels of meaning, both as a theory and a historical process, social theorists such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim, postulated that the modernization of society would include a decline in levels of religiosity. Study of this process seeks to determine the manner in which, or extent to which religious creeds, practices, the term also has additional meanings, primarily historical and religious. The 19th-century Kulturkampf in Germany and similar events in other countries also were expressions of secularization. In the 1960s there was a shift toward secularization in Western Europe, North America, Australia. At the most basic stages, this begins with a transition from oral traditions to a writing culture that diffuses knowledge. This first reduces the authority of clerics as the custodians of revealed knowledge, the issue of secularization is discussed in various religious traditions. The government of Turkey is a cited example, following the abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate. This established popular sovereignty in a secular republican framework, in opposition to a system whose authority is based on religion, as one of many examples of state modernization, this shows secularization and democratization as mutually reinforcing processes, relying on a separation of religion and state. Some have therefore argued that Western and Indian secularization is radically different in that it deals with autonomy from religious regulation, considerations of both tolerance and autonomy are relevant to any secular state. John Sommerville outlined six uses of the secularization in the scientific literature. When discussing individual institutions, secularization can denote the transformation of a religious into a secular institution, examples would be the evolution of institutions such as Harvard University from a predominantly religious institution into a secular institution. When discussing mentalities, secularization refers to the transition from ultimate concerns to proximate concerns, E. g. individuals in the West are now more likely to moderate their behavior in response to more immediately applicable consequences rather than out of concern for post-mortem consequences. This is a personal religious decline or movement toward a secular lifestyle, when discussing populations, secularization refers to broad patterns of societal decline in levels of religiosity as opposed to the individual-level secularization of above. This understanding of secularization is also distinct from above in that it specifically to religious decline rather than societal differentiation
23.
Reformation
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The period is usually considered to have begun with the publication of the Ninety-five Theses by Luther in 1517 to the Thirty Years War and ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The Protestant position, however, would come to incorporate doctrinal changes such as sola scriptura, the initial movement within Germany diversified, and other reform impulses arose independently of Luther. The spread of Gutenbergs printing press provided the means for the dissemination of religious materials in the vernacular. The largest groups were the Lutherans and Calvinists, Lutheran churches were founded mostly in Germany, the Baltics and Scandinavia, while the Reformed ones were founded in Switzerland, Hungary, France, the Netherlands and Scotland. The new movement influenced the Church of England decisively after 1547 under Edward VI and Elizabeth I, there were also reformation movements throughout continental Europe known as the Radical Reformation, which gave rise to the Anabaptist, Moravian and other Pietistic movements. The Roman Catholic Church responded with a Counter-Reformation initiated by the Council of Trent, much work in battling Protestantism was done by the well-organised new order of the Jesuits. In general, Northern Europe, with the exception of most of Ireland, southern Europe remained Roman Catholic, while Central Europe was a site of a fierce conflict, culminating in the Thirty Years War, which left it devastated. The oldest Protestant churches, such as the Unitas Fratrum and Moravian Church, the later Protestant Churches generally date their doctrinal separation from the Roman Catholic Church to the 16th century. The Reformation began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church, by priests who opposed what they perceived as false doctrines and ecclesiastic malpractice. They especially objected to the teaching and the sale of indulgences, and the abuses thereof, and to simony, the reformers saw these practices as evidence of the systemic corruption of the Churchs hierarchy, which included the pope. Unrest due to the Great Schism of Western Christianity excited wars between princes, uprisings among the peasants, and widespread concern over corruption in the Church, New perspectives came from John Wycliffe at Oxford University and from Jan Hus at the Charles University in Prague. Hus rejected indulgences and adopted a doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone, the Roman Catholic Church officially concluded this debate at the Council of Constance by condemning Hus, who was executed by burning despite a promise of safe-conduct. Wycliffe was posthumously condemned as a heretic and his corpse exhumed and burned in 1428, the Council of Constance confirmed and strengthened the traditional medieval conception of church and empire. The council did not address the national tensions or the theological tensions stirred up during the century and could not prevent schism. Pope Sixtus IV established the practice of selling indulgences to be applied to the dead, Pope Alexander VI was one of the most controversial of the Renaissance popes. He was the father of seven children, including Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia, in response to papal corruption, particularly the sale of indulgences, Luther wrote The Ninety-Five Theses. The Reformation was born of Luthers dual declaration – first, the discovering of Jesus and salvation by faith alone, the Protestant reformers were unanimous in agreement and this understanding of prophecy furnished importance to their deeds. It was the point and the battle cry that made the Reformation nearly unassailable
24.
