1.
Prekmurje Slovene
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Prekmurje Slovene, also known as Pannonian Slovene, East Slovene, or Wendish, is a supradialectal regional variety of Slovene. It is used in communication, liturgy, and publications by authors from Prekmurje. It is spoken in the Prekmurje region of Slovenia and by the Hungarian Slovenes in Vas County in western Hungary, the Prekmurje dialect is spoken by approximately 110,000 speakers worldwide. 80,000 in Prekmurje,20,000 dispered in Slovenia and 10,000 in other countries, in Hungary it is used by the Slovene-speaking minority in Vas County in and around the town of Szentgotthárd. Other speakers of the live in other Hungarian towns, particularly Budapest, Szombathely, Bakony. The dialect was spoken in Somogy, but it has nearly disappeared in the last two centuries. There are some speakers in Austria, Germany, the United States, Prekmurje Slovene has a defined territory and body of literature, and it is one of the few Slovene dialects in Slovenia that is still spoken by all strata of the local population. Some speakers have claimed that it is a separate language, prominent writers in Prekmurje Slovene, such as Miklós Küzmics, István Küzmics, Ágoston Pável, József Klekl Senior, and József Szakovics, have claimed that it is a language, not simply a dialect. Evald Flisar, a writer, poet, and playwright from Prekmurje and it also had a written standard and literary tradition, both of which were largely neglected after World War II. There were attempts to publish in it more widely in the 1990s, primarily in Hungary, others consider Prekmurje Slovene a regional language, without denying that it is part of Slovene. The linguist Janko Dular has characterized Prekmurje Slovene as a standard language for historical reasons. Together with Resian, Prekmurje Slovene is the only Slovene dialect with a standard that has had a different historical development from the rest of Slovene ethnic territory. For centuries, it was used as a language of religious education, the historical Hungarian name for the Slovenes living within the borders of the Kingdom of Hungary was Vendek, or the Wends. In the 18th and 19th centuries Prekmurje authors used to designate this dialect as sztári szlovenszki jezik old Slovene, both then and now, it is also referred to as the Slovene language between the Mura and Raba. Prekmurje Slovene is widely used in the media, films. The younger generation also write SMS messages and web comments in their local tongue, in the Prekmurje and Hungary a few streets, shops, hotels, etc. have Prekmurje Slovene names. In the 2012 protests in Slovenia in Murska Sobota the protesters use Prekmurje Slovene banners and it is the liturgical language in the Lutheran and Pentecostal churches, and in the Catholic Church of Hungarian Slovenes. Marko Jesenšek, a professor at the University of Maribor, states that the functionality of Prekmurje Slovene is limited, Prekmurje Slovene is part of the Pannonian dialect group, also known as the eastern Slovene dialect group
2.
Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
3.
North Africa
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North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of Africa. The United Nationss definition of Northern Africa is, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, the countries of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya are often collectively referred to as the Maghreb, which is the Arabic word for sunset. Egypt lies to the northeast and encompasses part of West Asia, while Sudan is situated on the edge of the Sahel, Egypt is a transcontinental country because of the Sinai Peninsula, which geographically lies in Western Asia. North Africa also includes a number of Spanish possessions, the Canary Islands and Madeira in the North Atlantic Ocean northwest of the African mainland are included in considerations of the region. From 3500 BC, following the abrupt desertification of the Sahara due to changes in the Earths orbit. The Islamic influence in the area is significant, and North Africa is a major part of the Muslim world. Some researchers have postulated that North Africa rather than East Africa served as the point for the modern humans who first trekked out of the continent in the Out of Africa migration. The Atlas Mountains extend across much of Morocco, northern Algeria and Tunisia, are part of the mountain system that also runs through much of Southern Europe. They recede to the south and east, becoming a steppe landscape before meeting the Sahara desert, the sediments of the Sahara overlie an ancient plateau of crystalline rock, some of which is more than four billion years old. Sheltered valleys in the Atlas Mountains, the Nile Valley and Delta, a wide variety of valuable crops including cereals, rice and cotton, and woods such as cedar and cork, are grown. Typical Mediterranean crops, such as olives, figs, dates and citrus fruits, the Nile Valley is particularly fertile, and most of the population in Egypt and Sudan live close to the river. Elsewhere, irrigation is essential to improve yields on the desert margins. The inhabitants of Saharan Africa are generally divided in a manner corresponding to the principal geographic regions of North Africa, the Maghreb, the Nile valley. The edge of the Sahel, to the south of Egypt has mainly been inhabited by Nubians, Ancient Egyptians record extensive contact in their Western desert with people that appear to have been Berber or proto-Berber, as well as Nubians from the south. They have contributed to the Arabized Berber populations, the official language or one of the official languages in all of the countries in North Africa is Arabic. The people of the Maghreb and the Sahara regions speak Berber languages and several varieties of Arabic, the Arabic and Berber languages are distantly related, both being members of the Afroasiatic language family. The Tuareg Berber languages are more conservative than those of the coastal cities. Over the years, Berbers have been influenced by contact with cultures, Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Romans, Vandals, Arabs, Europeans
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Extinct language
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An extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers, especially if it has no living descendants. A dead language is one that is no longer the language of any community, even if it still in use. A language that currently has living native speakers is called a modern language, as of the 2000s, a total of roughly 7,000 natively spoken languages existed worldwide. Most of these are languages in danger of extinction, one estimate published in 2004 expected that some 90% of the currently spoken languages will have become extinct by 2050. Normally the transition from a spoken to an extinct language occurs when a language undergoes language death while being replaced by a different one. For example, some Native American languages were replaced by English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, such languages are sometimes also referred to as dead languages, but more typically as classical language. g. Old English or Old High German relative to their descendants, English. Minor languages are endangered due to economic and cultural globalization. Second, the gradual process of language death may occur over several generations. The third and most rare outcome is for the group to maintain as much of its native language as possible, while borrowing elements of the dominant languages grammar. Institutions such as the system, as well as forms of media such as the Internet, television. Language revival is the attempt to re-introduce a recently-extinct language in use by a new generation of native speakers. The optimistic neologism sleeping beauty languages has been used to such a hope. Hebrew is an example of a language that has successfully been revived for everyday use. The revival of Hebrew has been successful due to extraordinarily favourable conditions. Revival attempts of minor languages with no status as liturgical language typically have more modest results and this is a list of languages reported as having become extinct after the year 2000. For a more complete list, see List of extinct languages
5.
Language family
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A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ancestral language or parental language, called the proto-language of that family. Linguists therefore describe the languages within a language family as being genetically related. Estimates of the number of living languages vary from 5,000 to 8,000, depending on the precision of ones definition of language, the 2013 edition of Ethnologue catalogs just over 7,000 living human languages. A living language is one that is used as the primary form of communication of a group of people. There are also dead and extinct languages, as well as some that are still insufficiently studied to be classified. Membership of languages in a family is established by comparative linguistics. Sister languages are said to have a genetic or genealogical relationship, speakers of a language family belong to a common speech community. The divergence of a proto-language into daughter languages typically occurs through geographical separation, individuals belonging to other speech communities may also adopt languages from a different language family through the language shift process. Genealogically related languages present shared retentions, that is, features of the proto-language that cannot be explained by chance or borrowing, for example, Germanic languages are Germanic in that they share vocabulary and grammatical features that are not believed to have been present in the Proto-Indo-European language. These features are believed to be innovations that took place in Proto-Germanic, language families can be divided into smaller phylogenetic units, conventionally referred to as branches of the family because the history of a language family is often represented as a tree diagram. A family is a unit, all its members derive from a common ancestor. Some taxonomists restrict the term family to a level. Those who affix such labels also subdivide branches into groups, a top-level family is often called a phylum or stock. The closer the branches are to other, the closer the languages will be related. For example, the Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Romance, there is a remarkably similar pattern shown by the linguistic tree and the genetic tree of human ancestry that was verified statistically. Languages interpreted in terms of the phylogenetic tree of human languages are transmitted to a great extent vertically as opposed to horizontally. A speech variety may also be considered either a language or a dialect depending on social or political considerations, thus, different sources give sometimes wildly different accounts of the number of languages within a family. Classifications of the Japonic family, for example, range from one language to nearly twenty, most of the worlds languages are known to be related to others
6.
