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Ж

Zhe (Ж, ж) is the letter of Cyrillic alphabet which represents the voiced postalveolar fricative (listen), similar to the "s" in the English word "treasure". Zhe is the 7th letter of the Bulgarian and Belarusian alphabets, the 8th letter in the Macedonian, Russian and Serbian alphabets, and the 9th in the Ukrainian alphabet. It is also found in most non-Slavic languages written in the Cyrillic script, representing either or . In the old Cyrillic alphabet, zhe was the 7th letter. Its name was "живѣте" (zhivěte)—live, and it did not have a numerical value. It is not known what zhe was derived from. No similar letter exists in Greek, Latin or any other alphabet of the time, though there is some graphic similarity with the Glagolitic letter "zhivete" (10px) which represents the same sound. However, the origin of zhivete, like that of most Glagolitic letters, is unclear. 10px Zhe is most often transliterated as "zh", more rarely as "zx", except in Serbian and Macedonian where it is most often transliterated as "ž", or, lacking diacritics, simply as "z". The Polish counterpart is "ż". Zhe is one of the first letters learned by children who learn to write in Slavic languages, because it looks quite like a young frog floating in a pond, and in these languages the word meaning "frog" or "toad" is written "жаба". Zhe can also be used in Leet speak in place of the letter x.

Code positions

Its HTML entities are: Ж or Ж for capital and ж or ж for small letter. ja:Ж

Letter

A letter is a written message from one party to another. Letters are usually intended to be received by someone far away. Before widespread availability of typewriters and computers, letters were always written by hand. Nowadays, letters are only widely used by companies who send out letters to large numbers of people, who may not have access to the internet for e-mail. The term letter is sometimes used for e-mail messages with a formal letter-like format. Historically, letters exist from the time of ancient Egypt and Sumer, all the way through Rome and Greece and China. Letters make up several of the books of the Christian Bible.

Advantages

Letters are still used, particularly by companies and advertisers. This is because of three main advantages:
- No special device needed - almost everybody has a home, which means they are easy to reach. A letterbox is all that the intended recipient needs - not like e-mail or phone-calls where you need access to a computer and a telephone respectively.
- "Catch-all" advertising- unlike e-mails, where the recipient needs an individual e-mail address to receive messages, addresses are not chosen (per se), and so with the help of postal services, delivering an advertisement to all homes in a particular area is not hard.
- Physical record - an important advantage of letters is that important messages that need to be retained (eg receipts) can be kept.

The letter-delivering process

Here is how a letter gets from the sender to the recipient: # Sender writes letter and buys a stamp, which he places on the front of the envelope. # Sender puts his letter in a postbox and does nothing more. # The National Postal Service for the sender's country (e.g. the Royal Mail in the UK or the US Postal Service in the US) empties the letterbox and takes all the contents to the regional sorting office # The sorting office then sort each letter by address and postcode, and deliver the letters belonging to a particular area to that area's post office. Letters belonging to a different region are sent to that region's sorting office, to be sorted further. # The local post office dispatches their letters to their postmen who deliver them to the appropriate houses. This whole process, depending on how for away the sender / recipient are, takes about 2-3 days. International mail is sent via trains and planes to other countries.

Letter Layout

The following is the normal way to set out a letter: (Note: This is the style in the UK. The American letter format is different.)

- TIP: Can't have the two S together. Use: Sir/Faithfully Or: Name/Sincerely
- [http://letter.dabase.com/ A Web form to Letter (PDF) generator] The following is a typical American format for a business letter:

- http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/BusinessLetter.html University of Wisconsin Writing Center Guide

Types of letters

External links

- [http://www.ipfeurope.com International Pen Friends] ja:手紙 Category:Letters

Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first letters) is an alphabet used to write six natural Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe.

Origins

The plan of the alphabet is derived from the early Cyrillic alphabet, itself a derivative of the Glagolitic alphabet, a ninth century uncial cursive usually credited to two brothers from Thessaloniki, Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius. The glyphs in the Cyrillic alphabet are, however, mainly Byzantine Greek letters. Some of them, especially those representing sounds that did not exist in medieval Greek, retain their Glagolitic forms. Whereas it is widely accepted that the Glagolitic alphabet was invented by Saints Cyril and Methodius, the origins of the early Cyrillic alphabet are still a source of much controversy. Though it is usually attributed to Saint Clement of Ohrid, a Bulgarian scholar and disciple of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, the alphabet is more likely to have developed at the Preslav Literary School in north-eastern Bulgaria, where the oldest Cyrillic inscriptions have been found, dating back to the 940s. The theory is supported by the fact that the Cyrillic alphabet almost completely replaced the Glagolitic in northeastern Bulgaria as early as the end of the tenth century, whereas the Ohrid Literary School—where Saint Clement worked—continued to use the Glagolitic until the twelfth century. Among the reasons for the replacement of the Glagolithic with the Cyrillic alphabet is the greater simplicity and ease of use of the latter and its closeness with the Greek alphabet, which had been well known in the First Bulgarian Empire. There are also other theories regarding the origins of the Cyrillic alphabet, namely that the alphabet was created by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius themselves, or that it preceded the Glagolitic alphabet, representing a "transitional" stage between Greek and Glagolitic cursive, but these have been widely disproved. Although Cyril is almost certainly not the author of the Cyrillic alphabet, his contributions to the Glagolitic and hence to the Cyrillic alphabet are still recognised, as the latter is named after him. The alphabet was disseminated along with the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language, and the alphabet used for modern Church Slavonic language in Eastern Orthodox rites still resembles early Cyrillic. However, over the following ten centuries, the Cyrillic alphabet adapted to changes in spoken language, developed regional variations to suit the features of national languages, and was subjected to academic reforms and political decrees. Today, dozens of languages in Eastern Europe and Asia are written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Letter-forms and typography

The development of Cyrillic typography passed directly from the medieval stage to the late Baroque, without a Renaissance phase as in Western Europe. Late Medieval Cyrillic letters (still found on many icon inscriptions even today) show a marked tendency to be very tall and narrow; strokes are often shared between adjacent letters. Peter the Great, tsar of Russia, mandated the use of westernized letter forms in the early eighteenth century; over time, these were largely adopted in the other languages that use the alphabet. Thus, unlike modern Greek fonts that retained their own set of design principles (such as the placement of serifs, the shapes of stroke ends, and stroke-thickness rules), modern Cyrillic fonts are much the same as modern Latin fonts of the same font family. The development of some Cyrillic computer typefaces from Latin ones has also contributed to the visual Latinization of Cyrillic type. Cyrillic uppercase and lowercase letter-forms are not as differentiated as in Latin typography. Upright Cyrillic lowercase letters are essentially small capitals (with the exception of a few forms such as "а" and "е" which adopted western lowercase shapes), although a good-quality Cyrillic typeface will still include separate small caps glyphs. small capitals In the absence of Roman and Italic traditions, Cyrillic type fonts are properly classified as upright (Russian: pryamoi shrift) and cursive (kursivnyi). Cursive or hand-written shapes of many letters, especially the lowercase letters, are entirely different from the upright shapes. As in Latin typography, a sans-serif face may have a mechanically-sloped oblique font (naklonnyi). In Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Serbian, some cursive letters are different from those used in other languages. These cursive letter shapes are often used in upright fonts as well, especially for road signs, inscriptions, posters and the like, less so in newspapers or books. External link: [http://jankojs.tripod.com/SerbianCyr.htm Serbian Cyrillic Letters BE, GHE, DE, PE, TE]. The following table shows the differences between the upright and cursive Cyrillic letters as used in Russian. Cursive glyphs that are bound to confuse beginners (either because of an entirely different look, or because of being a false friend with an entirely different Latin character) are highlighted. Reference: Bringhurst, Robert (2002). The Elements of Typographic Style (version 2.5), pp. 262–264. Vancouver, Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-133-4.