Sun Guoting
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Sun Guoting or Sun Qianli, was a Chinese calligrapher of the early Tang Dynasty, remembered for his cursive calligraphy and his Treatise on Calligraphy. The work was the first important theoretical work on Chinese calligraphy, the preface is the only surviving calligraphic work of Sun, therefore it is responsible for both Suns reputation as an artist and as a theorist. The original handscroll can be seen at the National Palace Museum, in Taipei, Taiwan, two Chinese Treatises on Calligraphy, Treatise on Calligraphy by Sun Qianli, Sequel to the Treatise on Calligraphy by Jiang Kui, Yale University Press,1995, ISBN 0-300-06118-8
25.
Cursive script (East Asia)
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Cursive script, often mistranslated as grass script, is a style of Chinese calligraphy. Cursive script is faster to write than other styles, but difficult to read for those unfamiliar with it and it functions primarily as a kind of shorthand script or calligraphic style. People who can read standard or printed forms of Chinese may not be able to comprehend this script, the character 書 means script in this context, and the character 草 means quick, rough or sloppy. Thus, the name of this script is literally rough script or sloppy script, the same character 草 appears in this sense in the noun rough draft, and the verb to draft. The other indirectly related meaning of the character 草 is grass, cursive script originated in China during the Han dynasty through the Jin period, in two phases. First, a form of cursive developed as a cursory way to write the popular. Faster ways to write characters developed through four mechanisms, omitting part of a graph, merging strokes together, replacing portions with abbreviated forms, or modifying stroke styles. This evolution can best be seen on extant bamboo and wooden slats from the period, on which the use of early cursive, modern cursive evolved from this older cursive in the Wei Kingdom to Jin dynasty with influence from the semi-cursive and standard styles. Beside zhāngcǎo and the cursive, there is the wild cursive which is even more cursive. When it was developed by Zhang Xu and Huaisu in the Tang dynasty, cursive, in this style, is no longer significant in legibility but rather in artistry. Cursive scripts can be divided into the style where each character is separate. Many of the simplified Chinese characters are modeled on the forms of the cursive forms of the corresponding characters. Cursive script forms of Chinese characters are also the origin of the Japanese hiragana script, which developed from cursive forms of the manyōgana script. In Japan, cursive script was considered to be suitable for women, and was called women’s script, whereas the clerical style was considered to be suitable for men, the Art of Japanese Calligraphy,1973, author Yujiro Nakata, publisher Weatherhill/Heibonsha, ISBN 0-8348-1013-1. Translation of 文字學概要 by Gilbert L. Mattos and Jerry Norman, Early China Special Monograph Series No.4. Berkeley, The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley
26.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
27.
Chinese characters
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Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and some other Asian languages. In Standard Chinese, and sometimes also in English, they are called hànzì. They have been adapted to write a number of languages including, Japanese, where they are known as kanji, Korean, where they are known as hanja. Collectively, they are known as CJK characters, in English, they are sometimes called Han characters. Chinese characters constitute the oldest continuously used system of writing in the world, Chinese characters number in the tens of thousands, though most of them are minor graphic variants encountered only in historical texts. Studies in China have shown that literacy in written Chinese requires a knowledge of between three and four thousand characters. In Japan,2,136 are taught through secondary school, the characters used in Japan are distinct from those used in China in many respects. There are various national standard lists of characters, forms, in South Korea, when Chinese characters are used they are of the traditional variant and are almost identical to those used in places like Taiwan and Hong Kong. In Old Chinese, most words were monosyllabic and there was a correspondence between characters and words. Rather, a character almost always corresponds to a syllable that is also a morpheme. However, there are a few exceptions to this correspondence, including bisyllabic morphemes. Modern Chinese has many homophones, thus the same syllable may be represented by many characters. A single character may also have a range of meanings, or sometimes quite distinct meanings, cognates in the several varieties of Chinese are generally written with the same character. They typically have similar meanings, but often quite different pronunciations and these foreign adaptations of Chinese pronunciation are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations, and have been useful in the reconstruction of Middle Chinese. When the script was first used in the late 2nd millennium BC, words of Old Chinese were generally monosyllabic, increasing numbers of polysyllabic words have entered the language from the Western Zhou period to the present day. The process has accelerated over the centuries as phonetic change has increased the number of homophones and it has been estimated that over two thirds of the 3,000 most common words in modern Standard Chinese are polysyllables, the vast majority of those being disyllables. The most common process has been to form compounds of existing words, words have also been created by adding affixes, reduplication and borrowing from other languages. Polysyllabic words are written with one character per syllable
28.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
29.
