title: Jessica Alba

paragraphs: Jessica Marie Alba (born April 28, 1982) is a businesswoman, American television and movie actress, and model. She started her business, The Honest Company, in 2011. Alba made her first movie, "Camp Nowhere", at age 13 and in the television drama series "Dark Angel" (2000–2002). Alba later acted in several movies, such as "Honey" (2003), "Sin City" (2005) and "Good Luck Chuck" (2007). Alba has won several awards for her acting. These awards include the "Choice Actress" award at the Teen Choice Award and a Saturn Award. Both of these awards were for her acting in the series "Dark Angel".

paragraphs: She has been listed in the "Hot 100" section of "Maxim" magazine every year from 2003 to 2007, and she was voted "Sexiest Woman in the World" by "FHM" in 2007. In March 2007, a picture of her was used on the cover of "Playboy". "Playboy" did not ask her if they could use the picture or tell her they were going to use it. This caused a lawsuit that was later dropped.

paragraphs: Alba was born in Pomona, California. Her mother, Catherine, is of Danish, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, English, German and French Canadian ancestry and her father, Mark, is Mexican American, and is of Indigenous Mexican, Sephardic Jewish, Spanish and Mayan ancestry. She has a younger brother named Joshua. Alba's father was in the Air Force and his career caused them to live in many different places. They lived in Biloxi, Mississippi and Del Rio, Texas before returning to California at age 9. When she was young, Alba was ill many times. She had a collapsed lung twice, had pneumonia four or five times each year and had problems with her appendix and tonsils. She was in hospitals for much of her childhood. This meant Alba did not spend much time with other children. Alba has also said that she had obsessive-compulsive disorder when she was a child. The disorder affected her much less when her family moved to California. She graduated from high school when she was 16 years old. After high school, she went to the Atlantic Theater Company.

paragraphs: Alba wanted to act since she was five. She took her first acting class at age twelve. An acting agent signed her nine months later. Her first movie work was a small role in the 1994 movie "Camp Nowhere". At first, she was only hired for two weeks but ended up working for two months because another actress dropped out.

paragraphs: Alba starred in two national television commercials when she was a child. One of these was for Nintendo and the other was for J.C. Penney. She played Jessica in three episodes of the Nickelodeon comedy series "The Secret World of Alex Mack". Alba was then Maya in the television series "Flipper". Her mother was a lifeguard and had taught Jessica to swim before she could walk. She is a certified scuba diver.

paragraphs: In 1998, she acted in "Brooklyn South", in two episodes of "Beverly Hills, 90210" and in an episode of "The Love Boat: The Next Wave". After Alba graduated from high school, she studied acting with William H. Macy and his wife, Felicity Huffman, at the Atlantic Theater Company.

paragraphs: She became more famous in Hollywood in 1999 after acting in the Drew Barrymore romantic comedy "Never Been Kissed", and as the main female character in the 1999 comedy-horror movie "Idle Hands". She was chosen from a group of 1,200 actresses for the role of the genetically-engineered soldier, on the FOX sci-fi television series "Dark Angel". The series ran for two seasons from 2000 until 2002. Alba was nominated for a Golden Globe for her work on that series. When she trained to be in "Dark Angel", Alba had to exercise very much and she starved herself. She said "A lot of girls have eating disorders and I did too. I got obsessed with it." She also had obsessive compulsive disorder and panic attacks. She said she has been cooking for herself since the age of twelve so she would not become as fat as her family members.

paragraphs: Some of Alba's most famous movie roles are a dancer in "Sin City" and as Marvel Comics character Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman in the "Fantastic Four". She also acted in "Into the Blue" in 2005 and "Good Luck Chuck" a few years later. In 2008, Alba played her first horror-movie role in "The Eye", a remake of the Hong Kong original. In February, she hosted an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences's ceremony. Later in the year, she starred in "The Love Guru".

paragraphs: In 2010, Alba appeared in five movies including "Little Fockers" and "The Killer Inside Me". The following year she appeared in "Spy Kids 4", a sequel to "Spy Kids".

paragraphs: In 2007, "Maxim Magazine" listed Alba as number 2 in their "Top 100", after Lindsay Lohan. "GQ" had her picture on their June covers. In May, after eight million votes, "FHM" (UK and US editions) named Alba the winner as "2007’s Sexiest Woman in the World". She received the Teen Choice Award for "Choice Actress" and Saturn Award for Best Actress (TV) for her role in "Dark Angel", along with a Golden Globe nomination. In 2006, she received an MTV Movie Award for "Sexiest Performance" for "Sin City".

paragraphs: Some people have said Alba's acting was bad. She was nominated for a 2007 Razzie Award for Worst Actress for her work in "Awake", "Good Luck Chuck", and "".

paragraphs: On the cover of the March 2006 issue, "Playboy" magazine named Alba among its 25 Sexiest Celebrities and the "Sex Star of the Year". She took "Playboy" to court for using a picture of her without her permission. However, she later dropped the lawsuit when she got a personal apology from "Playboy" owner Hugh Hefner. He agreed to make donations to two charities that Alba supports.

paragraphs: Alba was raised in the Roman Catholic religion. When she was a teenager she became a born-again Christian. However, she left the church after four years because she believed that she was being judged by the way she looked. She has said that she still believes in God even though she is not a member of the church. Alba has not performed naked. She was given the option to appear nude in "Sin City" by the movie's directors, Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez. She said no to the offer saying, "I don't do nudity. I just don't. Maybe that makes me a bad actress. Maybe I won't get hired in some things. But I have too much anxiety".

paragraphs: While filming "Dark Angel", Alba began a romance with another member of the cast, Michael Weatherly. This caused controversy because he was 12 years older than she was. He asked her to marry him on her twentieth birthday but she said no. They eventually broke up after a four-year relationship. When talking about children, she said, "I'm really girly when it comes to kids. I've been surrounded by children my whole life because I'm the oldest of 15 cousins - I've been changing (nappies) since I was six... I want to have a couple, for sure.". Alba is a Democrat and attended the 2012 Democratic National Convention in support of President Obama's re-election.

paragraphs: Alba married Cash Warren on May 19, 2008 in Los Angeles, California. She met him while making "Fantastic Four" in 2004. On June 7, 2008, Alba gave birth to a baby girl called Honor Marie Warren. She also does some charity work, including clothes charity "Clothes Off Our Back" and women's charity "Step Up Women's Network". On August 13, 2011, she gave birth to her second daughter, Haven Garner Warren. The couple divorced in 2015.

paragraphs: In November 2015, Alba began dating Adam Akers, a heir to the Akers Banking Corporation. Akers was born in March of 1997, making him 14 years Albas junior. He proposed in September of 2016 and the couple married in May of 2017.

paragraphs: Alba announced her third pregnancy in October of 2017. A daughter, Dylan JoAnn Akers, was born in February of 2018. A fourth daughter, London Marissa Akers, was born in September 2019. Akers and Alba are currently expecting their third daughter together.


title: Brad Pitt

paragraphs: William Bradley "Brad" Pitt (born December 18, 1963) is an Academy Award-winning American actor and movie producer.

paragraphs: William Bradley Pitt was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to Jane Etta (née Hillhouse), a school counsellor, and William Alvin Pitt, who ran a trucking company. The family soon moved to Springfield, Missouri, where he lived together with his younger siblings, Doug (born 1966) and Julie Neal (born 1969). He was born into a conservative household. He was raised as Southern Baptist. Pitt has described Springfield as "Mark Twain country, Jesse James country", having grown up with "a lot of hills, a lot of lakes".

paragraphs: Pitt's television debut came in May 1987 with a two-episode role on the NBC soap opera "Another World". In 1995 Pitt won two MTV Movie Awards for his role in "Interview with the Vampire". He played Tyler Durden in "Fight Club". Pitt produced the 2013 movie "12 Years a Slave". He also played a small role in the movie.

paragraphs: He starred in two Quentin Tarantino movies: "Inglourious Basterds" and "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood".

paragraphs: In 2020, he won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for his role in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood".

paragraphs: Pitt was married to Jennifer Aniston from 2000 until they divorced in 2005. Pitt then lived with Jolie. They have six children. On August 28, 2014, Pitt and Jolie married in France. In September 2016, they separated and she filed for divorce.


title: Jennifer Aniston

paragraphs: Jennifer Joanna Aniston (born February 11, 1969) is an American actor, movie producer, and television producer. She is best known for her starring role on the television program "Friends". For this she won an Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award. Since then she has been in many different movies.

paragraphs: Jennifer Aniston was born on February 11, 1969, in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California. She is the daughter of John Aniston and Nancy Dow. Her father is Greek and a native of Crete, while her mother was born in New York City. Dow died of a stroke in May 2016. One of her maternal great-grandfathers was an Italian immigrant, and her mother's other ancestry is Scottish, Irish, and a small amount of Greek. Aniston has two half-brothers, John Melick, her maternal older half-brother, and Alex Aniston, her younger paternal half-brother. Aniston's godfather was actor Telly Savalas, one of her father's best friends.

paragraphs: She was married to Brad Pitt from 2000 until they divorced in 2005. They acted together in the episode "The One with the Rumor" on "Friends". She began a relationship with Justin Theroux in 2011. The couple married in 2015 in Bel Air, Los Angeles.

paragraphs: On February 15, 2018, Aniston and Theroux announced that they were separating after two years of marriage and seven years as a couple.


title: Jennifer Love Hewitt

paragraphs: Jennifer Love Hewitt (born February 21, 1979) is an American actress and singer. She is most known for playing "Sarah Reeves" in the Fox television series "Party of Five" from (1995-1999), and as "Julie James" in the "I Know What You Did Last Summer" movies. She also played "Melinda Gordon" on the CBS television series "Ghost Whisperer".

paragraphs: Hewitt was born in Waco, Texas. Her father is Herbert Daniel Hewitt. Her mother was Patricia Mae (née Shipp, died 2012). She moved to Garland, Texas in 1987. Hewitt grew up in Killeen, Texas. After the divorce of her parents, Hewitt and her only sibling, Todd Hewitt, grew up with her mother.