Romanization

There are various systems for Romanization of Cyrillic text, including transliteration to convey Cyrillic spelling in Latin characters, and transcription to convey pronunciation. Standard Cyrillic-to-Latin transliteration systems include:
- Scientific transliteration, used in linguistics, is based on the Latin Croatian alphabet.
- The [http://www.eki.ee/wgrs/ Working Group on Romanization Systems] of the United Nations recommends different systems for specific languages. These are the most commonly used around the world.
- ISO 9:1995, from the International Organization for Standardization.
- America Library Association & Library of Congress (ALA-LC) [http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html Romanization tables for Slavic alphabets], used in North American libraries.
- BGN/PCGN 1947 transliteration system (United States Board on Geographic Names & Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use).
- GOST 16876-71 (1983), from the Main Administration of Geodesy and Cartography of the former Soviet Union. Russian abbreviation of GOsudarstvenny STandart, "the State Standard". GOST has limited support for non-Russian alphabets. Serbian is written in both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. There is also a Latin alphabet for Belarusian, and some non-Slavic languages, such as Azerbaijani, Uzbek or Moldavian have confronted permanent Romanization after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In Serbian there is a one-to-one correspondence between Vuk Karadžić's Serbian Cyrillic and Ljudevit Gaj's Croatian Gajica (derived from the Czech alphabet. See Serbo-Croatian language#Writing systems.) The Belarusian Latin alphabet is traditionally based on Polish and is called Łacinka, but, because of the political realities in the former USSR, Belarusian is usually Romanized by analogy to Russian. See also:
- Romanization.
- Transliteration of Russian into English.
- Romanization of Ukrainian.
- Transliteration of Bulgarian into English. External links:
- [http://transliteration.eki.ee/ Transliteration of Non-Roman Scripts], a collection of writing systems and transliteration tables, by Thomas T. Pederson. Includes PDF reference charts for many languages' transliteration systems.

As used in various languages

Sounds are indicated using IPA. These are only approximate indicators. While these languages by and large have phonemic orthographies, there are occasional exceptions—for example, Russian его (meaning him/his), which is pronounced instead of . Note that spellings of names may vary, especially Y/J/I, but also GH/G/H and ZH/J.

Slavic languages

Old Church Slavonic

Main article: early Cyrillic alphabet Old Church Slavonic is the first literary and liturgical Slavic language developed from the native language of the 9th century missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius. It is not the same as the modern Church Slavonic language, which is still used in some Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic church services. As the Cyrillic alphabet spread throughout the Slavic world, it was adopted for writing local languages, such as Old Ruthenian. Its adaptation to the characteristics of local languages led to the development of its many modern variants, below. Yeri (ЪІ) was originally a ligature of Yer and I. Ya (Я) was written in an archaic form called A iotified. Capital and lowercase letters were not distinguished in old manuscripts. The early Cyrillic alphabet is difficult to represent on computers. Many of the letterforms differed from modern Cyrillic and varied a great deal in manuscripts, and changed over time. Few fonts include adequate glyphs to reproduce the alphabet. Some characters are missing from the current Unicode standard altogether, including Cyrillic dotless I, iotified Yat, abbreviated Yer ("Yerok"), and many ligatures. See also: Glagolitic alphabet.

Russian

Main article: Russian alphabet Notes: # In the pre-reform Russian orthography, in Old Russian and in Old Church Slavonic the letter is called yer. Historically, the "hard sign" takes the place of a now-absent vowel, still preserved in Bulgarian. See the notes for Bulgarian. # When an iotated vowel (vowel whose sound begins with ) follows a consonant, the consonant will become palatalised (the sound will mix with the consonant), and the vowel's sound will not be heard independently. The Hard Sign will indicate that this does not happen, and the sound will appear only in front of the vowel. The Soft Sign will indicate the consonant should be palatised, but the vowel's sound will not mix with the palatalization of the consonant. The Soft Sign will also indicate that a consonant before another consonant or at the end of a word is palatised. Examples: та (); тя (); тья (); тъя (); т (); ть (). Historical letters: before 1918, there were four extra letters in use: (replaced by Ии), (Фита "Fita", replaced by Фф), (Ять "Yat", replaced by Ее), and (ижица "Izhitsa", replaced by Ии); these were eliminated by reforms of Russian orthography.

Ukrainian

Main article: Ukrainian alphabet. Ukrainian differs from Russian in the following ways:
- He (Г, г) is a voiced fricative consonant, pronounced .
- Ge (Ґ, ґ) appears after He, pronounced , i.e., like a Russian Г. It looks like He with an "upturn" pointing up from the right side of the top bar. (This letter was not officially used in the Soviet Union after 1933, so it is missing from older Cyrillic fonts.)
- E (Е, е) is pronounced .
- Ye (Є, є) appears after E, pronounced . It looks like a mirrored Russian letter Э.
- Y (И, и) is pronounced (similar to Russian Yery).
- I (І, і) appears after Y, pronounced . It looks like the Latin letter I.
- Yi (Ї, ї) appears after I, pronounced . It looks like I with a diaeresis above it (the same two dots that appear over the Russian letter Yo).
- Yot (Й, й) is the equivalent of Russian Short I.
- Shcha (Щ, щ) is pronounced .
- An apostrophe (’) serves the purpose of the Russian Hard Sign.
- Yo does not appear.

Belarusian

Belarusian is also written in a Belarusian Latin alphabet (Łacinka). Historically, Belarusian Tatars have written the language in the Arabic alphabet (Arabica), and Belarusian Jews in the Hebrew alphabet. NB: Before 1933, Ґ () was also present. Some linguists call for restoring the letter. Belarusian differs from Russian in the following ways:
- I looks like the Latin letter I (І, і). (But non-syllable short I looks the same as in Russian.)
- Between U and Ef is the letter U short (Ў, ў), which looks like U (У) with a breve and pronounced , or like the u part in diphthongs in now, low.
- Shcha (Щщ) does not appear. A combination of sh and ch (ШЧ/шч) is typically used instead.
- The Hard Sign is not used. Its purpose (removing of palatalisation) is served by an apostrophe.
- The letter combinations Дж дж and Дз дз appear after Д д in the Belarusian alphabet in some publications. These digraphs each represent one sound: Дж , Дз .
- Г represents a voiced fricative consonant.

External links

- [http://www.pravapis.org/art_belarusian_alphabet.asp Introduction to Belarusian Alphabet]
- [http://www.pravapis.org/art_lac1.asp Introduction to Belarusian Latin Script]
- [http://www.pravapis.org/art_kitab1_en.asp Belarusian language using Arabic script]
- [http://www.pravapis.org/art_letter_frequency.asp Letter Frequency in Belarusian and Russian]
- [http://www.pravapis.org/translator.asp Converter from Latin "Translit" into Cyrillics]

Bulgarian

See Bulgarian language#Alphabet. Bulgarian differs from Russian in the following ways:
- Ye (Е) is pronounced and is called "E".
- Yo (Ё) does not appear.
- The Russian letter Э does not appear.
- Shcha (Щ) is pronounced and is called "Shta".
- The Hard Sign (Ъ) is used for a vowel, (Schwa).
- Yery (Ы) does not appear.

Modern Serbian since the 19th century

Serbian can also be written with the Latin alphabet. See Serbo-Croatian language. Serbian differs from Russian in the following ways:
- Ye is pronounced . Yo does not appear. The Russian letter E does not appear.
- Between D and E is the letter Djə (Ђ, ђ), which is pronounced , and looks like Tjə, except that the loop of the H curls farther and dips downwards.
- Short I does not appear. Between I and K is the letter Jə (Ј, ј), pronounced , which looks like the Latin letter J.
- Between L and M is the letter Ljə (Љ, љ), pronounced , which looks like L and the Soft Sign smashed together.
- Between N and O is the letter Njə (Њ, њ), pronounced , which looks like N and the Soft Sign smashed together.
- Between T and U is the letter Tjə (Ћ, ћ), which is pronounced and looks like a lowercase Latin letter h with a bar. On the uppercase letter, the bar appears at the top; on the lowercase letter, the bar crosses the top half of the vertical line.
- Between Ch and Sh is the letter Dzhə (Џ, џ), pronounced , which looks like Ts but with the downturn moved from the right side of the bottom bar to the middle of the bottom bar.
- Sh is the last letter; the rest do not appear.