Thomas Shelton (stenographer)
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Thomas Shelton was an English stenographer and the inventor of a much-used British 17th- and 18th-century stenography. The 1647 edition of Thomas Sheltons Tachygraphie contains a portrait giving his age as 46, nothing sure is known about his origin and education, but it was supposed that he came from the well-known Shelton family which owned much land in Norfolk. In the English Civil War, Shelton stood on the side of the Parliament, Thomas Shelton made his living from shorthand, teaching the subject in London over a period of thirty years while he developed his stenographical systems. Shelton knew the stenography of John Willis and took over its geometrical basic principle for his own shorthand and he published several books about shorthand which he sold from his house. Shelton invented a new system and published it in 1626 in the book Short-Writing. In Sheltons shorthand system every consonant was expressed by a symbol which sometimes still resembled the alphabetical letter. The vowels were designated by the height of the following consonant, thus the B symbol with the L symbol written directly above meant ball, while the B symbol with the L symbol below meant bull. The B symbol with the L symbol on top right meant bell, in the middle right bill, a vowel at the word end was designated by a point in the suitable position. For initial vowels there were additional symbols, there were other symbols for frequent prefixes and suffixes as well as for consonant connections. A disadvantage of Sheltons shorthand was that vowels and diphthongs were not always distinguished, for example, the symbols for bat could mean bait or bate as well, and the symbols for bot could mean boot or boat as well. This can only be decided from the context, an advantage of his system was that it could be easily learnt. Therefore, between 1626 and 1710 more than 20 editions of his Tachygraphy were printed, german issues appeared between 1679 and 1743 and a French issue in Paris in 1681. Sheltons shorthand was used, amongst others, by Samuel Pepys, Sir Isaac Newton, in the year of his death,1650, Shelton published yet another shorthand system called Zeiglographia, but it did not become as widespread as his Tachygraphy. Sheltons Tachygraphy was taken up and adapted by later proponents of shorthand systems, Thomas Arkisden, Theophilus Metcalfe, the first edition of this text is available as an article on Wikisource, Shelton, Thomas. Alexander Tremaine Wright, Thomas Shelton, tachygrapher
30.
Isaac Newton
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His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, first published in 1687, laid the foundations of classical mechanics. Newton also made contributions to optics, and he shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing the infinitesimal calculus. Newtons Principia formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that dominated scientists view of the universe for the next three centuries. Newtons work on light was collected in his influential book Opticks. He also formulated a law of cooling, made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound. Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, politically and personally tied to the Whig party, Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, in 1689–90 and 1701–02. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and he spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden and Master of the Royal Mint and his father, also named Isaac Newton, had died three months before. Born prematurely, he was a child, his mother Hannah Ayscough reportedly said that he could have fit inside a quart mug. When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Newtons mother had three children from her second marriage. From the age of twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The Kings School, Grantham which taught Latin and Greek. He was removed from school, and by October 1659, he was to be found at Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Henry Stokes, master at the Kings School, persuaded his mother to send him back to school so that he might complete his education. Motivated partly by a desire for revenge against a bully, he became the top-ranked student. In June 1661, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge and he started as a subsizar—paying his way by performing valets duties—until he was awarded a scholarship in 1664, which guaranteed him four more years until he would get his M. A. He set down in his notebook a series of Quaestiones about mechanical philosophy as he found it, in 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that later became calculus. Soon after Newton had obtained his B. A. degree in August 1665, in April 1667, he returned to Cambridge and in October was elected as a fellow of Trinity. Fellows were required to become ordained priests, although this was not enforced in the restoration years, however, by 1675 the issue could not be avoided and by then his unconventional views stood in the way. Nevertheless, Newton managed to avoid it by means of a special permission from Charles II. A and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1672. Newtons work has been said to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics then studied and his work on the subject usually referred to as fluxions or calculus, seen in a manuscript of October 1666, is now published among Newtons mathematical papers
31.
