1.
Coat of arms
–
A coat of arms is an heraldic visual design on an escutcheon, surcoat, or tabard. The coat of arms on an escutcheon forms the central element of the heraldic achievement which in its whole consists of shield, supporters, crest. A coat of arms is traditionally unique to a person, family, state. The ancient Romans used similar insignia on their shields, but these identified military units rather than individuals, the first evidence of medieval coats of arms has been attributed to the 11th century Bayeux Tapestry in which some of the combatants carry shields painted with crosses. However, that heraldic interpretation remains controversial, coats of arms came into general use by feudal lords and knights in battle in the 12th century. By the 13th century, arms had spread beyond their initial battlefield use to become a flag or emblem for families in the social classes of Europe. Exactly who had a right to use arms, by law or social convention, in the German-speaking regions both the aristocracy and burghers used arms, while in most of the rest of Europe they were limited to the aristocracy. The use of spread to the clergy, to towns as civic identifiers. Flags developed from coats of arms, and the arts of vexillology, the coats of arms granted to commercial companies are a major source of the modern logo. Despite no widespread regulation, heraldry has remained consistent across Europe, some nations, like England and Scotland, still maintain the same heraldic authorities which have traditionally granted and regulated arms for centuries and continue to do so in the present day. In England, for example, the granting of arms is and has controlled by the College of Arms. Unlike seals and other emblems, heraldic achievements have a formal description called a blazon. Many societies exist that also aid in the design and registration of personal arms, in the heraldic traditions of England and Scotland, an individual, rather than a family, had a coat of arms. In those traditions coats of arms are legal property transmitted from father to son, wives, undifferenced arms are used only by one person at any given time. Other descendants of the bearer could bear the ancestral arms only with some difference. One such charge is the label, which in British usage is now always the mark of an apparent or an heir presumptive. Because of their importance in identification, particularly in seals on legal documents and this has been carried out by heralds and the study of coats of arms is therefore called heraldry. In time, the use of arms spread from military entities to educational institutes, the author Helen Stuart argues that some coats of arms were a form of corporate logo
Coat of arms
–
The German
Hyghalmen Roll, ca. late 15th century, illustrates the German practice of thematic repetition from the arms in the crest
Coat of arms
Coat of arms
–
The
Zechariah Seal coat of arms.
2.
Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
–
The Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was an autonomous republic within the Uzbek SSR in the Soviet Union. The capital of Tajik ASSR was in Dyushambe, the capital Dyushambe was renamed Stalinabad in honor of Joseph Stalin
Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
–
Location of the Tajik ASSR within the
Uzbek SSR
Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
–
Flag
3.
Tajik language
–
Tajik or Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It is closely related to Dari Persian, since the beginning of the twentieth century, Tajik has been considered by a number of writers and researchers to be a variety of Persian. The issue of whether Tajik and Persian are to be considered two dialects of a language or two discrete languages has political sides to it. Today Tajik is recognized as a West-Iranian language, Tajik is the official language of Tajikistan. In Afghanistan, this language is influenced by Turkic languages, is called Dari. The standard language is based on the dialects of Tajik. The most important cities of Central Asia—Samarkand and Bukhara—are in present-day Uzbekistan, today, virtually all Tajik speakers in Bukhara are bilingual in Tajik and Uzbek. This Tajik–Uzbek bilingualism has had a influence on the phonology, morphology. Tajiks are also found in numbers in the Surxondaryo Region in the south. Tajik is still spoken in Samarqand and Buxoro today, as Tajiks account for perhaps 70% of the total population of Samarqand and have been estimated to make up as much as 90% of Buxoro. Official statistics in Uzbekistan state that the Tajik community comprises 5% of the total population. However, these numbers do not include ethnic Tajiks who, for a variety of reasons, the Uzbekization movement ended in 1924. Native Tajiks living in the nation of Uzbekistan have reportedly estimated that Tajiks make up 25–30% of the nations population, Tajiks constitute 80% of Tajikistans population, and Persian dominates in most parts of the country. Some Tajiks in Badakhshan in southeastern Tajikistan, where the Pamir languages are the languages of most residents, are bilingual. Tajiks constitute between 25% and 30% of the population of the country. 50% of Afghan citizens are native speakers of Dari, a large Tajik-speaking diaspora exists due to the instability that has plagued Central Asia in recent years, with significant numbers of Tajiks found in Russia, Kazakhstan, and beyond. This Tajik diaspora is also the result of the state of the economy of Tajikistan. Tajik dialects can be split into the following groups, Northern dialects
Tajik language
–
Toçikī in the
Tajik alphabet
Tajik language
–
Tajik Republic's 1929 coat of arms with Tajik language in Perso-Arabic script جمهوريه اجتماعی شوروى مختار تاجيكستان
4.
Alphabet
–
An alphabet is a standard set of letters that is used to write one or more languages based upon the general principle that the letters represent phonemes of the spoken language. This is in contrast to other types of writing systems, such as syllabaries and logographies, the Proto-Canaanite script, later known as the Phoenician alphabet, is the first fully phonemic script. Thus the Phoenician alphabet is considered to be the first alphabet, the Phoenician alphabet is the ancestor of most modern alphabets, including Arabic, Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and possibly Brahmic. Under a terminological distinction promoted by Peter T. Daniels, an alphabet is a script that represents both vowels and consonants as letters equally. In this narrow sense of the word the first true alphabet was the Greek alphabet, in other alphabetic scripts such as the original Phoenician, Hebrew or Arabic, letters predominantly or exclusively represent consonants, such a script is also called an abjad. A third type, called abugida or alphasyllabary, is one where vowels are shown by diacritics or modifications of consonantal letters, as in Devanagari. The Khmer alphabet is the longest, with 74 letters, there are dozens of alphabets in use today, the most popular being the Latin alphabet. Many languages use modified forms of the Latin alphabet, with additional letters formed using diacritical marks, while most alphabets have letters composed of lines, there are also exceptions such as the alphabets used in Braille. Alphabets are usually associated with an ordering of letters. This makes them useful for purposes of collation, specifically by allowing words to be sorted in alphabetical order and it also means that their letters can be used as an alternative method of numbering ordered items, in such contexts as numbered lists and number placements. The English word alphabet came into Middle English from the Late Latin word alphabetum, the Greek word was made from the first two letters, alpha and beta. The names for the Greek letters came from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet, aleph, which also meant ox, and bet, in the alphabet song in English, the term ABCs is used instead of the word alphabet. Knowing ones ABCs, in general, can be used as a metaphor for knowing the basics about anything, the history of the alphabet started in ancient Egypt. These glyphs were used as guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections. Based on letter appearances and names, it is believed to be based on Egyptian hieroglyphs and this script had no characters representing vowels, although originally it probably was a syllabary, but unneeded symbols were discarded. An alphabetic cuneiform script with 30 signs including three that indicate the vowel was invented in Ugarit before the 15th century BC. This script was not used after the destruction of Ugarit, the Proto-Sinaitic script eventually developed into the Phoenician alphabet, which is conventionally called Proto-Canaanite before ca.1050 BC. The oldest text in Phoenician script is an inscription on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram and this script is the parent script of all western alphabets
Alphabet
–
Edward Bernard 's "Orbis eruditi", comparing all known alphabets as of 1689.
Alphabet
–
Writing systems
Alphabet
–
A Specimen of
typeset fonts and
languages, by
William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728
Cyclopaedia.
Alphabet
–
Codex Zographensis in the
Glagolitic alphabet from Medieval
Bulgaria
5.
Arabic script
–
The Arabic script is a writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic, dialects of Mandinka, Central Kurdish, Luri, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, and others. Until the 16th century, it was used to write some texts in Spanish. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by the number of countries using it, the Arabic script is written from right to left in a cursive style. In most cases the letters transcribe consonants, or consonants and a few vowels, the script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Qurʼān, the holy book of Islam. It is also the basis for the tradition of Arabic calligraphy, the Arabic script has been adopted for use in a wide variety of languages besides Arabic, including Persian, Malay and Urdu which are not Semitic. Such adaptations may feature altered or new characters to represent phonemes that do not appear in Arabic phonology, the modified version of the Arabic script originally devised for use with Persian is known as the Perso-Arabic script by scholars. In the cases of Bosnian, Kurdish, Kashmiri, and Uyghur writing systems, the Arabic script can therefore be used in both abugida and abjad, although it is often strongly, erroneously connected to the latter. Use of the Arabic script in West African languages, especially in the Sahel, to a certain degree the style and usage tends to follow those of the Maghreb. Additional diacritics have come into use to facilitate writing of sounds not represented in the Arabic language, the term ʻAjamī, which comes from the Arabic root for foreign, has been applied to Arabic-based orthographies of African languages. There is evidence that writing Arabic in this set of letters influenced the style of modern Arabic script. After this initial period, Garshuni writing has continued to the present day among some Syriac Christian communities in the Arabic-speaking regions of the Levant, Kazakh in China Kurdish in Northern Iraq and Northwest Iran. It is mainly used in Sri Lanka and the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu for religious purposes, arwi language is the language of Tamil Nadu Muslims. Malayalam language represented by Arabic script variant is known as Arabi Malayalam, the script has particular letters to represent the peculiar sounds of Malayalam. This script is used in madrasas of the South Indian state of Kerala. It is similar to Chittagonian language in neighboring Bangladesh and sometimes using the Roman script. Malay in the Arabic script known as Jawi, in some cases it can be seen in the signboards of shops or market stalls. In addition, some television programming uses Jawi, such as announcements, advertisements, news, social programs, Berber languages have often been written in an adaptation of the Arabic alphabet. The use of the Arabic alphabet, as well as the competing Latin, West Africa Zarma language of the Songhay family
Arabic script
–
Basic Arabic alphabet
Arabic script
–
Calligraphy
6.
Persian alphabet
–
The Persian alphabet or Perso-Arabic alphabet is a writing system based on the Arabic script and used for the Persian language. It has four more than the Arabic alphabet, پ, چ, ژ. The Persian script is an abjad and is exclusively written cursively and that is, the majority of the letters in a word connect to each other. This is also implemented on computers, whenever the Persian alphabet is typed, the computer automatically connects the letters to each other. Words are written right to left. Also, vowels are underrepresented in writing, see below for details, the replacement of the Pahlavi scripts with the Persian alphabet in order to write the Persian language was done by the Tahirid dynasty in ninth century Greater Khorasan. Below are the 32 letters of the modern Persian alphabet, since the script is cursive, the appearance of a letter changes depending on its position, isolated, initial, medial, and final of a word. The names of the letter are mostly the ones used in Arabic, the only ambiguous name is he, which is used for both ﺡ and ه. For clarification, these are often called ḥe-ye jimi and he-ye do-češm, respectively. Letters which do not link to a following letter Seven letters – و, ژ, ﺯ, ﺭ, ﺫ, ﺩ, ﺍ – do not connect to a letter as the rest of the letters of the alphabet do. These seven letters have the form in isolated and initial position. For example, when the letter ا alef is at the beginning of a such as اینجا injā. Persian script has adopted a subset of Arabic diacritics which consists of zabar /æ/, zir /e/, other Arabic diacritics may be seen in Arabic loan-words. The following are not actual letters but different orthographical shapes for letters, and in the case of the lām alef, as to ﺀ hamze, it has only a single graphic, since it is never tied to a preceding or following letter. However, it is seated on a vāv, ye or alef. Technically, hamze is not a letter but a diacritic, although at first glance they may seem similar, there are many differences in the way the different languages use the alphabets. For example, similar words are written differently in Persian and Arabic, vowel notation is simple but its history is complicated. Classical Arabic has a length distinction, in writing, long vowels are normally written ambiguously by letters known as matres lectionis while short ones are normally omitted entirely
Persian alphabet
–
Example showing the
Nastaʿlīq calligraphic style's proportion rules.
7.