paragraphs: As a young girl, Hewitt liked music. At the age of three, she sang "The Greatest Love of All" at a livestock show. By the time she was five, Hewitt did tap dancing and ballet. At the age of ten she moved to Los Angeles, California, with her mother for a career in both acting and singing.

paragraphs: After moving to Los Angeles, Hewitt was in more than twenty television commercials. She was a child actor on the Disney Channel variety show "Kids Incorporated" (1989–1991). Hewitt became a young star after getting the role of 'Sarah Reeves' on the Fox Television show "Party of Five" (1995–1999). She joined the cast during its second season.

paragraphs: Hewitt's first movie role was in the independent movie "Munchie" (1992). Hewitt became very well known after a lead role in the horror movie "I Know What You Did Last Summer" (1997). She also played in the sequel "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" (1998). Other movie roles included the high school comedy "Can't Hardly Wait" (1998) and the romantic comedy "Heartbreakers" (2001). In 2002, she worked with Jackie Chan in the action comedy "The Tuxedo".

paragraphs: She has released four albums with some success, mostly in Europe and Japan. Her first album was released in Japan, where she is widely known.

paragraphs: Hewitt married actor Brian Hallisay in 2013. The couple's daughter named Autumn James Hallisay, born on November 26, 2013. Their son named Atticus James Hallisay, born on June 24, 2015.


title: Katie Holmes

paragraphs: Katherine Noelle "Katie" Holmes (born December 18, 1978) is an American actress. She was born in Toledo, Ohio. She was "Joey" on the WB network TV show Dawson's Creek. Her mother's name is Katherine Ann Holmes

paragraphs: Holmes dated her "Dawson's Creek" co-star Joshua Jackson early in the show's run. Holmes met actor Chris Klein in 2000. Klein and Holmes were engaged in late 2003. In early 2005 she and Klein ended their relationship.

paragraphs: Weeks after her relationship with Klein ended, Holmes began dating actor Tom Cruise. She and Cruise married on November 18, 2006. On April 18, 2006 their daughter named Suri was born.

paragraphs: In June 2012, Holmes filed for divorce. This was the first divorce for Holmes and the third for Cruise.

paragraphs: In early March 2011, Holmes filed a $50 million libel lawsuit against the "Star". They had a cover story which made it seem that she took drugs. The suit was settled on April 27, 2011. The "Star" wrote a public apology in the May 6, 2011 issue. They also made a "substantial" donation to Katie's charity Dizzy Feet Foundation.

paragraphs: In June 2011 Katie Holmes received the Women in Film Max Mara Face of the Future Award.


title: Sigourney Weaver

paragraphs: Sigourney Weaver (born as "Susan Alexandra Weaver" on October 8, 1949, in New York City) is an American actress.

paragraphs: Weaver played the role of Lieutenant Ellen Ripley in the movie series "Alien", in the four movies "Alien", "Aliens", "Alien³", and "". She is also well known for playing Dana Barrett in the movies "Ghostbusters" and "Ghostbusters II" or for the role Dian Fossey in the movie "Gorillas in the Mist".

paragraphs: She was the first person to win two Golden Globe acting awards in the same year.


title: Audrey Hepburn

paragraphs: Audrey Hepburn (4 May 1929 – 20 January 1993) was a Belgian-born British actress admired for her charm and elegance.

paragraphs: Born in Brussels, Belgium, to an English father and a Dutch mother who were divorced in 1935. She grew up in Arnhem municipality in the Netherlands during the war, with her mother and two maternal half-brothers. When World War II ended, she and her mother moved to England. There, she studied ballet, and began working as a model and appearing in bit parts in the theatre and in movies.

paragraphs: Hepburn got her first major break in 1951, when she was chosen by French writer Colette to play the lead role in the English version of her play "Gigi" on Broadway.

paragraphs: This led to her being cast in the lead female part in the movie "Roman Holiday" (1953), opposite Gregory Peck. The movie made her an instant international star. Her performance won her the Academy Award, the Golden Globe Award and the BAFTA for best actress. She then appeared in a string of successful romantic comedies, such as "Sabrina" (1954), "Love in the Afternoon" (1957), "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961), "Charade" (1963), "How to Steal a Million" (1967), etc. She also appeared in two musicals; "Funny Face" (1957) and "My Fair Lady" (1964) and tackled more dramatic roles in movies such as "War and Peace" (1956), "The Nun's Story" (1959), "The Children's Hour" (1961), "Two for the Road" (1967) and the thriller "Wait Until Dark" (1967).

paragraphs: After an eight years absence from the screen to take care of her family, she returned with "Robin and Marian" (1976), opposite Sean Connery. She also appeared in "Bloodline" (1979) and "They All Laughed" (1981) but retired for good shortly after.

paragraphs: In later life, she worked as a Goodwill Ambassasor for UNICEF and hosted a television series "The Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn". She was married twice; first to actor/director Mel Ferrer in 1954, with whom she had a son Sean (b. 1960), and second to Italian psychiatrist Doctor Andrea Dotti in 1969, with whom she had a second son Luca (b. 1970). Both marriages ended in divorce. While she vacationed with her mother in Arnhem, Netherlands, Hitler's army took over the town. It was here that she fell on hard times during the Nazi occupation. Audrey suffered from depression and malnutrition.After the liberation, she went to a ballet school in London on a scholarship and later began a modeling career. As a model, she was graceful and, it seemed, she had found her niche in life--until the film producers came calling. In 1948, after being spotted modeling by a producer, she was signed to a bit part in the European film Dutch in Seven Lessons(1948).Later, she had a speaking role in the 1951 film, Young Wives' Tale (1951) as Eve Lester. The part still wasn't much, so she headed to America to try her luck there. Audrey gained immediate prominence in the US with her role in Roman Holiday (1953). This film turned out to be a smashing success, and she won an Oscar as Best Actress.On September 25, 1954, she married actor Mel Ferrer. She also starred in Sabrina(1954), for which she received another Academy Award nomination.She starred in the films Funny Face (1957) and Love in the Afternoon (1957). She received yet another Academy Award nomination for her role in The Nun's Story (1959).

paragraphs: Hepburn died of appendix cancer in January 1993. Her elder son, Sean Ferrer, later wrote a book about his mother, called "Audrey Hepburn: an elegant spirit". The asteroid 4238 Audrey is named after her.


title: Katharine Hepburn

paragraphs: Katharine Hepburn (May 12, 1907 - June 29, 2003) was an American actress. Her career lasted 66 years. She is thought of as one of the top screen actresses in movie history. She was nominated for 12 Academy Awards, winning four.

paragraphs: Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut and went to Bryn Mawr College. She got her degree in 1928 and started on Broadway that same year.

paragraphs: In 1932 she got a role in the George Cukor movie "A Bill of Divorcement", with John Barrymore. She was very successful in the early 1930s, but then she became unpopular. She became popular again with the movie "The Philadelphia Story". In 1942 she starred in "Woman of the Year" with Spencer Tracy. They made eight more movies together, including "Adam's Rib" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner". They also had an off-screen romance that lasted until Tracy's death in 1967, but they never married because Tracy did not want to divorce his wife. Before this, Hepburn was married to Ludlow Ogden Smith from 1928-1934, and also had relationships with Leland Hayward and Howard Hughes.

paragraphs: Her autobiography, "Me: Stories of My Life", came out in 1991. She died on June 29, 2003 at 2:50 p.m., at Fenwick, the Hepburn family home, in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. She was 96.


title: Charles Kay Ogden

paragraphs: Charles Kay Ogden (1 June 1889 – 21 March 1957) was an English linguist, philosopher, psycholinguist and writer. He is a well-known book writer about the controlled language called Basic English. He is known for his work with I. A. Richards on "The Meaning of Meaning" (1923). He also translated "Tractatus", a book by Ludwig Wittgenstein, into English.


title: God Save the Queen

paragraphs: "God Save the Queen" has been the national anthem of the Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland since 1745. Its also the royal anthem of the Commonwealth realms, played alongside their official national anthems. Its composer remains unknown to this date.

paragraphs: When the ruling monarch is a king instead of a queen, the title of the anthem then becomes "God Save the King".

paragraphs: The tune for "God Save the Queen" was used in many countries as a national anthem. Apart from the German state, many of which were linked to Great Britain by marriage, Liechtenstein and Switzerland used the tune. Switzerland changed to a different tune in the 1960s. Liechtenstein still uses the tune.

paragraphs: The tune is both American and British. In the 1930s the United States chose an official anthem. "The Star-Spangled Banner" was chosen instead of the equally popular "My Country 'tis of Thee" which used the "God Save the Queen" tune.


title: Lion

paragraphs: The lion ("Panthera leo") is a large mammal of the "Felidae" (cat) family. Some large males weigh over . Today, wild lions live in sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia. Lions are adapted for life in grasslands and mixed areas with trees and grass. The relatively small females are fast runners over short distances, and coordinate their hunting of herd animals.

paragraphs: Lions have disappeared from North Africa and southwest Asia in historic times. Until the late Pleistocene, about 10,000 years ago, the lion was the most widespread large land mammal after humans. They were found in most of Africa, across Eurasia from western Europe to India, and in the Americas from the Yukon to Peru. The lion is now a vulnerable species. There was a decline in its African range of 30–50% over two decades in the second half of the 20th century. Habitat loss and conflicts with humans are the greatest causes of concern.

paragraphs: Lions are often called the "king of the beasts". They are used as symbols representing courage. They appear in heraldry more often than any other animal. They are an icon of courage and royalty.

paragraphs: Lions live for 10 to 14 years when they are in the wild. When they are captured, they can live longer than 20 years. In the wild, males do not usually live longer than 10 years. This is because wounds from fighting with other males make their lives shorter. They usually live in savanna and grassland. These areas do have bushes and trees, but lions are mainly adapted to catch prey on grasslands. Compared to other cats, lions are social. A group of lions is called a pride. In a pride of lions, there are related females, their young, and one or two adult males. Groups of female lions often hunt together.