Heinrich Roller
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Christian Heinrich Roller, better known as Heinrich Roller and also known by his pen name Roland vom Hochplateau, was the inventor of a German shorthand system. Roller was also a writer of humorist texts and a professor at the Journalistische Hochschule in Berlin. Roller was considered a child in school and was the best of his class, yet, being the child of poor parents. Instead, although against his wishes, he began an apprenticeship to become a carpenter, in 1859, he became a member of the Berlin craftsmen association and developed an interest for stenography when he lost a bid for secretary to the board to a candidate who knew shorthand. He then went on to learn stenography from Leopold Arends who taught at the association, in 1869, Roller founded the Stenographisches Institut zur Erteilung von Unterricht und Ausbildung praktischer Stenographen where he taught Arends stenography system. Arends responded first with verbal attacks and then sued Rollers but he was acquitted of all charges, the book was published in 24 editions between 1875 and 1898. Roller made frequent adjustments to the system in the following years, in 1892, Roller released Praktischen Kürzungen, after having been asked to do so by his supporters, which contained abbreviations for common words used in speeches. In 1902, the now existing Hauptverband der Rollerschen Schule named the system Rollers Weltstenographie, when the Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift was discussed, Roller argued for his system personally. In 1864, Roller became a journalist with the magazine Social‑Demokrat, in 1865, he became secretary-general of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein but quit the job in 1868 because of differences in opinion. He also attended the congress of the Social Democratic Workers Party of Germany in 1869. Besides his work in the field of stenography, Roller published humor texts as well as merry poems, Roller died on 6 September 1916 in Berlin. His body was buried at the Friedhofspark Pappelallee, a cemetery founded by the religious humanist society of Berlin, on 25 November 1925 the Heinersdorfer Straße in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg was renamed to Heinrich-Roller-Straße to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his invention. Humoristische Erinnerungen aus dem alten Berlin, eine Reise kurzweiliger und belehrender Erzählungen aus der Mitte dieses Jahrhunderts. Vollständiger Lehrgang einer einfachen, in wenigen Stunden erlernbaren Stenographie für den Schul-, Korrespondenz- und parlamentarischen Gebrauch
32.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
33.
John Byrom
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John Byrom or John Byrom of Kersal or John Byrom of Manchester FRS was an English poet, the inventor of a revolutionary system of shorthand and later a significant landowner. He is most remembered as the writer of the lyrics of Anglican hymn Christians awake, salute the happy morn, which was supposedly a Christmas gift for his daughter. Byrom was descended from an old genteel Lancashire family, ralph Byrom came to Manchester from Lowton in 1485 and became a prosperous wool merchant. His son Adam acquired property in Salford, Darcy Lever, Bolton, Edward Byrom helped to foil a Royalist plot to seize Manchester in 1642. Byrom was born at what is now The Old Wellington Inn, Manchester, the Wellington Inn, now a major tourist attraction, has a plaque in the bar area which commemorates his birth. However, some claim that he was born at Kersal Cell in Lower Kersal in the township of Broughton, near Salford. According to Bailey he was one of the tallest men in the kingdom and his privileged background enabled him to obtain an excellent education, including The Kings School, Chester, and Merchant Taylors School, London. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, becoming a fellow there in 1714, He subsequently travelled abroad, Byrom invented a system of shorthand and, having perfected this, returned to England in 1716. Shortly after coming into his inheritance in 1740, he patented his New Universal Shorthand. This system of shorthand, officially taught at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, was used by the clerk of the House of Lords. On 16 June 1742, His Majesty George II secured to John Byrom, M. A. the sole right of publishing for a term of years the art. It was used by John and Charles Wesley, founders of Methodism, the ancestral home of the Byrom family is Byrom Hall at Slag Lane in Lowton. He lived here from time to time, but seems to have resided in a town house in Manchester. Byrom had several children, but his favourite was his daughter Dorothy, in December 1745, after a romp with Dolly, he promised to write her something for Christmas, it was to be written especially for her and no one else. The delighted Dolly reminded her father of his promise each day as Christmas grew nearer, on Christmas morning, when she ran down to breakfast, she found several presents awaiting her. Among them was an envelope addressed to her in her fathers handwriting and it was the first thing she opened and, to her great delight, it proved to be a Christmas carol entitled Christians awake. The original manuscript, headed with Christmas Day for Dolly, was first published in Harrops Manchester Mercury in 1746, although Byrom is probably best remembered for this Christmas carol, he was regarded by his contemporaries as a poet and a literary man. Most of his poems, the best-known of which is My spirit longeth for Thee, were religious in tone and he is also remembered for his epigrams and, above all, his coinage of the phrase Tweedledum and Tweedledee
34.