Latin script
–
Latin script is used as the standard method of writing in most Western and Central European languages, as well as in many languages in other parts of the world. Latin script is the basis for the largest number of alphabets of any writing system and is the most widely adopted writing system in the world, Latin script is also the basis of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The 26 most widespread letters are the contained in the ISO basic Latin alphabet. The script is either called Roman script or Latin script, in reference to its origin in ancient Rome, in the context of transliteration, the term romanization or romanisation is often found. Unicode uses the term Latin as does the International Organization for Standardization, the numeral system is called the Roman numeral system, and the collection of the elements, Roman numerals. The numbers 1,2,3. are Latin/Roman script numbers for the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, the Latin alphabet spread, along with Latin, from the Italian Peninsula to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The Latin script also came into use for writing the West Slavic languages and several South Slavic languages, the speakers of East Slavic languages generally adopted Cyrillic along with Orthodox Christianity. The Serbian language uses both scripts, with Cyrillic predominating in official communication and Latin elsewhere, as determined by the Law on Official Use of the Language and Alphabet. As late as 1500, the Latin script was limited primarily to the languages spoken in Western, Northern, the Orthodox Christian Slavs of Eastern and Southeastern Europe mostly used Cyrillic, and the Greek alphabet was in use by Greek-speakers around the eastern Mediterranean. The Arabic script was widespread within Islam, both among Arabs and non-Arab nations like the Iranians, Indonesians, Malays, and Turkic peoples, most of the rest of Asia used a variety of Brahmic alphabets or the Chinese script. It is used for many Austronesian languages, including the languages of the Philippines, Latin letters served as the basis for the forms of the Cherokee syllabary developed by Sequoyah, however, the sound values are completely different. In the late 19th century, the Romanians returned to the Latin alphabet, under French rule and Portuguese missionary influence, a Latin alphabet was devised for the Vietnamese language, which had previously used Chinese characters. In 1928, as part of Mustafa Kemal Atatürks reforms, the new Republic of Turkey adopted a Latin alphabet for the Turkish language, kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Iranian-speaking Tajikistan, and the breakaway region of Transnistria kept the Cyrillic alphabet, chiefly due to their close ties with Russia. In the 1930s and 1940s, the majority of Kurds replaced the Arabic script with two Latin alphabets, although the only official Kurdish government uses an Arabic alphabet for public documents, the Latin Kurdish alphabet remains widely used throughout the region by the majority of Kurdish-speakers. In 2015, the Kazakh government announced that the Latin alphabet would replace Cyrillic as the system for the Kazakh language by 2025. In the course of its use, the Latin alphabet was adapted for use in new languages, sometimes representing phonemes not found in languages that were written with the Roman characters. These new forms are given a place in the alphabet by defining an alphabetical order or collation sequence, a digraph is a pair of letters used to write one sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters in sequence. Examples are ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ng⟩, ⟨rh⟩, ⟨sh⟩ in English, a trigraph is made up of three letters, like the German ⟨sch⟩, the Breton ⟨c’h⟩ or the Milanese ⟨oeu⟩
Latin script
–
Latin Roman
8.
Cyrillic script
–
The Cyrillic script /sᵻˈrɪlɪk/ is a writing system used for various alphabets across eastern Europe and north and central Asia. It is based on the Early Cyrillic, which was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School. As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the alphabet for their national languages. With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the official script of the European Union, following the Latin script. Cyrillic is derived from the Greek uncial script, augmented by letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet and these additional letters were used for Old Church Slavonic sounds not found in Greek. The script is named in honor of the two Byzantine brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who created the Glagolitic alphabet earlier on, modern scholars believe that Cyrillic was developed and formalized by early disciples of Cyril and Methodius. In the early 18th century the Cyrillic script used in Russia was heavily reformed by Peter the Great, the new form of letters became closer to the Latin alphabet, several archaic letters were removed and several letters were personally designed by Peter the Great. West European typography culture was also adopted, Cyrillic script spread throughout the East and South Slavic territories, being adopted for writing local languages, such as Old East Slavic. Its adaptation to local languages produced a number of Cyrillic alphabets, capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts. Yeri was originally a ligature of Yer and I, iotation was indicated by ligatures formed with the letter І, Ꙗ, Ѥ, Ю, Ѩ, Ѭ. Sometimes different letters were used interchangeably, for example И = І = Ї, there were also commonly used ligatures like ѠТ = Ѿ. The letters also had values, based not on Cyrillic alphabetical order. The early Cyrillic alphabet is difficult to represent on computers, many of the letterforms differed from modern Cyrillic, varied a great deal in manuscripts, and changed over time. Few fonts include adequate glyphs to reproduce the alphabet, the Unicode 5.1 standard, released on 4 April 2008, greatly improves computer support for the early Cyrillic and the modern Church Slavonic language. In Microsoft Windows, Segoe UI is notable for having complete support for the archaic Cyrillic letters since Windows 8, the development of Cyrillic typography passed directly from the medieval stage to the late Baroque, without a Renaissance phase as in Western Europe. Late Medieval Cyrillic letters show a tendency to be very tall and narrow. Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, mandated the use of westernized letter forms in the early 18th century, over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the script. The development of some Cyrillic computer typefaces from Latin ones has also contributed to the visual Latinization of Cyrillic type, Cyrillic uppercase and lowercase letter forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography
Cyrillic script
–
Cyrillic
9.
History of Tajikistan
–
Tajikistan harkens to the Samanid Empire. The Tajik people came under Russian rule in the 1860s, the Basmachi revolt broke out in the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and was quelled in the early 1920s during the Russian Civil War. In 1924 Tajikistan became an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics of the Soviet Union and it has since experienced three changes in government and the Tajik civil war. A peace agreement among rival factions was signed in 1997, Tajikistan was part of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex in the Bronze Age, candidate for Proto-Indo-Iranian or Proto-Iranian culture. Tajikistan was part of Scythia in Classical Antiquity, most of modern Tajikistan had formed parts of ancient Kamboja and Parama Kamboja kingdoms, which find references in the ancient Indian epics like the Mahabharata. Linguistic evidence, combined with ancient literary and inscriptional evidence has led many eminent Indologists to conclude that ancient Kambojas originally belonged to Central Asia, achariya Yāskas Nirukta attests that verb Śavati in the sense to go was used by only the Kambojas. It has been shown that the modern Ghalcha dialects, mainly spoken in Pamirs and countries on the headwaters of the Oxus, still use terms derived from ancient Kamboja Śavati in the sense to go. The Yagnobi dialect spoken in Yagnobi province around the headwaters of Zeravshan valley in Sogdiana, further, Sir G. Grierson says that the speech of Badakshan was a Ghalcha until about three centuries ago when it was supplanted by a form of Persian. Thus, the ancient Kamboja, probably included the Badakshan, Pamirs and northern territories including Yagnobi province in the doab of the Oxus, Sogdiana, Bactria, Merv and Khorezm were the four principal divisions of Ancient Central Asia inhabited by the ancestors of the present-day Tajikistani Tajiks. Tajiks are now only in historic Bactria and Sogdiana. Merv is inhabited by the Turkoman and Khorezm by Uzbeks and Kazakhs, Sogdiana was made up of the Zeravshan and Kashka-Darya river valleys. Currently, One of the peoples of Sogdiana who speak a dialect of the Sogdian language are the Yaghnobis and Shugnanis. Bactria was located in northern Afghanistan between the range of the Hindu Kush and the Amu Darya River and some areas of current south Tajikistan. During different periods, Bactria was a center of various Kingdoms or Empires, the Avesta—the holy book of Zoroastrianism—was written in the old-Bactrian dialect, it is also thought that Zoroaster was most likely born in Bactria. During the Achaemenid period, Sogdiana and Bactria were part of the Persian empire, in fact, the Macedonians faced very stiff resistance under the leadership of Sogdian ruler Spitamenes. Alexander the Great managed to marry Roxana, the daughter of a local ruler, following Alexanders brief occupation, the Hellenistic successor states of the Seleucids and Greco-Bactrians controlled the area for another 200 years in what is known as the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. During the time period from 90 BC to 30 BC, Yuezhi destroyed the last Hellenistic successor states and, together with the Tokhari, created a Kushan Empire around 30 AD. For another 400 years, until 410 AD, the Kushan Empire was a power in the region along with the Roman Empire, the Parthian Empire
History of Tajikistan
–
Sculpture of the woman of the pre-Islamic period (Tajikistan).
History of Tajikistan
–
Achaemenid empire at its greatest extent
History of Tajikistan
–
Map of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom.
History of Tajikistan
–
Kushan Empire
10.
Tajikistan
–
Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a mountainous, landlocked country in Central Asia with an estimated 8 million people in 2013, and an area of 143,100 km2. It is bordered by Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the south, the Republic of Uzbekistan to the west, the Kyrgyz Republic to the north, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan lies to the south, separated by the narrow Wakhan Corridor. Traditional homelands of Tajik people included present-day Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, a civil war was fought almost immediately after independence, lasting from 1992 to 1997. Since the end of the war, newly established political stability, Tajikistan is a presidential republic consisting of four provinces. Most of Tajikistans 8 million people belong to the Tajik ethnic group, many Tajiks also speak Russian as their second language. Mountains cover more than 90% of the country and it has a transition economy that is highly dependent on remittances, aluminium and cotton production. Tajikistan means the Land of the Tajiks, the suffix -stan is Persian for place of or country and Tajik is, most likely, the name of a pre-Islamic tribe. Tajikistan appeared as Tadjikistan or Tadzhikistan in English prior to 1991 and this is due to a transliteration from the Russian, Таджикистан. In Russian, there is no single letter j to represent the phoneme /ʤ/ and дж, Tadzhikistan is the most common alternate spelling and is widely used in English literature derived from Russian sources. Tadjikistan is the spelling in French and can occasionally be found in English language texts, the way of writing Tajikistan in the Perso-Arabic script is. The earliest recorded history of the dates back to about 500 BCE when much, if not all. After the regions conquest by Alexander the Great it became part of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, northern Tajikistan was part of Sogdia, a collection of city-states which was overrun by Scythians and Yuezhi nomadic tribes around 150 BCE. The Silk Road passed through the region and following the expedition of Chinese explorer Zhang Qian during the reign of Wudi commercial relations between Han China and Sogdiana flourished. Sogdians played a role in facilitating trade and also worked in other capacities, as farmers, carpetweavers, glassmakers. Later the Hephthalite Empire, a collection of tribes, moved into the region. Central Asia continued in its role as a crossroads, linking China, the steppes to the north. It was temporarily under the control of the Tibetan empire and Chinese from 650–680, the Samanid Empire,819 to 999, restored Persian control of the region and enlarged the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara which became the cultural centres of Iran and the region was known as Khorasan. The Kara-Khanid Khanate conquered Transoxania and ruled between 999–1211, during Genghis Khans invasion of Khwarezmia in the early 13th century the Mongol Empire took control over nearly all of Central Asia
Tajikistan
–
The
Samanid ruler
Mansur I (961 – 976).
Tajikistan
Tajikistan
–
Tajik men and boys, 1905-1915
Tajikistan
–
Soviet negotiations with
basmachi, 1921
11.
Bukhori dialect
–
Bukhori, also known as Bukhari and Bukharian, is a dialect of the Tajiki language spoken in Central Asia by Bukharian Jews. The location where Bukharic exists is in Central Asia, the language classification of Bukharic is as follows, Indo-European > Indo-Iranian > Iranian > West Iranian > Southwest Iranian > Persian > Tajik > Bukharic. Bukhori is based on a substrate of classical Persian, with a number of Hebrew loanwords, as well as smaller numbers of loanwords from other surrounding languages, including Uzbek. The vocabulary consists of a mixture of Persian, Arabic, Uzbek, in early history of the Bukharian jews, Central Asia fell under Sunni Uzbek control. The Bukharian Jewish community was severely discriminated against and isolated from the other jews and this pushed Bukharian jews to create their own branch of judaism, which lead to the creation of the Bukhori dialect spoken throughout Bukharian history. In 1987, the number of speakers was 85,000. In the USSR, there were 45,000 speakers, in Israel, there were 32,000, one of the dialects of Bukharic is Rahamĭm. Ethnic Tajik minorities exist in countries, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Later Samarkand and Bukhara in Uzbekistan are two cities which are particularly populated, like most Jewish languages, traditionally, Bukhori uses the Hebrew alphabet. But throughout the past century, due to Soviet influence, the used to write Bukhori included Latin then the Cyrillic. Today, many older Bukharian Jews who speak Bukharian only know the Cyrillic alphabet when reading and writing Bukharian, the origin of its respective spelling system is talmudic orthography. During the Soviet Period, communists wanted Hebrew to be the language of culture and instruction in the Republic of Turkestan, in late 1921, the Turkestani People’s Commissariat of Education ordered that schools for Bukharan Jews to teach in Bukharic and not in Hebrew. In Uzbekistan in 1934,15 Bukharan Jewish clubs and 28 Bukharan Jewish red teahouses existed, however, in 1938, Bukharic was no longer used as the language for instruction in the schools and in cultural activities. There were attempts made to bring back Bukharan Jewish culture in the Soviet Union, one significant attempt was a council was established for Bukharan Jewish literature in the Uzbekistan Writers’ Union and was headed by Aharon Shalamaev-Fidoi. Another significant attempt was the Hoverim society was established in Tajikistan and was headed by Professor Datkhaev, an organization today that is continuing to support the Bukharan Jewish culture is the World Bukharian Jewish Congress. This organization is introducing to the public the story of the Bukharan Jews. Their goal is for others to learn about the history of the Bukharan Jews, as well as their culture, language, based on the Soviet census of 1979, 20% more of Central Asian Jews spoke Russian instead of Bukharic. Today, youths learning the Bukharian Jewish language sponsored by the Achdut-Unity Club in Queens use the modified Latin alphabet, kol Yisrael broadcasts in Bukhori from 12,45 to 13,00 GMT
Bukhori dialect
–
Caucasian (areal)
12.