Indo-European languages
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The Indo-European languages are a language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. There are about 445 living Indo-European languages, according to the estimate by Ethnologue, the most widely spoken Indo-European languages by native speakers are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, and Punjabi, each with over 100 million speakers. Today, 46% of the population speaks an Indo-European language as a first language. The Indo-European family includes most of the languages of Europe, and parts of Western, Central. It was also predominant in ancient Anatolia, the ancient Tarim Basin and most of Central Asia until the medieval Turkic migrations, all Indo-European languages are descendants of a single prehistoric language, reconstructed as Proto-Indo-European, spoken sometime in the Neolithic era. Several disputed proposals link Indo-European to other language families. In the 16th century, European visitors to the Indian subcontinent began to notice similarities among Indo-Aryan, Iranian, in 1583, English Jesuit missionary Thomas Stephens in Goa wrote a letter to his brother in which he noted similarities between Indian languages and Greek and Latin. Another account to mention the ancient language Sanskrit came from Filippo Sassetti, a merchant born in Florence in 1540, writing in 1585, he noted some word similarities between Sanskrit and Italian. However, neither Stephens nor Sassettis observations led to further scholarly inquiry and he included in his hypothesis Dutch, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic, and Baltic languages. However, Van Boxhorns suggestions did not become known and did not stimulate further research. Ottoman Turkish traveler Evliya Çelebi visited Vienna in 1665–1666 as part of a diplomatic mission, gaston Coeurdoux and others made observations of the same type. Coeurdoux made a comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship among them. Thomas Young first used the term Indo-European in 1813, deriving from the extremes of the language family. A synonym is Indo-Germanic, specifying the familys southeasternmost and northwesternmost branches, a number of other synonymous terms have also been used. Franz Bopps Comparative Grammar appeared between 1833 and 1852 and marks the beginning of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline, the classical phase of Indo-European comparative linguistics leads from this work to August Schleichers 1861 Compendium and up to Karl Brugmanns Grundriss, published in the 1880s. Brugmanns neogrammarian reevaluation of the field and Ferdinand de Saussures development of the theory may be considered the beginning of modern Indo-European studies. This led to the laryngeal theory, a major step forward in Indo-European linguistics. Isolated terms in Luwian/Hittite mentioned in Semitic Old Assyrian texts from the 20th and 19th centuries BC, Hittite texts from about 1650 BC, Armenian, writing known from the beginning of the 5th century AD
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Germanic languages
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It is the third most spoken Indo-European subdivision, behind Italic and Indo-Iranian, and ahead of Balto-Slavic languages. Limburgish varieties have roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch–Belgian–German border, the main North Germanic languages are Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese, which have a combined total of about 20 million speakers. The East Germanic branch included Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic, the last to die off was Crimean Gothic, spoken in the late 18th century in some isolated areas of Crimea. The total number of Germanic languages throughout history is unknown, as some of them—especially East Germanic languages—disappeared during or after the Migration Period. Proto-Germanic, along all of its descendants, is characterized by a number of unique linguistic features. Early varieties of Germanic enter history with the Germanic tribes moving south from Scandinavia in the 2nd century BC, to settle in the area of todays northern Germany, furthermore, it is the de facto language of the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. It is also a language in Nicaragua and Malaysia. German is a language of Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland and has regional status in Italy, Poland, Namibia. German also continues to be spoken as a minority language by immigrant communities in North America, South America, Central America, Mexico, a German dialect, Pennsylvania Dutch, is still present amongst Anabaptist populations in Pennsylvania in the United States. Dutch is a language of Aruba, Belgium, Curaçao. The Netherlands also colonised Indonesia, but Dutch was scrapped as a language after Indonesian independence. Dutch was until 1925 an official language in South Africa, but evolved in and was replaced by Afrikaans, Afrikaans is one of the 11 official languages in South Africa and is a lingua franca of Namibia. It is used in other Southern African nations as well, low German is a collection of sometimes very diverse dialects spoken in the northeast of the Netherlands and northern Germany. Scots is spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster, frisian is spoken among half a million people who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. Luxembourgish is mainly spoken in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, though it extends into small parts of Belgium, France. Limburgish varieties are spoken in the Limburg and Rhineland regions, along the Dutch–Belgian–German border, Swedish is also one of the two official languages in Finland, along with Finnish, and the only official language in the Åland Islands. Danish is also spoken natively by the Danish minority in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, Norwegian is the official language of Norway. Icelandic is the language of Iceland, and is spoken by a significant minority in the Faroe Islands
8.
Migration Period
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The Migration Period was a time of widespread migrations within or into Europe in the middle of the first millennium AD. It has also been termed the Völkerwanderung and, from the Roman, many of the migrations were movements of Germanic, Slavic, and other peoples into the territory of the then Roman Empire, with or without accompanying invasions or war. Although immigration was common throughout the time of the Roman Empire, later invasions, also had significant effects, however, they are outside the scope of the Migration Period. Germanic peoples moved out of southern Scandinavia and Germany to the adjacent lands between the Elbe and Oder after 1000 BC. The first wave moved westward and southward, moving into southern Germany up to the Roman provinces of Gaul and Cisalpine Gaul by 100 BC and it is this western group which was described by the Roman historian Tacitus and Julius Caesar. A later wave of Germanic tribes migrated eastward and southward from Scandinavia between 600 and 300 BC to the opposite coast of the Baltic Sea, moving up the Vistula near the Carpathians, the Barbarian Invasions may be divided into two phases. The first phase, occurring between AD300 and 500, is documented by Greek and Latin historians but difficult to verify archaeologically. It puts Germanic peoples in control of most areas of what was then the Western Roman Empire, the Tervingi entered Roman territory in 376. Some time thereafter in Marcianopolis, the escort to Fritigern was killed while meeting with Lupicinus, fending off challenges from the Allemanni, Burgundians, and Visigoths, the Frankish kingdom became the nucleus of what would later become France and Germany. The initial Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain occurred during the fifth century, the Burgundians settled in North Western Italy, Switzerland and Eastern France in the fifth century. The second phase took place between 500 and 700 and saw Slavic tribes settling in central and eastern Europe, gradually making it predominantly Slavic, additionally, Turkic tribes such as the Avars became involved in this phase. In 567, the Avars and the Lombards destroyed much of the Gepid Kingdom, the Lombards, a Germanic people, settled in Italy with their Herulian, Suebian, Gepid, Thuringian, Bulgarian, Sarmatian and Saxon allies in the 6th century. They were later followed by the Bavarians and the Franks, who conquered and ruled most of Italy, during the Khazar–Arab Wars, the Khazars stopped the Arab expansion into Europe across the Caucasus. At the same time, the Moors invaded Europe via Gibraltar and these battles broadly demarcated the frontiers between Christendom and Islam for the next millennium. The following centuries saw the Muslims successful in conquering most of Sicily from the Christians by 902, the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin from around 895, and the Viking expansion from the late 8th century conventionally mark the last large movements of the period. Christianity gradually converted the non-Islamic newcomers and integrated them into the medieval Christian order, a number of contemporary historical references worldwide refer to an extended period of extreme weather during 535–536. Evidence of this period is also found in dendrochronology and ice cores. The consequences of this period are debated
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Vandals
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The Vandals are believed to have migrated from southern Scandinavia to the area between the lower Oder and Vistula rivers during the 2nd century BC and to have settled in Silesia from around 120 BC. They are associated with the Przeworsk culture and were possibly the people as the Lugii. Around 400 the Vandals were pushed westwards again, this time by the Huns, in 409, the Vandals crossed the Pyrenees into the Iberian Peninsula, where their main groups, the Hasdingi and the Silingi, settled in Gallaecia and Baetica respectively. In 429, under king Genseric, the Vandals entered North Africa, by 439 they established a kingdom which included the Roman province of Africa as well as Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta and the Balearic Islands. They fended off several Roman attempts to recapture the African province and their kingdom collapsed in the Vandalic War of 533–4, in which Justinian I managed to reconquer the province for the Eastern Roman Empire. Renaissance and Early Modern writers characterized the Vandals as barbarians, sacking and looting Rome and this led to the use of the term vandalism to describe any senseless destruction, particularly the barbarian defacing of artwork. However, modern historians tend to regard the Vandals during the period from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages as perpetuators, not destroyers. The connection would be that Vendel is the homeland of the Vandals prior to the Migration Period. Further possible homelands of the Vandals in Scandinavia are Vendsyssel in Denmark, the etymology of the name may be related to a Germanic verb *wand- to wander. The Germanic mythological figure of Aurvandil shining wanderer, dawn wanderer, evening star, much has forwarded the theory that the tribal name Vandal reflects worship of Aurvandil or the Dioscuri, probably involving an origin myth that the Vandalic kings were descended from Aurvandil. Some medieval authors applied the ethnonym Vandals to Slavs, Veneti, Wends and it was once thought that the Slovenes were the descendants of the Vandals, but this is not the view of modern scholars. The Vandals are believed to have migrated from southern Scandinavia to the area between the lower Oder and Vistula somewhere in the 2nd century BC, and to have settled in Silesia from around 120 BC. The earliest mention of the Vandals is from Pliny the Elder, tribes within this category who he mentions are the Burgundiones, Varini, Carini, and the Gutones. Most archaeologists and historians identify the Vandals with the Przeworsk culture, the bearers of the Przeworsk culture mainly practiced cremation, with occasional inhumation. The Lugii have been identified by historians as the same people as the Vandals. The Lugii are mentioned by Strabo, Tacitus and Ptolemy as a group of tribes living between the Vistula and the Oder. Neither Strabo, Tacitus or Ptolemy mentions the Vandals, while Pliny the Elder mentions the Vandals, according to John Anderson, the Lugii and Vandili are designations of the same tribal group, the latter an extended ethnic name, the former probably a cult-title. By the end of the 2nd century, the Vandals were divided in two main groups, the Silingi and the Hasdingi, with the Silingi being associated with Silesia
10.
Gothic language
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Gothic is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus, a copy of a fourth-century Bible translation. As a Germanic language, Gothic is a part of the Indo-European language family and it is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the fourth century, the language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks, the elimination of the Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation. Gothic-seeming terms found in manuscripts may or may not belong to the same language. The existence of such early attested texts makes it a language of considerable interest in comparative linguistics, only a few documents in Gothic survive, not enough for completely reconstructing the language. That is especially true considering that most Gothic corpora are translations or glosses of other languages and he commissioned a translation of the Greek Bible into the Gothic language, of which roughly three-quarters of the New Testament and some fragments of the Old Testament have survived. It contains a part of the four Gospels. Since it is a translation from Greek, the language of the Codex Argenteus is replete with borrowed Greek words, the syntax in particular is often copied directly from the Greek. Codex Ambrosianus and the Codex Taurinensis, Five parts, totaling 193 leaves It contains scattered passages from the New Testament, of the Old Testament, the text likely had been somewhat modified by copyists. Codex Gissensis, One leaf, fragments of Luke 23–24 was found in Egypt in 1907 and was destroyed by damage in 1945. Several names in an Indian inscription were thought to be possibly Gothic by Krause, busbecqs material also contains many puzzles and enigmas and is difficult to interpret in the light of comparative Germanic linguistics. Reports of the discovery of parts of Ulfilas Bible have not been substantiated. Heinrich May in 1968 claimed to have found in England 12 leaves of a palimpsest containing parts of the Gospel of Matthew, only fragments of the Gothic translation of the Bible have been preserved. The translation was apparently done in the Balkans region by people in contact with Greek Christian culture. The Gothic Bible apparently was used by the Visigoths in Iberia until about 700 AD, and perhaps for a time in Italy, the Balkans, in exterminating Arianism, many texts in Gothic were probably expunged and overwritten as palimpsests or collected and burned. Very few secondary sources make reference to the Gothic language after about 800, some writers even referred to Slavic-speaking people as Goths. However, it is clear from Ulfilas translation that despite some puzzles the language belongs with the Germanic language group, the relationship between the language of the Crimean Goths and Ulfilass Gothic is less clear
11.