Macedonian

Macedonian differs from Serbian in the following ways:
- Between Ze and I is the letter Dze (Ѕ, ѕ), pronounced , which looks like the Latin letter S.
- Djerv is replaced by Gje (Ѓ, ѓ), pronounced , which looks like Ghe with an acute accent (´).
- Tjerv is replaced by Kja (Ќ, ќ), pronounced , which looks like Ka with an acute accent (´).

Non-Slavic languages

These alphabets are generally modelled after Russian, but often bear striking differences, particularly when adapted for Caucasian languages. The first few of them were generated by Orthodox missionaries for the Finnic and Turkic peoples of Idel-Ural (Mari, Udmurt, Mordva, Chuvash, Kerashen Tatars) in 1870s. Later such alphabets were created for some of the Siberian and Caucasus peoples who had recently converted to Christianity. In the 1930s, some of those alphabets were switched to the Uniform Turkic Alphabet. All of the peoples of the former Soviet Union who had been using an Arabic or other Asian script (Mongolian script, etc.) also adopted Cyrillic alphabets, and during the Great Purge in late 1930s, all of the Roman-based alphabets of the peoples of then Soviet Union were switched over to Cyrillic as well. The Abkhazian alphabet was switched to Georgian script, but after the death of Stalin Abkhaz also adopted Cyrillic. The last language to adopt Cyrillic was the Gagauz language, which had used Greek script before. In Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, the use of Cyrillic to represent local languages has often been a politically controversial issue after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as it evokes the era of Soviet rule (see Russification). Some of Russia's languages have also tried to drop Cyrillic, but the move was halted under Russian law (see Tatar alphabet). A number of languages have switched from Cyrillic to other orthographies—either Roman-based or returning to a former script. Unlike the Roman alphabet, which is usually adapted to different languages by using additions to existing letters such as accents, umlauts, tildes and cedillas, the Cyrillic alphabet is usually adapted by the creation of entirely new letter shapes. In some alphabets invented in the 19th century, such as Mari, Udmurt and Chuvash, umlauts and breves also were used.

Abkhaz

Abkhaz is a Caucasian language, spoken in the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, Georgia. See Abkhaz alphabet.

Turkic languages

Chuvash

The Cyrillic alphabet is used for the Chuvash language since the late 19th century, with some changes in 1938.

Kazakh

Kazakh is also written with the Latin alphabet (in Turkey and now in Kazakhstan as well), and modified Arabic alphabet (in China, Iran and Afghanistan).
- Ә ә =
- Ғ ғ = (uvular fricative)
- Қ қ = (uvular plosive)
- Ң ң =
- Ө ө =
- У у = , ,
- Ұ ұ =
- Ү ү =
- Һ һ =
- İ і = The Cyrillic letters Вв, Ёё, Цц, Чч, Щщ, Ъъ, Ьь and Ээ are not used in native Kazakh words, but only for Russian loans.

Kyrgyz

Kyrgyz has also been written in Latin and in Arabic.
- Ң ң =
- Ү ү =
- Ө ө =

Moldovan

The Moldovan language used the Cyrillic alphabet between 1946 and 1989. Nowadays, this alphabet is still official in the breakaway republic of Transnistria.

Mongolian

The Mongolic languages include Khalkha (in Mongolia), Buryat (around Lake Baikal) and Kalmyk (northwest of the Caspian Sea). Khalkha Mongolian is also written with the Mongol vertical alphabet, which is being slowly reintroduced in Mongolia.

Khalkha

- В в =
- Е е = ,
- Ё ё =
- Ж ж =
- З з =
- Н н = ,
- Ө ө =
- Ү ү =
- Ы ы = (after a hard consonant)
- Ь ь = (extra short)
- Ю ю = , The Cyrillic letters Кк, Фф and Щщ are not used in native Mongolian words, but only for Russian loans.

Buryat

The Buryat (буряад) Cyrillic alphabet is similar to the Khalkha above, but Ьь indicates palatalization as in Russian. Buryat does not use Вв, Кк, Фф, Цц, Чч, Щщ or Ъъ in its native words.
- Е е = ,
- Ё ё =
- Ж ж =
- Н н = ,
- Ө ө =
- Ү ү =
- Һ һ =
- Ы ы = ,
- Ю ю = ,

Kalmyk

The Kalmyk (хальмг) Cyrillic alphabet is similar to the Khalkha, but the letters Ээ, Юю and Яя appear only word-initially. In Kalmyk, long vowels are written double in the first syllable (нөөрин), but single in syllables after the first. Short vowels are omitted altogether in syllables after the first syllable (хальмг = xaʎmag).
- Ә ә =
- В в =
- Һ һ =
- Е е = ,
- Җ җ =
- Ң ң =
- Ө ө =
- Ү ү =

Cyrillic in Unicode

Main article: Cyrillic characters in Unicode. In Unicode, the Cyrillic block extends from U+0400 to U+052F. The characters in the range U+0400 to U+045F are basically the characters from ISO 8859-5 moved upward by 864 positions. The characters in the range U+0460 to U+0489 are historic letters, not used now. The characters in the range U+048A to U+052F are additional letters for various languages that are written with Cyrillic script. Unicode does not include accented Cyrillic letters, but they can be combined by adding U+0301 ("combining acute accent") after the accented vowel (e.g., ы́ э́ ю́ я́). Some languages (e.g., modern Church Slavonic) still are not fully supported.

External links

- [http://toma.dnsalias.net/phonetic Bulgarian Online Transliterator]
- [http://www.omniglot.com/writing/cyrillic.htm Cyrillic alphabet at omniglot.com]
- [http://www.terena.nl/library/multiling/euroml/mlcs5-cyr.txt A Survey of The Use of Modern Cyrillic Script], including the complete required repertoire of graphic characters, by J. W. van Wingen.
- [http://www.peoples.org.ru/eng_index.html Minority Languages of Russia on the Net], a list of resources.
- [http://www.easybulgarian.com/members/u0a_sample.html Bulgarian Cyrillic Alphabet audio]
- [http://www.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/translit.htm Information on Cyrillic transliteration] and the handwritten script form of Cyrillic.
- [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0400.pdf Unicode Code Charts "Cyrillic"] (PDF)
- [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0500.pdf Unicode Code Charts "Cyrillic Supplement"] (PDF)
- [http://czyborra.com/charsets/cyrillic.html The Cyrillic Charset Soup], Roman Czyborra's overview and history of Cyrillic charsets.
- [https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=561 The Russ Key Mozilla Firefox extension], this extension allows typing in Russian and other languages and transliterating HTML text into Cyrillic. Category:Cyrillic alphabet als:Kyrillisches Alphabet ko:키릴 문자 ja:キリル文字 th:อักษรซีริลลิก

English language

English is a West Germanic language that is spoken in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, and many other countries. English is now the third-most spoken native language worldwide (after Chinese and Hindi), with some 380 million speakers. It has lingua franca status in many parts of the world, due to the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries and that of the United States from the 20th century to the present. Through the global influence of native English speakers in cinema, airlines, broadcasting, science, and the Internet in recent decades, English is now the most widely learned second language in the world. Many students worldwide are required to learn some English, and a working knowledge of English is required in many fields and occupations.

