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Defense

Defense

The words defense (AmE) or defence (CwE) can refer to any of the following:
- For defense of a doctoral dissertation see thesis committee
- For the military term see defense (military)
- Civil defense measures and emergency preparedness
- In politics, defense may be a euphemism for war
- In economics, defense means the defense industry.
- For defense against prosecution and liability see defense (legal)
- For defense against an attacker:
- see self-defense
- as a legal justification, see self defense and defense of others, defense of property
- For defense in sport see defense (sport) This disambiguation article uses the American English variant of the word. Defense is predominantly American English, while defence is used in the other English-speaking countries, similar to offence/offense. (See also: American and British English differences.) ja:防衛 simple:Defense

Commonwealth English

"Commonwealth English" is intended as a collective term for the perceived standard English language used in the Commonwealth of Nations¹, applying in theory to Australian English, British English, Caribbean English, Canadian English, Hiberno-English (Irish English)², Hong Kong English³, Indian English (includes Pakistani English), formal Malaysia English, New Zealand English, formal Singapore English (but not colloquial Singlish) and South African English. But Canadian English in particular does not fit well with the others. The term is little used, and when used is most often synonymous with British English in its narrower sense or with International English in a specialized sense which excludes American English.

Rationale for the term "Commonwealth English"

The term perhaps comes from a desire to recognise that "Standard English" of Britain, distinguished from American English, is just as much owned by those who use it in Australia or New Zealand or India or South Africa as by those who use it in the land of its origin and from a feeling that this use in multiple countries should appear in its name, that this kind of English is no longer only British.

Conflict from differences in language

Aside from spelling, there are other differences in the languages. Words used in the United States are sometimes used in England which can be insultive and derogatory.

Canadian English's unique position

Words and idioms

Canada, the Commonwealth country with the largest native-born native-English-speaking population outside of Britain, is unique in that its standard vocabulary, idiom, and accent tend to coincide with that of neighbouring speakers in the United States far more than with those of Britain or the rest of the Commonwealth. Most of the distinctive terms Britons identify as American English are used by Canadians as well, such as diaper, gasoline, elevator, and apartment. See also North American English.

Canadian spelling

There is no universally accepted standard of Canadian spelling, and standards differ from one area of English-speaking Canada to another. Historical ties with Britain tend to pull Canadian spelling in that direction; physical proximity with the United States has tended to pull it towards the American standard. As a result, Canadian spelling has tended to waver between the two, taking some of each. Most authorities, such as the Canadian Government's style manual, The Canadian Style, the Canadian Press style guide, the Gage Canadian Dictionary and the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, propose certain standards:
- the use of the "-our" ending in words such as neighbour and colour;
- the use of the "-ce" ending for nouns and the "-se" ending for the equivalent verbs, such as licence (noun), to license (verb) and practice (noun), to practise (verb);
- the use of double letters in words such as travelled, leveller, etc. Certain American spellings remain common. The spelling program is more usual than programme, airplane is universally favoured over aeroplane, tire is used rather than tyre, etc.

Australian borrowings

Australian English also borrows from both British and American spellings. However, British spelling dominates.

Internal spelling differences

Within British English and its Commonwealth variants there is disagreement as to proper spelling of words such as organise / organize. Both "-ise" and "-ize" are generally accepted as correct. The "-ise" forms are very rarely used in Canada, but they are the choice of the majority in Britain (even though most British dictionaries prefer the "-ize" forms). See British English for more details. According to Pam Peters (1994: -ise/-ize), based on British National Corpus data, in Britain: :... the -ise spellings outnumber those with -ize in the ratio of about 3:2. In Australian English, the difference is still greater (often 3:1, by frequencies in the ACE corpus), and the tendency has been reinforced by official endorsement of -ise by the Australian government Style Manual since 1966. The English Academy of South Africa website uses "-ize" forms on some pages and "-ise" forms on other pages, recognising both. The Australian Journal of Linguistics, the official journal of the Australian Linguistics Society, insists on the "-ize" forms against the Australian dictionaries and the majority in Australia.