East Germanic language
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The East Germanic languages are a group of extinct Germanic languages of the Indo-European language family spoken by East Germanic peoples. Crimean Gothic is believed to have survived until the 18th century, by the 1st century AD, the writings of Pomponius Mela, Pliny the elder, and Tacitus indicate a division of Germanic-speaking peoples into large groupings with shared ancestry and culture. In fact, the Scandinavian influence on Pomerania and northern Poland from period III onwards was so considerable that this region is included in the Nordic Bronze Age culture. There is also archaeological and toponymic evidence that Burgundians lived on the Danish island of Bornholm, schwedischen Akademie der Literatur, Geschichte und Altertumsforschung über das Julita-Symposium 1986. La formation de lEurope et les invasions barbares, Paris, Editions Montaigne, contacts between eastern Scandinavia and the southern Baltic coast 1000 BCE –500 CE. Musset, L. Les invasions, les vagues germanique, Paris, about the Gothic Peoples in the Nordic Countries and on the Continent
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Silingi
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The Silings or Silingi were a Germanic tribe, part of the larger Vandal group. The Silingi at one point lived in Silesia, and the names Silesia, melibocus, from whom to the east near the Albis river and above them, below Mt. Asciburgius, the Corconti and the Lugi Buri up to the head of the Vistula river. The tribe of Nahanarvali is speculated by scholars to be the same people as the Silingi. Tacitus Germania,43 mentions the Naharvali as the keepers of sanctuary of the Lugian federation, tacitus does not mention the Silingi, however, he places the Naharvali in about the same geographical area in which Ptolemaeus placed the Silingi. During the reign of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the Silingi lived in the Vandal mountains, later part of the former Sudetenland, pushed westwards by the Huns around 400, the Vandals crossed the Rhine into Gaul in 406 and the Pyrenees into Iberia in 409. While the other main Vandal group, the Hasdingi, settled in Gallaecia, after Gunderics succession by Genseric in 428, the Vandals relocated to North Africa, where they established a kingdom centered at Carthage. The kingdom collapsed in the Vandalic War of 533–4, in which Justinian I managed to reconquer the Africa province for the Eastern Roman Empire, according to some historians, the names of Silesia and the Silingi are related. Another hypothesis derives the name of the mountain and river, and hence the region, from the old Polish word Ślągwa, meaning humid or damp, reflecting the climate of the region. The name of the territory of Silesia is often assumed to derive from the river or the mountain now called the Ślęza River or Mount Ślęża. C. Corps Silingia Breslau is a student organization that has been operating since 1877, currently in Cologne, Germany, list of ancient Germanic peoples Fredebal Silesians Silesian tribes
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Portugal
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Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. It is the westernmost country of mainland Europe, to the west and south it is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and to the east and north by Spain. The Portugal–Spain border is 1,214 kilometres long and considered the longest uninterrupted border within the European Union, the republic also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, both autonomous regions with their own regional governments. The territory of modern Portugal has been settled, invaded. The Pre-Celts, Celts, Carthaginians and the Romans were followed by the invasions of the Visigothic, in 711 the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by the Moors, making Portugal part of Muslim Al Andalus. Portugal was born as result of the Christian Reconquista, and in 1139, Afonso Henriques was proclaimed King of Portugal, in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal established the first global empire, becoming one of the worlds major economic, political and military powers. Portugal monopolized the trade during this time, and the Portuguese Empire expanded with military campaigns led in Asia. After the 1910 revolution deposed the monarchy, the democratic but unstable Portuguese First Republic was established, democracy was restored after the Portuguese Colonial War and the Carnation Revolution in 1974. Shortly after, independence was granted to almost all its overseas territories, Portugal has left a profound cultural and architectural influence across the globe and a legacy of over 250 million Portuguese speakers today. Portugal is a country with a high-income advanced economy and a high living standard. It is the 5th most peaceful country in the world, maintaining a unitary semi-presidential republican form of government and it has the 18th highest Social Progress in the world, putting it ahead of other Western European countries like France, Spain and Italy. Portugal is a pioneer when it comes to drug decriminalization, as the nation decriminalized the possession of all drugs for use in 2001. The early history of Portugal is shared with the rest of the Iberian Peninsula located in South Western Europe, the name of Portugal derives from the joined Romano-Celtic name Portus Cale. Other influences include some 5th-century vestiges of Alan settlements, which were found in Alenquer, Coimbra, the region of present-day Portugal was inhabited by Neanderthals and then by Homo sapiens, who roamed the border-less region of the northern Iberian peninsula. These were subsistence societies that, although they did not establish prosperous settlements, neolithic Portugal experimented with domestication of herding animals, the raising of some cereal crops and fluvial or marine fishing. Chief among these tribes were the Calaicians or Gallaeci of Northern Portugal, the Lusitanians of central Portugal, the Celtici of Alentejo, a few small, semi-permanent, commercial coastal settlements were also founded in the Algarve region by Phoenicians-Carthaginians. Romans first invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 219 BC, during the last days of Julius Caesar, almost the entire peninsula had been annexed to the Roman Republic. The Carthaginians, Romes adversary in the Punic Wars, were expelled from their coastal colonies and it suffered a severe setback in 150 BC, when a rebellion began in the north
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Galicia (Spain)
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Galicia is an autonomous community of Spain and historic nationality under Spanish law. It had a population of 2,718,525 in 2016 and has an area of 29,574 km2. Galicia has over 1,660 km of coastline, including its islands and islets, among them Cíes Islands, Ons, Sálvora, Cortegada. Galicia was incorporated into the Roman Empire at the end of the Cantabrian Wars in 19 BC, in 410, the Germanic Suebi established a kingdom with its capital in Braga, this kingdom was incorporated into that of the Visigoths in 585. The Governor also presided the Real Audiencia do Reino de Galicia, from the 16th century, the representation and voice of the kingdom was held by an assembly of deputies and representatives of the cities of the kingdom, the Cortes or Junta of the Kingdom of Galicia. This institution was forcibly discontinued in 1833 when the kingdom was divided into four provinces with no legal mutual links. During the 19th and 20th centuries, demand grew for self-government and this resulted in the Statute of Autonomy of 1936, soon frustrated by Francos coup detat and subsequent long dictatorship. After democracy was restored the legislature passed the Statute of Autonomy of 1981, approved in referendum and currently in force, the interior of Galicia is characterized by a hilly landscape, mountain ranges rise to 2,000 m in the east and south. The coastal areas are mostly a series of rías and cliffs. The climate of Galicia is usually temperate and rainy, with drier summers. Its topographic and climatic conditions have made animal husbandry and farming the primary source of Galicias wealth for most of its history, allowing for a relative high density of population. With the exception of shipbuilding and food processing, Galicia was based on a farming and fishing economy until after the mid-20th century, in 2012, the gross domestic product at purchasing power parity was €56,000 million, with a nominal GDP per capita of €20,700. There are smaller populations around the cities of Lugo and Ourense. The political capital is Santiago de Compostela, in the province of A Coruña, Vigo, in the province of Pontevedra, is the most populous municipality, with 292,817, while A Coruña is the most populous city, with 215,227. 56% of the Galician population speak Galician as their first language and these Callaeci were the first tribe in the area to help the Lusitanians against the invading Romans. The Romans applied their name to all the tribes in the northwest who spoke the same language. In any case, Galicia, being per se a derivation of the ethnic name Kallaikói, the name evolved during the Middle Ages from Gallaecia, sometimes written Galletia, to Gallicia. This coincides with the spelling of the Castilian Spanish name, the historical denomination Galiza became popular again during the end of the 19th and the first three-quarters of the 20th century, and is still used with some frequency today
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Andalusia
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Andalusia is an autonomous community in southern Spain. It is the most populated and the second largest in area of the communities in the country. The Andalusian autonomous community is recognised as historical nationality. The territory is divided into eight provinces, Almería, Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga and its capital is the city of Seville. Andalusia is the only European region with both Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines, the small British overseas territory of Gibraltar shares a three-quarter-mile land border with the Andalusian province of Cádiz at the eastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar. The main mountain ranges of Andalusia are the Sierra Morena and the Baetic System, consisting of the Subbaetic and Penibaetic Mountains, in the north, the Sierra Morena separates Andalusia from the plains of Extremadura and Castile–La Mancha on Spains Meseta Central. To the south the geographic subregion of Upper Andalusia lies mostly within the Baetic System, the name Andalusia is derived from the Arabic word Al-Andalus. Including an intense relationship with Naples, Italy, Andalusia has been a traditionally agricultural region, compared to the rest of Spain and the rest of Europe. However, the growth of the community especially in the sectors of industry and services was above average in Spain, the region has, however, a rich culture and a strong cultural identity. Many cultural phenomena that are seen internationally as distinctively Spanish are largely or entirely Andalusian in origin and these include flamenco and, to a lesser extent, bullfighting and Hispano-Moorish architectural styles. Andalusias hinterland is the hottest area of Europe, with cities like Córdoba, Late evening temperatures can sometimes stay around 35 °C until close to midnight, with daytime highs of over 40 °C common. Seville also has the highest average temperature in mainland Spain and mainland Europe. Its present form is derived from the Arabic name for Muslim Iberia. However, the etymology of the name Al-Andalus is disputed, the Spanish place name Andalucía was introduced into the Spanish languages in the 13th century under the form el Andalucía. This was a Castilianization of Al-Andalusiya, the form of the Arabic language al-Andalus. The etymology of al-Andalus is itself somewhat debated, but in fact it entered the Arabic language before this came under Muslim rule. Like the Arabic term al-Andalus, in historical contexts the Spanish term Andalucía or the English term Andalusia do not necessarily refer to the territory designated by these terms today. To designate the territories the Christians had regained by that time in the Guadalquivir valley and in the Kingdoms of Granada, in a document from 1253, Alfonso X styled himself Rey de Castilla, León y de toda Andalucía