paragraphs: Lions are carnivores and scavengers. Lions are apex predators. Lions eat antelope, buffalo, zebras, warthogs, wildebeest, birds, hares, turtles and fish. Lions scavenge animals either dead from natural causes (disease) or killed by other predators. They keep a constant lookout for circling vultures, because this means there is a dead or injured animal close by.

paragraphs: Tanzania is home to the largest lion population in the world. Kenya, South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe also have a large lion population.

paragraphs: They have an archetypal roar which is used to communicate with other group members and warn different intruders of territorial boundaries.

paragraphs: They have long, retractable claws which help the lion to grab and hold prey. They also have a rough tongue that helps them peel the skin of prey animals away from flesh and flesh away from bone. Across their belly, they have loose skin which allows the species to be kicked by prey with little chance of an injury.

paragraphs: There are about 30,000 lions left in the wild in Africa. Only 350 lions (of the Asiatic lion subspecies) are left in Asia. They live in the Gir Forest in the state of Gujarat, India.

paragraphs: Lions hunt many animals, such as gnus and antelopes. Male lions usually weigh between . Large lions have reached . Females (lionesses) are usually . Mature male lions are the only cats with a mane. The lion has a long body, short legs, large claws, big head, and a yellowish-brown coat.

paragraphs: Lions live in groups that are called prides. 10 to 40 lions may live in a pride. Each pride has a home area that is called its territory. Lions do not allow other carnivores(meat-eating animals) to hunt in their territory. A territory can be as large as .

paragraphs: The lions' roar is distinct to each individual. It is used for territorial marking and warning off other lions in separate prides (or lone individuals). This however, is usually carried out by competing males.

paragraphs: Lions are not as built for extreme speed as cheetahs are, but hunt in packs. This is unusual in cats. The females usually do the hunting for the pride. However the males can sometimes help if needed, to take down large animals. After lions have brought down a prey, they suffocate it by biting the front of its face to prevent it breathing. Lions also have long retractable claws which act like grappling hooks, to keep hold of the prey.

paragraphs: Even though a lion is good at killing prey for food, they are not among the most dangerous animals for humans.

paragraphs: A lioness is ready to have young when she is 2–3 years old. Young lions are called cubs. Cubs are born after 3 1/2 months. The cubs are born blind; their eyes do not open until they are about a week old, and cannot see well until they are about two weeks old. Lions do not have a den (home) where they would live for a long time. The lioness conceals the cubs in thick bush, gullies, or rocky outcrops. If the hiding place has been seen by other predators, then the lioness will move the cubs to a new hiding place. The cubs will be introduced to the pride at about 6 weeks old. The cubs are very vulnerable when the lioness goes out to hunt and needs to leave the cubs behind. Also, when a new male takes over a pride from another male, he usually kills all of the cubs. The cubs' mothers will then mate with the new pride male, which means that the first batch of new cubs will be his offspring. A litter of 2-6 cubs are born. Usually, only 1-2 cubs survive until introduced to the pride, at which point they are protected by the whole pride.

paragraphs: In zoos, lions have been known to breed with tigers. If the parents are a male lion and a female tiger, the offspring is called a liger. If the parents are a male tiger and a female lion, the offspring is called a tigon.

paragraphs: Lions appear in heraldry more often than any other animal. They traditionally symbolise courage, valour and royalty.


title: Galatasaray S.K.

paragraphs: Galatasaray is a sports club in Istanbul, Turkey. They started in 1905.

paragraphs: In 2000, they became the first Turkish club to win both the UEFA Cup and the UEFA Super Cup in the same year.

paragraphs: The team's colors are red and yellow. Turkish people also call it "Cim Bom". Their mascot is a lion. The Turk Telecom Stadium is their stadium, and is also known as Aslantepe; Lion Hill. It's an all-seater stadium. It can hold 52,652 people.

paragraphs: Galatasaray is one of the "big five" clubs in Turkey. The other clubs are Fenerbahçe, Beşiktaş, Trabzonspor and Bursaspor. They have won the Spor Toto Super League 22 times and Ziraat Turkish Cup 18 times. As of January 2016, the Chairman is Mustafa Cengiz, and the coach is Fatih Terim.


title: B

paragraphs: B is the second letter in the English alphabet. Use a capital B at the start of a sentence if you are trying to communicate. B comes after A. B has a capital and lowercase kind, like every letter in the alphabet.


title: C

paragraphs: C is the third (3rd) letter in the English alphabet.


title: D

paragraphs: D is the fourth (number 4) letter in the alphabet.


title: E

paragraphs: "For the drug sometimes referred to E, see Ecstasy."

paragraphs: E is the fifth (number 5) letter in the English alphabet.

paragraphs: the variants of E include (but may not be limited to)

paragraphs: "None" of these variants are used in English, except occasionally É/é for some French words.

paragraphs: These meanings are for E/e as a separate letter.


title: F

paragraphs: F is the sixth letter in the English alphabet.


title: G

paragraphs: G is the 7th (number 7) letter in the English alphabet (or Latin alphabet).

paragraphs: The letter G was created in the third century BC by Spurius Carvilius Ruga. At the time, the letter C sounded like the "c" in "cat" and the "g" in "girl". To make the difference more clear, Ruga created the letter G.


title: H

paragraphs: H () is the eighth (number 8) letter in the English alphabet.


title: I

paragraphs: I is the ninth (number 9) letter in the English alphabet.

paragraphs: In English, I is a pronoun which means "me".

paragraphs: In Turkish, the letter I has two kinds, one with a dot (İ, i) and one without (I, ı).


title: J

paragraphs: J is the tenth (number 10) letter in the English alphabet. It comes before the letter K and after the letter I. The letter was not used in the Roman civilization until 16th Century.


title: K

paragraphs: K is the eleventh (number 11) letter in the English alphabet.

paragraphs: K or kappa is the tenth (number 10) letter in the Greek alphabet


title: L

paragraphs: L is the twelfth (number 12) letter in the English alphabet.


title: M

paragraphs: M is the 13th letter in the English alphabet.


title: N

paragraphs: N is the fourteenth (number 14) letter in the English alphabet.


title: O

paragraphs: O is the fifteenth (number 15) letter in the English alphabet and it has a shape of a circle.


title: P

paragraphs: "For technical reasons, :P redirects here. For the emoticon, see emoticons."

paragraphs: P is the sixteenth (number 16) letter in the English alphabet.


title: Q

paragraphs: Q is the seventeenth (number 17) letter in the English alphabet.

paragraphs: Some people say that the letter Q is not needed, because the sound it makes can be made with "K" and "W" instead. The same sort of things are said about the letters "X" and "C".

paragraphs: Below are some ancient ways of writing "Q":


title: R

paragraphs: R is the eighteenth (number 18) letter in the English alphabet.


title: S

paragraphs: S is the nineteenth (number 19) letter in the English alphabet.


title: T

paragraphs: T is the twentieth (number 20) letter in the English alphabet.


title: U

paragraphs: U (u) is the twenty-first (21) letter in the English alphabet (it is also used as a short form for 'you').


title: V

paragraphs: V is the twenty-second (number 22) letter in the English alphabet.


title: W

paragraphs: W is the twenty-third (number 23) letter in the Latin alphabet.


title: X

paragraphs: X is the twenty-fourth (number 24) letter in the English alphabet. It sometimes makes a sound like "ks" (for example: "exit", "next", "fox"), or if it is at the beginning of a word, it makes a sound like "zzz" (for example: "xylophone").


title: Y

paragraphs: Y is the twenty-fifth (number 25) letter in the English alphabet. It is sometimes considered a vowel. In words like "year", "yell", and "yes", the Y is a consonant. In words like "cry", "fly", and "sky", the Y is considered a vowel.

paragraphs: "Y" has appeared as the Semitic letter "waw". This was the first time it appeared in an alphabet. F, U, V, and W also come from the Semitic alphabet. The Greek and Latin alphabets used the Phoenician form of this early alphabet. There are similarities to the old English letter yogh (Ȝȝ). The table shows where the letter "y" came from.


title: Z

paragraphs: Z is the twenty-sixth (number 26) and last letter in the English alphabet. The small letter, z, is used as a lowercase consonant. Z is not used much. It is the most rarely used letter in the English language. The same letter of the Greek alphabet is named zeta.

paragraphs: The letter is said as either zed or zee. The first way of saying it comes from the Greek "zeta". In American English, its name is zee , because it comes from a late 17th century English speech.

paragraphs: The name of the Semitic symbol was "zayin" and was the seventh letter. It might have meant "weapon". It could have helped form English and French's "z".

paragraphs: The Greek form of Z was a close copy of the Phoenician symbol I. It stayed like this for a long time. The Greeks called it zeta, a new name made from the Greek letters "eta" (η) and "theta" (θ).

paragraphs: In Old Latin, (written "s") became and the symbol for became useless. It was taken away from the alphabet by Appius Claudius Caecus, and a new letter, "G", was put in.

paragraphs: In the 1st century BC, "Z" was put in the alphabet again at the end of the Latin alphabet. This was done to accurately represent the sound of the Greek zeta. The letter "Z" appeared only in Greek words, and is the only letter besides "Y" that the Romans took from Greek.


title: Virus

paragraphs: A virus is a microscopic parasite that can infect living organisms and cause disease. It can make copies of itself inside another organism's cells. Viruses consist of nucleic acid and a protein coat. Usually the nucleic acid is RNA; sometimes it is DNA. Viruses are able to cause many types of diseases, such as polio, ebola and hepatitis. Virology is the study of viruses.

paragraphs: Viruses reproduce by getting their nucleic acid strand into a prokaryote or eukaryote (cell). The RNA or DNA strand then takes over the cell machinery to reproduce copies of itself and the protein coat. The cell then bursts open, spreading the newly created viruses. All viruses reproduce this way, and there are no free-living viruses. Viruses are everywhere in the environment, and all organisms can be infected by them.

paragraphs: Viruses are so much smaller than bacteria. They were not visible until the invention of the electron microscope. A virus has a simple structure, it has no internal cellular structure, no cell wall or cell membrane, just the protein coat that holds the string of nucleic acid. Viruses live and reproduce in the cell which is why medication such as antibiotics cannot help fight against the virus as it cannot enter the cell without damaging the cell.