History

English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Old Saxon language brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of northwest Germany. The original Old English language was subsequently influenced by two successive waves of invasion. The first was by speakers of languages in the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who colonised parts of Britain in the 8th and 9th centuries. The second wave was of the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke a variety of French. These two invasions caused English to become "creolised" to some degree (though it was never a full creole in the linguistic sense of the word); creolisation arises from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication. Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Friesian core of English; the later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of European languages; this new layer entered English through use in the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of considerable suppleness and huge vocabulary. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, around the year 449, Vortigern, King of the British Isles, invited the "Angle kin" (Angles led by Hengest and Horsa) to help him against the Picts. In return, the Angles were granted lands in the south-east. Further aid was sought, and in response "came men of Ald Seaxum of Anglum of Iotum" (Saxons, Angles, and Jutes). The Chronicle talks of a subsequent influx of settlers who eventually established seven kingdoms, known as the heptarchy. Modern scholarship considers most of this story to be legendary and politically motivated. These Germanic invaders dominated the original Celtic-speaking inhabitants, whose languages survived largely in Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland. The dialects spoken by the invaders formed what would be called Old English, which resembled some coastal dialects in what are now the Netherlands and north-west Germany. Later, it was strongly influenced by the North Germanic language Norse, spoken by the Vikings who settled mainly in the north-east (see Jorvik). The new and the earlier settlers spoke languages from different branches of the Germanic family; many of their lexical roots were the same or similar, although their grammars were more distant, including the prefixes, suffixes and inflections of many of their words. The Germanic language of these Old English inhabitants of Britain would be partly creolised by the contact with Norse invaders. This resulted in a stripping away of much of the grammar of Old English, including gender and case, with the notable exception of the pronouns; thus, the language became simpler and plainer. The most famous work from the Old English period is the epic poem "Beowulf", by an unknown poet. For the 300 years following the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Norman kings and the high nobility spoke only a variety of French. A large number of Norman words were assimilated into Old English, with some words doubling for Old English words (for instance, ox/beef, sheep/mutton). The Norman influence reinforced the continual evolution of the language over the following centuries, resulting in what is now referred to as Middle English. Among the changes was a broadening in the use of a unique aspect of English grammar, the "continuous" tenses, with the suffix "-ing". During the 15th century, Middle English was transformed by the Great Vowel Shift, the spread of a standardised London-based dialect in government and administration, and the standardising effect of printing. Modern English can be traced back to around the time of William Shakespeare. The most well-known work from the Middle English period is Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

Classification and related languages

The English language belongs to the western subbranch of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. The closest living relative of English is Scots (Lallans), a West Germanic language spoken mostly in Scotland and parts of Northern Ireland. Like English, Scots is a direct descendant of Old English, also known as Anglo-Saxon. After Scots, the next closest relative is Frisian—spoken in the Netherlands and Germany. Other less closely related living languages include Dutch, Afrikaans, German, Plattdüütsch and the Scandinavian languages. Many French words are also intelligible to an English speaker (pronunciations are not always identical, of course), because English absorbed a tremendous amount of vocabulary from French, via the Norman language after the Norman conquest and directly from French in further centuries; as a result, a substantial share of English vocabulary is quite close to the French, with some minor spelling differences (word endings, use of old French spellings, etc.), as well as occasional differences in meaning.

Geographic distribution

Norman conquest English is the second or third most widely spoken language in the world today; a total of 600–700 million people use English regularly. About 377 million people use English as their mother tongue, and an equal number of people use it as their second or foreign language. It is used widely in either the public or private sphere in more than 100 countries all over the world. In addition, the language has occupied a primary place in international academic and business communities. The current status of the English language compares with that of Latin in the past. English is the primary language in Antigua and Barbuda, Australia (Australian English), the Bahamas, Barbados (Caribbean English), Bermuda, Belize, Canada (Canadian English), the Cayman Islands, Dominica, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guernsey, Guyana, Ireland (Irish English), Isle of Man, Jamaica (Jamaican English), Jersey, Montserrat, New Zealand (New Zealand English), Saint Helena, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the United Kingdom (various forms of British English), the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the United States. English is also an important minority language of South Africa (South African English), and in several other former colonies and current dependent territories of the United Kingdom and the United States, for example Guam and Mauritius. In Hong Kong, English is an official language and is widely used in business activities. It is taught from kindergarten, and is the medium of instruction for a few primary schools, many secondary schools and all universities. Substantial numbers of students acquire native-speaker level. It is so widely used and spoken that it is inadequate to say it is merely a second or foreign language, though there are still many people in Hong Kong with poor or no command of English. The majority of English native speakers (67 to 70 per cent) live in the United States. Although the U.S. federal government has no official languages, it has been given official status by 27 of the 50 state governments, most of which have declared English their sole official language. Hawaii, Louisiana, and New Mexico have also designated Hawaiian, French, and Spanish, respectively, as official languages in conjunction with English. In many other countries where English is not a major first language, it is an official language; these countries include Cameroon, Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia, Ghana, Gambia, India, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Malta, the Marshall Islands, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Rwanda, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. English is the most widely learned and used foreign language in the world, and as such, many linguists believe it is no longer the exclusive cultural emblem of "native English speakers", but rather a language that is absorbing aspects of cultures worldwide as it grows in use. Others believe that there are limits to how far English can go in suiting everyone for communication purposes. It is the language most often studied as a foreign language in Europe (32.6 per cent), followed by French, German, and Spanish. It is also the most studied in Japan, South Korea and in the Republic of China (Taiwan), where it is compulsory for most high school students. See English as an additional language.

English as a global language

See also: English on the Internet Because English is so widely spoken, it has been referred to as a "global language". While English is not the official language in many countries, it is the language most often taught as a second language around the world. It is also, by international treaty, the official language for aircraft/airport communication. Its widespread acceptance as a first or second language is the main indication of its global status. There are numerous arguments for and against English as a global language. On one hand, having a global language aids in communication and in pooling information (for example, in the scientific community). On the other hand, it excludes those who, for one reason or another, are not fluent. It can also marginalise populations whose first language is not the global language, and lead to a cultural hegemony of the populations speaking the global language as a first language. Most of these arguments hold for any candidate for a global language, though the last two counter-arguments do not hold for languages not belonging to any ethnic group (like Esperanto). A secondary concern with respect to the spread of global languages (English, Spanish, etc.) is the resulting disappearance of minority languages, often along with the cultures and religions that are primarily transmitted in those languages. English has been implicated in a number of historical and ongoing so-called "language deaths" and "linguicides" around the world, many of which have also led to the loss of cultural heritage. In the Americas, Native American nations have been most strongly affected by this phenomenon.

Dialects and regional variants

The expansiveness of the British and the Americans has spread English throughout the globe. Because of its global spread, it has bred a variety of English dialects and English-based creoles and pidgins. The major varieties of English in most cases contain several subvarieties, such as Cockney within British English, Newfoundland English within Canadian English, and African American Vernacular English ("Ebonics") within American English. English is considered a pluricentric language, with no variety being clearly considered the only standard. Some consider Scots as an English dialect. Pronunciation, grammar and lexis differ, sometimes substantially. The Scottish dialect retains many German aspects including guttural pronunciations. Because of English's wide use as a second language, English speakers can have many different accents, which may identify the speaker's native dialect or language. For more distinctive characteristics of regional accents, see Regional accents of English speakers. For more distinctive characteristics of regional dialects, see List of dialects of the English language. Many countries around the world have blended English words and phrases into their everyday speech and refer to the result by a colloquial name that implies its bilingual origins, which parallels the English language's own addiction to loan words and borrowings. Named examples of these ad-hoc constructions, distinct from pidgin and creole languages, include Engrish, Wasei-eigo, Franglais and Spanglish. (See List of dialects of the English language for a complete list.) Europanto combines many languages but has an English core.

Constructed variants of English

- Basic English is simplified for easy international use. It is used by some aircraft manufacturers and other international businesses to write manuals and communicate. Some English schools in the Far East teach it as an initial practical subset of English.
- Special English is a simplified version of English used by the Voice of America. It uses a vocabulary of 1500 words.
- English reform is an attempt to improve collectively upon the English language.
- Seaspeak and the related Airspeak and Policespeak, all based on restricted vocabularies, were designed by Edward Johnson in the 1980s to aid international co-operation and communication in specific areas.
- European English is a new variant of the English language created to become the common language in Europe.