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Visigoths
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The Visigoths were the western branches of the nomadic tribes of Germanic peoples referred to collectively as the Goths. These tribes flourished and spread throughout the late Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, the Visigoths emerged from earlier Gothic groups who had invaded the Roman Empire beginning in 376 and had defeated the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Relations between the Romans and the Visigoths were variable, alternately warring with one another and making treaties when convenient, the Visigoths invaded Italy under Alaric I and sacked Rome in 410. The Visigoths first settled in southern Gaul as foederati of the Romans – a relationship established in 418, however, they soon fell out with their Roman hosts and established their own kingdom with its capital at Toulouse. They next extended their authority into Hispania at the expense of the Suebi, in 507, however, their rule in Gaul was ended by the Franks under Clovis I, who defeated them in the Battle of Vouillé. After that, the Visigoth kingdom was limited to Hispania, in or around 589, the Visigoths under Reccared I converted from Arianism to Nicene Christianity, gradually adopting the culture of their Hispano-Roman subjects. Their legal code, the Visigothic Code abolished the practice of applying different laws for Romans. Once legal distinctions were no longer being made between Romani and Gothi, they became known collectively as Hispani, in the century that followed, the region was dominated by the Councils of Toledo and the episcopacy. In 711 or 712, a force of invading African Moors defeated the Visigoths in the Battle of Guadalete and their king and many members of their governing elite were killed, and their kingdom rapidly collapsed. During their governance of the Kingdom of Hispania, the Visigoths built several churches that survive and they also left many artifacts, which have been discovered in increasing numbers by archaeologists in recent times. The Treasure of Guarrazar of votive crowns and crosses is the most spectacular and they founded the only new cities in western Europe from the fall of the Western half of the Roman Empire until the rise of the Carolingian dynasty. Many Visigothic names are still in use in modern Spanish and Portuguese, contemporaneous references to the Gothic tribes use the terms Vesi, Ostrogothi, Thervingi, and Greuthungi. Most scholars have concluded that the terms Vesi and Tervingi were both used to refer to one particular tribe, while the terms Ostrogothi and Greuthungi were used to refer to another. In addition, the Notitia Dignitatum equates the Vesi with the Tervingi in a reference to the years 388–391, the earliest sources for each of the four names are roughly contemporaneous. The first recorded reference to the Tervingi is in a eulogy of the emperor Maximian, delivered in or shortly after 291 and it says that the Tervingi, another division of the Goths, joined with the Taifali to attack the Vandals and Gepidae. The first known use of the term Ostrogoths is in a document dated September 392 from Milan and this would explain why the latter terms dropped out of use shortly after 400, when the Goths were displaced by the Hunnic invasions. Wolfram believes that the people Zosimus describes were those Tervingi who had remained behind after the Hunnic conquest, for the most part, all of the terms discriminating between different Gothic tribes gradually disappeared after they moved into the Roman Empire. The last indication that the Goths whose king reigned at Toulouse thought of themselves as Vesi is found in a panegyric on Avitus by Sidonius Apollinaris dated 1 January 456, most recent scholars have concluded that Visigothic group identity emerged only within the Roman Empire
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Alans
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The Alans were an Iranian nomadic pastoral people of antiquity. The name Alan is an Iranian dialectical form of Aryan, a common self-designation of the Indo-Iranians, possibly related to the Massagetae, the Alans have been connected by modern historians with the Central Asian Yancai and Aorsi of Chinese and Roman sources, respectively. Having migrated westwards and become dominant among the Sarmatians on the Pontic Steppe, at the time they had settled the region north of the Black Sea, and frequently raided the Parthian Empire and the Caucasian provinces of the Roman Empire. In 215–250 AD their power on the Pontic Steppe was broken by the Goths, upon the Hunnic defeat of the Goths on the Pontic Steppe around 375 AD, many of the Alans migrated westwards along with various Germanic tribes. They crossed the Rhine in 406 AD along with the Vandals and Suebi, settling in Orléans, around 409 AD they joined the Vandals and Suebi in the crossing of the Pyrenees into the Iberian Peninsula, settling in Lusitania and Carthaginiensis. The Iberian Alans were soundly defeated by the Visigoths 418 AD, the Alans who remained under Hunnic rule founded a powerful kingdom in the North Caucasus in the Middle Ages, which ended with the Mongol invasions in the 13th century AD. These Alans are said to be the ancestors of the modern Ossetians, the Alans spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian. The various forms of Alan – Greek, Ἀλανοί Alanoi, Chinese, 阿蘭聊 Alanliao in the 2nd century, 阿蘭 Alan in the 3rd century – and Iron and later Alanguo are derived from Iranian dialectal forms of Aryan. These and other variants of Aryan were common self-designations of the Indo-Iranians, scarcer spellings include Alauni or Halani. The Alans were also known over the course of their history by another group of related names including the variations Asi, As and it is this name that is the root of the modern Ossetian. The first mentions of names that historians link with the Alani appear at almost the time in texts from the Mediterranean, Middle East. In the 1st century AD, the Alans migrated westwards from Central Asia, the Alans are mentioned in the Vologeses inscription which reads that Vologeses I, the Parthian king c. 51–78 AD, in the 11th year of his reign, battled Kuluk, the contemporary Jewish historian, Josephus supplements this inscription. Now there was a nation of the Alans, which we have formerly mentioned somewhere as being Scythians and these Alans therefore plundered the country without opposition, and with great ease, and proceeded as far as Armenia, laying waste all before them. The fact that the Alans invaded Parthia through Hyrcania shows that at the time many Alans were still based north-east of the Caspian Sea, by the early 2nd century AD the Alans were in firm control of the Lower Volga and Kuban. These lands had earlier occupied by the Aorsi and the Siraces. It is likely that the Alans influence stretched further westwards, encompassing most of the Sarmatian world, in 135 AD, the Alans made a huge raid into Asia Minor via the Caucasus, ravaging Media and Armenia. They were eventually driven back by Arrian, the governor of Cappadocia, in 215–250 AD, the Germanic Goths expanded south-eastwards and broke the Alan dominance on the Pontic Steppe
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Suebi
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The Suebi was a large group of related Germanic peoples who lived in Germania in the time of the Roman Empire. They were first mentioned by Julius Caesar in connection with his battles against Ariovistus in Gaul and they actually occupy more than half of Germania, and are divided into a number of distinct tribes under distinct names, though all generally are called Suebi. At one time, classical ethnography had applied the name Suevi to so many Germanic tribes that it appeared as if, in the first centuries AD, classical authors noted that the Suevic tribes, compared to other Germanic tribes, were very mobile and not reliant on agriculture. Various Suevic groups moved from the direction of the Baltic Sea, towards the end of the empire, the Alemanni, also referred to as Suebi, first settled in the Agri Decumates and then crossed the Rhine and occupied Alsace. An area in southwest Germany is still called Swabia, which derives from the Suebi. Other Suebi entered Gaul and some moved as far as Gallaecia, where they established the Kingdom of the Suebi, which lasted for 170 years until its integration into the Visigothic Kingdom. Notably, the Semnones, known to classical authors as one of the largest Suebian groups, also seem to have a name with this same meaning, alternatively, it may be borrowed from a Celtic word for vagabond. Caesar placed the Suebi east of the Ubii apparently near modern Hesse, in the position where later writers mention the Chatti, some commentators believe that Caesars Suebi were the later Chatti or possibly the Hermunduri, or Semnones. Later authors use the term Suebi more broadly, to cover a number of tribes in central Germany. Whether or not the Chatti were ever considered Suevi, both Tacitus and Strabo distinguish the two partly because the Chatti were more settled in one territory, whereas Suevi remained less settled. The definitions of the greater ethnic groupings within Germania were apparently not always consistent and clear, whereas Tacitus reported three main kinds of German peoples, Irminones, Istvaeones, and Ingaevones, Pliny specifically adds two more genera or kinds, the Bastarnae and the Vandili. The Vandals were tribes east of the Elbe, including the well-known Silingi, Goths, and Burgundians, the modern term Elbe Germanic similarly covers a large grouping of Germanic peoples that at least overlaps with the classical terms Suevi and Irminones. In the time of Caesar, southern Germany was Celtic, in addition, also near the Hercynian forest Caesar believed that the Celtic Tectosages had once lived. All of these peoples had for the most part moved by the time of Tacitus, nevertheless, Cassius Dio wrote that the Suebi, who dwelt across the Rhine, were called Celts, which could mean that some Celtic groups were absorbed by larger Germanic tribal confederations. Strabo, in Book IV of his Geography also associates the Suebi with the Hercynian Forest and the south of Germania north of the Danube. He describes a chain of mountains north of the Danube that is like an extension of the Alps, possibly the Swabian Alps. In Book VII Strabo specifically mentions as Suevic peoples the Marcomanni, some of these tribes were inside the forest and some outside of it. Tacitus confirms the name Boiemum, saying it was a survival marking the old population of the place
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Vandal Kingdom