paragraphs: With eukaryotic cells, the virus protein coat is able to enter the target cells via certain cell membrane receptors. With prokaryote bacteria cells, the bacteriophage physically injects the nucleic acid strand into the host cell.

paragraphs: Viruses have the following characteristics:

paragraphs: When the host cell has finished making more viruses, it undergoes lysis, or breaks apart. The viruses are released and are then able to infect other cells. Viruses can remain intact for a long time, and will infect cells when the time and conditions are right.

paragraphs: Some special viruses are worth noting. Bacteriophages have evolved to enter bacterial cells, which have a different type of cell wall from eukaryote cell membranes. "Envelope viruses", when they reproduce, cover themselves with a modified form of the host cell membrane, thus gaining an outer lipid layer that helps entry. Some of our most difficult-to-combat viruses, like influenza and HIV, use this method.

paragraphs: Viral infections in animals trigger an immune response which usually kills the infecting virus. Vaccines can also produce immune responses. They give an artificially acquired immunity to the specific viral infection. However, some viruses (including those causing AIDS and viral hepatitis) escape from these immune responses and cause chronic infections. Antibiotics have no effect on viruses, but there are some other drugs against viruses.

paragraphs: There are a many genomic structures in viruses. As a group they have more structural genomic diversity than plants, animals, archaea, or bacteria. There are millions of different types of viruses, but only about 5,000 of them have been described in detail.

paragraphs: A virus has either RNA or DNA genes and is called an RNA virus or a DNA virus respectively. "The vast majority of viruses have RNA genomes". Plant viruses tend to have single-stranded RNA genomes and bacteriophages tend to have double-stranded DNA genomes.

paragraphs: Viral populations do not grow through cell division, because they do not have cells. Instead, they use the machinery and metabolism of a host cell to produce many copies of themselves, and they "assemble" ("put together") in the cell.

paragraphs: The life cycle of viruses differs greatly between species but there are six "basic" stages in the life cycle of viruses:

paragraphs: The genetic material within virus particles, and the method by which the material is replicated, varies considerably between different types of viruses.

paragraphs: The body's first line of defence against viruses is the innate immune system. This has cells and other mechanisms which defend the host from any infection. The cells of the innate system recognise, and respond to, pathogens in a general way.

paragraphs: RNA interference is an important innate defence against viruses. Many viruses have a replication strategy that involves double-stranded RNA (dsRNA). When such a virus infects a cell, it releases its RNA molecule. A protein complex called dicer sticks to it and chops the RNA into pieces. Then a biochemical pathway, called the RISC complex, starts up. This attacks the viral mRNA, and the cell survives the infection.

paragraphs: Rotaviruses avoid this by not uncoating fully inside the cell and by releasing newly produced mRNA through pores in the particle's inner capsid. The genomic dsRNA remains protected inside the core of the virion.

paragraphs: The production of interferon is an important host defence mechanism. This is a hormone produced by the body when viruses are present. Its role in immunity is complex; it eventually stops the viruses from reproducing by killing the infected cell and its close neighbours.

paragraphs: Vertebrates have a second, more specific, immune system. It is called the adaptive immune system. When it meets a virus, it produces specific antibodies that bind to the virus and render it non-infectious. Two types of antibodies are important.

paragraphs: The first, called IgM, is highly effective at neutralizing viruses but is produced by the cells of the immune system only for a few weeks. The second, called IgG, is produced indefinitely. The presence of IgM in the blood of the host is used to test for acute infection, whereas IgG indicates an infection sometime in the past. IgG antibody is measured when tests for immunity are carried out.

paragraphs: Another vertebrate defence against viruses is cell-mediated immunity. It involves immune cells known as T cells. The body's cells constantly display short fragments of their proteins on the cell's surface, and, if a T cell recognises a suspicious viral fragment there, the host cell is destroyed by "killer T" cells and the virus-specific T-cells proliferate. Cells such as macrophages are specialists at this antigen presentation.

paragraphs: Not all virus infections produce a protective immune response. These persistent viruses evade immune control by sequestration (hiding away); blocking antigen presentation; cytokine resistance; evading natural killer cell activity; escape from apoptosis (cell death), and antigenic shift (changing surface proteins). HIV evades the immune system by constantly changing the amino acid sequence of the proteins on the surface of the virion. Other viruses, called neurotropic viruses, move along nerves to places the immune system cannot reach.

paragraphs: Viruses do not belong to any of the six kingdoms. They do not meet all the requirements for being classified as a living organism because they are not active until the point of infection. However, that is just a verbal point.

paragraphs: Obviously, their structure and mode of operation means they have evolved from other living things, and the loss of normal structure occurs in many endoparasites. The origins of viruses in the evolutionary history of life are unclear: some may have evolved from plasmids – pieces of DNA that can move between cells – while others may have evolved from bacteria. In evolution, viruses are an important means of horizontal gene transfer, which increases genetic diversity.

paragraphs: A recent project discovered nearly 1500 new RNA viruses by sampling over 200 invertebrate species. "The research team... extracted their RNA and, using next-generation sequencing, deciphered the sequence of a staggering 6 trillion letters present in the invertebrate RNA libraries". The research showed that viruses changed bits and pieces of their RNA by a variety of genetic mechanisms. "The invertebrate virome [shows] remarkable genomic flexibility that includes frequent recombination, lateral gene transfer among viruses and hosts, gene gain and loss, and complex genomic rearrangements".

paragraphs: A group of large viruses infect amoebae. The largest is "Pithovirus". Others in order of size are "Pandoravirus", then "Megavirus", then "Mimivirus". They are bigger than some bacteria, and visible under a light microscope.

paragraphs: Viruses are used widely in cell biology. Geneticists often use viruses as vectors to introduce genes into cells that they are studying. This is useful for making the cell produce a foreign substance, or to study the effect of introducing a new gene into the genome. Eastern European scientists have used phage therapy as an alternative to antibiotics for some time, and interest in this approach is increasing, because of the high level of antibiotic resistance now found in some pathogenic bacteria.


title: Microprocessor

paragraphs: A microprocessor is an electronic component that is used by a computer to do its work. It is a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit chip containing millions of very small components including transistors, resistors, and diodes that work together. Some microprocessors in the 20th century required several chips. Microprocessors help to do everything from controlling elevators to searching the Web. Everything a computer does is described by instructions of computer programs, and microprocessors carry out these instructions many millions of times a second.

paragraphs: Microprocessors were invented in the 1970s for use in embedded systems. The majority are still used that way, in such things as mobile phones, cars, military weapons, and home appliances. Some microprocessors are microcontrollers, so small and inexpensive that they are used to control very simple products like flashlights and greeting cards that play music when opened. A few especially powerful microprocessors are used in personal computers.

paragraphs: Like other central processing units, microprocessors use three steps commonly called Fetch, Decode, and Execute. In the Fetch step, an instruction is copied from the computer memory into the microprocessor. In the Decode step, the microprocessor figures out what operation the instruction is meant to do. In the Execute step, this operation is performed. Different computers can have different instruction sets.


title: Heat

paragraphs: Heat is the sum of the kinetic energy of atoms or molecules. In thermodynamics, heat means energy which is moved between two things, when one of them is has a higher temperature than the other thing.

paragraphs: Adding heat to something increases its temperature, but heat is not the same as temperature. The temperature of an object is the measure of the average speed of the moving particles in it. The energy of the particles is called the internal energy. When an object is heated, its internal energy can increase to make the object hotter. The first law of thermodynamics says that the increase in internal energy is equal to the heat added minus the work done on the surroundings.

paragraphs: Heat can also be defined as the amount of thermal energy in a system. Thermal energy is the type of energy that a thing has because of its temperature. In thermodynamics, thermal energy is the internal energy present in a system in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium because of its temperature. That is, heat is defined as a spontaneous "flow of energy" (energy in transit) from one object to another, caused by a difference in temperature between two objects; therefore, objects do not possess heat.

paragraphs: Heat is a form of energy and not a physical substance. Heat has no mass.

paragraphs: Heat can move from one place to another in different ways:

paragraphs: The measure of how much heat is needed to cause a change in temperature for a material is the specific heat capacity of the material. If the particles in the material are hard to move, then more energy is needed to make them move quickly, so a lot of heat will cause a small change in temperature. A different particle that is easier to move will need less heat for the same change in temperature.

paragraphs: Specific heat capacities can be looked up in a table, like this one.

paragraphs: Unless some work is done, heat moves only from hot things to cold things.

paragraphs: Heat can be measured. That is, the amount of heat given out or taken in can be given a value. One of the units of measurement for heat is the joule.

paragraphs: Heat is usually measured with a calorimeter, where the energy in a material is allowed to flow into nearby water, which has a known specific heat capacity. The temperature of the water is then measured before and after, and heat can be found using a formula.


title: Shogun

paragraphs: Shogun is a military title in pre-Meiji period Japan. Shogun means "general" in the Japanese language. The full name was "Seii Taishogun" (Great General who fights against the Eastern savages and will win).

paragraphs: In earlier times Shogun were simply generals for emperors. The emperor had power over the shogun, choosing each shogun. Later however, the Shogun held much of the actual power. In 1192 a samurai, military leader Minamoto no Yoritomo got the title of Shogun from the last Emperor Go-Shirakawa. Excluding the later middle of the 16th century, Shogun was the real ruler of Japan.

paragraphs: The office of the Shogun is called the shogunate ("bakufu", meaning "office in a tent").- This is because Shogun had originally been military leaders and he had his office in a tent on a battle field.

paragraphs: In 1868 the 15th Shogun of Tokugawa Shogunate, Tokugawa Yosinobu gave up his office. Then the time of Shogun rule ended. It was the end of the feudal time of Japan.


title: Bratislava

paragraphs: Bratislava is the capital city of Slovakia. About 450,000 people live there. It used to be called Pressburg (German) or Pozsony (Hungarian) and by some other names. Bratislava is the seat of national government, the presidency, and the parliament. It has several museums, galleries and of other educational, cultural and economic institutions.