Bukharan Jews
–
Bukharan Jews, also Bukharian Jews or Bukhari Jews are Jews from Central Asia who historically spoke Bukhori, a dialect of the Tajik-Persian language. Their name comes from the former Central Asian Emirate of Bukhara, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the great majority have immigrated to Israel or to the United States, while others have immigrated to Europe or Australia. The term Bukharan was coined by European travelers who visited Central Asia around the 16th century, since most of the Jewish community at the time lived under the Emirate of Bukhara, they came to be known as Bukharan Jews. The name by which the community called itself is Isroil, the appellative Bukharian was adopted by Bukharan Jews who moved to English-speaking countries, in an anglicisation of the Hebrew Bukhari. However, Bukharan was the term used historically by English writers, Bukharan Jews used the Persian language to communicate among themselves and later developed Bukhori, a distinct dialect of the Tajiki-Persian language with certain linguistic traces of Hebrew. This language provided easier communication with their communities and was used for all cultural and educational life among the Jews. It was used widely until the area was Russified by the Russians, the elderly Bukharan generation use Bukhori as their primary language but speak Russian with a slight Bukharan accent. The younger generation use Russian as their language, but do understand or speak Bukhori. The Bukharan Jews are Mizrahi Jews and have introduced to. The first primary written account of Jews in Central Asia dates to the beginning of the 4th century CE, the presence of Jewish communities in Merv is also proven by Jewish writings on ossuaries from the 5th and 6th centuries, uncovered between 1954 and 1956. According to some ancient texts, there were Israelites that began traveling to Central Asia to work as traders during the reign of King David of Jerusalem as far back as the 10th century B. C. E. When Persian King Cyrus conquered Babylon, he encouraged the Jews he liberated to settle in his empire, in the Middle Ages, the largest Jewish settlement in Central Asia was in the Emirate of Bukhara. Among Bukharan Jews, there are two ancient theories of how Jewish people settled in Central Asia, modern sources have described the Bukhara Jews as, for example, an ethnic and linguistic group in Central Asia, claiming descent from 5th-century exiles from Persia. The Bukharan Jews are considered one of the oldest ethno-religious groups of Central Asia, throughout the years, Jews from other Eastern countries such as Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Morocco migrated into Central Asia. In the beginning of the 16th century, the area was invaded and occupied by nomadic Uzbek tribes who established strict observance of Islamic religion, around 1620, the first synagogue had been constructed at Bukhara city. This was done in contravention of the law of Caliph Omar who forbade the construction of new synagogues as well as forbade the destruction of those that existed in the pre-Islamic period. There was a case when Caliph Umar had ordered the destruction of a mosque, before the construction of the first synagogue, Jews had shared a place in a mosque with Muslims. This mosque was called the Magoki Attoron, some say that Jews and Muslims worshipped alongside each other in the same place at the same time
Bukharan Jews
–
Lev Leviev
Bukharan Jews
–
Bukharan girls in Samarkand, ca 1900
Bukharan Jews
–
Robert Ilatov
Bukharan Jews
–
Idan Yaniv
13.
Hebrew alphabet
–
Historically, there have been two separate abjad scripts to write Hebrew. In the remainder of this article, the term Hebrew alphabet refers to the Jewish square script unless otherwise indicated, the Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. It does not have case, but five letters have different forms used at the end of a word. Hebrew is written right to left. Originally, the alphabet was an abjad consisting only of consonants, as with other abjads, such as the Arabic alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel points, known in Hebrew as niqqud. In both biblical and rabbinic Hebrew, the letters א ה ו י are also used as matres lectionis to represent vowels. There is a trend in modern Modern Hebrew toward the use of matres lectionis to indicate vowels that have traditionally gone unwritten, the paleo-Hebrew alphabet was used in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The Samaritans, who remained in the Land of Israel, continued to use the paleo-Hebrew alphabet, after the fall of the Persian Empire in 330 BCE, Jews used both scripts before settling on the Assyrian form. The square Hebrew alphabet was adapted and used for writing languages of the Jewish diaspora – such as Karaim, the Judeo-Arabic languages, Judaeo-Spanish. In the traditional form, the Hebrew alphabet is an abjad consisting only of consonants and it has 22 letters, five of which use different forms at the end of a word. Also, a system of points to indicate vowels, called niqqud, was developed. In modern forms of the alphabet, as in the case of Yiddish and to some extent Modern Hebrew, today, the trend is toward full spelling with the weak letters acting as true vowels. When used to write Yiddish, vowels are indicated, using letters, either with or without niqqud-diacritics, except for Hebrew words. To preserve the proper vowel sounds, scholars developed several different sets of vocalization, one of these, the Tiberian system, eventually prevailed. Aaron ben Moses ben Asher, and his family for generations, are credited for refining and maintaining the system. These points are used only for special purposes, such as Biblical books intended for study. The Tiberian system also includes a set of marks, called trope. These are shown below the normal form in the following table, although Hebrew is read and written from right to left, the following table shows the letters in order from left to right
Hebrew alphabet
–
A Jewish stele near the archeological excavations of the early medieval walls of
Serdica
Hebrew alphabet
–
Aleppo Codex: 10th-Century-AD
Hebrew Bible with
Masoretic pointing. Text of
Joshua 1:1
Hebrew alphabet
–
A replica of the Gezer Calendar in the
Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Hebrew alphabet
–
Hebrew script on the
bustier of
Jan van Scorel 's
Maria Magdalena, 1530.
14.
Post-Soviet states
–
On March 11,1990, Lithuania was the first to declare its independence, with Estonia and Latvia following suit in August 1991. All three Baltic states claimed continuity from the states that existed prior to their annexation by the Soviet Union in 1944 and were admitted to the United Nations on 17 September 1991. The remaining 12 republics all subsequently seceded,12 of the 15 states, excluding the Baltic states, initially formed the CIS and most joined CSTO, while the Baltic states focused on European Union and NATO membership. The 15 post-Soviet states are divided into the following five groupings. Each of these regions has its own set of traits, owing not only to geographic and cultural factors. In addition, there are a number of de facto independent, the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place as a result and against the backdrop of general economic stagnation, even regression. In all, the process triggered severe economic declines, with Gross Domestic Product dropping by more than 40% overall between 1990 and 1995. This decline in GDP was much more intense than the 27% decline that the United States suffered in the wake of the Great Depression between 1930 and 1934. The economic shocks associated with wholesale privatization resulted in the deaths of roughly 1 million working age individuals throughout the former Soviet bloc in the 1990s, by 2007,10 of the 15 post-Soviet states had recovered and reached GDP greater than what they had in 1991. Only Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan had GDP significantly below the 1991 level, the recovery in Russia was marginal, with GDP in 2006-2007 just nudging above the 1991 level. Combined with the aftershocks of the 1998 economic crisis it led to a return of more interventionist economic policies by Vladimir Putins administration. Change in Gross Domestic Product in constant prices, 1991-2015 *Economy of most Soviet republics started to decline in 1989-1990, **The year when GDP decline switched to GDP growth. List of the present Gross domestic product, The post-Soviet states listed according to their Human Development Index scores, only organizations that are mainly composed of post-Soviet states are listed in this section, organizations with wider memberships are not discussed. The 15 post-Soviet states are divided in their participation to the blocs, Belarus, Russia. It was conceived as an organization to the USSR. It currently consists of nine of the 15 former Soviet republics, with one participating state, Georgia withdrew from the CIS in August 2008. The sole exception to the above has been their recent membership in the Community of Democratic Choice, the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are members of the CIS and participate in several regional organizations that have Russia as a primary mover. Such organizations are the Eurasian Economic Community, Collective Security Treaty Organization, the last two groups only became distinct once Uzbekistan withdrew from GUAM and sought membership in EurAsEc and CSTO
Post-Soviet states
–
Victory Day in
Donetsk, Ukraine, 9 May 2010
Post-Soviet states
–
Post-Soviet states in English alphabetical order: 1.
Armenia; 2.
Azerbaijan; 3.
Belarus; 4.
Estonia; 5.
Georgia; 6.
Kazakhstan; 7.
Kyrgyzstan; 8.
Latvia; 9.
Lithuania; 10.
Moldova; 11.
Russia; 12.
Tajikistan; 13.
Turkmenistan; 14.
Ukraine; 15.
Uzbekistan
15.
Writing system
–
A writing system is any conventional method of visually representing verbal communication. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a form of information storage. The processes of encoding and decoding writing systems involve shared understanding between writers and readers of the meaning behind the sets of characters that make up a script, the general attributes of writing systems can be placed into broad categories such as alphabets, syllabaries, or logographies. Any particular system can have attributes of more than one category, in the alphabetic category, there is a standard set of letters of consonants and vowels that encode based on the general principle that the letters represent speech sounds. In a syllabary, each symbol correlates to a syllable or mora, in a logography, each character represents a word, morpheme, or other semantic units. Other categories include abjads, which differ from alphabets in that vowels are not indicated, alphabets typically use a set of 20-to-35 symbols to fully express a language, whereas syllabaries can have 80-to-100, and logographies can have several hundreds of symbols. Systems will also enable the stringing together of these groupings in order to enable a full expression of the language. The reading step can be accomplished purely in the mind as an internal process, writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, which used pictograms, ideograms and other mnemonic symbols. Proto-writing lacked the ability to capture and express a range of thoughts. Soon after, writing provided a form of long distance communication. With the advent of publishing, it provided the medium for a form of mass communication. Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that a system is always associated with at least one spoken language. In contrast, visual representations such as drawings, paintings, and non-verbal items on maps, such as contour lines, are not language-related. Some other symbols, such as numerals and the ampersand, are not directly linked to any specific language, every human community possesses language, which many regard as an innate and defining condition of humanity. However, the development of writing systems, and the process by which they have supplanted traditional oral systems of communication, have been sporadic, uneven, once established, writing systems generally change more slowly than their spoken counterparts. Thus they often preserve features and expressions which are no current in the spoken language. One of the benefits of writing systems is that they can preserve a permanent record of information expressed in a language. In the examination of individual scripts, the study of writing systems has developed along partially independent lines, thus, the terminology employed differs somewhat from field to field
Writing system
–
Writing systems
Writing system
–
Predominant national and selected regional or minority scripts
Writing system
–
Chinese characters (漢字) are morpho-syllabic. Each one represents a syllable with a distinct meaning, but some characters may have multiple meanings or pronunciations
Writing system
–
A Specimen of typefaces and styles, by
William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728
Cyclopaedia
16.
Uzbekistan
–
Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, is one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world. Located in Central Asia, it is a unitary, constitutional, presidential republic, comprising twelve provinces, one autonomous republic and a capital city. Uzbekistan is bordered by five landlocked countries, Kazakhstan to the north, Tajikistan to the southeast, Kyrgyzstan to the northeast, Afghanistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest. Once part of the Turkic Khaganate and later Timurid Empires, the region that includes the Republic of Uzbekistan was conquered in the early 16th century by Eastern Turkic-speaking nomads. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, it declared independence as the Republic of Uzbekistan on 31 August 1991, Uzbekistan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. The countrys official language is Uzbek, a Turkic language written in the Latin alphabet and spoken natively by approximately 85% of the population, however, Uzbeks constitute 81% of the population, followed by Russians, Tajiks, Kazakhs, and others. A majority of Uzbeks are non-denominational Muslims, Uzbekistan is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, UN, and the SCO. While officially a republic, non-governmental human rights organizations define Uzbekistan as an authoritarian state with limited civil rights. Uzbekistans economy relies mainly on commodity production, including cotton, gold, uranium, despite the declared objective of transition to a market economy, its government continues to maintain economic controls which imports in favour of domestic import substitution. Uzbekistan has an area of 447,400 square kilometres and it is the 56th largest country in the world by area and the 42nd by population. Among the CIS countries, it is the 4th largest by area, Uzbekistan lies between latitudes 37° and 46° N, and longitudes 56° and 74° E. It stretches 1,425 kilometres from west to east and 930 kilometres from north to south, Uzbekistan also shares a short border with Afghanistan to the south. Uzbekistan is a dry, landlocked country and it is one of two doubly landlocked countries in the world, the other being Liechtenstein. In addition, due to its location within a series of endorheic basins, less than 10% of its territory is intensively cultivated irrigated land in river valleys and oases. The rest is vast desert and mountains, the climate in the Republic of Uzbekistan is continental, with little precipitation expected annually. The average summer high temperature tends to be 40 °C, while the winter low temperature is around −23 °C. Uzbekistan has a rich and diverse natural environment, the Aral Sea used to be the fourth-largest inland sea on Earth, acting as an influencing factor in the air moisture and arid land use. Since the 1960s, the decade when the misuse of the Aral Sea water began, it has shrunk to less than 50% of its former area, reliable, or even approximate data, have not been collected, stored or provided by any organization or official agency
Uzbekistan
–
Comparison of the
Aral Sea between 1989 and 2014.
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
–
Female statuette wearing the
kaunakes. Chlorite and limestone,
Bactria, beginning of the 2nd millennium BC.
Uzbekistan
–
Alexander the Great at the
Battle of Issus.
17.