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The Vandal Kingdom or Kingdom of the Vandals and Alans was a kingdom established by the Germanic Vandals under Gaiseric in North Africa and the Mediterranean from 435 AD to 534 AD. The Kingdom was conquered by Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the Vandalic War, although primarily remembered for their persecution of orthodox Nicene Christians, the Vandals were also patrons of learning. Grand building projects continued, schools flourished and North Africa fostered many of the most innovative writers, the Vandals, under their new king Genseric, crossed to Africa in 429. According to Procopius, the Vandals came to Africa at the request of Bonifacius, however, it has been suggested that the Vandals migrated to Africa in search of safety, they had been attacked by a Roman army in 422 and had failed to seal a treaty with them. Advancing eastwards along the coast, the Vandals laid siege to the city of Hippo Regius in 430. Inside, Saint Augustine and his priests prayed for relief from the invaders, on 28 August 430, three months into the siege, St. Augustine died, perhaps from starvation or stress, as the wheat fields outside the city lay dormant and unharvested. Peace was made between the Romans and the Vandals in 435 through a treaty giving the Vandals control of coastal Numidia, geiseric chose to break the treaty in 439 when he invaded the province of Africa Proconsularis and laid siege to Carthage. The city was captured without a fight, the Vandals entered the city while most of the inhabitants were attending the races at the hippodrome. Genseric made it his capital, and styled himself the King of the Vandals and Alans, conquering Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Malta and the Balearic Islands, he built his kingdom into a powerful state. Historian Cameron suggests that the new Vandal rule may not have been unwelcome to the population of North Africa as the landowners were generally unpopular. The impression given by such as Victor of Vita, Quodvultdeus. However, recent archaeological investigations have challenged this assertion, although Carthages Odeon was destroyed, the street pattern remained the same and some public buildings were renovated. The political centre of Carthage was the Byrsa Hill, new industrial centres emerged within towns during this period. When the Vandals raided Sicily in 440, the Western Roman Empire was too preoccupied with war in Gaul to react, theodosius II, emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, dispatched an expedition to deal with the Vandals in 441, however it only progressed as far as Sicily. The Western Empire under Valentinian III secured peace with the Vandals in 442, under the treaty the Vandals gained Byzacena, Tripolitania, part of Numidia, and confirmed their control of Proconsular Africa. During the next years, with a large fleet, Genseric looted the coasts of the Eastern and Western Empires. After Attila the Huns death, however, the Romans could afford to turn their back to the Vandals. In an effort to bring the Vandals into the fold of the Empire, before this treaty could be carried out, however, politics again played a crucial part in the blunders of Rome
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Vandalic War
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The Vandalic War was a conflict fought in North Africa between the forces of the Eastern Roman Empire and the Vandalic Kingdom of Carthage, in 533–534. It was the first of Justinian Is wars of reconquest of the lost Western Roman Empire, the Vandals had occupied Roman North Africa in the early 5th century, and established an independent kingdom there. Under their first king, Geiseric, the formidable Vandal navy carried out attacks across the Mediterranean, sacked Rome. In 530, a coup in Carthage overthrew the pro-Roman Hilderic. Justinian took advantage of, or even instigated, rebellions in the remote Vandal provinces of Sardinia and Tripolitania, the Vandal king gathered his forces and met the Roman army at the Battle of Ad Decimum, near Carthage, on 13 September. Gelimers elaborate plan to encircle and destroy the Roman army came close to success, Gelimer withdrew to Bulla Regia, where he gathered his remaining strength, including the army of Tzazon, which returned from Sardinia. In December, Gelimer advanced towards Carthage and met the Romans at the Battle of Tricamarum, the battle resulted in a Roman victory and the death of Tzazon. Gelimer fled to a mountain fortress, where he was blockaded until he surrendered in the spring. Imperial control scarcely reached beyond the old Vandal kingdom, however, the new province was shaken by the wars with the Moors and military rebellions, and it was not until 548 that peace was restored and Roman government firmly established. Thus, in May 429, Geiseric crossed the straits of Gibraltar with his entire people, geiserics Vandals and Alans, however, had their own plans, and aimed to conquer the African provinces outright. Their possession of Mauretania Caesariensis, Mauretania Sitifensis and most of Numidia was recognized in 435 by the Western Roman court, warfare soon recommenced, and in October 439, the capital of Africa, Carthage, fell to the Vandals. These events marked the foundation of the Vandalic Kingdom, as the Vandals made Carthage their capital, Sicily barely escaped the same fate through the presence there of Ricimer. In the aftermath of disaster, and following further Vandal raids against the shores of Greece. Whereas the kings of Western Europe continued to pay deference to the emperors and minted coinage with their portraits, in addition, the Vandals—like most Germanics, adherents of Arianism—persecuted the Chalcedonian majority of the local population, especially in the reigns of Huneric and Gunthamund. In 523, Hilderic, the son of Huneric, ascended the throne at Carthage, Justinian evidently hoped that this rapprochement would lead to the peaceful subordination of the Vandal state to his empire. Justinian seized the opportunity, demanding Hilderics restoration, with Gelimer predictably refusing to do so, Justinian then demanded Hilderics release to Constantinople, threatening war otherwise. Geiseric was unwilling to surrender a rival claimant to Justinian, who could use him to stir up trouble in his kingdom and he consequently refused Justinians demand on the grounds that this was an internal matter among the Vandals. Justinian now had his pretext, and with peace restored on his eastern frontier with Sassanid Persia in 532, he started assembling an invasion force
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Praetorian prefecture of Africa
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It continued to exist until the late 580s, when it was replaced by the Exarchate of Africa. In 533, the Roman army under Belisarius defeated and destroyed the Vandal Kingdom that had existed in the former Roman territories of Northern Africa, immediately after the victory, in April 534, the emperor Justinian published a law concerning the administrative organization of the newly acquired territories. It is also noteworthy that Sardinia was formally detached from Italy, justinians intent was to, in the words of the historian J. B. Bury, wipe out all traces of the Vandal conquest, as if it had never been. The churches were restored to the Chalcedonian clergy, and the remaining Arians suffered persecution, the military administration was headed by the new post of magister militum Africae, with a subordinate magister peditum and four regional frontier commands under duces. This organization was gradually established, as the Romans pushed the Mauri back. When the Romans landed in Africa, the Moors maintained a neutral stance, the most significant tribes were the Leuathae in Tripolitania, and the Frexi in Byzacena. The Frexi and their allies were led by Antalas, while other tribes in the area followed Cutzinas, the Aurasii in Numidia were ruled by Iaudas, and the Mauretanian Moors were led by Mastigas and Masuna. After Belisarius departed for Constantinople, he was succeeded as magister militum Africae by his domesticus, the tribes of Mauri living in Byzacena and Numidia almost immediately rose up, and Solomon set out with his forces, which included allied Moorish tribes, against them. The situation was so critical that Solomon was also entrusted with civil authority, replacing the first prefect, Archelaus, Solomon was able to defeat the Mauri of Byzacena at Mamma, and again, decisively, at the battle of Mt. Bourgaon in early 535. In the summer, he campaigned against Iabdas and the Aurasii, who were ravaging Numidia, Solomon then set about erecting forts along the borders and the main roads, hoping to contain the raids of the Moors. In the Easter of 536 however, a military revolt broke out. Solomon, together with Procopius, who worked as his secretary, was able to escape to Sicily, solomons lieutenants Martinus and Theodore were left behind, the first to try to reach the troops at Numidia, and the second to hold Carthage. Upon hearing about the mutiny, Belisarius, with Solomon and 100 picked men, Carthage was being besieged by 9,000 rebels, including many Vandals, under a certain Stotzas. Theodore was contemplating capitulation, when Belisarius appeared, the news of the famous generals arrival were sufficient for the rebels to abandon the siege and withdraw westwards. Belisarius, although able to muster only 2,000 men, immediately gave pursuit and caught up, the bulk of the rebels however was able to flee, and continued to march towards Numidia, where the local troops decided to join them. Belisarius himself was forced to return to Italy, and Justinian appointed his cousin Germanus as magister militum to deal with the crisis, Germanus managed to win over many of the rebels to his side by appearing conciliatory and paying their arrears. Eventually, in the spring of 537, the two clashed at Scalae Veteres, resulting in a hard-won victory for Germanus. Stotzas fled to the tribesmen of Mauretania, and Germanus spent the two years in re-establishing discipline in the army
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Spanish language
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Spanish —also called Castilian —is a Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain, with hundreds of millions of native speakers around the world. It is usually considered the worlds second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese and it is one of the few languages to use inverted question and exclamation marks. Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Beginning in the early 16th century, Spanish was taken to the colonies of the Spanish Empire, most notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa, Oceania, around 75% of modern Spanish is derived from Latin. Greek has also contributed substantially to Spanish vocabulary, especially through Latin, Spanish vocabulary has been in contact from an early date with Arabic, having developed during the Al-Andalus era in the Iberian Peninsula. With around 8% of its vocabulary being Arabic in origin, this language is the second most important influence after Latin and it has also been influenced by Basque as well as by neighboring Ibero-Romance languages. It also adopted words from languages such as Gothic language from the Visigoths in which many Spanish names and surnames have a Visigothic origin. Spanish is one of the six languages of the United Nations. It is the language in the world by the number of people who speak it as a mother tongue, after Mandarin Chinese. It is estimated more than 437 million people speak Spanish as a native language. Spanish is the official or national language in Spain, Equatorial Guinea, speakers in the Americas total some 418 million. In the European Union, Spanish is the tongue of 8% of the population. Spanish is the most popular second language learned in the United States, in 2011 it was estimated by the American Community Survey that of the 55 million Hispanic United States residents who are five years of age and over,38 million speak Spanish at home. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the language of the whole Spanish State in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas. Article III reads as follows, El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado, las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas. Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State, the other Spanish languages as well shall be official in their respective Autonomous Communities. The Spanish Royal Academy, on the hand, currently uses the term español in its publications. Two etymologies for español have been suggested, the Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary derives the term from the Provençal word espaignol, and that in turn from the Medieval Latin word Hispaniolus, from—or pertaining to—Hispania
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Moors