paragraphs: There is a small Old Town, and a castle called Bratislavský Hrad. The Danube river goes through Bratislava.

paragraphs: Bratislava had many names through its history. Here are some of them:

paragraphs: Bratislava is in the extreme southwest of Slovakia, on the borders with Austria and Hungary, and not far from the Czech Republic border. It is on the Morava and Danube rivers.

paragraphs: People have lived here since the Neolithic age. The Celts inhabited this area from 400 BC-50 BC. The Roman Empire set up border military camps near Bratislava from the 1st century until the 5th century, for example ""Gerulata"". The Slavs started moving here from the 6th century. Bratislava was part of the Slavic empire called Great Moravia in the 9th century. From the second half of the 10th century until 1918, it was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, with some exceptions. It was even capital of the Kingdom between 1524 and 1830/1848. After the World War I ended in 1918, it was part of newly founded Czechoslovakia until 1939, when it became capital of World War II Slovak Republic until 1945. After 1945, it was part of Czechoslovakia again, becoming capital of Slovak Socialist Republic (which was still part of Czechoslovakia) in 1968. After the event called Velvet Divorce, when the Czechoslovakia broke up, Bratislava became capital of Slovakia.

paragraphs: Economy of Bratislava is prosperous and based on automobile industry, chemical industry and services. The unemployment (people without work) is lowest in Slovakia (around 2%, compared to the national average 7%). Approximately 250,000 people from all over the Slovakia travel to Bratislava for work.

paragraphs: Position of Bratislava made it a natural crossroads for international traffic. It is a motorway junction, rail junction, has its own international airport. The international river traffic passes along the Danube through Bratislava, with its own river port.

paragraphs: Bratislava has its own public transport system, with buses, trams and trolleybuses.

paragraphs: Bratislava is divided into 5 national districts and 17 city parts:

paragraphs: Further it is divided into 20 cadastral areas, which are identical with the city parts with 2 exceptions:


title: Wellington

paragraphs: Wellington is the capital of New Zealand. It has been the capital since 1865. Before then Auckland was the capital. Wellington is the second largest city in New Zealand. It had about 448,000 people in 2006. Wellington is the southernmost capital city in the world.

paragraphs: Wellington is in the middle of New Zealand, at the south end of the North Island. South of Wellington is Cook Strait, the sea between the North Island and the South Island. The city has a lot of hills and a deep harbour. The middle of the city is busier than most small cities and is easy for people to walk around.

paragraphs: It was named for Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. Wellington recently became famous because "The Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy was made there.

paragraphs: The city averages 2,068 hours of sunshine per year. The climate is a temperate marine one, (Köppen: "Cfb ") is generally moderate all year round, and rarely sees temperatures above or below . The hottest recorded temperature is , while is the coldest. The city is notorious for its southerly blasts in winter, which may make the temperature feel much colder. It is generally very windy all year round with high rainfall; average annual rainfall is , June and July being the wettest months. Frosts are quite common in the hill suburbs and the Hutt Valley between May and September. Snow is very rare at low altitudes, although snow fell on the city and many other parts of the Wellington region during separate events in July and August 2011.


title: Biochemistry

paragraphs: Biochemistry is the study of chemical reactions in living beings, and of biological molecules in general. It is important to cell biology and physiology. The study of biochemistry involves enzymes, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, sugars, proteins, and lipids. In the body, most of the molecules are polymers built of long chains of smaller molecules. Biochemistry studies the chemical transformations which produce these small building-block molecules, and which produce energy from food.

paragraphs: The biologic polymers can have between tens of thousands to tens of millions of atoms, or more. These polymers are composed of many small molecules, each of which has no more than fifty atoms. These small molecules are made almost exclusively from carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. They also contain sulfur, phosphorus, and few other atoms, which are critical to the biological functioning of these polymers.

paragraphs: Nucleic acids are long-chain molecules which are of two kinds: DNA and RNA. Their building blocks are called nucleotides.

paragraphs: DNA is found in every cell. It contains the information needed to make all of the nucleic acids, and all of the proteins. It is found joined up in a "double helix". It is the substance of heredity, and holds the information which life passes from generation to generation.

paragraphs: RNA acts to make the information from DNA work inside the cells of the body. To make a particular protein the information in the DNA is transferred to an RNA molecule. Another RNA molecule uses this as a set of instructions for making the protein. The RNA which makes protein is called a ribosome and it acts as a ribozyme vastly increasing the speed with which the individual amino acids connect together to form the protein.

paragraphs: Proteins are polymers of amino acids. There are twenty different common types of amino acid.

paragraphs: Broadly speaking, proteins have two kinds of function. The first is structural: they make up many of the key structures in cells and tissues. Muscle, hair, and skin are all mainly made of protein. The second is functional: as enzymes they greatly speed up the chemical reactions in a living cell. All cellular life consists of a thousand, or more, chemical reactions, called metabolism, which transform the molecules eaten into energy, or into other molecules the cell needs to survive. The function of proteins is to speed up these reactions, often by over a million times faster. In addition they cause chemical reactions to occur which would not without the action of the protein.

paragraphs: Carbohydrates include sugars and starches.

paragraphs: Sugars are the simplest carbohydrates. The monosaccharides are "single sugars", such as glucose and fructose. The disaccharides are two monosaccharides joined together. Table sugar (cane sugar) is a disaccharide of glucose and fructose. The polysaccharides are made from many monosaccharids joined together. The vast majority of polysaccharides are polymers of glucose, and are of two types: starch and cellulose. Starch is the white stuff of grain, potatoes, apples, and bread, and is a readily available source of energy for the body. Cellulose is the structural material that holds up all plants. Half of the material that makes wood is cellulose.

paragraphs: Carbohydrates have a number of functions in the body, but the most important is to act as a ready source of energy for the cell's metabolism. By breaking the chemical bonds in carbohydrates, energy is released and can be used by the body.

paragraphs: Lipids are fats, and waxes. Saturated lipids contain single bonds, and are found in butter and lard. Unsaturated lipids have one or more double bonds, and are often found in oils. The human body stores lipids as an energy source. When the body needs a large amount of energy, lipid molecules are broken down to release that energy.


title: Sadness

paragraphs: Sadness is an emotion. It is the opposite of happiness. People feel sad when something bad has happened, for example, if their mother or father has died.

paragraphs: In big letters, SAD, or S.A.D. is short for "Seasonal Affective Disorder". SAD is a sickness that some people have in the winter. They feel depressed as the nights become longer and there is less daylight.

paragraphs: When people are very sad, and for a long time, the person could have a serious mental illness called depression or Bipolar disorder.

paragraphs: It is normally thought of as the opposite of happiness, but you can feel both happy and sad at the same time.


title: Microeconomics

paragraphs: Microeconomics is the science of how people make decisions at the small scale. It is different from macroeconomics which looks at how the economy works as a whole ("on aggregate"). In microeconomics, we might look at how a person chooses what to buy at the store, or how many things a company will make. Some parts of microeconomics include "Consumer Theory" and "Theory of the Firm", which study how people and businesses make decisions. Game theory looks at how people make decisions when the outcome (how something ends) depends on what decision another person makes; when agents are said to act "strategically".


title: Cryptography

paragraphs: Cryptography, or cryptology, is the practice and study of hiding information. It is sometimes called code, but this is not really a correct name. It is the science used to try to keep information secret and safe. Modern cryptography is a mix of mathematics, computer science, and electrical engineering. Cryptography is used in ATM (bank) cards, computer passwords, and shopping on the internet.

paragraphs: When a message is sent using cryptography, it is changed (or "encrypted") before it is sent. The method of changing text is called a "code" or, more precisely, a "cipher". The changed text is called "ciphertext". The change makes the message hard to read. Someone who wants to read it must change it back (or "decrypt" it). How to change it back is a secret. Both the person that sends the message and the one that gets it should know the secret way to change it, but other people should not be able to. Studying the cyphertext to discover the secret is called "cryptanalysis" or "cracking" or sometimes "code breaking".

paragraphs: Different types of cryptography can be easier or harder to use and can hide the secret message better or worse. Ciphers use a "key" which is a secret that hides the secret messages. The cryptographic method needn't be secret. Various people can use the same method but different keys, so they cannot read each other's messages. Since the Caesar cipher has only as many keys as the number of letters in the alphabet, it is easily cracked by trying all the keys. Ciphers that allow billions of keys are cracked by more complex methods.

paragraphs: Since the time of Caesar, many improved cyphers have been made. Some involved clever mathematics to resist clever cryptanalysis. During the 20th century computers became the principle tool of cryptography.

paragraphs: In a symmetric-key algorithm, both the sender and receiver share the key. The sender uses the key to hide the message. Then, the receiver will use the same key in the opposite way to reveal the message. For centuries, most cryptography has been symmetric. Advanced Encryption Standard is a widely used one. However this is not to be confused with symmetry.

paragraphs: Asymmetric cryptography is harder to use. Each person who wants to use asymmetric cryptography uses a secret number (a "private key") that is not shared, and a different number (a "public key") that they can tell everyone. If someone else wants to send this person a message, they'll use the number they've been told to hide the message. Now the message cannot be revealed, even by the sender, but the receiver can easily reveal the message with his secret or "private key". This way, nobody else needs to know the secret key.

paragraphs: Asymmetric cryptography generally takes more time and requires more computer power, therefore it is not used most of the time. Instead, it is often used for computer signatures, when a computer must know that some data (like a file or a website) was sent from a certain sender. For example, computer software companies that release updates for their software can sign those updates to prove that the update was made by them, so that hackers cannot make their own updates that would cause harm. Websites that use HTTPS use an popular algorithm named RSA to create certificates, that show they own the website and that it is secure. Computers can also use asymmetric ciphers to give each other the keys for symmetric ciphers.

paragraphs: Computers can calculate quickly. They can do very strong encryption, and most 21st century cryptography uses them. Examples are computer algorithms like RSA, AES, and there are many others. Using good algorithms like these can make it very hard to read the information that is sent.