Uzbek alphabet
–
The Uzbek language has been written in various scripts, Arabic, Cyrillic and Latin. In Uzbekistan, it is now written in the Latin script officially, in the Xinjiang region of China, some Uzbek speakers write using Cyrillic, while others apply the Uyghur Arabic script for Uzbek. Uzbeks of Afghanistan also write Uzbek using the Arabic script, the Uzbek Arabic script is being taught at schools in Afghanistan. Like all Turkic languages in Central Asia, Uzbek was written in forms of the Arabic script by the literate population. The Latinization of Uzbek was carried out in the context of Latinization of all Turkic languages, in 1940, Uzbek was switched to the Cyrillic script under Joseph Stalin. The deadline in Uzbekistan for making this transition has been repeatedly changed, the latest deadline was 2005, but was shifted once again to provide a few more years. Already education in areas of Uzbekistan is in the Latin script. Since 2004 some official websites have switched over to using the Latin script when writing in Uzbek, most street signs are also in the new Latin script. The main national TV channel of Uzbekistan, Oʻzbekiston telekanali, has switched to the Latin script when writing in Uzbek. The modern Uzbek Latin alphabet has 29 letters, The symbol ⟨ʼ⟩ does not constitute a separate letter, below is a table of Uzbek Cyrillic and Latin alphabets with represented sounds. Notes When the Uzbek language is written using the Latin script, the modifier letter apostrophe is used to mark the phonetic glottal stop when it is put immediately before a vowel in borrowed words, as in sanʼat. The modifier letter apostrophe is used to mark a long vowel when placed immediately after a vowel. Since this character is absent from most keyboard layouts, many Uzbek websites use U+2019 ’ RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK instead. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Uzbek alphabet
–
A page from an Uzbek book printed in Arabic script.
Tashkent, 1911.
Uzbek alphabet
–
A
Nowruz sign in front of the State Art Museum of Uzbekistan written using an
ʻokina -like symbol
18.
Islamism
–
Islamism is a concept whose meaning has been debated in both public and academic contexts. It is commonly used interchangeably with the terms political Islam or Islamic fundamentalism and these movements have arguably altered the Middle East more than any trend since the modern states gained independence, redefining politics and even borders according to Robin Wright. Some authors hold the term Islamic activism to be synonymous and preferable to Islamism, Central and prominent figures of modern Islamism include Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Abul Ala Maududi, and Ruhollah Khomeini. Some Islamist thinkers emphasize peaceful political processes, whereas Sayyid Qutb in particular called for violence, however, Qutb, unlike modern extremists, denounced the killing of innocents. Following the Arab Spring, some Islamist currents became heavily involved in politics, while others spawned the most aggressive and ambitious Islamist militia to date. A theocratic ideology that seeks to impose any version of Islam over society by law, subsequently, clarified to be, the desire to impose any given interpretation of Islam on society. A movement so broad and flexible it reaches out to everything to everyone in Islam, making it unsustainable. and at the extremes, a violent vehicle for rejectionists and radicals. All who seek to Islamize their environment, whether in relation to their lives in society, their circumstances, or the workplace. Moderate and reformist Islamists who accept and work within the process include parties like the Tunisian Ennahda Movement. Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan is basically a socio-political and democratic Vanguard party but has gained political influence through military coup détats in the past. The Islamist groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine participate in the democratic, following the Arab Spring, Roy has described Islamism as increasingly interdependent with democracy in much of the Arab Muslim world, such that neither can now survive without the other. While Islamist political culture itself may not be democratic, Islamists need democratic elections to maintain their legitimacy, at the same time, their popularity is such that no government can call itself democratic that excludes mainstream Islamist groups. The term, which denoted the religion of Islam, first appeared in English as Islamismus in 1696. The term appears in the U. S. Supreme Court decision in In Re Ross, the term Islamism acquired its contemporary connotations in French academia in the late 1970s and early 1980s. From French, it began to migrate to the English language in the mid-1980s, a 2003 article in Middle East Quarterly states, In summation, the term Islamism enjoyed its first run, lasting from Voltaire to the First World War, as a synonym for Islam. Enlightened scholars and writers generally preferred it to Mohammedanism, eventually both terms yielded to Islam, the Arabic name of the faith, and a word free of either pejorative or comparative associations. To all intents and purposes, Islamic fundamentalism and Islamism have become synonyms in contemporary American usage, the AP Stylebook entry for Islamist now reads as follows, An advocate or supporter of a political movement that favors reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam. Do not use as a synonym for Islamic fighters, militants, extremists or radicals, where possible, be specific and use the name of militant affiliations, al-Qaida-linked, Hezbollah, Taliban, etc
Islamism
–
Sab'u Masajid, Saudi Arabia
Islamism
–
An Islamist protestor in London protesting over anti-Muslim cartoons, 6 February 2006
Islamism
–
Jamal-al-Din al-Afghani
Islamism
–
Painting of
Abul Ala Maududi
19.
Iran
–
Iran, also known as Persia, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km2, it is the second-largest country in the Middle East, with 82.8 million inhabitants, Iran is the worlds 17th-most-populous country. It is the country with both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. The countrys central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is the countrys capital and largest city, as well as its leading economic and cultural center. Iran is the site of to one of the worlds oldest civilizations, the area was first unified by the Iranian Medes in 625 BC, who became the dominant cultural and political power in the region. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, under the Sassanid Dynasty, Iran again became one of the leading powers in the world for the next four centuries. Beginning in 633 AD, Arabs conquered Iran and largely displaced the indigenous faiths of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism by Islam, Iran became a major contributor to the Islamic Golden Age that followed, producing many influential scientists, scholars, artists, and thinkers. During the 18th century, Iran reached its greatest territorial extent since the Sassanid Empire, through the late 18th and 19th centuries, a series of conflicts with Russia led to significant territorial losses and the erosion of sovereignty. Popular unrest culminated in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which established a monarchy and the countrys first legislative body. Following a coup instigated by the U. K. Growing dissent against foreign influence and political repression led to the 1979 Revolution, Irans rich cultural legacy is reflected in part by its 21 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the third-largest number in Asia and 11th-largest in the world. Iran is a member of the UN, ECO, NAM, OIC. Its political system is based on the 1979 Constitution which combines elements of a democracy with a theocracy governed by Islamic jurists under the concept of a Supreme Leadership. A multicultural country comprising numerous ethnic and linguistic groups, most inhabitants are Shia Muslims, the largest ethnic groups in Iran are the Persians, Azeris, Kurds and Lurs. Historically, Iran has been referred to as Persia by the West, due mainly to the writings of Greek historians who called Iran Persis, meaning land of the Persians. As the most extensive interactions the Ancient Greeks had with any outsider was with the Persians, however, Persis was originally referred to a region settled by Persians in the west shore of Lake Urmia, in the 9th century BC. The settlement was then shifted to the end of the Zagros Mountains. In 1935, Reza Shah requested the international community to refer to the country by its native name, opposition to the name change led to the reversal of the decision, and Professor Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, propagated a move to use Persia and Iran interchangeably
Iran
–
Cave painting in Doushe cave,
Lorestan, Iran,
8th millennium BC
Iran
–
Flag
Iran
–
A depiction of the united
Medes and
Persians in
Apadana,
Persepolis
Iran
–
Ruins of the
Gate of All Nations,
Persepolis
20.
Persian people
–
The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group that make up over half the population of Iran. They share a cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language. The ancient Persians were originally a branch of the ancient Iranian population who entered modern-day Iran by the early 10th century BC. The English term Persian derives from Latin Persia, itself deriving from Greek Persís, in the Bible, it is referred to as Parás —sometimes Paras uMadai —within the books of Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemya. Although Persis was originally one of the provinces of ancient Iran, varieties of this term were adopted through Greek sources, thus, in the Western world, the term Persian came to refer to all inhabitants of the country. 10th-century Iraqi historian Al-Masudi refers to Pahlavi, Dari and Azari as dialects of the Persian language, in 1333, medieval Moroccan traveler and scholar Ibn Battuta, referred to the people of Kabul as a specific sub-tribe of Persians. Lady Mary Sheil, in her observation of Iran during the Qajar era, describes Persians, Kurds and Leks to identify themselves as descendants of the ancient Persians. On March 21,1935, the king of Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi, issued a decree asking the international community to use the term Iran. However, the term Persian is still used to designate the predominant population of the Iranian peoples living in the Iranian cultural continent. The earliest known written record attributed to the Persians is from the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, the inscription mentions Parsua as a tribal chiefdom in modern-day western Iran. The ancient Persians were originally a branch of the Iranian population that, in the early 10th century BC. They were initially dominated by the Assyrians for much of the first three centuries after arriving in the region, however, they played a role in the downfall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Medes, another branch of population, founded the unified empire of Media as the regions dominant cultural and political power in c.625 BC. Meanwhile, the Persian dynasty of the Achaemenids formed a state to the central Median power. In c.552 BC, the Achaemenids began a revolution which led to the conquest of the empire by Cyrus II in c.550 BC. They spread their influence to the rest of what is called the Iranian Plateau, at its greatest extent, the Achaemenid Empire stretched from parts of Eastern Europe in the west, to the Indus Valley in the east, making it the largest empire the world had yet seen. The Achaemenids developed the infrastructure to support their growing influence, including the creation of Pasargadae and its legacy and impact on the kingdom of Macedon was also notably huge, even for centuries after the withdrawal of the Persians from Europe following the Greco-Persian Wars. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, until the Parthian era, the Iranian identity had an ethnic, linguistic, and religious value, however, it did not yet have a political import
Persian people
–
Costumes of an ancient Persian noblemen and soldiers.
Persian people
–
Geographic distribution of modern Iranian languages: Modern Persian (green) and other related Persian (some descendant of Middle Persian like Luri in Red) also shown in the map
Persian people
–
Greek
hoplite and Persian warrior depicted fighting, on an ancient
kylix, 5th century BC
Persian people
–
Tajiks in
Samarkand,
Uzbekistan
21.
Russia
–
Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
Russia
–
Kievan Rus' in the 11th century
Russia
–
Flag
Russia
–
The
Baptism of Kievans, by
Klavdy Lebedev
Russia
–
Sergius of Radonezh blessing
Dmitry Donskoy in
Trinity Sergius Lavra, before the
Battle of Kulikovo, depicted in a painting by
Ernst Lissner
22.
Sogdian alphabet
–
The Sogdian alphabet was originally used for the Sogdian language, a language in the Iranian family used by the people of Sogdia. The alphabet is derived from Syriac, the descendant script of the Aramaic alphabet, the Sogdian alphabet is one of three scripts used to write the Sogdian language, the others being the Manichaean alphabet and the Syriac alphabet. It was used throughout Central Asia, from the edge of Iran in the west, to China in the east, like the writing systems from which it is descended, the Sogdian writing system can be described as an abjad, but it also displays tendencies towards an alphabet. The script consists of 17 consonants, many of which have alternate forms for initial, middle, as in the Aramaic alphabet, long vowels were commonly written with matres lectionis, the consonants aleph, yodh and waw. However, unlike Aramaic and most abjads, these consonant signs would also serve to express the short vowels. To disambiguate long vowels from short ones, an additional aleph could be written before the sign denoting the long vowel, the alphabet also includes several diacritics, which were used inconsistently. It is written right to left, but by the time it had evolved into its child system. Voiced and voiceless fricatives are not distinguished in the script. Aramaic logograms also appear in the script, remnants of adapting the Aramaic alphabet to the Sogdian language and these logograms are used mainly for functional words such as pronouns, articles, prepositions, and conjunctions. * those letters are not used in Sogdian words, Early Sogdian dates to the early fourth century C. E. and is characterized by distinct, separated graphemes. The sutra script appears around 500 C. E. while the cursive script develops approximately a century later, the cursive script is thus named because its letters are connected with a base line. Since many letters in the script are extremely similar in form, to the point of being indistinguishable. As the Sogdian alphabet became more cursive and more stylized, some became more difficult to distinguish, or were distinguished only in final position. The Sogdian script is known from texts of Buddhism, Manichaeism, and Christianity, as well as from secular sources such as letters, coins. The oldest known Sogdian documents are the Ancient Letters, found in 1920 by Sir Aurel Stein in a watchtower near Dunhuang and these letters date to approximately 312-313 C. E. and are written in Early Sogdian. The Sogdian Buddhist texts, written in the script, are younger. They were found during the first two decades of the century in one of the caves of the Thousand Buddhas in the Chinese province of Gansu. The bulk of these reside in the British Museum, the Bibliothèque nationale de France
Sogdian alphabet
–
Sogdian text. Manichaean Letter
Sogdian alphabet
–
Sogdian script on the Bugut Inscription (585), central
Mongolia. Sogdian is the distant ancestor of the Mongolian script.
23.