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Moors are not a distinct or self-defined people, and mainstream scholars observed in 1911 that The term Moors has no real ethnological value. Medieval and early modern Europeans variously applied the name to Arabs, Berber North Africans and Muslim Europeans. The term has also used in Europe in a broader, somewhat derogatory sense to refer to Muslims in general, especially those of Arab or Berber descent. During the colonial era, the Portuguese introduced the names Ceylon Moors and Indian Moors in Sri Lanka, in 711, troops mostly formed by Moors from North Africa led the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. The Iberian peninsula then came to be known in classical Arabic as Al-Andalus, in 827, the Moors occupied Mazara on Sicily, developing it as a port. They eventually consolidated the rest of the island and some of southern Italy, in 1224 the Muslims were expelled from Sicily to the settlement of Lucera, which was destroyed by European Christians in 1300. The fall of Granada in 1492 marked the end of Muslim rule in Iberia, the Berber tribes of the region were noted in Classical literature as Mauri, which was subsequently rendered as Moors in English and in related variations in other European languages. Mauri is recorded as the name by Strabo in the early 1st century. This appellation was also adopted into Latin, whereas the Greek name for the tribe was Maurusii, in medieval Romance languages, variations of the Latin word for the Moors developed different applications and connotations. During the context of the Crusades and the Reconquista, the term Moors included the suggestion of infidels. Apart from these associations and context, Moor and Moorish designate a specific ethnic group speaking Hassaniya Arabic. They inhabit Mauritania and parts of Algeria, Western Sahara, Tunisia, Morocco, Niger, in Niger and Mali, these peoples are also known as the Azawagh Arabs, after the Azawagh region of the Sahara. Some authors have pointed out that in modern colloquial Spanish use of the term moro is derogatory for Moroccans in particular, however, this designation has gained more acceptance in the south. In the Philippines, a former Spanish colony, many modern Filipinos call the large, local Muslim minority concentrated in Mindanao, the word is a catch-all term, as Moro may come from several distinct ethno-linguistic groups such as the Maranao people. The term was introduced by Spanish colonisers, and has since been appropriated by Filipino Muslims as an endonym, moreno can mean dark-skinned in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and the Philippines. Also in Spanish, morapio is a name for wine, especially that which has not been baptized or mixed with water. Among Spanish speakers, moro came to have a broader meaning, Moro refers to all things dark, as in Moor, moreno, etc. It was also used as a nickname, for instance, the Milanese Duke Ludovico Sforza was called Il Moro because of his dark complexion, in Portugal, mouro may refer to supernatural beings known as enchanted moura, where moor implies alien and non-Christian
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Al-Andalus
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Al-Andalus, also known as Muslim Spain or Islamic Iberia, was a medieval Muslim territory and cultural domain occupying at its peak most of what are today Spain and Portugal. At its greatest geographical extent in the century, southern France—Septimania—was briefly under its control. Rule under these kingdoms led to a rise in cultural exchange, a number of achievements that advanced Islamic and Western science came from al-Andalus including major advances in trigonometry, astronomy, surgery, pharmacology, and other fields. Al-Andalus became an educational center for Europe and the lands around the Mediterranean Sea as well as a conduit for culture. For much of its history, al-Andalus existed in conflict with Christian kingdoms to the north, after the fall of the Umayyad caliphate, al-Andalus was fragmented into a number of minor states and principalities. Attacks from the Christians intensified, led by the Castilians under Alfonso VI, the Almoravid empire intervened and repelled the Christian attacks on the region, deposing the weak Andalusi Muslim princes and included al-Andalus under direct Berber rule. In the next century and a half, al-Andalus became a province of the Berber Muslim empires of the Almoravids and Almohads, ultimately, the Christian kingdoms in the north of the Iberian Peninsula overpowered the Muslim states to the south. In 1085, Alfonso VI captured Toledo, starting a gradual decline of Muslim power, with the fall of Córdoba in 1236, most of the south quickly fell under Christian rule and the Emirate of Granada became a tributary state of the Kingdom of Castile two years later. In 1249, the Portuguese Reconquista culminated with the conquest of the Algarve by Afonso III, finally, on January 2,1492, Emir Muhammad XII surrendered the Emirate of Granada to Queen Isabella I of Castile, completing the Christian Reconquista of the peninsula. The toponym al-Andalus is first attested to by inscriptions on coins minted by the new Muslim government in Iberia, the etymology of the name has traditionally been derived from the name of the Vandals. A number of proposals since the 1980s have contested this, Vallvé proposed a corruption of the name Atlantis, halm derives the name from a Gothic term *landahlauts. Bossong suggests derivation from a pre-Roman substrate and they crossed the Pyrenees and occupied Visigothic Septimania in southern France. Most of the Iberian peninsula became part of the expanding Umayyad Empire and it was organized as a province subordinate to Ifriqiya, so, for the first few decades, the governors of al-Andalus were appointed by the emir of Kairouan, rather than the Caliph in Damascus. Visigothic lords who agreed to recognize Muslim suzerainty were allowed to retain their fiefs, resistant Visigoths took refuge in the Cantabrian highlands, where they carved out a rump state, the Kingdom of Asturias. In the 720s, the al-Andalus governors launched several raids into Aquitaine. At the Battle of Poitiers in 732, the al-Andalus raiding army was defeated by Charles Martel, in 734, the Andalusi launched raids to the east, capturing Avignon and Arles and overran much of Provence. In 737, they climbed up the Rhône valley, reached as far as Burgundy, Charles Martel of the Franks, with the assistance of Liutprand of the Lombards, invaded Burgundy and Provence and expelled the raiders by 739. Relations between Arabs and Berbers in al-Andalus had been tense in the years after the conquest
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Procopius
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Procopius of Caesarea was a prominent late antique scholar from Palaestina Prima. He is commonly held to be the last major historian of the ancient Western world, apart from his own writings, the main source for Procopius life is an entry in the Suda, a Byzantine encyclopaedia, written sometime after 975, which tells everything about his early life. He was a native of Caesarea in the Roman Province Palaestina Prima and he evidently knew Latin, as was natural for a man with legal training. In 527, the first year of Eastern Roman Emperor Justinians reign, he became the adsessor for Belisarius, Procopius was with Belisarius on the eastern front until the latter was defeated at the Battle of Callinicum in 531 and recalled to Constantinople. Procopius witnessed the Nika riots of January,532, which Belisarius, Procopius recorded a few of the extreme weather events of 535–536, although these were presented as a backdrop to Roman military activities, such as a mutiny, in and near Carthage. He rejoined Belisarius for his campaign against the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy and experienced the Gothic siege of Rome that lasted a year and nine days and he witnessed Belisarius entry into the Gothic capital, Ravenna, in 540. Book Eight of the Wars of Justinian, and the Secret History, suggest that his relationship with Belisarius seems to have cooled thereafter. When Belisarius was sent back to Italy in 544 to cope with a renewal of the war with the Goths, now led by the able king Totila, Procopius appears to have no longer been on Belisarius staff. As magister militum, Belisarius was a vir illustris, and Procopius, as his adsessor, must and he thus belonged to the middle-ranking group of the ordo senatorius. However, the Suda, which is well informed in such matters. Should this information be correct, then Procopius had a seat in the senate of Constantinople and it is not known when Procopius himself died, and many historians date his death to 554, but in 562 there was an urban prefect of Constantinople who happened to be called Procopius. In that year, Belisarius was implicated in a conspiracy and was brought before this urban prefect, the writings of Procopius are the primary source of information for the rule of the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian. Procopius Wars of Justinian is clearly his most important work, although it is not as known as the Secret History. The first two deal with the conflict between the Romans and Sassanid Persia in Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia, Lazica and Caucasian Iberia. They also cover the early career of the Roman general Belisarius, Procopius patron, the next two books, the Vandal War, cover Belisarius successful campaign against the Vandal kingdom in Roman Africa. The remaining books cover the Gothic War, the campaigns by Belisarius and others to recapture Italy and this includes accounts of the sieges of Naples and Rome. Later, Procopius added a book, which brings the history to 552/553. This eighth book covers both in Italy and on the Eastern frontier
26.
Goths
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The Goths were an East Germanic people, two of whose branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe. In the Gothic language they were called the Gut-þiuda, most commonly translated as Gothic people, gut-þiudai, or Gutans Inferred from gen. pl. gutani in Pietroassa inscription. In Old Norse they were known as the Gutar or Gotar, in Latin as the Gothi, the exact origin of the ancient Goths is unknown. Evidence of them before they interacted with the Romans is limited, Modern academics have generally abandoned this theory. Today, the Wielbark culture is thought to have developed from earlier cultures in the same area, archaeological finds show close contacts between southern Sweden and the Baltic coastal area on the continent, and further towards the south-east, evidenced by pottery, house types and graves. Rather than a migration, similarities in the material cultures may be products of long-term regular contacts. However, the record could indicate that while his work is thought to be unreliable. Sometime around the 1st century AD, Germanic peoples may have migrated from Scandinavia to Gothiscandza, early archaeological evidence in the traditional Swedish province of Östergötland suggests a general depopulation during this period. However, there is no evidence for a substantial emigration from Scandinavia. Upon their arrival on the Pontic Steppe, the Germanic tribes adopted the ways of the Eurasian nomads, the first Greek references to the Goths call them Scythians, since this area along the Black Sea historically had been occupied by an unrelated people of that name. The earliest known material culture associated with the Goths on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea is the Wielbark culture, centered on the modern region of Pomerania in northern Poland. This culture replaced the local Oxhöft or Oksywie culture in the 1st century, the culture of this area was influenced by southern Scandinavian culture beginning as early as the late Nordic Bronze Age and early Pre-Roman Iron Age. In Eastern Europe they formed part of the Chernyakhov culture and it has been suggested that the Goths maintained contact with southern Sweden during their migration. In the first attested incursion in Thrace, the Goths were mentioned as Boranoi by Zosimus, the first incursion of the Roman Empire that can be attributed to Goths is the sack of Histria in 238. Several such raids followed in subsequent decades, in particular the Battle of Abrittus in 251, led by Cniva, at the time, there were at least two groups of Goths, the Thervingi and the Greuthungs. Goths were subsequently recruited into the Roman Army to fight in the Roman-Persian Wars. The Moesogoths settled in Thrace and Moesia, the first seaborne raids took place in three subsequent years, probably 255-257. An unsuccessful attack on Pityus was followed in the year by another
27.