paragraphs: Because people are slower than computers, any cryptography they use can probably be broken if enough of the secret way to change it is known.

paragraphs: Simple forms of cryptography that people can do without machines are Caesar ciphers and transposition ciphers, but many other kinds were used before computers were used.


title: Tuesday

paragraphs: Tuesday is the day of the week between Monday and Wednesday. In some countries, for example the United States of America, Tuesday is the third day of the week. In other parts of the world, Tuesday is the second day of the week.

paragraphs: The name "Tuesday" comes from a Middle English word, "Tiwesday". This word came from the Old English word "Tiwes dæg". This was named after the Nordic god Tyr. Tyr was the God of War, like the Roman war god Mars, and Greek god Ares.

paragraphs: In Latin, "Tuesday" is called "Martis dies" which means "Mars's Day". In French, Spanish, Italian and Romanian, the (Romance languages), the word for "Tuesday" is nearly the same as the Latin name. Tuesday is "mardi" in French, "martes" in Spanish, "martedì" in Italian, "dimarts" in Catalan, and "marţi" in Romanian.

paragraphs: The Celtic languages still spoken use the Latin names, even though none of these languages came from Latin. Tuesday is "dé máirt" in Irish, "Meurzh" in Breton, "dydd Mawrth" in Welsh and "Dimàirt" in Scottish Gaelic.

paragraphs: The English and Scandinavian names for "Tuesday" come from the Nordic god Tyr (Old English "Tiw"):


title: Wednesday

paragraphs: In some countries, like the United States of America, Wednesday is the fourth day of the week. In other parts of the world Wednesday is said to be the third day of the week.

paragraphs: Wednesday is named after the Norse god Woden.


title: Thursday

paragraphs: According to ISO 8601, Thursday is either the fourth or fifth day of the week. It comes after Wednesday and before Friday. Thursday is named after the Norse god Thor.


title: Friday

paragraphs: Friday is a day of the week. In some countries, for example the United States, it is the sixth day of the week. In other parts of the world, for example the United Kingdom, it is said to be the fifth day of the week. Friday is the Sabbath for Muslims.

paragraphs: There is a superstition that a Friday on the 13th day of a month is unlucky. If the first day of a month is a Sunday, the month will have a Friday the 13th.

paragraphs: Some people consider Friday to be the last day of the week before the weekend. Others see Friday night as part of the weekend, since work or school is over for the week. In some places, the weekend is Friday and Saturday. Because many people are happy to not have to go to work during the weekend, there are sayings like "Thank God it's Friday!".

paragraphs: Friday is named after Norse Goddess Frigg.


title: Saturday

paragraphs: In some countries, like the United States of America, Saturday is the seventh and final day of the week. In other parts of the world, like the United Kingdom, Saturday is said to be the sixth day of the week. It is also the day of rest and worship for Jewish people. Along with Sunday, it makes up the weekend. Its name comes from the Roman god Saturn.


title: Laos

paragraphs: Lao People's Democratic Republic or Laos (ລາວ), is a country in southeast Asia. The capital of Laos is Vientiane.

paragraphs: Laos is landlocked (it does not have a coast on a sea or ocean). It is bordered by Myanmar (used to be known in English as "Burma") and by China to the northwest, by Vietnam to the east, by Cambodia to the south and by Thailand to the west. The Mekong river forms a large part of the western boundary with Thailand. Boats from Laos cannot get to the ocean using the Mekong because of rapids and waterfalls in the south of the country.

paragraphs: The official language is Lao, a language belonging to the Tai language group. 98% of Lao people believe in Buddhism. The main crop in Laos is rice.

paragraphs: Laos is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia. The country is slightly smaller than Romania and Colorado. The landscape is mostly rugged mountains. The highest point is Phou Bia at . The Mekong River forms the border with Thailand. The mountains of the Annamite Range form the eastern border with Vietnam. The climate is tropical. The rainy season is from May to November. The dry season is from December to April. Laos has three seasons (rainy, cold and hot). The capital and largest city is Vientiane.

paragraphs: Fa Ngum created the first unified Lao Kingdom.

paragraphs: Lao became a French colony in 1893 and also became part of French Indochina. In 1949 it became independent from France, as the Kingdom of Laos. Later there was a civil war, and in 1975 it became a One-party state under the leadership of the communist party.

paragraphs: Laos is divided in 16 provinces and one prefecture.

paragraphs: Laos is one of the world's five remaining communist states. The only legal political party is the Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP). The head of state is President Choummaly Sayasone. He is the General Secretary of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party.

paragraphs: Shortly after the end of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) joined forces with the Pathet Lao, started a coup on December 2, 1975 to overthrow the royalist Lao government, and established a communist government that continues to run the country to this day.

paragraphs: The current head of government is Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith, as of 2016. The current President is Bounnhang Vorachith. Government policies are determined by the party. Important government decisions are checked by the Council of Ministers.


title: Yes

paragraphs: Yes is an English word that shows acceptance or agreement, or making a positive response or exclamation. It is the opposite of no.


title: Amaterasu

paragraphs: Amaterasu (), Amaterasu-ōmikami ( or ) or Ōhirume-no-muchi-no-kami (), is a goddess in Japanese mythology. She is the Sun Goddess, and the most sacred of all Shinto deities. Her name, "Amaterasu", means ""(that which) illuminates Heaven."" Her shrine is at Ise.

paragraphs: Amaterasu is the sister of Susano'o, the god of the sea and storms, and of Tsukuyomi, the god of the moon. All three were created from Izanagi, when he washed his face to clean the dirtiness of Yomi, the underworld. Amaterasu was born when Izanagi washed out his left eye, Tsukuyomi was born from the washing of the right eye, and Susano'o from the washing of the nose.

paragraphs: The tales tell of great rivalry between Amaterasu and Susano'o. When he was to leave Heaven forever because Izanagi ordered him to, he went to say goodbye to his sister. Amaterasu, suspicious, proposed him a challenge: each of them was to turn an object of the other's into people. Amaterasu created three women from Susanoo's sword while he created five men from her necklace. Amaterasu said the men were hers because they were born of her necklace. Susano'o destroyed her rice fields, threw a dead pony into her loom, and killed one of her assistants in anger. For this, Amaterasu, sad, angry and scared, went to hide inside Ama-no-Iwato, the ""heavenly rock cave"", so the Sun was hidden and the world became dark for a long time. The Oni (devils of Japanese mythology) came out to the dark world, and the gods could not make Amaterasu come out of the cave.

paragraphs: The intelligent goddess of happiness, Ama-no-Uzume (天宇受売命), took a big bucket, turned it upside down near the cave entrance, and began a dance on it, tearing off her clothing in front of the other Kami. They thought this was so funny that they laughed happily.

paragraphs: Amaterasu heard them, and looked out to see why the gods were laughing. When she opened the cave, she saw her wonderful reflection in a mirror Uzume had put on a tree, and slowly came out of the cave.

paragraphs: At that moment, the god Ameno-Tajikarao (天手力男命) closed the cave behind her, so she could not go back in. Another god tied a magic rope across the entrance. The sun goddess was then asked by the Kami Ame-no-Koyane (天児屋根命) to go back with the gods. She agreed, and light came back to the earth, but Susanoo was punished by being banished from Heaven.


title: Organism

paragraphs: An organism is an individual living thing. It is easy to recognize a living thing, but not so easy to define it. Animals and plants are organisms, obviously. Organisms are a biotic, or living, part of the environment. Rocks and sunshine are parts of the non-living environment.

paragraphs: Organisms usually have five basic needs, to continue their metabolism. They need air, water, nutrient (food), energy, and a place to live. However, not all living things need all these at the same time. Many organisms do not need access to air at all.

paragraphs: A little thought is needed about viruses. There is no agreement as to whether they should be regarded as living. They are made of protein and nucleic acid, and they evolve, which is a really important fact. However, they exist in two quite different phases. One phase is dormant, not active. The other is inside a living cell of some other organism. Then the virus is very active reproducing itself. Consider the parallel with a computer program. When in use it is active; when it is not, it is completely inactive. It is still a program all the same.

paragraphs: Another example from biology is the spore, which is a distribution phase of a bacteria, fungus or some plants. They are not active until they get to the right situation. They have all the working parts to build a complete organism, but for the moment it is switched off.

paragraphs: Some organisms are made up of millions of cells. They are multicellular organisms. Many can be seen without using a microscope.

paragraphs: Most organisms are so small that they cannot be seen with the naked eye. You need a microscope to see them. They are called microorganisms. Organisms can be made up of just one cell. They are called "unicellular organisms" or "single celled organisms". Examples include bacteria, and protozoa such as the "Amoeba" and "Paramecium".

paragraphs: The Tree of Life project works on the relationships between living things. Identifying a LUCA (last universal common ancestor) is one of its main aims. The LUCA is estimated to have lived some 3.8 billion years ago (sometime in the Palaeoarchaean era).

paragraphs: The idea came from Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species", "Therefore... probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form..."


title: Kinetic energy

paragraphs: Kinetic energy is the energy that an object has because of its motion. This energy can be converted into other kinds, such as gravitational or electric potential energy, which is the energy that an object has because of its position in a gravitational or electric field.

paragraphs: Kinetic Energy is the maximum amount of work a moving body due to its motion can do, whereas Potential energy is the maximum amount of work a body can do due to its configuration or position in a field force. Kinetic Energy is valid for all sorts of forces as seen from this derivation.

paragraphs: but Potential Energy is not as can be seen here

paragraphs: which clearly suggests that only conservative forces can have potential energy associated with them.

paragraphs: The translational kinetic energy of an object is:

paragraphs: The rotational kinetic energy of an object is:


title: Potential energy

paragraphs: Potential energy is the stored or pent-up energy of an object. It is often contrasted with kinetic energy.

paragraphs: In physics, potential energy is the energy which an object has due to its position in a force field or which a system has due to the way its parts are arranged.

paragraphs: Common types include the gravitational potential energy of an object that depends on its vertical position and mass, the elastic potential energy of an extended spring, and the electric potential energy of a charge in an electric field. The SI unit for energy is the joule (symbol J).