Sounds

Vowels

Notes: It is the vowels that differ most from region to region. Where symbols appear in pairs, the first corresponds to the sounds used in North American English, the second corresponds to English spoken elsewhere. #North American English lacks this sound; words with this sound are pronounced with or . According to The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (1998), this sound is present in Standard Canadian English. #Many dialects of North American English do not have this vowel. See cot-caught merger. #The North American variation of this sound is a rhotic vowel. #Many speakers of North American English do not distinguish between these two unstressed vowels. For them, roses and Rosa's are pronounced the same, and the symbol usually used is schwa . #This sound is often transcribed with or with . #The letter U can represent either /u/ or the iotated vowel /ju/.

Consonants

This is the English Consonantal System using symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). #The velar nasal is a non-phonemic allophone of /n/ in some northerly British accents, appearing only before /g/. In all other dialects it is a separate phoneme, although it only occurs in syllable codas. #The alveolar flap is an allophone of /t/ and /d/ in unstressed syllables in North American English and increasingly in Australian English. This is the sound of "tt" or "dd" in the words latter and ladder, which are homophones in North American English. This is the same sound represented by single "r" in some varieties of Spanish. #In some dialects, such as Cockney, the interdentals /θ/ and /ð/ are usually merged with /f/ and /v/, and in others, like African American Vernacular English, /ð/ is merged with /d/. In some Irish varieties, /θ/ and /ð/ become the corresponding dental plosives, which then contrast with the usual alveolar plosives. #The sounds are labialised in some dialects. Labialisation is never contrastive in initial position and therefore is sometimes not transcribed. #The voiceless velar fricative /x/ is used only by Scottish or Welsh speakers of English for Scots/Gaelic words such as loch or by some speakers for loanwords from German and Hebrew like Bach or Chanukah /xanuka/, or in some dialects such as Scouse (Liverpool) where the affricate [kx] is used instead of /k/ in words such as docker . Most native speakers have a great deal of trouble pronouncing it correctly when learning a foreign language. Most speakers use the sounds [k] and [h] instead. #Voiceless w is found in Scottish, Irish, some upper-class British, some eastern United States, and New Zealand accents. In all other dialects it is merged with /w/.

Voicing and Aspiration

Voicing and aspiration of stop consonants in English depend on dialect and context, but a few general rules can be given:
- Voiceless plosives and affricates (//, //, //, and //) are aspirated when they are word-initial or begin a stressed syllable and are not part of a consonant cluster—compare pin [] and spin [].
- In some dialects, aspiration extends to unstressed syllables as well.
- In other dialects, such as Indian English, most or all voiceless stops may remain unaspirated.
- Word-initial voiced plosives may be devoiced in some dialects.
- Word-terminal voiceless plosives may be unreleased or accompanied by a glottal stop in some dialects (e.g. many varieties of American English)—examples: tap [], sack [].
- Word-terminal voiced plosives may be devoiced in some dialects (e.g. some varieties of American English)—examples: sad [], bag []. In other dialects they are fully voiced in final position, but only partially voiced in initial position.

Intonation

Tone groups

English is an Intonation language. This means that the pitch of the voice is used syntactically, for example, to convey surprise and irony, or to change a statement into a question. In English, intonation patterns are on groups of words, which are called tone groups, tone units, intonation groups or sense groups. Tone groups are said on a single breath and, as a consequence, are of limited length, more often being on average five words long or lasting roughly two seconds. The structure of tone groups can have a crucial impact on the meaning of what is said. For example: :- :- :-

Characteristics of intonation

Each tone group can be subdivided into syllables, which can either be stressed (strong) or unstressed (weak). There is always a strong syllable, which is stressed more than the others. This is called the nuclear syllable. For example: :That | was | the | best | thing | you | could | have | done! Here, all syllables are unstressed, except the syllables/words "best" and "done", which are stressed. "Best" is stressed harder and, therefore, is the nuclear syllable. The nuclear syllable carries the main point the speaker wishes to make. For example: :John had stolen that money. (... not I) :John had stolen that money. (... you said he hadn't) :John had stolen that money. (... he wasn't given it) :John had stolen that money. (... not this money) :John had stolen that money. (... not something else) The nuclear syllable is spoken louder than all the others and has a characteristic change of pitch. The changes of pitch most commonly encountered in English are the rising pitch and the falling pitch, although the fall-rising pitch and/or the rise-falling pitch are sometimes used. For example: :When do you want to be paid? :Nów? (rising pitch. In this case, it denotes a question: can I be paid now?) :Nòw (falling pitch. In this case, it denotes a statement: I choose to be paid now)

Grammar

English grammar is based on its Germanic roots, though some scholars during the 1700s and 1800s attempted to impose Latin grammar upon it, with little success. English is just slightly inflected, much less so than most Indo-European languages. It compensates for this by placing more grammatical information in auxiliary words and word order. Unlike most other Indo-European languages, modern nominal groups (nouns) in English do not carry gender, although an archaic form of gender is technically assigned as either masculine, feminine, neuter or common. Engendered nouns are only apparent in special cases, such as "I loved that ship as if she were my own", where the noun "ship" is referred to by its feminine pronoun.

Vocabulary

Almost without exception, Germanic words (which include all the basics such as pronouns and conjunctions) are shorter and more informal. Latinate words are often regarded as more elegant or educated. However, the excessive use of Latinate words is often mistaken for either pretentiousness (as in the stereotypical policeman's talk of "apprehending the suspect") or obfuscation (as in a military document which says "neutralise" when it means "kill"). George Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language gives a thorough treatment of this feature of English. An English speaker is often able to choose between Germanic and Latinate synonyms: "come" or "arrive"; "sight" or "vision"; "freedom" or "liberty"—and sometimes also between a word inherited through French and a borrowing direct from Latin of the same root word: "oversee", "survey" or "supervise". The richness of the language is that such synonyms have slightly different meanings, enabling the language to be used in a very flexible way to express fine variations or shades of thought. List of Germanic and Latinate equivalents In everyday speech the majority of words will normally be Germanic. If a speaker wishes to make a forceful point in an argument in a very blunt way, Germanic words will usually be chosen. A majority of Latinate words (or at least a majority of content words) will normally be used in more formal speech and writing, such as a courtroom or an encyclopedia article. English is noted for the vast size of its active vocabulary and its fluidity. English easily accepts technical terms into common usage and imports new words which often come into common usage. In addition, slang provides new meanings for old words. In fact this fluidity is so pronounced that a distinction often needs to be made between formal forms of English and contemporary usage. See also sociolinguistics.

Number of words in English

As the General Explanations at the beginning of the Oxford English Dictionary state: :The Vocabulary of a widely diffused and highly cultivated living language is not a fixed quantity circumscribed by definite limits.... there is absolutely no defining line in any direction: the circle of the English language has a well-defined centre but no discernible circumference. The vocabulary of English is undoubtedly vast, but assigning a specific number to its size is more a matter of definition than of calculation. Unlike other languages, there is no Academy to define officially accepted words. Neologisms are coined regularly in medicine, science and technology—some enter wide usage; others remain restricted to small circles. Foreign words used in immigrant communities often make their way into wider English usage. Archaic, dialectal, and regional words might be considered "English" or not. The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition) includes over 500,000 headwords, following a rather inclusive policy: :It embraces not only the standard language of literature and conversation, whether current at the moment, or obsolete, or archaic, but also the main technical vocabulary, and a large measure of dialectal usage and slang (Supplement to the OED, 1933). The difficulty of defining the number of words is compounded by the emergence of new versions of English, such as Asian English.

Word origins

One of the consequences of the French influence is that the vocabulary of English is, to a certain extent, divided between those words which are Germanic (mostly Old English) and those which are "Latinate" (Latin-derived, mostly from Norman French but some borrowed directly from Latin). A computerised survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd ed.) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973) which estimated the origin of English words as follows:
- French, including Old French and early Anglo-French: 28.3%
- Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
- Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and Dutch: 25%
- Greek: 5.32%
- No etymology given: 4.03%
- Derived from proper names: 3.28%
- All other languages contributed less than 1% James D. Nicoll made the oft-quoted observation: "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary." [http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1990May15.155309.8892%40watdragon.waterloo.edu&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain]

Writing system

English is written using the Latin alphabet. The spelling system or orthography of English is historical, not phonological. The spelling of words often diverges considerably from how they are spoken, and English spelling is often considered to be one of the most difficult to learn of any language that uses an alphabet. See English orthography.