Syriac alphabet
–
The Syriac alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Syriac language from the 1st century AD. Syriac is written right to left. It is a script where some, but not all. The alphabet consists of 22 letters, all of which are consonants, the vowel sounds are supplied either by the readers memory or by optional diacritic marks. In addition to the sounds of the language, the letters of the Syriac alphabet can be used to represent numbers in a similar to Hebrew. When Arabic began to be the dominant spoken language in the Fertile Crescent, Malayalam was also written with Syriac script and was called Suriyani Malayalam. These writings are usually called Karshuni or Garshuni, Garshuni is often used today by Neo-Aramaic speakers in written communication such as letters and fliers. There are three variants of the Syriac alphabet, ʾEsṭrangēlā, Maḏnḥāyā, and Serṭā. The oldest and classical form of the alphabet is ʾEsṭrangēlā, although ʾEsṭrangēlā is no longer used as the main script for writing Syriac, it has received some revival since the 10th century. It is often used in publications, in titles and inscriptions. In some older manuscripts and inscriptions it is possible for any letter to join to the left, vowel marks are usually not used with ʾEsṭrangēlā. The East Syriac dialect is written in the Maḏnḥāyā form of the alphabet. Other names for the script include Swāḏāyā, ʾĀṯūrāyā, Kaldāyā, the Eastern script resembles ʾEsṭrangēlā more closely than the Western script, being somewhat a midway point between the two. Some transliteration schemes find its inclusion necessary for showing spirantization or for historical reasons, whether because its distribution is mostly predictable or because its pronunciation was lost, neither the East nor West variants of the alphabet have a sign to represent the schwa. The West Syriac dialect is written in the Serṭā form of the alphabet, also known as the Pšīṭā, Maronite. Most of the letters are derived from ʾEsṭrangēlā, but are simplified. A cursive, chancery hand is evidenced in the earliest Syriac manuscripts, from the 8th century, the simpler Serṭā style came into fashion, perhaps because of its more economical use of parchment. The Nabataean alphabet was based on this form of Syriac handwriting, lowercase Omega, used only in the vocative interjection ʾō
Syriac alphabet
–
Estrangela alphabet
Syriac alphabet
–
11th century book in Syriac Serṭā.
Syriac alphabet
–
Isho or Eesho, the
Aramaic name of
Jesus
24.
Manichaean alphabet
–
Unlike Pahlavi, Manichaean script reveals influences from Sogdian script, which in turn descends from the Syriac branch of Aramaic. Manichaean script is so named because Manichaean texts attribute its design to Mani himself, Middle Persian is written with this alphabet. Older Manichaean texts appear in a script and language that is identifiable as Syriac-Aramaic. Later texts using Manichaean script are attested in the literature of three Middle Iranian language ethnolects, the dialect of Sogdiana in the east, which had a large Manichean population, the dialect of Parthia in the northeast, which is indistinguishable from Medean of the northwest. The dialect of Parsa in southwest Iran, formerly and properly known as Parsi, Manichaean script was not the only script used to render Manichaean manuscripts. When writing in Sogdian, which was frequently the case, Manichaean scribes frequently used Sogdian script, likewise, outside Manichaeism, the dialect of Parsa was also recorded in other systems, including Pahlavi script and Avestan script. As Manichaeism was persecuted around Mesopotamia and the regions of the Sasanian Empire, its origins, it became well-established in Central Asia, in the 19th century, German expeditions discovered a number of Manichaean manuscripts at Bulayiq on the Silk Road, near Turpan in north-west China. Many of these manuscripts are preserved in Berlin. Like most abjads, Manichaean is written right to left. There are obligatory conjuncts for certain combinations involving n and y, the numbers are built from units of 1,5,10,20, and 100 and can be visually identifiable. There are also some forms of certain characters. The Manichaean alphabet was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0, photos of the original texts written in manichaean script discovered at Turpan Initial Iranian conference proposing Unicode for Manichaean Script
Manichaean alphabet
–
Table of letters from Manichaean script, with their Latin transliterations.
25.
Aramaic alphabet
–
The ancient Aramaic alphabet is adapted from the Phoenician alphabet and became distinctive from it by the 8th century BCE. It was used to write the Aramaic language and had displaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet for the writing of Hebrew, the letters all represent consonants, some of which are also used as matres lectionis to indicate long vowels. Rather, it is a different type, the earliest inscriptions in the Aramaic language use the Phoenician alphabet. Over time, the alphabet developed into the form shown below, Aramaic gradually became the lingua franca throughout the Middle East, with the script at first complementing and then displacing Assyrian cuneiform, as the predominant writing system. Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised, its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect and was influenced by Old Persian. Both were in use through the Achaemenid Persian period, but the cursive form steadily gained ground over the lapidary, the Aramaic script would survive as the essential characteristics of the Iranian Pahlavi writing system. A group of 30 Aramaic documents from Bactria has been recently discovered, an analysis was published in November 2006. The texts, which were rendered on leather, reflect the use of Aramaic in the 4th century BC in the Persian Achaemenid administration of Bactria, the widespread usage of Achaemenid Aramaic in the Middle East led to the gradual adoption of the Aramaic alphabet for writing Hebrew. Formerly, Hebrew had been using an alphabet closer in form to that of Phoenician. After the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the unity of the Imperial Aramaic script was lost, the Hebrew and Nabataean alphabets, as they stood by the Roman era, were little changed in style from the Imperial Aramaic alphabet. A cursive Hebrew variant developed from the early centuries AD, the Old Turkic script is generally considered to have its ultimate origins in Aramaic, in particular via the Pahlavi or Sogdian alphabets, as suggested by V. Thomsen, or possibly via Karosthi. Aramaic is also considered to be the most likely source of the Brahmi script, ancestor of the Brahmic family of scripts, today, Biblical Aramaic, Jewish Neo-Aramaic dialects and the Aramaic language of the Talmud are written in the Hebrew alphabet. Syriac and Christian Neo-Aramaic dialects are written in the Syriac alphabet, Mandaic is written in the Mandaic alphabet. The near-identity of the Aramaic and the classical Hebrew alphabets caused Aramaic text to be mostly in the standard Hebrew script in scholarly literature. In Maloula, one of few surviving communities in which a Western Aramaic dialect is still spoken and they started to use the Syriac alphabet instead. In Aramaic writing, Waw and Yodh serve a double function, originally, they represented only the consonants w and y, but they were later adopted to indicate the long vowels ū and ī respectively as well. In the latter role, they are known as matres lectionis or mothers of reading. Ālap, likewise, has some of the characteristics of a mater lectionis because in initial positions, it indicates a glottal stop, among Jews, the influence of Hebrew often led to the use of Hē instead, at the end of a word
Aramaic alphabet
–
Bilingual Greek and Aramaic inscription by the
Mauryan emperor
Ashoka the Great at
Kandahar,
Afghanistan, 3rd century BC
26.
Islam
–
Islam is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion which professes that there is only one and incomparable God and that Muhammad is the last messenger of God. It is the worlds second-largest religion and the major religion in the world, with over 1.7 billion followers or 23% of the global population. Islam teaches that God is merciful, all-powerful, and unique, and He has guided mankind through revealed scriptures, natural signs, and a line of prophets sealed by Muhammad. The primary scriptures of Islam are the Quran, viewed by Muslims as the word of God. Muslims believe that Islam is the original, complete and universal version of a faith that was revealed many times before through prophets including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses. As for the Quran, Muslims consider it to be the unaltered, certain religious rites and customs are observed by the Muslims in their family and social life, while social responsibilities to parents, relatives, and neighbors have also been defined. Besides, the Quran and the sunnah of Muhammad prescribe a comprehensive body of moral guidelines for Muslims to be followed in their personal, social, political, Islam began in the early 7th century. Originating in Mecca, it spread in the Arabian Peninsula. The expansion of the Muslim world involved various caliphates and empires, traders, most Muslims are of one of two denominations, Sunni or Shia. Islam is the dominant religion in the Middle East, North Africa, sizable Muslim communities are also found in Horn of Africa, Europe, China, Russia, Mainland Southeast Asia, Philippines, Northern Borneo, Caucasus and the Americas. Converts and immigrant communities are found in almost every part of the world, Islam is a verbal noun originating from the triliteral root s-l-m which forms a large class of words mostly relating to concepts of wholeness, submission, safeness and peace. In a religious context it means voluntary submission to God, Islām is the verbal noun of Form IV of the root, and means submission or surrender. Muslim, the word for an adherent of Islam, is the active participle of the verb form. The word sometimes has connotations in its various occurrences in the Quran. In some verses, there is stress on the quality of Islam as a state, Whomsoever God desires to guide. Other verses connect Islām and dīn, Today, I have perfected your religion for you, I have completed My blessing upon you, still others describe Islam as an action of returning to God—more than just a verbal affirmation of faith. In the Hadith of Gabriel, islām is presented as one part of a triad that also includes imān, Islam was historically called Muhammadanism in Anglophone societies. This term has fallen out of use and is said to be offensive because it suggests that a human being rather than God is central to Muslims religion
Islam
–
The
Kaaba, in
Mecca,
Hejaz region, today's
Saudi Arabia, is the
center of Islam.
Muslims from all over the world gather there to
pray in unity.
Islam
–
The dome of the
Carol I Mosque in
Constanța,
Romania, topped by the
Islamic crescent
Islam
–
Medallion showing "
Allah " (
God) in
Hagia Sophia,
Istanbul,
Turkey.
Islam
–
An
angel presenting
Muhammad and his companions with a miniature city. In the
Topkapi Palace Library,
Istanbul.
27.
Persian language
–
Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and it is mostly written in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages, Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis, hence the name Persian. A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone, there are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also been a cultural language in other regions of Western Asia, Central Asia. It also exerted influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic. Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family, other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, in Persian, the language is known by several names, Western Persian, Parsi or Farsi has been the name used by all native speakers until the 20th century. Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for reasons, in English. Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Native Iranian Persian speakers call it Fārsi, Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Muslim conquest of Persia, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The origin of the name Farsi and the place of origin of the language which is Fars Province is the Arabicized form of Pārs, in English, this language has historically been known as Persian, though Farsi has also gained some currency. Farsi is encountered in some literature as a name for the language. In modern English the word Farsi refers to the language while Parsi describes Zoroastrians, some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of Farsi in their articles. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name Persian for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan and this consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian. Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages
Persian language
–
Old Persian
Persian language
–
Ferdowsi 's
Shahnameh
Persian language
–
Kalilah va Dimna, an influential work in Persian literature.
28.
Soviet Union
–
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
Soviet Union
–
Vladimir Lenin addressing a crowd with Trotsky, 1920
Soviet Union
–
Flag
Soviet Union
–
Stalin and
Nikolai Yezhov, head of the
NKVD. After Yezhov was executed, he was
edited out of the image.
Soviet Union
29.
Central Asia
–
Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. It is also referred to as the -stans as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix -stan. Central Asias five former Soviet republics are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. It has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, the Silk Road connected Muslim lands with the people of Europe, India, and China. This crossroads position has intensified the conflict between tribalism and traditionalism and modernization, in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was predominantly Iranian, peopled by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Parthians. Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan, the idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions, historically built political geography and geoculture are two significant parameters widely used in the scholarly literature about the definitions of the Central Asia. The most limited definition was the one of the Soviet Union. This definition was also used outside the USSR during this period. However, the Russian culture has two terms, Средняя Азия and Центральная Азия. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia, the UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity and these areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan, the Tibetans and Ladakhi are also included. Insofar, most of the peoples are considered the indigenous peoples of the vast region. Central Asia is a large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains, vast deserts. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe. Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming, the Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan Mountains, 116°–118° E. Central Asia has the following geographic extremes, The worlds northernmost desert, at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, the Northern Hemispheres southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17′ N
Central Asia
–
On the southern shore of Issyk Kul lake,
Issyk Kul Region.
Central Asia
–
Central Asia
Central Asia
–
Uzbek men from
Khiva, ca. 1861–1880
Central Asia
–
Kazakh man on a horse with golden eagle
30.
Abjad
–
An abjad is a type of writing system where each symbol stands for a consonant, leaving the reader to supply the appropriate vowel. The name abjad is derived from pronouncing the first letters of the Arabic alphabet in order, the ordering of Arabic letters used to match that of the older Hebrew, Phoenician and Semitic alphabets, ʾ b g d. According to the formulations of Daniels, abjads differ from alphabets in that only consonants, abugidas mark the vowels with a diacritic, a minor attachment to the letter, or a standalone glyph. Some abugidas use a symbol to suppress the inherent vowel so that the consonant alone can be properly represented. In a syllabary, a grapheme denotes a syllable, that is. This caused fatal effects on terminology in general and especially in Semitic philology, the first abjad to gain widespread usage was the Phoenician abjad. Unlike other contemporary scripts, such as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs and this made the script easy to learn, and seafaring Phoenician merchants took the script wherever they went. Phoenician gave rise to a number of new writing systems, including the Greek alphabet and Aramaic, the Greek alphabet evolved into the modern western alphabets, such as Latin and Cyrillic, while Aramaic became the ancestor of many modern abjads and abugidas of Asia. Impure abjads have characters for vowels, optional vowel diacritics. The term pure abjad refers to scripts entirely lacking in vowel indicators and this practice was at first rare and limited in scope, but it became increasingly common and more developed in later times. In the 9th century BC, the Greeks adapted the Phoenician script for use in their own language, the phonetic structure of the Greek language created too many ambiguities when the vowels went unrepresented, so the script was modified. They did not need letters for the sounds represented by aleph, he, heth or ayin. The letters waw and yod were also adapted into vowel signs, along with he, the major innovation of Greek was to dedicate these symbols exclusively and unambiguously to vowel sounds that could be combined arbitrarily with consonants. Abugidas developed along a different route. The basic consonantal symbol was considered to have an inherent a vowel sound, hooks or short lines attached to various parts of the basic letter modify the vowel. In this way, the South Arabian alphabet evolved into the Geez alphabet between the 5th century BC and the 5th century AD, similarly, around the 3rd century BC, the Brāhmī script developed. The other major family of abugidas, Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, was developed in the 1840s by missionary and linguist James Evans for the Cree. Evans used features of Devanagari script and Pitman shorthand to create his initial abugida, later in the 19th century, other missionaries adapted Evans system to other Canadian aboriginal languages
Abjad
–
Writing systems
Abjad
–
A specimen of Proto-Sinaitic script containing a phrase which may mean 'to
Baalat '. The line running from the upper left to lower right reads mt l b c lt.