paragraphs: Potential energy is often associated with restoring forces such as a spring or the force of gravity. The action of stretching the spring or lifting the mass is performed by an external force that works against the force field of the potential. This work is stored in the force field, which is said to be stored as potential energy. If the external force is removed the force field acts on the body to perform the work as it moves the body back to the initial position, reducing the stretch of the spring or causing a body to fall. When this happens, potential energy changes into kinetic energy. The total energy stays the same because of the law of conservation of energy.

paragraphs: Physicists say that potential energy is the difference between the energy of an object in a given position and its energy at a reference position.

paragraphs: Bringing a rock uphill increases its potential energy under gravity. Stretching a rubber band increases its elastic potential energy, which is a form of electric potential energy. A mixture of a fuel and an oxidant has a chemical potential energy, which is another form of electric potential energy. Batteries too have chemical potential energy.

paragraphs: There are various types of potential energy, each associated with a particular type of force.

paragraphs: Gravitational potential energy is experienced by an object when height and mass is a factor in the system. Gravitational potential energy causes objects to move towards each other.

paragraphs: If an object is lifted a certain distance from the surface from the Earth, the force experienced is caused by weight and height.

paragraphs: Work is defined as force over a distance, and work is another word for energy. The potential energy added when you lift an object is:

paragraphs: Here, formula_5 is the acceleration due to gravity.

paragraphs: The total work done by gravitational potential energy when an object falls from position 1 to position 2 is:

paragraphs: Electric potential energy is experienced by charges both different and alike, as they repel or attract each other. Charges can either be positive (+) or negative (-), where opposite charges attract and similar charges repel.

paragraphs: If two charges were placed a certain distance away from each other, the potential energy stored between the charges can be calculated by:

paragraphs: Elastic potential energy is experienced when a rubbery material is pulled away or pushed together. A spring for example stores elastic potential energy. The amount of potential energy the material has depends on the distance pulled or pushed. The longer the distance pushed, the greater the elastic potential energy the material has.

paragraphs: If a material is pulled or pushed, the potential energy can be calculated by:


title: Ship

paragraphs: A ship is a large vehicle used to travel on water. It is bigger than a boat. Most are cargo ships, which carry most of the world's international trade. There are also many warships, passenger ships and other kinds for different purposes.

paragraphs: The first ships used oars or the wind (or both) to make them move.

paragraphs: From about 4000 BC the Ancient Egyptians were making wooden sail boats. By 1200 BC the Phoenicians and Greeks had begun to make bigger sailing ships which were about 30 metres (100 feet) long and could carry 90180 tonnes of cargo. The Romans made even bigger ships which could carry up to 1,000 people and 1,000 tonnes of cargo. The 8th century saw the rise of the Vikings, who were famous for their "longships" and which were mainly used for raiding other countries, but also for trading. The longships had flat bottoms so they could move in shallow (not deep) rivers.

paragraphs: Sailing ships were used for thousands of years, but they were very important from the Age of Discovery to the 19th century. The Chinese admiral Zheng He commanded a fleet of large 'treasure ships' on seven voyages all over Asia up to East-Africa in the early fifteenth century. The most successful and largest fleet in the 17th century was the Dutch fleet (see the Netherlands). For trade and transport the Dutch often used a particular kind of trading ship, called a flute ("fluyt" in Dutch). Transport of people and cargo on sailing ships became rare in the early 20th century.

paragraphs: Some famous ships from this era include:

paragraphs: In the 19th century, steamboats became commonplace.

paragraphs: At one time, the steamships "Titanic", "Olympic", and "Britannic" were the largest ships in the world, "Titanic" sank on her maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg, becoming one of the most famous shipwrecks of all time, the "Olympic" was "Titanic" 's nearly identical twin, and actually set sail before "Titanic" and was scrapped in the 1930s after a very successful career including her being a passenger liner and a warship in World War I. The "Britannic" was the largest of these three sister ships, and was supposed to be more grand and elegant than the "Titanic", but before she set sail on her maiden voyage, WWI broke out and she was stripped of her elegant furniture and elaborate paneling and became a hospital ship. During her term as a hospital ship, she was sunk by either a mine or torpedo, no one knows for sure. The "Titanic" lies at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Nova Scotia, and the "Britannic" lies in the Aegean Sea, off the coast of the Island of Kea.

paragraphs: After World War II ships with diesel engines became commonplace. Passenger airliners replaced passenger ships for long trips in the late 20th century. Cargo ships became much bigger. The main kinds are container ships for mostly manufactured goods, and bulk carriers including oil tankers.

paragraphs: The world's largest ship is the "Prelude", owned by Shell. It is being built on Geoje Island, South Korea. It is 488m long and has the internal capacity greater than the total volume of four large aircraft carriers. What it will do is collect natural gas off the coast of Australia, and liquify it. When liquified, the hydrocarbon takes up 600 times less space than its gas. Smaller tankers will take the liquid gas to its buyers. The ship will do liquifying and temporary storage, which is usually done on land. Shell believes this justifies the cost of the ship.

paragraphs: The shipping yard builds all kinds of structures for the oil industry. It employs 30,000 workers.


title: Boat

paragraphs: A boat is a vehicle used to travel on water. It is smaller than a ship and can be lifted out of the water and carried on a ship. Some boats have sails, some are powered by rowing with oars, and some use motors. Those that use steam engines are steamboats

paragraphs: These boats are usually made of wood. However, some parts are made of metals like steel and aluminium. Expensive boats may have parts from fiberglass or composite materials and some even have helicopter pads. There are some boats that can even go underwater. They are called submarines.

paragraphs: A narrowboat is a boat designed to be used on narrow canals. It is sometimes called a barge.

paragraphs: The Pesse Canoe is likely the oldest boat recovered to date as it was built sometime around 8,000 BCE


title: Navy

paragraphs: The navy is the part of a country's military that fights on water using boats. People in the navy are called sailors. The navy is mostly made up of warships. It may also have its own air force and soldiers. It may have special boats that can go underwater, called submarines, or another kind of special boat that is meant to carry airplanes, called aircraft carriers.

paragraphs: Originally, Naval war was fought by ramming other ships and then jumping onto them to fight the crew. In Ancient Greece and Rome, the ships were usually powered by oars. During the Middle Ages, the cannon was invented. These could be shot at other ships from a great distance. Warships around this time also began to use sails instead of oars for power. In the middle 19th century, ships began to be plated in armor for protection. Steam engines allowed them move while carrying the armor, and better ones soon made them much faster. These early warships, called ironclads, are thought to have begun the type of Naval warfare used today. Ships soon became much larger.


title: Air force

paragraphs: An air force is the branch of a country's military which fights in the air. The air force is made up of aircraft such as fighters, bombers, helicopters and transport aircraft. When a navy has its own air force it is called Naval Aviation.

paragraphs: Air forces began in the early 20th century, usually as part of the army. Most countries separated their air forces in the 1930s and 1940s.

paragraphs: Aircraft in an air force sometimes fly in a formation. Formations are when the aircraft fly in a pattern. Air forces is part of the military.

paragraphs: The biggest air force in the world is the United States Air Force (USAF).


title: Adware

paragraphs: Adware is an advertising computer program that can be put there by other people on someone's computer, sometimes without their permission. It is controversial because sometimes businesses put the program there so they can see what people are doing or what web pages they are browsing. They then put an advertisement that is of the same subject as the web-page the person is looking at. This can be good if the person is trying to buy something, but many people do not want advertisements. Many people also do not want other people to find out what they are doing or what web pages they are looking at. An example is in the popular peer-to-peer file sharing program, Kazaa. When someone downloads it, it installs adware on their computer that then sends advertisements to the computer. Some people do not like this so they use an illegally changed version of this program called Kazaa Lite.

paragraphs: Removal tools have been developed to assist users in clearing out these unwanted programs.

paragraphs: Like many programs that people use for security, the program must be changed often. Updating allows the removal tool to recognize new types of adware. This can be done by downloading files over the internet using the 'update' option in the program.


title: Gender

paragraphs: Gender is a word that is used to talk about how people express masculine (traits most people think of as male) or feminine (traits most people think of as female) traits. It is commonly used for a person's sex (male or female) but this word only means someone’s biology (body parts).

paragraphs: "Gender" comes from the Latin word genus which meant "kind" or "type". In the few hundred years before the 1950s, the term 'gender' was used only in the field of grammar. In 1955, a scientist began to use the word "gender" in new ways when referring to people, in a way that was related to their 'sex' but not quite the same. The term was not applied to other animals. They continued to have different “sexes”.

paragraphs: Before the 1950s, the term 'gender' was used only in the field of grammar, and only to distinguish a category of words that are called 'feminine nouns' from other words that are 'masculine nouns'. Early Indo-European languages~had three genders. Languages that come from Latin like Spanish, French, and Italian have lost one, and their nouns are either feminine or masculine in gender. For example, in Spanish, 'house' ("casa") is feminine, and 'day' ("día") is masculine. Some languages still have three genders, like German. Outside of their grammatical category, the word 'gender' was not used to refer to people. At that time, when one spoke about someone being either 'male' or 'female', the word used was "sex".

paragraphs: In 1955, John Money created the term gender role and began to use it to mean something different from sex. Gender roles are how a society thinks different genders are like and are used to tell people of different sexes how to act should act. Some examples of this are often people view feminine or female people as better at cooking or cleaning rather than doing sports. These roles change over time but differ based on different groups of people, but they are all ideas that are created by people rather than coming from nature.

paragraphs: ‘Binary’ comes from the Latin word bini meaning two together. As such binary refers to an idea in which there are only two possible options that are often opposite. This is how most people thought of gender throughout history in many parts of the world with male and female being the only two options.

paragraphs: Thinking of gender in this way can lead to a society with strict gender roles that are in place for a long time to think that those are natural or biological roles that each option has to conform to at birth. Examples of this are women who are not allowed access to education or jobs or men who are expected to not be emotional or soft. Strict binary gender roles are also often tied to reasons for oppression of sexualities outside of the majority. Societies often enforce gender binaries due to concepts like tradition and the idea that their stability relies on keeping this binary in place.