Basic sound-letter correspondence

Written accents

English includes some words which can be written with accent marks. These words have mostly been imported from other languages, usually French. But it is increasingly rare for writers of English to actually use the accent marks for common words, even in very formal writing, to the point where actually writing the accent may be interpreted as a sign of pretension—though this view is counterbalanced by the view that fine typography should preserve accents, especially where it makes a distinction in pronunciation (compare façade vs. facade which would rhyme with cascade). The strongest tendency to retain the accent is in words that are atypical of English morphology and therefore still perceived as slightly foreign. For example, café has a pronounced final e, which would be silent by the normal English pronunciation rules. Some examples: ångström, appliqué, attaché, blasé, bric-à-brac, café, cliché, crème, crêpe, façade, fiancé(e), flambé, naïve, né(e), papier-mâché, passé, piñata, protégé, raison d'être, résumé, risqué, über-, vis-à-vis, voilà. For a more complete list, see List of English words with diacritics. Some words such as rôle and hôtel were first seen with accents when they were borrowed into English, but now the accent is almost never used. The words were considered very French borrowings when first used in English, even accused by some of being foreign phrases used where English alternatives would suffice, but today their French origin is largely forgotten. The accent on "élite" has disappeared from most publications today, but Time magazine still uses it. For some words such as "soupçon" however, the only spelling found in English dictionaries (the OED and others) uses the diacritic. Italics, with appropriate accents, are generally applied to foreign terms that are uncommonly used in or have not been assimilated into English: for example, adiós, coup d'état, crème brûlée, pièce de résistance, raison d'être, über (übermensch), vis-à-vis. It is also possible to use a diaeresis to indicate a syllable break, but again this is often left out or a hyphen used instead. Examples: coöperate (or co-operate), daïs, naïve, noël, reëlect (or re-elect). One publication that still uses a diaeresis to indicate a syllable break is the New Yorker magazine. Written accents are also used occasionally in poetry and scripts for dramatic performances to indicate that a certain normally unstressed syllable in a word should be stressed for dramatic effect, or to keep with the meter of the poetry. This use is frequently seen in archaic and pseudoarchaic writings with the "-ed" suffix, to indicate that the "e" should be fully pronounced, as with cursèd. In certain older texts (typically in Commonwealth English), the use of ligatures is common in words such as archæology, œsophagus, and encyclopædia. Such words have Latin or Greek origin. Nowadays, the ligatures have been generally replaced in Commonwealth English by the separated letters "ae" and "oe" ("archaeology", "oesophagus") and in American English by "e" ("archeology", "esophagus"). However, the spellings "oeconomy" and "oecology" are now generally replaced by "economy" and "ecology" in Commonwealth English, making these spellings the same as in American English.
See also

- English literature
- Formal written English - regional differences
- List of languages
- Common phrases in various languages
Dialects

- American and British English differences
- English speaking Europe
- General American
- List of dialects of the English language
Pronunciation

- General American
- International Phonetic Alphabet for English
- List of words of disputed pronunciation
- Non-native pronunciations of English
- Phonemic differentiation in English
- Received Pronunciation
- Regional accents of English speakers
- Rhotic and non-rhotic accents
Social, cultural or political

- English as a lingua franca for Europe
- English as an additional language
- English on the Internet
- Foreign language influences in English
- Languages in the United States
- Lists of English words of international origin
- Anglosphere
- Anglo-Saxon
Grammar

- English declension
- English plural
- English verb conjugation
- Initial-stress-derived noun
- Present progressive tense
Usage

- Dictionary
- Like
- List of archaic English words and their modern equivalents
- List of unusual English words
- Longest word in English
- Misspelling
- Gender-neutral language
- Singular they
- Siamese twins (English language)
External links

- [http://www.abroadlanguages.com/al/english/ Learning English abroad] and online. With dictionaries, games, penpals, etc.
- [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/routesofenglish/index.shtml BBC - Radio 4 - Routes of English]
- [http://www.englishtenseswithcartoons.com Short Discriptions of the English Tenses]
- [http://www.ego4u.com/ English Grammar Online] free exercises, explanations, games and teaching materials on English as a foreign language
- [http://www.eslbase.com/ TEFL] - Teaching English as a Foreign Language - information and advice
- http://www.teach-yourself-english.com/ Easy-going learning aid
- [http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en Learning English Online] grammar, vocabulary, exercises, exams - English as a second language.
- [http://www.english.hb.pl Pako's English Page - Articles and advice on learning English]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=eng Ethnologue report for English]
- [http://www.LanguageMonitor.com LanguageMonitor] - Watchdog on contemporary English usage
- [http://www.vec.ca/english/1/english.cfm Development of English]
- [http://www.esu.org English Speaking Union]
- [http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages.htm The World's Most Widely Spoken Languages]
- [http://www.antimoon.com/ Antimoon - How to learn English] - Advice and inspiration for learners of English.
- [http://www.zozanga.com/ Zozanga ESL - Learn Online English] How to learn English.
- [http://www.quiz-tree.com/English_Spelling_main.html Free English spelling quizzes]
- [http://inenglishofcourse.pl Conversation and Resource Point for Learners of English]
- [http://www.globalenglishsalon.com Global English Salon] - Listen to English online free.
- [http://www.loecsen.com/travel/discover_pop.php?lang=en&to_lang=2&learn-English/ Learn and listen to useful expressions in English] Each expression is presented with an audio recording and an illustration
- [http://www.whatdoesthatmean.com What Does That Mean?] A wiki based lexicon of English idioms from around the world
- [http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/SLF/EngluVglSW/ELiX/bge.pdf Basic Global English]
Dictionaries

- [http://www.oed.com Oxford English Dictionary] The definitive record of the English language
- [http://dicts.info/dictlist1.php All free English dictionaries] Collection of many free English dictionaries.
- [http://dictionary.cambridge.org Cambridge Dictionary]
- [http://www.freelang.net/dictionary/french.html Freelang - French-English Dictionary made by Bertrand Cornu]
Further reading

- Baugh AC and Cable T. A history of the English language (5th ed), Rouledge, 2002 (ISBN 0415280990_
- Crystal, D. The Cambridge encyclopedia of the English language (2nd ed), Cambridge University Press, 2003 (ISBN 0521530334)
- Halliday, MAK. An introduction to functional grammar (2nd ed), London, Edward Arnold, 1994 (ISBN 0340557826)
- McArthur, T (ed). The Oxford Companion to the English Language, Oxford University Press, 1992 (ISBN 019214183X)
- Robinson, Orrin, "Old English and Its Closest Relatives", Stanford Univ Press, 1992 (ISBN 0-8047-2221-8) English language Category:Languages of Fiji Category:Languages of Guam Category:Languages of Hong Kong Category:Languages of Singapore Category:Languages of the Philippines Category:Languages of the United Kingdom Category:Languages of the United States Category:Languages of Canada Category:Languages of New Zealand Category:Languages of India als:Englische Sprache ko:영어 ms:Bahasa Inggeris zh-min-nan:Eng-gí ja:英語 nb:Engelsk språk simple:English language th:ภาษาอังกฤษ

Belarusian language

Belarusian (беларуская мова) is the language of the Belarusian people. It is one of the three East Slavic languages and is spoken in and around Belarus. It is also known as "Belarusan", "Byelorussian", "Belorussian", or "Belarusian". The word "Byelorussian" is an adjective derived from the transliteration of the Russian name of the country (Byelorussia). It was in predominant use in English earlier. The adjectives "Belarusian" and "Belarusan" and many other forms emerged in the 1990s by English-speaking people to denote something or somebody of or pertaining to present-day name of Belarus, its people and the language they speak, whereas in Russian and Belarusian no new forms of the adjective appeared in those days. "Belarusian" is the adjective in most common use today (but the Soviet or Russian version adjective "Byelorussian" can still be found in many texts).