Independent standards within "Commonwealth English"

The more extensive forms of Commonwealth English and even some of those less used have their own separate, recognised dictionaries. The Dictionary of Canadian English: The Senior Dictionary was first published by the Canadian textbook publisher Gage Learning in 1967 and updated versions have appeared regularly, the most recent being the Gage Canadian Dictionary in 1997. For South Africa there was Charles Pettman's Africanderisms, a glossary of South African colloquial words and phrases published in 1913. Philip Branford's A Dictionary of South African English was published in 1978 and the most recent edition in 1991. Australian English has had the Macquarie Dictionary since 1981. In 1996 Oxford University Press published the Concise Ulster Dictionary. In 1998 they went farther afield by releasing A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles, The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, and The Dictionary of New Zealand English. In 2000 they published The Australian Oxford Dictionary. All these use previous Oxford English dictionaries as a base, but modify or replace text according to research on other varieties of English. Caribbean English has Frederic G. Cassidy and Robert B. Le Page's Dictionary of Jamaican English and John A. Holm and Alison W. Shlling's Dictionary of Bahamian English.

Limited use

"Commonwealth English" is not a clear and distinctive dialect, although it becomes far closer to being one if Canadian English is not considered. Microsoft Encarta appears in four English versions, an American English version, a British English version, a Canadian English version, and an Australian English version, perhaps indicating that Microsoft did not feel that one Commonwealth English version would serve to balance the American English version, though there are likely to be few differences between the British English version and the Australian English version. A fifth version could be introduced as well: British English with Concise Oxford Dictionary spelling (IANA value en-GB-oed). Also, increasingly, spell checkers are supporting more finely grained systems of spelling, not attempting to make British English, renamed as Commonwealth English, do for all.

Notes

# There are a number of other Commonwealth nations which are not listed here but also have English as either the primary or an official, language. Examples include Malta, Singapore and Mozambique, which is a Commonwealth member but uses Portuguese as its main language of communication. # Although Hiberno-English (Irish English) is listed as Commonwealth English, the Republic of Ireland is not a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, but Northern Ireland is (as part of the United Kingdom). # Although Hong Kong English is listed as Commonwealth English, since 1997 Hong Kong is not a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, but a Special Administrative Region of China.

References and external links

- Peters, Pam (2004). . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052162181X.
- [http://www.englishacademy.co.za English Academy of South Africa] (Website).
- [http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/cajlauth.asp Taylor & Francies: Instructions for Authors for the Australian Journal of Linguistics] ("The -ize suffix is used, for example, civilize, civilization rather than civilise, civilisation"). Category:Commonwealth of Nations Category:English dialects

Thesis committee

A thesis committee (or, at some universities, specifically for the doctorate, a dissertation committee) is a committee that evaluates a graduate student's thesis. Although each school is different, for the master's degree the "committee" may be only one advisor, or perhaps a small group. For a research-oriented doctorate such as the Ph.D., the process is considerably more involved. The committee is chosen by the student in conjunction with his or her thesis advisor. The members, which usually vary in number from two to four, have Ph.Ds in the field and will have the task of reading the dissertation, making suggestions for changes and improvements, and sitting in on the defense. Depending on the subject matter, one may be a professor from a related field. One of the most important steps in a doctoral program is assembling a good committee. If the student has members who have "issues" between them, he or she can be placed in a very difficult position. On the other hand, a good working committee whose members are well recognized in their field can be of considerable career help. Again, careful thought should go into this process. The defense is the last hurdle in the attainment of a doctorate. At this final meeting, the doctoral candidate typically speaks for some amount of time on the dissertation, and then answers the questions of the members of the committee. At many universities, the candidate's talk is open to the public, who may ask questions, but are then asked to withdraw so that the committee may ask further questions in a closed session. (In the UK the defense is known as a viva, short for viva voce, Latin for "live voice".) If the defense is successful, the committee members and advisor sign the dissertation. The thesis committee can also require that final changes be made before the dissertation may be submitted to the graduate school. It is customary in many schools to grant the title of "Doctor" immediately following a successful defense by offering the words "Congratulations, Doctor..."