Samuel Taylor (stenographer)
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Samuel Taylor was the British inventor of a widely used system of stenography. He began working on his own method of stenography in 1773 and his stenographic method consisted in cutting out the superfluous consonants as well as the vowels in polysyllabic words. It used an alphabet composed of 19 letters of simplified shapes and he taught stenography at Oxford as well as the universities of Scotland and Ireland for many years. His system was adopted for other languages, including French, German, Spanish, Italian. He also published a book on angling in 1800, titled Angling in All Its Branches, lontoo, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd.1951. This article is based on a translation of the article from the French Wikipedia
35.
Taylor shorthand
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Taylor shorthand uses an alphabet of 19 letters of simplified shape. Vowels are omitted except at the beginning and end of a word, a single letter stands for both f and v, one for s and z, and another for g and j, as well as additional letters for ch, sh, th. The consonants are joined together, as in cursive Latin script, apart from a couple of suffixes, when two of the same consonant come together, they are written with a single letter of larger size. Taylor shorthand is written phonetically, so that, for example, an English word containing ph is written with the letter for f. However, silent e is written with a dot, so that rear is ⟨rr⟩, H tends to be omitted medially and even initially, a vowel dot written instead, presumably reflecting Taylors pronunciation. In addition to sounds, each letter stands for several short words. There is a letter for suffixes pronounced like -ious and the abbreviation viz. The shapes of the letters are as follows, because they are not supported by computer fonts, Canadian syllabics have been substituted where these have approximately the same shape, where a symbol is not available, a description is given. L and r are written upwards, all vertical and diagonal letters are written downwards. Various suffixes are plural -s, -ly, -ing (a ᐟ after the word, or below the last letter for -ings, so ⟨, -tion (a dot above the last letter, so ⟨·, -tions, -ble, -ment, -ject, -ward, -ship. An Essay Intended to Establish a Standard for an Universal System of Stenography
36.
Thomas Gurney (shorthand writer)
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Thomas Gurney was an English shorthand-writer. Gurney was born at Woburn, Bedfordshire, on 7 March 1705 and his father, John, though of an ancient family, belonged to the yeoman class, and was a substantial miller with a large family. Thomas was intended for a farmer, but his inclination for books and mechanics was so decided and he then learned clockmaking, and soon afterwards became a schoolmaster at Newport Pagnell and Luton. His connection with shorthand was brought about accidentally and his notebook of 1722–3 is still preserved, and shows that at that time he used Masons system with very little alteration. In 1737 Gurney came to London, and was afterwards appointed shorthand-writer at the Old Bailey. Gurney himself, however, in the postscript to the edition of Brachygraphy. He may have originally practised without an appointment, or may have held a subordinate post for the first ten years, in any case it was the first official appointment of a shorthand-writer, anywhere, although there had been instances of the use of shorthand for official purposes. On 16 October 1750 he published his system under the title of Brachygraphy, the whole is founded on so just a plan, that it is wrote with greater expedition than any yet invented, and likewise may be read with the greatest ease. Improvd after upwards of thirty years practice and experience, London,34 engraved pages, the price of subscription was 2s. One of the learners of the system was Erasmus Darwin. He held his appointment at the Old Bailey till his death on 22 June 1770. He is said to have been a shrewd, humorous, well-informed man, who could do many things well, and an oil painting of him. Attribution This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Stephen, Leslie, Lee, Sidney
37.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
38.
Gabelsberger shorthand
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Gabelsberger shorthand, named for its creator, is a form of shorthand previously common in Germany and Austria. Created c.1817 by Franz Xaver Gabelsberger, it was first fully described in the 1834 textbook Anleitung zur deutschen Redezeichenkunst oder Stenographie, Gabelsberger shorthand has a full alphabet with signs for both consonants and vowels. The consonant signs were made by simplifying the features of cursive Latin letters, the vowel signs are used mainly when a vowel stands at the beginning or the end of a word. Vowels in the middle of words are represented symbolically, mainly by varying the position, contrary to the practice in many English shorthand systems, vowels are never entirely omitted. Most German shorthand systems published after 1834 are ultimately based on Gabelsbergers system, modern German shorthand, Deutsche Einheitskurzschrift, retains most of the consonant signs of Gabelsbergers alphabet but has a modified system of vowel representation. Gabelsberger shorthand was adopted into a number of languages and was particularly successful in Scandinavia, the Slavic countries. A host of shorthand systems have appeared that build on the graphic principles laid down by Gabelsberger. Anleitung zur deutschen Redezeichenkunst oder Stenographie at WorldCat
39.