31.
Turcophone
–
Outside of Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official EU language, in 1928, as one of Atatürks Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination, the basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics, Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a person out of respect. Turkic languages belong to the Altaic language group, the Turkic family comprises some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia, erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the second Turk Kaghanate. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, following the adoption of Islam c. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a reform to replace loanwords of Arabic. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the terms of Arabic or Persian origin. The past few decades have seen the work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance, however, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka, political party—also failed to meet with popular approval, some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings, for example betik is now used to mean script in computer science
Turcophone
–
Old Turkic inscription with the
Orkhon script (c. 8th century).
Kyzyl, Russia
Turcophone
–
Countries where Turkish is an official language
Turcophone
–
Road signs in
Prizren,
Republic of Kosovo. Official languages are:
Albanian (top),
Serbian (middle) and Turkish (bottom).
Turcophone
–
Map of the main subgroups of
Turkish dialects.
32.
Turkic language
–
The Turkic languages are a language family of at least thirty-five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples from Southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China. Turkic languages are spoken as a language by some 170 million people. The Turkic language with the greatest number of speakers is Turkish, spoken mainly in Anatolia and the Balkans, characteristic features of Turkish, such as vowel harmony, agglutination, and lack of grammatical gender, are universal within the Turkic family. Apparent similarities with the Uralic languages family even caused these families to be regarded as one for a time under the hypothesis of Ural-Altaic languages. Turkic languages are languages, have vowel harmony, extensive agglutination by means of suffixes, and lack of grammatical articles, noun classes. Subject–object–verb word order is universal within the family, the geographical distribution of Turkic-speaking peoples across Eurasia ranges from the North-East of Siberia to Turkey in the West, since the Ottoman era. The two groups shared a religion, Tengrism, and there exists a multitude of evident loanwords between Turkic languages and Mongolic languages, although the loans were bidirectional, today Turkic loanwords constitute the largest foreign component in Mongolian vocabulary. The most famous of these loanwords include lion, gold, the Compendium of the Turkic Dialects, written during the 11th century AD by Kaşgarlı Mahmud of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, constitutes an early linguistic treatment of the family. The Compendium is the first comprehensive dictionary of the Turkic languages and it mainly pertains to the Southwestern branch of the family. The earliest records of the language spoken by Volga Bulgars, the parent to todays Chuvash language, are dated to the 13th–14th centuries AD. With the Turkic expansion during the Early Middle Ages, Turkic languages, in the course of just a few centuries, spread across Central Asia, various terminologies from the Turkic languages have passed into Persian, Hindustani, Russian, Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Arabic. This has obscured the historical developments within each language and/or language group, the modern genetic classification schemes for Turkic are still largely indebted to Samoilovich. It is not clear when two major types of Turkic can be assumed to have actually diverged. With less certainty, the Southwestern, Northwestern, Southeastern and Oghur groups may further be summarized as West Turkic, the following isoglosses are traditionally used in the classification of the Turkic languages, Rhoticisation, e. g. in the last consonant of the word for nine *toqqız. This separates the Oghur branch, which exhibits /r/, from the rest of Turkic, in this case, rhoticisation refers to the development of *-/r/, *-/z/, and *-/d/ to /r/, *-/k/, *-/kh/ in this branch. See Antonov and Jacques on the debate concerning rhotacism and lambdacism in Turkic and this separates Khalaj as a peripheral language. The following table is based upon the classification presented by Lars Johanson The following is a brief comparison of cognates among the basic vocabulary across the Turkic language family. Also, there may be shifts in the meaning from one language to another, in some cases the form given is found only in some dialects of the language, or a loanword is much more common
Turkic language
–
Turkic languages
33.
Literacy
–
Literacy is traditionally understood as the ability to read, write, and use arithmetic. The concept of literacy is expanding in OECD countries to include skills to access knowledge through technology and ability to assess complex contexts. A person who travels and resides in a country but is unable to read or write in the language of the host country would also be regarded by the locals as being illiterate. The key to literacy is reading development, a progression of skills that begins with the ability to understand words and decode written words. The inability to do so is called illiteracy or analphabetism, Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society. Literacy is thought to have first emerged with the development of numeracy, script developed independently at least four times in human history in Mesopotamia, Egypt, lowland Mesoamerica, and China. The earliest forms of written communication originated in Sumer, located in southern Mesopotamia about 3500-3000 BCE, writing systems in Mesopotamia first emerged from a recording system in which people used impressed token markings to manage trade and agricultural production. The token system served as a precursor to early cuneiform writing once people began recording information on clay tablets, proto-cuneiform texts exhibit not only numerical signs, but also ideograms depicting objects being counted. Egyptian hieroglyphs emerged from 3300-3100 BCE and depicted royal iconography that emphasized power amongst other elites, the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system was the first notation system to have phonetic values. Writing in lowland Mesoamerica was first put into practice by the Olmec and Zapotec civilizations in 900-400 BCE and these civilizations used glyphic writing and bar-and-dot numerical notation systems for purposes related to royal iconography and calendar systems. The earliest written notations in China date back to the Shang Dynasty in 1200 BCE and these systematic notations were found inscribed on bones and recorded sacrifices made, tributes received, and animals hunted, which were activities of the elite. These oracle-bone inscriptions were the ancestors of modern Chinese script and contained logosyllabic script. According to social anthropologist Jack Goody, there are two interpretations that regard the origin of the alphabet, many classical scholars, such as historian Ignace Gelb, credit the Ancient Greeks for creating the first alphabetic system that used distinctive signs for consonants and vowels. Thus, many argue that the ancient Semitic-speaking peoples of northern Canaan invented the consonantal alphabet as early as 1500 BCE. Much of this development is credited to English archeologist Flinders Petrie. Ten years later, English Egyptologist Alan Gardiner reasoned that these contain an alphabet. In 1948, William F. Albright deciphered the text using additional evidence that had been discovered subsequent to Goodys findings and this included a series of inscriptions from Ugarit, discovered in 1929 by French archaeologist Claude F. A. Schaeffer. Some of these inscriptions were mythological texts that consisted of a 32-letter cuneiform consonantal alphabet, another significant discovery was made in 1953 when three arrowheads were uncovered, each containing identical Canaanite inscriptions from twelfth century BCE
Literacy
–
Brain areas involved in literacy acquisition
Literacy
–
World illiteracy halved between 1970 and 2005.
Literacy
–
Bill of sale of a male slave and a building in Shuruppak,
Sumerian tablet, circa 2600 BC
Literacy
–
Dutch schoolmaster and children, 1662
34.
Russification
–
Russification or Russianization is a form of cultural assimilation process during which non-Russian communities, voluntarily or not, give up their culture and language in favor of the Russian one. The major areas of Russification are politics and culture, in politics, an element of Russification is assigning Russian nationals to leading administrative positions in national institutions. In culture, Russification primarily amounts to domination of the Russian language in official business, the shifts in demographics in favour of the ethnic Russian population are sometimes considered as a form of Russification as well. In this sense, although Russification is usually conflated across Russification, Russianization, Russianization and Sovietization, for example, did not automatically lead to Russification – change in language or self-identity of non-Russian peoples to being Russian. An early case of Russification took place in the 16th century in the conquered Khanate of Kazan, the main elements of this process were Christianization and implementation of the Russian language as the sole administrative language. After the Russian defeat in the Crimean War in 1856 and the Polish rebellion of 1863, Russia was populated by many minority groups, and forcing them to accept the Russian culture was an attempt to prevent self-determinationist tendencies and separatism. In the 19th century, Russian settlers on traditional Kirghiz land drove many of the Kirghiz over the border to China, indigenous to large parts of western and central Russia are the Uralic peoples, such as the Vepsians, Mordvins, Maris and Permians. Historically, the Russification of Uralic peoples begins already with the eastward expansion of the East Slavs. The Russification of the Komi began in the 13th to 14th centuries, komi-Russian bilingualism has become the norm over the 19th and has led to increasing Russian influence in the Komi language. As a result, several of Russias indigenous languages and cultures are considered endangered. E. g. between the 1989 and 2002 censuses, the numbers of the Mordvins have totalled over 100,000. Russification intensified after the November Uprising of 1831, and in particular after the January Uprising of 1863, in 1864, the Polish and Belarusian languages were banned in public places, in the 1880s, Polish was banned in schools and on school grounds and offices of Congress Poland. Research and teaching of the Polish language, history or of Catholicism were forbidden, illiteracy rose as Poles refused to learn Russian. Students were beaten for resisting Russification, a Polish underground education network was formed, including the famous Flying University. According to Russian estimates, by 1901 one-third of the inhabitants in the Congress Kingdom was involved in education based on Polish literature. From 1840s Russia even considered introducing Cyrillic script for spelling Polish language, with the first school books printed in 1860s, a similar development took place in Lithuania. Muravyov also banned the use of Latin and Gothic scripts in publishing and he was reported saying, What the Russian bayonet didnt accomplish, the Russian school will. The knygnešiai became a symbol of the resistance of Lithuanians against Russification, the campaign also promoted the Russian Orthodox faith over Catholicism
Russification
–
Religion was an element of Russification in the Russian Empire. This
Roman Catholic Church in
Warsaw was seized and converted into a
Russian Orthodox Church while Warsaw was a part of the
Russian Empire.
Russification
Russification
–
Two issues of the same popular prayer book, Auksa altorius (Golden Altar). The one on the left was illegal [
citation needed] because it was printed in the Latin alphabet. The one on the right was legal and paid for by the government.
Russification
35.
Education
–
Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, but learners may also educate themselves. Education can take place in formal or informal settings and any experience that has an effect on the way one thinks, feels. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy, in most regions education is compulsory up to a certain age. Etymologically, the education is derived from the Latin ēducātiō from ēducō which is related to the homonym ēdūcō from ē-. Education began in prehistory, as trained the young in the knowledge. In pre-literate societies this was achieved orally and through imitation, story-telling passed knowledge, values, and skills from one generation to the next. As cultures began to extend their knowledge beyond skills that could be learned through imitation. Schools existed in Egypt at the time of the Middle Kingdom, plato founded the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in Europe. The city of Alexandria in Egypt, established in 330 BCE, there, the great Library of Alexandria was built in the 3rd century BCE. European civilizations suffered a collapse of literacy and organization following the fall of Rome in CE476, after the Fall of Rome, the Catholic Church became the sole preserver of literate scholarship in Western Europe. The church established cathedral schools in the Early Middle Ages as centres of advanced education, some of these establishments ultimately evolved into medieval universities and forebears of many of Europes modern universities. During the High Middle Ages, Chartres Cathedral operated the famous, founded in 1088, the University of Bologne is considered the first, and the oldest continually operating university. The Renaissance in Europe ushered in a new age of scientific and intellectual inquiry and appreciation of ancient Greek, around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg developed a printing press, which allowed works of literature to spread more quickly. The European Age of Empires saw European ideas of education in philosophy, religion, arts, the Enlightenment saw the emergence of a more secular educational outlook in Europe. In most countries today, full-time education, whether at school or otherwise, is compulsory for all children up to a certain age, formal education occurs in a structured environment whose explicit purpose is teaching students. Usually, formal education takes place in a environment with classrooms of multiple students learning together with a trained, certified teacher of the subject. Most school systems are designed around a set of values or ideals that govern all educational choices in that system, such choices include curriculum, organizational models, design of the physical learning spaces, student-teacher interactions, methods of assessment, class size, educational activities, and more
Education
–
Lecture at the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering,
CTU, in Prague
Education
–
School children sitting in the shade of an orchard in Bamozai, near Gardez, Paktya Province,
Afghanistan
Education
–
Student participants in the
FIRST Robotics Competition, Washington, D.C.
Education
–
Nalanda, ancient center for higher learning
36.
Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan
–
The Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan is an banned Islamist political party in Tajikistan. Until 2015, it was the only legal Islamist party in Central Asia, the group was founded in 1990. In 1992, the party hosted a conference in Saratov, Russia, attended by Islamists from ex-Soviet central Asia, when Tajikistan became independent, it was banned in 1993. It fought with the United Tajik Opposition and the Garmi people against the government during the Tajik Civil War but was legalised following peace accords in 1998, in 1999 it was the second largest party in Tajikistan. The IRPs long-running leader, Said Abdullo Nuri, died in August 2006 of cancer, the party boycotted the 2006 presidential election. At the legislative elections held 27 February and 13 March 2005 the party won 8% of the vote and 2 out of 63 seats. At the elections held on 1 March 2015 the Party failed to surpass the 5% vote barrier, after a ban in 2015, Tajikistan designated the party as a terrorist organization. In April 2014, the party denounced official harassment and alleged government attempts to undermine their credibility and electoral chances, as parliamentary elections were scheduled in 2015. In the runup to the 1 March 2015 legislative elections, a wide-ranging government-induced campaign, to demonize the party, on 28 August 2015, the government of Tajikistan demanded the party halt its illegal activities as it attempted to hold a party congress. The party claimed that the government was attempting to close it down, official website Olimova, Saodat and Muzaffar Olimov. The Islamic Renaissance Party _Conciliation Resources_
Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan
–
Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan Ҳизби Наҳзати Исломии Тоҷикистон
37.
Diacritic marks
–
A diacritic – also diacritical mark, diacritical point, or diacritical sign – is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek διακριτικός, from διακρίνω, diacritic is primarily an adjective, though sometimes used as a noun, whereas diacritical is only ever an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave, are often called accents, diacritical marks may appear above or below a letter, or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters. The main use of marks in the Latin script is to change the sound-values of the letters to which they are added. In other Latin alphabets, they may distinguish between homonyms, such as the French là versus la that are both pronounced /la/, in Gaelic type, a dot over a consonant indicates lenition of the consonant in question. In other alphabetic systems, diacritical marks may perform other functions, vowel pointing systems, namely the Arabic harakat and the Hebrew niqqud systems, indicate vowels that are not conveyed by the basic alphabet. The Indic virama and the Arabic sukūn mark the absence of a vowel, in the Hanyu Pinyin official romanization system for Chinese, diacritics are used to mark the tones of the syllables in which the marked vowels occur. In orthography and collation, a letter modified by a diacritic may be treated either as a new and this varies from language to language, and may vary from case to case within a language. ◌ː – triangular colon, used in the IPA to mark long vowels, not all diacritics occur adjacent to the letter they modify. In the Wali language of Ghana, for example, an apostrophe indicates a change of vowel quality, because of vowel harmony, all vowels in a word are affected, so the scope of the diacritic is the entire word. In abugida scripts, like those used to write Hindi and Thai, diacritics indicate vowels, the tittle on the letter i of the Latin alphabet originated as a diacritic to clearly distinguish i from the minims of adjacent letters. It first appeared in the 11th century in the sequence ii, then spread to i adjacent to m, n, u, the j, originally a variant of i, inherited the tittle. The shape of the diacritic developed from initially resembling todays acute accent to a flourish by the 15th century. With the advent of Roman type it was reduced to the round dot we have today, tanwīn symbols, Serve a grammatical role in Arabic. The sign ـً is most commonly written in combination with alif, waṣla, Comes most commonly at the beginning of a word. Indicates a type of hamza that is pronounced only when the letter is read at the beginning of the talk, ḥarakāt, fatḥa kasra ḍamma sukūn The ḥarakāt or vowel points serve two purposes, They serve as a phonetic guide. They indicate the presence of short vowels or their absence, at the last letter of a word, the vowel point reflects the inflection case or conjugation mood. For nouns, The ḍamma is for the nominative, fatḥa for the accusative, for verbs, the ḍamma is for the imperfective, fatḥa for the perfective, and the sukūn is for verbs in the imperative or jussive moods
Diacritic marks
–
Hunminjeongeum, the Korean alphabet
Diacritic marks
–
Genesis 1:9 "And God said, Let the waters be collected". Letters in black,
niqqud in red,
cantillation in blue
Diacritic marks
–
Blackboard used in class at
Harvard shows students' efforts at placing the
ü and
acute accent diacritic used in
Spanish orthography.
38.
Russian Revolution
–
The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, in the second revolution that October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a communist state. The February Revolution was a revolution focused around Petrograd, then capital of Russia, in the chaos, members of the Imperial parliament assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government. The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution, the February Revolution took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War, which left much of the Russian Army in a state of mutiny. During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests and many strikes, when the Provisional Government chose to continue fighting the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions campaigned for stopping the conflict. The Bolsheviks turned workers militias under their control into the Red Guards over which they exerted substantial control, the Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918, soon after, civil war erupted among the Reds, the Whites, the independence movements and the non-Bolshevik socialists. It continued for years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists. In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, the Russian Revolution of 1905 was said to be a major factor to the February Revolutions of 1917. The events of Bloody Sunday triggered a line of protests, a council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created in all this chaos, and the beginning of a communist political protest had begun. World War I prompted a Russian outcry directed at Tsar Nicholas II and it was another major factor contributing to the retaliation of the Russian Communists against their royal opponents. However, the problems were merely administrative, and not industrial as Germany was producing great amounts of munitions whilst constantly fighting on two major battlefronts, the war also developed a weariness in the city, owing to a lack of food in response to the disruption of agriculture. Food scarcity had become a problem in Russia, but the cause of this did not lie in any failure of the harvests. As a result, they tended to hoard their grain and to revert to subsistence farming, thus the cities were constantly short of food. At the same time rising prices led to demands for wages in the factories. The outcome of all this, however, was a criticism of the government rather than any war-weariness. The original fever of excitement, which had caused the name of St. Heavy losses during the war also strengthened thoughts that Tsar Nicholas II was unfit to rule, the Liberals were now better placed to voice their complaints, since they were participating more fully through a variety of voluntary organizations
Russian Revolution
–
Bolshevik forces marching on
Red Square
Russian Revolution
–
Soldiers blocking
Narva Gate on
Bloody Sunday
Russian Revolution
–
Russian soldiers marching in Petrograd in February 1917
Russian Revolution
–
The Petrograd Soviet Assembly meeting in 1917
39.
Letter case
–
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger upper case and smaller lower case in the written representation of certain languages. The writing systems that distinguish between the upper and lower case have two sets of letters, with each letter in one set usually having an equivalent in the other set. Basically, the two variants are alternative representations of the same letter, they have the same name and pronunciation. Letter case is generally applied in a fashion, with both upper- and lower-case letters appearing in a given piece of text. The choice of case is often prescribed by the grammar of a language or by the conventions of a particular discipline, in mathematics, letter case may indicate the relationship between objects, with upper-case letters often representing superior objects. In some contexts, it is conventional to use only one case, the terms upper case and lower case can be written as two consecutive words, connected with a hyphen, or as a single word. These terms originated from the layouts of the shallow drawers called type cases used to hold the movable type for letterpress printing. Traditionally, the letters were stored in a separate case that was located above the case that held the small letters. Majuscule, for palaeographers, is technically any script in which the letters have very few or very short ascenders and descenders, or none at all. By virtue of their impact, this made the term majuscule an apt descriptor for what much later came to be more commonly referred to as uppercase letters. The word is often spelled miniscule, by association with the word miniature. This has traditionally been regarded as a mistake, but is now so common that some dictionaries tend to accept it as a nonstandard or variant spelling. Miniscule is still less likely, however, to be used in reference to lower-case letters, the glyphs of lower-case letters can resemble smaller forms of the upper-case glyphs restricted to the base band or can look hardly related. There is more variation in the height of the minuscules, as some of them have higher or lower than the typical size. In Times New Roman, for instance, b, d, f, h, k, l, t are the letters with ascenders, and g, j, p, q, y are the ones with descenders. In addition, with old-style numerals still used by traditional or classical fonts,6 and 8 make up the ascender set. Writing systems using two separate cases are bicameral scripts, languages that use the Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Coptic, Armenian, Adlam, Varang Kshiti, Cherokee, and Osage scripts use letter cases in their written form as an aid to clarity. Other bicameral scripts, which are not used for any modern languages, are Old Hungarian, Glagolitic, the Georgian alphabet has several variants, and there were attempts to use them as different cases, but the modern written Georgian language does not distinguish case
Letter case
–
Divided upper and lower type cases for movable type
Letter case
–
The lower-case "a" and upper-case "a" are the two case variants of the first letter in the alphabet.
Letter case
–
Williamsburg 18th-century press letters
Letter case
–
Latin majuscule inscription on the
Arch of Titus (82 AD)
40.
Jews
–
The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד Yid, ייִדן, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group
Jews
–
Baruch Spinoza
Jews
–
Map of
Canaan
Jews
–
David Ben-Gurion
Jews
–
George Gershwin
41.
Turkish alphabet
–
This alphabet represents modern Turkish pronunciation with a high degree of accuracy and specificity. It is the current official alphabet and the latest in a series of distinct alphabets used in different eras, the letters of the Turkish alphabet are, Of these 29 letters, eight are vowels, the 21 others are consonants. The letters Q, W, and X of the ISO basic Latin alphabet do not occur in the Turkish alphabet, while dotted and dotless I are distinct letters in Turkish so that i does not become I when capitalized. Turkish also uses a, i and u with the circumflex, in the case of length distinction, these letters are used for old Arabic and Persian borrowings from the Ottoman Turkish period, most of which have been eliminated from the language. Native Turkish words have no vowel length distinction, and for them the circumflex is used solely to indicate palatalization, the names of the vowel letters are the vowels themselves, whereas the names of the consonant letters are the consonant plus e. The following table presents the Turkish letters, the sounds they correspond to in International Phonetic Alphabet, the earliest known Turkish alphabet is the Orkhon script, also known as the Old Turkic alphabet, the first surviving evidence of which dates from the 7th century. In general, Turkic languages have been written in a number of different alphabets including Uyghur, Cyrillic, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Turkish was written using a Turkish form of the Arabic script for over a thousand years. It was well suited to write Ottoman Turkish which incorporated a great deal of Arabic, however, it was poorly suited to the Turkish part of the vocabulary. Whereas Arabic is rich in consonants but poor in vowels, Turkish is exactly the opposite, the script was thus inadequate at representing Turkish phonemes. Some could be expressed using four different Arabic signs, others could not be expressed at all, the introduction of the telegraph and printing press in the 19th century exposed further weaknesses in the Arabic script. The Turkic Kipchak Cuman language was written in Latin alphabet like in the Codex Cumanicus, some Turkish reformists promoted the adoption of the Latin script well before Atatürks reforms. In 1862, during a period of reform, the statesman Münuf Pasha advocated a reform of the alphabet. At the start of the 20th century similar proposals were made by writers associated with the Young Turks movement, including Hüseyin Cahit, Abdullah Cevdet. The issue was raised again in 1923 during the first Economic Congress of the newly founded Turkish Republic, a move away from the Arabic script was strongly opposed by conservative and religious elements. It was argued that Romanization of the script would detach Turkey from the wider Islamic world, others opposed Romanization on practical grounds, at that time there was no suitable adaptation of the Latin script that could be used for Turkish phonemes. Some suggested that a better alternative might be to modify the Arabic script to introduce characters to better represent Turkish vowels. In 1926, however, the Turkic republics of the Soviet Union adopted the Latin script, turkish-speaking Armenians used the Mesrobian script to write Holy Bibles and other books in Turkish for centuries. Many Armenian linguists, including Agop Dilâçar comprised the team which invented the modern Turkish alphabet
Turkish alphabet
–
Participants of the conference on the Turkish alphabet, including Atatürk. August 29, 1929
Turkish alphabet
–
Ottoman Turkish alphabet and 1930s Latin alphabet guide, from Museum of Republic,
Ankara
Turkish alphabet
–
Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of
Kayseri. September 20, 1928
42.
Gha
–
The letter Ƣ has been used in the Latin orthographies of various, mostly Turkic languages, such as Azeri or the Jaꞑalif orthography for Tatar. It usually represents a velar fricative but is sometimes used for a voiced uvular fricative. All orthographies using it have been phased out, so the letter is not well-supported in fonts and it can still be seen in pre-1983 books published by the People’s Republic of China. Historically, it is derived from a form of the small Latin letter q. The majuscule is then based on the minuscule and its use for stems from the linguistic tradition of representing such sounds by q in Turkic languages and in transcriptions of Arabic or Persian. The assigned names, LATIN CAPITAL LETTER OI and LATIN SMALL LETTER OI respectively, are acknowledged by the Unicode Consortium to be mistakes, as gha is unrelated to the letters O and I
Gha
–
For other uses, see
GHA (disambiguation).
43.