History

The modern Belarusian language has evolved considerably from its early roots, the dialects of Old East Slavic (Common East Slavic) spoken in the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Rus' and Samogitia. On the basis of Belarusian (and Ukrainian) dialects a chancellery language was developed that afterwards became a fully-fledged Belarusian-Ukrainian literary language called Ruthenian (but in Belarusian context often also called Old Belarusian; the name used by the speakers themselves was the name inherited from Old East Slavic: ruskaja mova ‘language of Rus'’, or, in contrast to Church Slavonic and Polish, prostaja mova ‘simple language’). It was the official language of the chancellery and courts of the Grand Duchy until 1696. All of the documents of the Lithuanian Metrika (the whole archive of the State Chancellery of the Grand Duchy) and Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania are written in this language. Old Belarusian was actually the language of the first Bible to be printed in one of the Eastern Slavic languages – the achievement of Francysk Skaryna. The 16th century was the Belarusian golden age: many schools were active, and religious quarrels between Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants and Jews were fought using printing presses rather than violence. Many Belarusians were people of the Renaissance, educated at the universities of Western Europe or the Lithuanian university in Vilnius that was founded in 1579. After the series of wars known in Polish history as the Deluge, the Belarusian population was halved, partly due to deaths, and partly due to the policy of deportations of skilled craftsman and workers to Russia by the occupying Russian army. Especially devastating was the 13-year war (1654–1667). In the process, most cities were burned down, almost all schools were closed, and the remaining educated people were attracted by Polish culture. By 1696, the language of the upper classes of society had switched to Polish, followed by a change of the official language. Belarusian was used both by peasants, and by nobles wishing to express their sympathy toward common people. By the 16th century, the term "ruski" ("Russian" or "Ruthenian" in Latin) continued to refer to the language spoken in modern-day Ukraine and Belarus, not the language of Muscovy (the modern Russians). After partitions of Poland (1772–1796), the Belarusian territory was incorporated into Imperial Russia. Unlike Ukraine, Belarus has historically lacked a strong nationalistic drive. During the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth times, educated people of Belarus tended to identify themselves with Poland, and today some prominent persons are claimed both by Poland and Belarus for their nationality. More recently, the population of Belarus tends to identify itself as a close associate of Russia (if not considering themselves Russian outright). One of the reasons for this situation is the minority status of Belarusian speakers in urban areas—traditional cultural centers. For example, according to the 1897 Imperial Russian census, in Belarusian towns of more than 50,000 residents, only 7.3% respondents reported Belarusian as their mother tongue (the criterion in defining nationality for the purposes of the census). This state of affairs greatly contributed to a perception that Belarusian is a "rural", "uneducated" language. In the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, very few people wrote in Belarusian, peasants being mostly illiterate, and urban dwellers preferring Russian, Polish or Yiddish. Still there existed a minor movement for returning to the Belarusian language; it was important in the circle of friends of Adam Mickiewicz. On March 25, 1918, Belarusians proclaimed the independence of the Belarusian National Republic, but it was short-lived and didn't manage to stay independent. The official language of all communication in the BNR was Belarusian. In 1918–1919, Soviets took control of the Belarusian lands and created the Belarusian SSR. In the 1920s, a campaign of Belarusization started, as a part of the all-Union campaign of "Korenizatsiya" and revival of national cultures. Some administration and legal affairs began to be carried out in Belarusian and a large number of books were printed in the Belarusian language by prominent Belarusian authors and publicists: Yakub Kolas, Yanka Kupala, Zmitrok Biadulia, Maksim Bahdanovich, and many others. Active discussions were carried out about the standardisation of the language. The Belarusization was stalled and even reversed beginning in the 1930s. Hundreds of people were shot or sent to Siberia. The orthographic reform of 1933 clearly "russified" the Belarusian spelling rules. In 1938 Russian language become an obligatory subject in all Soviet schools. The final blow was the school reform of 1958, when parents were given the right to select the language of instruction for their children. After that, more and more people began to send their children to Russian-language schools, and the number of Belarusian-language schools began to diminish. Under the Soviets, there was also the elimination of the Belarusian middle class between 1917 and 1941 by the Communist Party; in Kurapaty (a suburb of Minsk), the NKVD killed perhaps 100,000 people. Many thousands of people were sent to concentration camps (Gulag) or resettled to Siberia. Around 400 Belarusian authors were repressed during anti-nationalism campaigns that started around 1929 and culminated during the Great Purge. Interest in the Belarusian language was revived at the end of 1980s during perestroika. In 1990, Belarusian became the only official language of Belarusian SSR, and a second campaign of Belarusization followed. The "Law on languages" (Закон аб мовах), ratified on 26 January 1990, envisioned a complete switch of all administrative and official documentation of the country into Belarusian by 2000. However, the Belarusization was totally stopped following the election of Alexander Lukashenka in 1994. Also in 1995 there was a referendum which, among other things, gave Russian language an equal status with Belarusian. Currently, russification is taking place in Belarus on an ever-growing scale, and the government does not provide any support for the Belarusian language. In this respect, a fact of note is that the [http://www.president.gov.by/ official website of the Belarusian President] is in two languages: Russian and English (as of 2005) . During Soviet times, the Belarusian language was viewed by many native speakers as a rural and peasant language as opposed to Russian's image as a modern and urban language. That image in the eyes of the public has changed somewhat in the years of Belarus independence: some perceive it as a language of the young emerging urban elite. Nevertheless, current Russification policies are seen by some as a serious threat that may lead to the eventual extinction of the Belarusian language in Belarus. The largest centre of Belarusian cultural activity, in the Belarusian language, outside Belarus is in the Polish province of Białystok, which is home to a long-established Belarusian minority.

Orthography

The Belarusian language was written not only in the Cyrillic alphabet, but previously also in its original Łacinka (лацінка - "Latin alphabet"), and also in [http://www.pravapis.org/art_kitab1_en.asp Arabica] (Arabic script, used by Tatars). Today, the Arabic script is no longer used, but some people continue to write in Łacinka, although officially only the Cyrillic script is supported. More articles on Belarusian alphabets are [http://www.pravapis.org/articles.asp here]. See also an article about the unique Belarusian letter Ў.

Belarusian Cyrillic alphabet

Аа Бб Вв Гг Дд (ДЖдж ДЗдз) Ее Ёё Жж Зз Іі Йй Кк Лл Мм Нн Оо Пп Рр Сс Тт Уу Ўў Фф Хх Цц Чч Шш Ыы Ьь Ээ Юю Яя In addition, the apostrophe is used between a consonant and the following "soft" (iotified) vowel (е ё, ю, я) to indicate that no palatalization of the preceding consonant takes place, and the vowel is pronounced in the same way as at the beginning of the word. In lacinka this function is performed by the letter 'j'. Compare: "Сям'я" vs "Siamja" (Note: two different ways of matching the letter 'я'). Before 1933, in addition to Ge (Гг), the Belarusian alphabet contained the letter Ghe (Ґґ). Some Belarusians promote restoring the letter, but the issue is not yet being considered in Belarus officially.

Belarusian Latin alphabet

Aa Bb Cc Ćć Čč Dd (Dzdz Dźdź Dždž) Ee Ff Gg Hh Chch Ii Jj Kk Ll Łł Mm Nn Ńń Oo Pp Rr Ss Śś Šš Tt Uu Ŭŭ Vv Yy Zz Źź Žž

Transliteration

Transliteration of geographical names

In 2000, the rules of transliteration of geographical names into the Latin alphabet were decreed in Belarus. Main peculiarities:
- Г/г → H/h, and thus Х/х → Ch/ch.
- Е е, Ё ё, Ю ю, Я я are treated according to the following two cases (this rule eliminates the necessity in the separating apostrophe):
- after consonants: iе, iо, iu, iа (renders palatalisation)
- in all other cases (at the beginning of a word, after vowes and separators): Jе jе, Jо jо, Ju ju, Jа jа (renders yotation).
- Ўў → Uu with Circumflex (Û/û)
- Ч ч → Č č, Ш ш → Š š, Ж ж → Ž ž
- Ь ь → '
- Ы ы → Y y
- Э э → Е е This approach resembles Łacinka, but differs from it as well. Compare: Mahiloŭ (Łacinka), Mahilioû (new).