Pitman shorthand
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Pitman shorthand is a system of shorthand for the English language developed by Englishman Sir Isaac Pitman, who first presented it in 1837. Like most systems of shorthand, it is a system, the symbols do not represent letters, but rather sounds. As of 1996, Pitman shorthand was the most popular shorthand system used in the United Kingdom, doing this requires a writing instrument responsive to the users drawing pressure, specialist fountain pens were originally used, but pencils are now more commonly used. Pitman shorthand uses straight strokes and quarter-circle strokes, in various orientations, the predominant way of indicating vowels is to use light or heavy dots, dashes, or other special marks drawn close to the consonant. Vowels are drawn before the stroke if the vowel is pronounced ahead of the consonant and this is often enough to distinguish words with similar consonant patterns. Another method of vowel indication is to choose from among a selection of different strokes for the same consonant, for example, the sound R has two kinds of strokes, round, or straight-line, depending on whether there is a vowel sound before or after the R. There have been versions of Pitmans shorthand since 1837. The original Pitmans shorthand had an alphabet of consonants, which was later modified, additional modifications and rules were added to successive versions. Pitman New Era had the most developed set of rules and abbreviation lists, Pitman 2000 introduced some simplifications and drastically reduced the list of abbreviations to reduce the memory load, officially reduced to a list of 144 short forms. The later versions dropped certain symbols and introduced other simplifications to earlier versions, for example, strokes rer and kway are present in Pitmans New Era, but not in Pitmans 2000. Pitman was asked to create a system of his own in 1837. He had used Samuel Taylors system for seven years, but his symbols bear greater similarity to the older Byrom system, the first phonetician to invent a system of shorthand, Pitman used similar-looking symbols for phonetically related sounds. For example, the dental and alveolar consonants are upright, ⟨|⟩ = /t/, ⟨|⟩ = /d/, ⟨)⟩ = /s/, ⟨)⟩ = /z/, ⟨ There are two strokes for r, ar and ray. The former assumes the form of the top quarter of a circle, whereas the latter is like chay ⟨/⟩. There are rules governing when to use each of these forms, the long vowels in Pitmans shorthand are, /ɑː/, /eɪ/, /iː/, /ɔː/, /oʊ/, and /uː/. The short vowels are /æ/, /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /ɒ/, /ʌ/, the long vowels may be remembered by the sentence, Pa, may we all go too. /pɑː | meɪ wiː ɔːl ɡoʊ tuː/, and the vowels may be remembered by the sentence. A vowel is represented by a dot or a dash, which can be written either lightly or heavily depending on the vowel needed
40.
Isaac Pitman
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Sir Isaac Pitman, was an English teacher who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in Stenographic Soundhand in 1837 and he was also the vice president of the Vegetarian Society. Pitman was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1894, Pitman was born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire in England. One of his cousins was Abraham Laverton, in 1831 he had five months training at the Training College of the British and Foreign School Society, which was sufficient to qualify him as a teacher. He started teaching at Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire, in 1835 he married a widow, and moved in 1836 to Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, where he started his own school. In 1839 he moved to Bath, where he opened a small school, in the 1851 census he appears in Bath aged 38, living with his wife, Mary, aged 58, born in Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire. He married Isabella Masters in 1861, and he appears in the 1871 census, aged 58, with his new wife Isabella, Isaac Pitman was a lifelong advocate of spelling reform for the English language, producing many pamphlets during his lifetime on spelling reform. His motto was time saved is life gained, one of the outcomes of his interest in spelling reform was the creation of his system of phonetic shorthand which he first published in 1837, in a pamphlet titled Sound-Hand. Among the examples in this pamphlet, were the Psalm 100, the Lords Prayer, by 1843 his business of preparing and publishing had expanded sufficiently to give up teaching, and to set up his own printing press, as well as compositing and a binding. In 1844 he published Phonotypy, his work on spelling reform. In 1845 he published the first version of the English Phonotypic Alphabet, in the 1881 census his name is spelled phonetically as Eisak Pitman. In the 1891 census he is listed as Isaac. In 1886 Pitman went into partnerships with his sons Alfred and Ernest to form Isaac Pitman, in the same year the millionth copy of the Phonographic Teacher was sold in Great Britain. The publishing division was bought by rival Pearson Plc in 1985, the training business evolved into two separate businesses, Pitman Training and JHP Training. The element of student feedback was an innovation of Pitmans system. This scheme was made possible by the introduction of postage rates across England in 1840. Not only did he read The Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg daily, he devoted much time. He published and distributed books and tracts by and about Swedenborg, among the authors he encouraged was Thomas Child