Gepids
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The Gepids were an East Germanic tribe. They were closely related to, or a subdivision of, the Goths and they are first recorded in 6th-century historiography as having been allied with the Goths in the invasion of Dacia in c. In the 4th century, they were incorporated into the Hunnic Empire, under their leader Ardaric, the Gepids united with other Germanic tribes and defeated the Huns at the Battle of Nedao in 454. The Gepids then founded a kingdom centered on Sirmium, known as Gepidia, remnants of the Gepids were conquered by the Avars later in the 6th century. Jordanes reports that their name is from gepanta, an insult meaning sluggish, an Old English form of their name is recorded in Widsith, as Gefþ-, alongside the name of the Wends. The Gepids were the most shadowy of all the major Germanic peoples of the migration period, neither Tacitus nor Ptolemy mentioned them in their detailed lists of the barbarians, suggesting that the Gepids emerged only in the 3rd century AD. The first sporadic references to them, which were recorded in the late 3rd century, the 6th-century Byzantine writer, Procopius, listed the Gepids among the Gothic nations, along with the Vandals, Visigoths and Goths proper, in his Wars of Justinian. All information of the Gepids origins came from malicious and convoluted Gothic legends, according to Jordanes narration the northern island of Scandza, which is associated with Sweden by modern scholars, was the original homeland of the ancestors of the Goths and Gepids. They left Scandza in three boats under the leadership of Berig, the legendary Gothic King, Jordanes also writes that the Gepids ancestors traveled in the last of the three ships, for which their fellows mocked them as gepanta, or slow and stolid. They settled along the shore of the Baltic Sea on an island at mouth of the Vistula River, called Gepedoius, or the Gepids fruitful meadows. Jordanes passage in his Getica is the following, Should you ask how the and Gepidae are kinsmen, I can tell you in a few words. One of these three ships proved to be slower than the others, as is usually the case, and thus is said to have given the tribe their name, for in their language gepanta means slow. Hence it came to pass that gradually and by corruption the name Gepidae was coined for them by way of reproach. For undoubtedly they too trace their origin from the stock of the Goths, but because, as I have said, gepanta means something slow and stolid, the word Gepidae arose as a gratuitous name of reproach. Modern historians who write of the Gepids early history tend to apply a mixed argumentation, according to Jordanes, the Gepids decided to leave Gepedoius during the reign of their legendary king, Fastida. They moved to the south and defeated the Burgundians, after the victory, Fastida demanded land from Ostrogotha, King of the Visigoths, because the Gepids territory was hemmed in by rugged mountains and dense forests. Ostrogotha refused Fastidas demand and the Gepids joined battle with the Goths at the town of Galtis, near which the river Auha flowed and they fought until darkness when Fastida and his Gepids withdrew from the battlefield and returned to their land. Archaeologist Kurdt Horedt writes that the battle took place east of the Carpathian Mountains after 248, on the other hand, historian István Bóna says that the two armies clashed in the former province of Dacia around 290
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Arianism
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Arian teachings were first attributed to Arius, a Christian presbyter in Alexandria, Egypt. The teachings of Arius and his supporters were opposed to the views held by Homoousian Christians, regarding the nature of the Trinity. The Arian concept of Christ is that the Son of God did not always exist but was begotten by God the Father, there was a dispute between two interpretations based upon the theological orthodoxy of the time, both of them attempted to solve its theological dilemmas. So there were, initially, two equally orthodox interpretations which initiated a conflict in order to attract adepts and define the new orthodoxy, homoousianism was formally affirmed by the first two Ecumenical Councils. All mainstream branches of Christianity now consider Arianism to be heterodox, the Ecumenical First Council of Nicaea of 325 deemed it to be a heresy. According to Everett Ferguson, The great majority of Christians had no clear views on the Trinity, at the regional First Synod of Tyre in 335, Arius was exonerated. Constantine the Great was baptized by the Arian bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, after the deaths of both Arius and Constantine, Arius was again anathemised and pronounced a heretic again at the Ecumenical First Council of Constantinople of 381. The Roman Emperors Constantius II and Valens were Arians or Semi-Arians, as was the first King of Italy, Odoacer, and the Lombards till the 7th century. Arius had been a pupil of Lucian of Antioch at Lucians private academy in Antioch and he taught that God the Father and the Son of God did not always exist together eternally. A verse from Proverbs was also used, The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, therefore, the Son was rather the very first and the most perfect of Gods creatures, and he was made God only by the Fathers permission and power. Controversy over Arianism arose in the late 3rd century and persisted throughout most of the 4th century and it involved most church members—from simple believers, priests, and monks to bishops, emperors, and members of Romes imperial family. Two Roman emperors, Constantius II and Valens, became Arians or Semi-Arians, as did prominent Gothic, Vandal, such a deep controversy within the Church during this period of its development could not have materialized without significant historical influences providing a basis for the Arian doctrines. Of the roughly three hundred bishops in attendance at the Council of Nicea, two bishops did not sign the Nicene Creed, which condemned Arianism, Arians do not believe in the traditional doctrine of the Trinity. The letter of Arian Auxentius regarding the Arian missionary Ulfilas gives a picture of Arian beliefs. Arian Ulfilas, who was ordained a bishop by Arian Eusebius of Nicomedia and returned to his people to work as a missionary, believed, God, the Father, always existing, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, begotten before time began and who is Lord/Master. By the 8th century it had ceased to be the tribes mainstream belief as the tribal rulers gradually came to adopt Nicene orthodoxy. This trend began in 496 with Clovis I of the Franks, then Reccared I of the Visigoths in 587, the remaining tribes – the Vandals and the Ostrogoths – did not convert as a people nor did they maintain territorial cohesion. Having been militarily defeated by the armies of Emperor Justinian I, the Vandalic War of 533–534 dispersed the defeated Vandals
29.
Calliope
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In Greek mythology, Calliope is the muse who presides over eloquence and epic poetry, so called from the ecstatic harmony of her voice. She is spoken of by Hesiod and Ovid as the Chief of all Muses and she is mostly stated to be the eldest of the Muses, sometimes vying with her sister Urania for the position. Calliope also had two sons, Orpheus and Linus, by either Apollo or the king Oeagrus of Thrace. She taught Orpheus verses for singing, according to Hesiod, she was also the wisest of the Muses, as well as the most assertive. Calliope married Oeagrus close to Pimpleia, Olympus and she is said to have defeated the daughters of Pierus, king of Thessaly, in a singing match, and then, to punish their presumption, turned them into magpies. She was sometimes believed to be Homers muse for the Iliad, the Roman epic poet, Virgil, invokes her in the Aeneid. Calliope is usually seen with a tablet in her hand. At times, she is depicted carrying a roll of paper or a book or wearing a gold crown and she would also be seen with her children. The Italian poet, Dante Alighieri, in his Divine Comedy, makes reference to Calliope, Media related to Calliope at Wikimedia Commons Theoi. com – Calliope Warburg Institute Iconographic Database
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Dionysus
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Dionysus is the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theatre and religious ecstasy in ancient Greek religion and myth. Wine played an important role in Greek culture, and the cult of Dionysus was the religious focus for its unrestrained consumption. He may have been worshipped as early as c, 1500–1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks, traces of Dionysian-type cult have also been found in ancient Minoan Crete. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms, some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, in some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner, in others, from Ethiopia in the South. He is a god of epiphany, the god that comes and his festivals were the driving force behind the development of Greek theatre. The earliest cult images of Dionysus show a male, bearded and robed. He holds a staff, tipped with a pine-cone and known as a thyrsus. Later images show him as a beardless, sensuous, naked or half-naked androgynous youth, in its fully developed form, his central cult imagery shows his triumphant, disorderly arrival or return, as if from some place beyond the borders of the known and civilized. His procession is made up of female followers and bearded satyrs with erect penises, some are armed with the thyrsus. The god himself is drawn in a chariot, usually by exotic beasts such as lions or tigers and this procession is presumed to be the cult model for the followers of his Dionysian Mysteries. He is also known as Bacchus, the adopted by the Romans. His thyrsus, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. As Eleutherios, his wine, music and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care and those who partake of his mysteries are possessed and empowered by the god himself. The cult of Dionysus is also a cult of the souls, his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings and he is sometimes categorised as a dying-and-rising god. Some scholars believe that Dionysus is a syncretism of a local Greek nature deity, Dionysus had a strange birth that evokes the difficulty in fitting him into the Olympian pantheon. His mother was a woman, Semele, the daughter of king Cadmus of Thebes, and his father was Zeus. Zeus wife, Hera, discovered the affair while Semele was pregnant, appearing as an old crone, Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that Zeus was the actual father of the baby in her womb. Hera pretended not to believe her, and planted seeds of doubt in Semeles mind, curious, Semele demanded of Zeus that he reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his godhood
31.
Languages of the Roman Empire
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Latin and Greek were the dominant languages of the Roman Empire, but other languages were important regionally. The language of the ancient Romans was Latin, which served as the language of power, Latin was pervasive in the Roman Empire as the language of the law courts in the West, and of the military everywhere. Koine Greek had become a language around the eastern Mediterranean. The linguistic frontier dividing the Latin West and the Greek East passed through the Balkan peninsula, with the dissolution of the Empire in the West, Greek became the dominant language of the Eastern Roman Empire, later known as the Byzantine Empire. Some evidence exists in inscriptions, or in references in Greek and Roman texts to other languages, for Punic, Coptic, and Aramaic or Syriac, a significant amount of epigraphy or literature survives. The Celtic languages were widespread throughout much of western Europe, and while the orality of Celtic education left scant written records, Celtic epigraphy is limited in quantity, the Germanic languages of the Empire have left next to no inscriptions or texts, with the exception of Gothic. In the early 21st century, the first or second language of more than a billion people derived from Latin, Latin was the language of the Romans from the earliest known period. Writing under the first Roman emperor Augustus, Virgil emphasizes that Latin was a source of Roman unity, and I will make them all Latins with one mode of expression. Latin became the language of conquered areas because people started speaking it. Latin was not imposed officially on peoples brought under Roman rule, saint Augustine observed that Romans preferred for Latin to be adopted per pacem societatis, through a social pact. This language policy contrasts with that of Alexander, who aimed to impose Greek throughout his empire as the official language, Latin was needed for Imperial service and advancement, and was the language used for the internal functioning of government. Edicts and official communications of the emperor were in Latin, including rulings on local laws that might be in another language, the Romans placed a high value on the written word, as indicated by their obsession with documentation and public inscriptions. Estimates of the literacy rate in the Empire range from 5 to 30 percent or higher. The lack of intervention in access to education was a barrier to literacy. The birth certificates and wills of Roman citizens had to be written in Latin until the time of Alexander Severus, illiterate Roman subjects would have someone such as a government scribe read or write their official documents for them. Laws and edicts were posted in writing as well as read out, public art and religious ceremonies were ways to communicate imperial ideology regardless of language spoken or ability to read. An early form of ballet was brought to Rome by Greek performers. Latin was the language of the Roman army until the mid-6th century
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International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
33.