Grammar

Phonetics

The most prominent phonetic features of Belarusian are
- akannie (аканьне) – the tendency to pronounce unstressed "o" and "e" as clear open front unrounded vowel "a";
- dzekanie (дзеканьне) – the pronunciation of palatalized d as soft affricate dz' (dź);
- tsekanie (цеканьне) – the pronunciation of palatalized t as soft affricate ts' (ć);
- strong palatalization of ś (сь) and ź (зь).

Some Belarusian sounds in IPA

Vocabulary

In terms of lexicon, Belarusian is most closely related to Ukrainian, then to Polish, and only then to Russian. Some very basic examples:
- вітаю (vitaju) – hello
- як (jak) – how
- як маесься? (jak majessia?) – how are you doing?
- добрай раніцы (dobraj ranicy) – good morning
- дабранач (dabranach) – good night
- дзякуй (dziakuj) – thank you
- калі ласка (kali laska) – please, you are welcome
- спадар / спадарыня (spadar / spadarynia) – mister / missis
- добра (dobra) – good
- кепска / дрэнна (kiepska / drenna) – bad
- выдатна (vydatna) – excellent
- цудоўна (cudouna) – wonderful
- дзе (dzie) – where?
- адкуль (adkul) – where from?
- чаму (chamu) – why?
- разумею (razumieju) – I understand
- нічога не разумею (nichoha nie razumieju) – I don't understand anything

Comparison

Nouns (nazounik)

There are six cases:
- Nominative (nazouny)
- Genitive (rodny)
- Dative (davalny)
- Accusative (vinavalny)
- Instrumental (tvorny)
- Locative (mesny) There is also a seventh case, vocative (klichny), but in modern Belarusian it's very rarely used, so in contemporary textbooks most often you'll see just the first six cases mentioned. For nouns there are several types of declension:
- i-stem – feminine (feminine nouns ending in a hard consonant, soft consonant or ў: печ "stove", косьць "bone", кроў "blood")
- a-stem – mostly feminine (subdivided into four subgroups: hard stems, guttural stems, soft stems, hardened stems)
- o-stem – masculine (subdivided into hard stem and soft stem) and neuter (вясло "oar", мора "sea")
- consonantal stem – mostly neuter (ягня "lamb", бярэмя "burden", семя "seed")
- irregular nouns (for example, вока "eye" and вуха "ear")

Pronouns (zajmiennik)

In Belarusian there are eight types of pronouns (займеньнік):
- Possessive (прыналежныя): мой (my, mine); твой (your(s)familiar); яго, ягоны (his); яе, ейны (her); наш, наскі (our(s)); ваш (your(s)); іх, іхны (their(s)), свой ((one's) own).
- Personal (асабовыя): я (I), ты (you (familiar)), ён (he), яна (she), яно (it), мы (we), вы (you), яны (they);
- Negative (адмоўныя): ніхто (nobody), нішто (nothing), нічый (nobody's), ніякі (not of any kind), ніводзін, ніводны (no one);
- Definitive (азначальныя): сам (-self); самы ("the very", - self); увесь (all, whole); усё (all, everything); усе (all, every, everybody); усякі, усялякі (every, any); кожны (each); іншы (other).
- Indefinite (няпэўныя): нехта (someone); нешта (something); нейкі (some, а); нечы (somebody's, a); некаторы (some of); некалькі (a few, some, several); хтось, хтосьці (somebody); штось, штосьці (something); чыйсьці (somebody's); якісьці, які-кольвек (some, a kind of, something like); хто-небудзь, хто-кольвек (anybody); што-небудзь, што-кольвек (anything); чый-небудзь (some one's); абы-што (smth.dickey); абы-чый (a, somebody's (negative)); абы-які (dickey).
- Interrogative-comparative (пытальныя): хто (who), што (what), які (which), каторы (which), чый (whose), колькі (how much);
- Demonstrative (указальныя): той (that); гэты (this); гэны (this/that); такі (such); гэткі, гэтакі (such, of this kind); столькі, гэтулькі (that much);
- Reflexive (зваротны): сябе (-self).

External links

- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=bel Ethnologue report for Belarusian]
- [http://www.belarusguide.com/dictionaries/engblr/index.html English-Belarusian dictionaries, in Lacinka]
- [http://www.lacinka.org/ Łacinka.org]
- [http://www.belarusguide.com/culture1/texts/Metrika.html Metrica of GDL]
- [http://www.belarusguide.com/culture1/texts/Statut.html Statutes of GDL]
- [http://www.pravapis.org/ pravapis.org - Belarusian language]
- [http://vitba.org/ Fundamentals of Modern Belarusian]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Belarusan-english/ Belarusan English Dictionary] from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition Category:Languages of Belarus Category:Languages of Estonia Category:Languages of Latvia Category:Languages of Lithuania Category:Languages of Poland Category:East Slavic languages Category:Belarusian language ja:ベラルーシ語

Macedonian language

:This article is about the Slavic language. For the language spoken in the ancient world, see Ancient Macedonian language. The Macedonian language (Македонски, Makedonski) is a language in the Eastern group of South Slavic languages and is the official language of the Republic of Macedonia. Macedonian is also spoken in Australia, Canada, USA, Greece, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia and Montenegro, Turkey and some countries of the European Union. The total number of native Macedonian speakers is estimated around 2 million. The Macedonian language is most closely related to the Bulgarian language. Macedonian also has similarities with Serbian, particularly Old Serbian. Bulgarian and Macedonian share typological similarities with Romanian, Greek, and Albanian. These five languages make up the Balkan language league, even though they are all from different language families (Romanian is a Romance language, while Greek and Albanian comprise their own branches in the Indo-European family). Macedonian is the official language in the Republic of Macedonia, and officially recognized in the District of Korçë in Albania. Native speakers are also found in Serbia and Montenegro, Greece, and Albania. Along with Bulgarian, Macedonian is the only Slavic language not to generally use noun cases in quite the same respect as the others. The only case used is vocative, however three different definite articles are used (as suffixes). It should also be noted that only Macedonian contains the three definite articles pertaining to position of the object; all other languages have the basic form. One unique characteristic of Macedonian speech is the permanent short stress falling on the syllable third from last, and gradually moving along each time the word lengthens. Example: ZAmina (vozot) - (The train) departed; zaMInuvaj - Go from here! (imperative); zamiNUvanje - Departure ; ZaminuVAnjeto - The departure. Even so, this tends not to be the case when the word has entered the language more recently and from a foreign source (chiefly English). Menadžment (Management) is pronounced Me-naj-MENT. A modified Cyrillic script, Macedonian Cyrillic with 31 letters, is used for writing. Cyrillic, with Glagolitic, was an old Slavic script, used for the original Old Slavonic language. Only Cyrillic is used today, probably because the letters are simpler and more easily learnt when scholars like Saint Cyril introduced Christian writings to the Slavic people. While the transliteration to Latin script is easy in principle, there is currently a lot of confusion about which standard to use. When Macedonia was part of former Yugoslavia, Macedonian was typically written using the Latin script used for, e.g., Croatian. For example, the Cyrillic letter ж was written as ž. Since then, the use of "zh" or simply "z" has gained currency. Especially problematic is the Cyrillic letter џ, which can be found transliterated into Latin as "dž", "dzh", "dz" or even "x". Macedonian language is taught as a subject in several of the university centres of the world, and is currently taught in all universities of the former Yugoslavia.

History

The 19th century, accompanied by pan-Slavic nationalism, saw the first attempts to resolve the question of linguistic norms in the Bulgarian-Macedonian diasystem. Writers from Macedonia advocated a common Bulgarian language based on the Slavic dialects in Macedonia or on a compromise between the upper-Bulgarian (northeastern Bulgarian) and the western Macedonian dialects. Writers from northern Bulgaria, however, insisted on the adoption of the northeastern Bulgarian dialect onl