paragraphs: Although many societies still exist under a gender binary, more and more around the world are becoming more accepting of ideas of gender outside of strict male and female categories. An important thing to know about gender in this form is that the people who exist within them have always existed but have not always been free to express themselves. One example of this is people who are transgender, those who were labeled based on their biological sex, but eventually come to realize that label does not fit what they identify with. In addition to this, some people do not experience gender in a way that fits into a binary at all, and these people are called either non binary or genderqueer.

paragraphs: Another category that is not a part of the gender binary is called intersex. Intersex people are born without obviously male or female genitalia. It is a common practice in hospitals that an intersex baby will have a surgery that makes them one sex. Doctors do this with the belief it will help the child later on in life as they begin to develop during puberty. However, it can cause mental and emotional issues for the child if they begin to struggle with gender identity. Intersexuality is not a well accepted or understood idea in most places, since most people have never heard of it or are willing to accept people who are.


title: Dutch language

paragraphs: Dutch () is a West Germanic language. It comes from the Netherlands and is the country's official language. It is also spoken in the northern half of Belgium (the region called Flanders), and in the South American country of Suriname. A language known as "Afrikaans" was developed from Dutch by the people in southern Africa and is now spoken mainly in South Africa but also in nearby Namibia. About 22 million people around the world speak Dutch.

paragraphs: Dutch is a West Germanic language The West Germanic branch is divided into English, Frisian, German and Dutch. It is why Dutch is very much like English in its vocabulary and grammar, though it resembles German more than English does.

paragraphs: The North Germanic languages of Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic are also part of the Germanic language branch. Dutch is also in some cases like these languages.

paragraphs: The Dutch of before 1170 is called "Old Dutch" (Oudnederlands). The Dutch between 1170 and 1500 is called "Middle Dutch" (Middelnederlands), which is also called "Diets". That's why Dutch is called Dutch in English. The word "Dutch" itself came from the Proto-Germanic word "", which means "language of the common people" and which at the time was also used to refer to the Germans and their language. Over time, the modern English usage is now used to refer to that of the Netherlands and not the Germans. The Dutch word for German, "Duits", comes from the same origin.

paragraphs: The oldest Dutch book known is "Wachtendonckse Psalmen" which was written in 900. The first Dutch writer we know by name is Hendrik van Veldeke, who was born around 1150.

paragraphs: Dutch uses the same roman alphabet (letters) as English.

paragraphs: Note: The e can also be a schwa (like in "the")

paragraphs: The way of how vowels are pronounced, depends on the fact if the syllable is "open" or "closed". If a syllable is open, short written vowels are spoken as long ones. Short written vowels are only spoken short if the syllable is closed.

paragraphs: There is, however, an exception to this rule. This is the "e". This is because "e" can also be a "mute e" (Schwa) (IPA character ə). In most words, where an open syllable ends with e it is a short e. Therefore, open syllables with a long e (ee) are written as ee. Example:

paragraphs: There are, however, exceptions to this rule as well. This can be seen in the word "meenemen". This word can be divided into three syllables: mee|ne|men. The e's in the first two syllables are long ones, but the last one is a mute e.

paragraphs: The mute e also occurs in the ending of verbs (usually -en).

paragraphs: Note: In words that end with "-d", the "-d" is pronounced like "-t".

paragraphs: The grammar of Dutch is slightly different from English. The order in which words are put in sentences are different in complex sentences. The most simple sentence-structure is "Subject - Verb". The Dutch language has few grammatical "tenses". The most used are:

paragraphs: The most simple verb-time is the onvoltooide tegenwoordige tijd (ott; present simple). The ott is used when something is occurring "now", or "regularly" (like: "Hij eet regelmatig" (He eats regularly)). Most verbs are conjugated (changed) in a regular form (these verbs are called "regelmatige werkwoorden" (regular verbs)). The word stem of the verb is still there in all of the conjugations (changes). The correct way of doing this is

paragraphs: Note*: The stem of a verb is the infinitive of the verb without the final "-en". In some verbs, the first syllable is open, and any vowel therefore is long. The stem changes to a written long vowel. So the stem of "lopen" becomes "loop". If the "-en" is then added to the stem (for example with wij), the written form becomes short again (but it still will be spoken as a long vowel).

paragraphs: The past form of the ott is the "onvoltooid verleden tijd" (ovt; past simple). The way how verbs are conjugated (changed) in the ovt is not easy to understand, and is mistaken often. This is because some verbs are conjugated by adding a D, while others are conjugated while adding a T. A way of solving this problem is the socalled 't kofschip. If the verb without "-en" (the stem in most verbs, but not always) ends with a consonant which is also in "'t kofschip", the verb is changed with a T. Example:

paragraphs: The verb can now be changed as the following:

paragraphs: There are however words in "'t kofschip" are not so easy. This is for instance in the word "vrezen" (to fear). The stem of the verb is "vrees", so it seems that the verb is changed with a T. This is not true (it changed with a D), because "vrezen" minus "-en" is "vrez". The Z is not in "'t kofschip", so the verb is changed with a D.

paragraphs: Although the Dutch have a kind of "present continuous" (the -ing form of verbs in English), they do not use it much. Example:

paragraphs: Actually, there are three types of continuous verbs in Dutch.

paragraphs: In number with three digits (e.g. 100), the Dutch change the u into o and replace 1 of the r's. Example:


title: Creative Commons licenses

paragraphs: The Creative Commons licenses relates to the name of copyright licenses released on December 16, 2002. The licenses were released by "Creative Commons", a United States nonprofit corporation. Everybody can put their own creations under these licenses.

paragraphs: There are four basic license conditions. A simple overview of these four:

paragraphs: It is possible to combine the license elements. For example, a combination of the first and fourth is called "CC by-sa". This stands for "Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike". With this license other people must give credit to the original creator, and when they make something new with the work they have to give it the "CC by-sa" license.

paragraphs: The Free Software Foundation thinks that the Creative Commons system is confusing, because people often forget to tell which of the licenses they use. Instead they suggest to use the Free Art license.


title: Marshall Islands

paragraphs: The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) is a Micronesian island nation in the western Pacific Ocean. The capital of Marshall Islands is Majuro.

paragraphs: Roughly 10% of the population of the Marshall Islands can now be found in northwest Arkansas, U.S. Most live and work in the city of Springdale, a community of roughly 50,000. Each year, the Marshallese host a homecoming event so friends and relatives can get together to celebrate, stay in touch with politics at home, and spread their island culture. They meet at the Jones Center for Families in Springdale and have dancing, feasting, volleyball, and basketball. As a population, they are devoted to family and church and bring island dance and song to this corner of Arkansas.


title: Alphabet

paragraphs: An alphabet is a writing system, a list of symbols for writing. The basic symbols in an alphabet are called "letters". In an alphabet, each letter is a symbol for a sound or related sounds. To make the alphabet work better, more signs assist the reader: punctuation marks, spaces, standard reading direction, and so on.

paragraphs: The name "alphabet" comes from "Aleph" and "Beth", the first two letters in the Phoenician alphabet.

paragraphs: This article is written with the Roman alphabet (or Latin alphabet). It was first used in Ancient Rome to write Latin. Many languages use the Latin alphabet: it is the most used alphabet today.

paragraphs: It seems that the idea of an alphabet – a script based entirely upon sound – has been copied and adapted to suit many different languages. Although no alphabet fits its language perfectly, they are flexible enough to fit any language approximately. The alphabet was a unique invention.

paragraphs: The Roman alphabet, the Cyrillic, and a few others come from the ancient Greek alphabet, which dates back to about 1100 to 800. The Greek alphabet was probably developed from the Phoenician script, which appeared somewhat earlier, and had some similar letter-shapes.

paragraphs: The Phoenicians spoke a Semitic language, usually called Canaanite. The Semitic group of languages includes Arabic, Maltese, Hebrew and also Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. We do not know much about how the alphabetic idea arose, but the Phoenicians, a trading people, came up with letters which were adapted by the early Greeks to produce their alphabet. The one big difference is that the Phoenician script had no pure vowels. Arabic script has vowels which may, or may not, be shown by diacritics (small marks above or below the line). The oldest Qu'ran manuscripts had no diacritics. Israeli children to about the third grade use Hebrew texts with vowel 'dots' added.

paragraphs: No ancient script, alphabetic or not, had pure vowels before the Greeks. The Greek alphabet even has two vowels (Eta) and Epsilon) for 'e' and two (Omega and Omicron) for 'o', to distinguish between the long and short sounds. It appears that careful thought went into both the Phoenician invention and the Greek adaptation, but no details survive of either process.

paragraphs: Semitic scripts apparently derive from "Proto-Sinaitic", a script of which only 31 inscriptions (plus 17 doubtful) are known. It is thought by some researchers that the original source of this script was the Egyptian hieratic script, which by the late Middle Kingdom (about 1900) had added some alphabetic signs for representing the consonants of foreign names. Egyptian activity in Sinai was at its height at that time. A similar idea had been suggested many years previously.

paragraphs: A list of alphabets and examples of the languages they are used for:

paragraphs: Other writing systems do not use letters, but they do (at least in part) represent sounds. For example, many systems represent syllables. In the past such writing systems were used by many cultures, but today they are almost only used by languages people speak in Asia. A "syllabary" is a system of writing that is similar to an alphabet. A syllabary uses one symbol to indicate each syllable of a word, instead of one symbol for each letter of the word. For example, a syllabary would use one symbol to mean the syllable "ga", instead of two letters of the alphabet "g" and "a".

paragraphs: Originally, 1200 BC in the Shang dynasty, Chinese characters were mainly "pictographic", using pictures to show words or ideas. Now only 1% of Chinese characters are pictographic. 97% of modern characters are SP characters. These are a pair of symbols, one for meaning (semantics) and the other for pronunciation. In many cases the P and S parts are put together into one joint character. Chinese is not one spoken language, but many, but the same writing system is used for all. This writing system has been reformed a number of times.