West Germanic languages
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The West Germanic languages constitute the largest of the three branches of the Germanic family of languages. The three most prevalent West Germanic languages are English, German, and Dutch, additionally, several creoles, patois, and pidgins are based on Dutch and English as they were languages of colonial empires. The West Germanic languages share many lexemes not existing in North Germanic and/or East Germanic—archaisms as well as common neologisms, most scholars doubt that there was a Proto-West-Germanic proto-language common to the West Germanic languages and no others, though a few maintain that Proto-West-Germanic existed. Although there is quite a bit of knowledge about North Sea Germanic or Anglo-Frisian, linguists know almost nothing about Weser-Rhine Germanic, in fact, these two terms were coined in the 1940s to refer to groups of archeological findings rather than linguistic features. Only later were these terms applied to hypothetical dialectal differences within both regions, the rhotacism of /z/ to /r/. The development of the demonstrative pronoun ancestral to English this, rhotacism, for example, was largely complete in West Germanic at a time when North Germanic runic inscriptions still clearly distinguished the two phonemes. However, there are also a number of common archaisms in West Germanic shared by neither Old Norse nor Gothic, the debate on the existence of a Proto-West-Germanic clade was recently summarized, That North Germanic is. A unitary subgroup is completely obvious, as all of its dialects shared a series of innovations. Several scholars have published reconstructions of Proto-West-Germanic morphological paradigms and many authors have reconstructed individual Proto-West-Germanic morphological forms or lexemes, the first comprehensive reconstruction of the Proto-West-Germanic language was published in 2013 by Wolfram Euler. If indeed Proto-West-Germanic existed, it must have been between the 3rd and 7th centuries, after that, the split into West and North Germanic occurred. It has been argued that, judging by their nearly identical syntax, over the course of this period, the dialects diverged successively. Bordering dialects very probably continued to be mutually intelligible even beyond the boundaries of the consonant shift, in fact, many dialects of Limburgish and Ripuarian are still mutually intelligible today. The High German consonant shift distinguished the High German languages from the other West Germanic languages, by early modern times, the span had extended into considerable differences, ranging from Highest Alemannic in the South to Northern Low Saxon in the North. Although both extremes are considered German, they are not mutually intelligible, the southernmost varieties have completed the second sound shift, whereas the northern dialects remained unaffected by the consonant shift. Of modern German varieties, Low German is the one that most resembles modern English, the district of Angeln, from which the name English derives, is in the extreme northern part of Germany between the Danish border and the Baltic coast. The area of the Saxons lay south of Anglia, the Anglo-Saxons, two Germanic tribes, were a combination of a number of peoples from northern Germany and the Jutland Peninsula. Note that divisions between subfamilies of Germanic are rarely defined, most form dialect continua, with adjacent dialects being mutually intelligible. Also note that English is part of the North Sea Germanic branch of the West Germanic languages, some may only appear in the older languages but are no longer apparent in the modern languages
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Anglo-Frisian languages
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The Anglo-Frisian languages is the group of West Germanic languages that includes Anglic and Frisian. For additional detail, see Phonological history of Old English, ingvaeonic, also known as North Sea Germanic, is a postulated grouping of the West Germanic languages that comprises Old Frisian, Old English and Old Saxon. It is not thought of as a monolithic proto-language, but rather as a group of related dialects that underwent several areal changes in relative unison. High German languages Low Franconian languages Friedrich Maurer, Nordgermanen und Alemannen, Studien zur Sprachgeschichte, Stammes- und Volkskunde,244 p. in German with English summary, Verlag Inspiration Un Ltd. Ringe, Donald R. and Taylor, Ann, the Development of Old English - A Linguistic History of English, vol
35.
Forth and Bargy dialect
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The Forth and Bargy dialect, also known as Yola, is an extinct variety of English once spoken in the baronies of Forth and Bargy in County Wexford, Ireland. It is thought to have evolved from Middle English, which was brought to Ireland during the Norman invasion, as such, it was similar to the Fingallian dialect of the Fingal area. Both became extinct in the 19th century, when they were replaced by modern Hiberno-English, the name Yola means old in the dialect. The dialect was spoken in County Wexford, particularly in the baronies of Forth and this was the first area English-speakers came to in the Norman invasion of Ireland, supporting the theory that the dialect evolved from the Middle English introduced in that period. As such it is thought to have similar to Fingallian. After this point, the Forth and Bargy dialect and Fingallian were the only attested relicts of this form of English. Modern English was widely introduced by British colonists during and after the 17th century, the new varieties were notably distinct from the surviving relict dialects. As English continued to spread, both the Forth and Bargy dialect and the Fingal dialect died out in the 19th century, as in the Dutch language, in southwestern varieties of English and in German, most voiceless fricatives in Forth and Bargy became voiced. The Middle English vowels are well-preserved, having only partially and sporadically undergone the changes associated with the Great Vowel Shift, Forth and Bargy pronouns were similar to Middle English pronouns. The definite article was at first a, which was replaced by the. Forth and Bargy verbs had some conservative characteristics, the second and third person plural endings were sometimes -eth as in Chaucerian English. The past participle retained the Middle English y prefix as ee, some nouns retained the -en plural of ME children, such as been bees and tren trees. The glossary compiled by Jacob Poole provides most of what is known about Forth, Poole was a farmer and member of the Religious Society of Friends from Growtown in the Parish of Taghmon on the border between the baronies of Bargy and Shelmalier. He collected words and phrases from his tenants and farm labourers between 1800 and his death in 1827, although most of its vocabulary is Anglo-Saxon in origin, Forth and Bargy contains many borrowings from Irish and French. Compare Dorset dialect, one, two, dree, vower, vive, zix, zeven, aïght, nine, ten, diarmaid Ó Muirithe travelled to South Wexford in 1978 to study the English spoken there. His informants ranged in age between 40 and 90, the papers editor Mr Edmund Hore writes, The most remarkable fact, in reality, in connexion with the address is this. Double ee sounds like e in “me”, and most words of two syllables the long accent is placed on the last, to follow the English pronunciation completely deprives the dialect of its peculiarities. To’s Excellencie Constantine Harrie Phipps, y’ Earle Mulgrave, Lord Lieutenant-General and General Governor of Ireland, ye soumissive Spakeen o’ouz Dwelleres o’ Baronie Forthe, Weisforthe
36.
Fingallian
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Fingallian or the Fingal dialect is an extinct variety of English formerly spoken in Fingal, Ireland. It is thought to have been an offshoot of Middle English, which was brought to Ireland during the Norman invasion, although little is known of Fingallian, it is thought to have been similar to the Forth and Bargy dialect of County Wexford. The surviving literature of Fingallian consists of two satirical or humorous poems, the short Fingallian Dance and the much longer Purgatorium Hibernicum. Both poems are anonymous and are thought to be parodies of Fingallian by non-native speakers. Fingallian was spoken in the region of Fingal, traditionally the part of County Dublin north of the River Tolka and it was spoken in the area near the northern border. The name Fingal is from the Irish Fine Gall, or territory of foreigners, linguist Alf Sommerfelt proposed the idea of a Norse influence on the Fingallian dialect, though later scholars have found no evidence of such a connection. Like the Yola dialect of County Wexford, Fingallian is thought to have derived from Middle English, Middle English was well established in southeastern Ireland until the 14th century, when the area was re-Gaelicized and English was displaced. As such, the Yola and Fingal dialects would have been the only attested relicts of this original English variety in Ireland. The poem most likely to have composed by a native speaker of Fingallian is The Fingallian Dance. It is a mildly indecent poem about a man going to see dancers at a bullring, although the poem is likely to have been standardised when written down, it gives a flavour of Fingallian, particularly forms like fat for what or fen for when. Other words that need explanation are ame them and plack-keet, part of a petticoat. - But fire take ame, They made me ashame, the Purgatoriam Hibernicum is a humorous and bawdy burlesque or travesty on the Roman poet Virgils Aeneid. Virgils prince Aeneas and his noble lover Dido are transformed into a bumbling young Fingallian called Prince Nees, the names of all the characters are converted into mock Irish forms and the places mentioned in Virgils text become places in Fingal. Part of the humour for the Anglo-Irish readers of the poem is that Nees, although the intention is supposedly to mock their speech, it is rendered with such vitality and wit that the effect is actually to give the reader an appreciation of its richness. The short extract below provides an example of Fingallian. In it Nees encounters Dydy again and seeing her look pale and unwell realises that he may have been responsible for giving her the flame or venereal disease. A few features need explanation, V is used instead of W in Fingallian, suggam is a kind of rope, Ful dea ro is derives from Irish fuil Dé. Sayes Nees, dis me old vench is, but when he drew more neare her quarters, And know her by her suggam garters, Ful dea, ro, dou unlucky jade, Ill chance upon dee
37.
Scots language
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Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster. It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language which was restricted to most of the Highlands. The language developed during the Middle English period as a distinct entity, although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects do exist, these often render contradictory results. Broad Scots is at one end of a linguistic continuum. Scots is often regarded as one of the ancient varieties of English, alternatively, Scots is sometimes treated as a distinct Germanic language, in the way Norwegian is closely linked to, yet distinct from, Danish. In the 2011 Scottish census, a question on Scots language ability was featured, native speakers sometimes refer to their vernacular as braid Scots or use a dialect name such as the Doric, or the Buchan Claik. The old-fashioned Scotch, an English loan, occurs occasionally, especially in Northern Ireland, the term Lallans, a variant of the Modern Scots word lawlands, is also used, though this is more often taken to mean the Lallans literary form. Scots in Ireland is known in circles as Ulster-Scots or Ullans. Scots is a contraction of Scottis, the Older Scots and northern version of late Old English Scottisc, before the end of the 15th century, English speech in Scotland was known as English, whereas Scottish referred to Gaelic. From 1495 the term Scottis was increasingly used to refer to the Lowland vernacular and Erse, meaning Irish, the Gaelic of Scotland is now usually called Scottish Gaelic. Northumbrian Old English had been established in what is now southeastern Scotland as far as the River Forth by the seventh century and it remained largely confined to this area until the thirteenth century, continuing in common use while Gaelic was the language of the Scottish court. Scots also includes loan words resulting from contact with Gaelic, Early medieval legal documents include a body of Gaelic legal and administrative loans. Contemporary Gaelic loans are mainly for geographical and cultural features, such as ceilidh, loch, from the thirteenth century Early Scots spread further into Scotland via the burghs, proto-urban institutions which were first established by King David I. The growth in prestige of Early Scots in the century. By the sixteenth century Middle Scots had established orthographic and literary norms largely independent of those developing in England, from 1610 to the 1690s during the Plantation of Ulster large numbers of Scots-speaking Lowlanders, some 200,000, settled there. In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one, Modern Scots is used to describe the language after 1700 when southern Modern English was generally adopted as the literary language though Scots remained the vernacular. In Scotland, Scots is spoken in the Scottish Lowlands, the Northern Isles, Caithness, Arran, in Ulster it is spoken in the Counties of Down, Antrim, Londonderry and Donegal. Dialects include Insular Scots, Northern Scots, Central Scots, Southern Scots, many speakers are either diglossic and/or able to code-switch along the continuum depending on the situation in which they find themselves