Common Turkic Alphabet
–
The term Common Turkic Alphabet refers to two different systems using the Latin alphabet to write various Turkic languages. The old system was developed in the Soviet Union and used in the 1930s and its letters are as follows, Long forms of vowels are shown with a circumflex, Â, Ê, Î, Ô, Û. The orthographies of Turkic languages are largely phonetic, meaning that the pronunciation of a word can usually be determined from its spelling, for example, Turkish orthography is highly regular and a words pronunciation can almost always be determined by its spelling. This rule excludes recent loanwords such as proper names, the letters representing vowel sounds in Turkic languages are, in alphabetical order, ⟨a⟩, ⟨ä⟩ and ⟨e⟩, ⟨ı⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨ö⟩, ⟨u⟩, ⟨ü⟩. Semi-vowels are shown with a breve, Ă, Ĕ, Ĭ, Ŏ, Ŭ, the /θ/ phoneme is only present in the Bashkir language. The /ð/ phoneme is only present in the Bashkir language, Ä is sometimes written as Əə or Эə. The phonemes /t͡s/ and /d͡z/ are represented in the Lipka Tatars Belarusian Arabic alphabet, some handwritten letters have variant forms. For example, Čč=Jj, Ķķ=Ⱪⱪ, and Ḩḩ=Ⱨⱨ. ٯ = ق or ڨ, Ţ is a letter originating as part of the Romanian alphabet, used to represent the Romanian and Moldovan phoneme /t͡s/, the voiceless alveolar affricate. It is written as the letter T with a comma below. It is also a part of the Gagauz alphabet and the Livonian alphabet, the letter corresponds to Cyrillic Tse in the romanisation of Cyrillic Turkic alphabets. Ḑ is a letter originating as part of the old Romanian alphabet, used to represent the old Romanian and Moldovan sound /d͡z/ and it is written as the letter D with a small comma below, and it has both lower-case and the upper-case variants. It is also a part of the Livonian alphabet, the letter corresponds to Cyrillic Dze in the romanisation of Cyrillic Turkic alphabets. Ṡ, Ż, Ṫ and Ḋ are only used for Arabic transcriptions, for example, Ramaḋan, Kaḋı, Kaḋa, Ḋarb, Ḋarbe, Ṡahib, Ṡabun, Huṡuṡ, Arḋ, Ṡabr, etc. The Latin letter Ë has no relation to the Cyrillic letter Ё, the Latin letter Ë represents the sound sequence /je/ and thus corresponds to the Cyrillic letter Є in Ukrainian or Е in Russian. The Uniform Turkic Alphabet was a Latin alphabet used by peoples of the USSR in the 1930s. The alphabet used letters from Jaꞑalif as it was also a part of the uniform alphabet, the uniform alphabet utilized Latin letters, excluding w. Some additional letters were introduced into the alphabet. In, Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 1929, Spalten 441–453, in, Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 1930, Spalten 399–413
Common Turkic Alphabet
–
Examples of Latin Turkic alphabets 1922-1940
44.
Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic
–
The Tajik Republic was created on 5 December 1929 as a national entity for the Tajik people within the Soviet Union. On 24 August 1990, the Tajik SSR declared sovereignty in its borders, the republic was renamed to the Republic of Tajikistan on 31 August 1991 and declared its independence from the Soviet Union on 9 September 1991. Geographically, at 143,100 km2, it was bordered by Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kirghizia to the north, pakistan lies to the south, separated by the narrow Wakhan Corridor. The name Tajik refers to the name of a tribe that existed before the seventh century A. D. One of the new states created in the process of national delimitation of Soviet Central Asia in October 1924 was the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic – Uzbek SSR or Soviet Uzbekistan and its capital was established in Dyushambe, which had been a village of 3,000 in 1920. In December 1929, Tajik ASSR was detached from the Uzbek SSR, at that time, its capital was renamed Stalinabad, after Joseph Stalin, and the territory that is now northern Tajikistan was added to the new republic. Even with the territory, the Tajik SSR remained the smallest Central Asian republic. On 5 December 1936, it was renamed to the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, with the creation of a Tajik republic defined in national terms came the creation of institutions that, at least in form, were likewise national. The first Tajik-language newspaper in Soviet Tajikistan began publication in 1926, new educational institutions also began operation at about the same time. The first state schools, available to children and adults and designed to provide basic education, opened in 1926. Under Soviet rule, Tajikistan experienced some economic and social progress, however, living standards in the republic were still among the lowest in the Union. Most people still lived in rural qishlaqs, settlements that were composed of 200 to 700 one-family houses built along a waterway, after Stalins death in March 1953, Stalinabad, was renamed to Dushanbe on 10 November 1961 as part of the De-Stalinization program. In February 1990, tensions between the Tajiks and Armenians squared off in the republics capital Dushanbe,26 people died and 565 more were injured and the Soviet troops put down the riots. Both Yaqub Salimov, the Interior Minister and the activists were convicted for the participation in the riots. Later on 24 August 1990, Tajik SSR declared its sovereignty over Soviet laws, by 1991, Tajikistan participated in a referendum in March as part of the attempt to preserve the union with a turnout of 96. 85%. However, this did not happened when hardliners took control of Moscow during the three days in August. After the failure of the coup, the Tajik SSR was renamed to the Republic of Tajikistan on 31 August 1991, on 9 September 1991, Tajikistan seceded from the Soviet Union months before the country itself ceased to exist on 26 December 1991. Conflicts after independence caused a war throughout the country over the next six years
Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic
–
Flag
45.
October Revolution
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It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 25 October 1917. During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and this immediately initiated the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first self-proclaimed socialist state. The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces, Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the takeover of government buildings on 24 October 1917. The following day, the Winter Palace, was captured, the long-awaited Constituent Assembly elections were held on 12 November 1917. The Bolsheviks only won 175 seats in the 715-seat legislative body, coming in second behind the Socialist Revolutionary party, the Constituent Assembly was to first meet on 28 November 1917, but its convocation was delayed until 5 January 1918 by the Bolsheviks. On its first and only day in session, the body rejected Soviet decrees on peace and land, as the revolution was not universally recognized, there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. At first, the event was referred to as the October coup or the Uprising of 25th, in Russian, however, переворот has a similar meaning to revolution and also means upheaval or overturn, so coup is not necessarily the correct translation. With time, the term October Revolution came into use and it is also known as the November Revolution having occurred in November according to the Gregorian Calendar. The Great October Socialist Revolution was the name for the October Revolution in the Soviet Union after the 10th anniversary of the Revolution in 1927. The February Revolution had toppled Tsar Nicolas II of Russia, however, the provisional government was weak and riven by internal dissension. It continued to wage World War I, which became increasingly unpopular, a nationwide crisis developed in Russia, affecting social, economic, and political relations. Disorder in industry and transport had intensified, and difficulties in obtaining provisions had increased, gross industrial production in 1917 had decreased by over 36% from what it had been in 1914. In the autumn, as much as 50% of all enterprises were closed down in the Urals, the Donbas, at the same time, the cost of living increased sharply. Real wages fell about 50% from what they had been in 1913, russias national debt in October 1917 had risen to 50 billion rubles. Of this, debts to foreign governments constituted more than 11 billion rubles, the country faced the threat of financial bankruptcy. In these months alone, more than a million took part in strikes. Workers established control over production and distribution in many factories and plants in a social revolution, by October 1917, there had been over 4,000 peasant uprisings against landowners. When the Provisional Government sent punitive detachments, it only enraged the peasants
October Revolution
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Red Guards at Vulkan factory in 1917
October Revolution
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Bolshevik (1920), by
Boris Kustodiev
October Revolution
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A scene from the July Days. The army has just opened fire on street protesters.
October Revolution
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Cruiser
Aurora
46.
Tajikistani ruble
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The rouble or ruble was the currency of Tajikistan between May 10,1995 and October 29,2000. It was subdivided into 100 tanga, although no coins or banknotes were issued denominated in tanga, like a number of other republics of the former Soviet Union, Tajikistan continued using the Soviet/Russian rouble a few years after independence. On July 26,1993, a new series of Russian ruble was issued, in Tajikistan, pre-1993 Russian rubles ceased to be legal tender on 8 January 1994. On May 10,1995, the Tajikistani ruble replaced the Russian ruble at a rate of 1 Tajikistani ruble to 100 Russian rubles, among the republics of the former Soviet Union, Tajikistan was the last to issue its own currency. Transnistria, a state, issued its own ruble before Tajikistan did. The reason for this was lack of funds and resources, with Tajikistan being the poorest of the former soviet republics. This was compounded further by the disorganization caused by the war in Tajikistan. By the end of the decade, rampant inflation caused by the problems had essentially destroyed the Tajikistani ruble. On October 30,2000, the somoni were introduced and replaced the ruble with 1 somoni equal to 1000 rubles, only one commemorative coin was issued for the Tajikistani ruble. These were aimed for the market and were never intended for use in circulation. The colour schemes can be traced back to the issues of the Russian Empire. Many of the old printing templates used for the production of Soviet notes were used on Tajikistans notes and this is because the Tajikistani ruble was printed under the direction of Goznak, the official Russian agency responsible for the production of banknotes and coins. Some of the old printing templates used for Soviet notes were used on Tajikistan notes
Tajikistani ruble
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Text detail from the reverse of the 1 Tajikistani ruble note.
47.
Russian alphabet
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The Russian alphabet uses letters from the Cyrillic script. The modern Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters, the Russian alphabet is as follows, The consonant letters represent both as soft and hard consonant phonemes. A soft sign indicates ⟨Ь⟩ palatalization of the consonant without adding a vowel. ^† An alternate form of the letter El closely resembles the Greek letter for lambda, today it is used mostly to separate a prefix from the following root. Its original pronunciation, lost by 1400 at the latest, was that of a short middle schwa-like sound, /ŭ/. Until the 1918 reform, no word could end in a consonant. The soft sign acts like a silent front vowel and indicates that the consonant is palatalized. This is important as palatalization is phonemic in Russian, for example, брат contrasts with брать. The original pronunciation of the sign, lost by 1400 at the latest, was that of a very short fronted reduced vowel /ĭ/. There are still remnants of this ancient reading in modern Russian, in the co-existing versions of the same name, read differently, such as in Марья. The vowels ⟨е, ё, и, ю, я⟩ indicate a preceding palatalized consonant, the IPA vowels shown are a guideline only and sometimes are realized as different sounds, particularly when unstressed. However, ⟨е⟩ may be used in words of foreign origin without palatalization, ⟨ы⟩ is an old Proto-Slavic close central vowel, thought to have been preserved better in modern Russian than in other Slavic languages. It was originally nasalized in certain positions, камы, камень and its written form developed as follows, ⟨ъ⟩ + ⟨і⟩ → ⟨ъı⟩ → ⟨ы⟩. ⟨э⟩ was introduced in 1708 to distinguish the non-iotated/non-palatalizing /e/ from the iotated/palatalizing one, the original usage had been ⟨е⟩ for the uniotated /e/, ⟨ѥ⟩ or ⟨ѣ⟩ for the iotated, but ⟨ѥ⟩ had dropped out of use by the sixteenth century. In native Russian words, ⟨э⟩ is found only at the beginnings of words or in compound words. Many words, especially monosyllables, words ending in ⟨е⟩ and many words where ⟨е⟩ follows ⟨т⟩, ⟨д⟩, ⟨н⟩, ⟨с⟩, ⟨з⟩ or ⟨р⟩ are pronounced with /e/ without palatalization or iotation, секс, but many other words are pronounced with /ʲe/, секта, дебют. The letter ⟨ё⟩ is optional, it is correct to write ⟨e⟩ for both /je/ and /jo/. None of the attempts in the twentieth century to mandate the use of ⟨ё⟩ have stuck
Russian alphabet
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Russian alphabet in capital letters
48.
Descender
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In typography, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font. The line that descenders reach down to is known as the beard line, for example, in the letter y, the descender is the tail, or that portion of the diagonal line which lies below the v created by the two lines converging. In the letter p, it is the stem reaching down past the o, in most fonts, descenders are reserved for lowercase characters such as g, j, q, p, y, and sometimes f. Some fonts, however, also use descenders for some numerals, such numerals are called old-style numerals. Some fonts also use descenders for the tails on a few letters such as J and Q. The parts of characters that extend above the x-height of a font are called ascenders
Descender
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Here, 'p' has a descender — the part below the red line.
49.
International Phonetic Alphabet
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The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators. The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of language, phones, phonemes, intonation. IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a letter, or with a letter plus diacritics. Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription, thus, /t/ is less specific than, occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 letters,52 diacritics and these are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA. In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, for example, the sound was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the digraph ⟨ch⟩ in French. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, the idea of making the IPA was first suggested by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by Alexander John Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the International Phonetic Association Kiel Convention in 1989, a minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for mid central vowels and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap, apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces. Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology were created in 1990, the general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound, although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, as do hard, finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as selectiveness. These are organized into a chart, the chart displayed here is the chart as posted at the website of the IPA. The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet, for this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither, for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a question mark
International Phonetic Alphabet
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The official chart of the IPA as of 2005. Click to enlarge. The proper symbols for upstep and downstep are not available in this font, and have been substituted.
International Phonetic Alphabet
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X-ray photos show the sounds [i, u, a, ɑ]