Defense (military)

In military science, defense (or defence) is the art of preventing an enemy from conquering territory. Defense may also be a euphemism for war, such as "Ministry of Defence". In non-local conflicts, it is generally true that defenders have an advantage over attackers, since they may have the ability to make preparations for the battle to protect themselves from the enemy while making the enemy vulnerable, such as laying obstacles such as landmines or preparing positions such as trenches and fortifications. However in encounters larger than the small scale the attacker may often have the advantage, since they get to choose the time and place of battle. An attacker may concentrate their entire force on a small part of the defended area, while the defender is forced to spread their forces over the possible area of attack.

Emergency preparedness

Emergency operations or Emergency preparedness is a set of doctrines to prepare civil society to cope with natural or man-made disasters. Disaster relief is the subset of these doctrines that is concerned with recovery efforts. This is usually a government policy adapted from civil defense to prepare for nonmilitary civil emergencies before they happen. In the U.S., most cities maintain at least a cabinet in a basement conference room with several telephone lines. In an emergency, special stationary and other supplies come out of the cabinet, and the conference room becomes the "emergency operations center." The EOC then coordinates the city's emergency effort. Even this tiny amount of preparation, with periodic drills, and coordination with civic organizations, is amazingly better than nothing. This article covers both civil and personal preparedness, because they work together. However, civil preparedness is far less expensive per-capita, and far more valuable, even though it can be harder to arrange. Coping with disaster has four activities: mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery.

Mitigations

Mitigations attempt to prevent the disaster from ever occurring, or reduce the effects of the disaster. Floods and storm damage are the most common disasters. So, for example, a project can raise the level of a city so that a storm surge will not drown thousands. This was actually accomplished for Galveston, Texas after a devastating storm surge drowned thousands. For another example, a city can build levies to prevent floods, or (as in San Antonio, Texas) arrange for flood zones to be nonessential parks and walks. Mitigation is the most preferred method, when it can be achieved at an acceptable cost. Mitigation is often practical for flood prevention, famine prevention, public health measures, and outages of power, water and sewer services.

Preparations

The most important government preparation, and one of the cheapest, is simply for a city or region to have an emergency operations center, and a practiced, region-wide doctrine for managing emergencies. (For personal preparations, see below) An emergency operations center (EOC) is, at minimum, a couple of cabinets in a conference room, and a rather large group of cooperative people. It should have reliable telephones and reliable access to civil and amateur radio networks. One cabinet has the radios, emergency lights and a portable generator. The other cabinet contains specialized stationary, manuals, and vests or large badges to mark people with particular roles in the emergency process. This type of emergency center is sufficiently cheap that any region can afford two, or can have one that's fancy, and one that's cheap, in case the main one is damaged. One common doctrine for an EOC has an emergency coordinator and assistant supported by teams of secretary, manager, assistant and runner for each of financial services, emergency services, planning, and logistics. There is usually a train of up to ten alternate people for the emergency coordinator, six to ten for each team's leader, and four for each role in the EOC. Alternates agree to carry pagers or cellular phones. Amateur radio operators train and organize to offer civil emergency communication services at their own expense, and form service organizations for this purpose. Other preparations preposition training, supplies and equipment for use in the response and recovery stages. For example, storm shelters and evacuation routes are very helpful for extreme weather. In floods, prepositioned caches of food, fuel, boats and radio equipment can be very helpful. Many cities also offer training for community emergency response team. Basically, this is mass training to provide teams of amateur emergency workers in every neighborhood. These are truly useful because in an emergency, real firemen are instantly overloaded, with hundreds of calls, and the ability to respond to only a few. The trained amateurs can handle roughly 90% of all emergency rescues, and man almost all other emergency services.

Response

Cities should plan to rescue their citizens, and plan emergency services. Generally, a large emergency is first reported to a dispatcher for fire or police services. The dispatcher has a predefined criterion to contact the emergency services coordinator, or an alternate. The coordinator decides whether to activate the emergency operations center. When the coordinator, and members of the supporting teams are in place, the EOC becomes active. The EOC usually begins by dispatching crews to gather information. Then it prioritizes needs, and dispatches emergency services. It also begins negotiations for emergency funding sources. A continuing nasty problem in mass emergencies is a lack of trained responders. Most professional emergency services support about ten trucks per 100,000 people, and take at least a half hour per rescue. If a mass emergency injures or traps 2% of the population, this force will finish its rescues in about 100 hours. In this time, up to 3/4 of the salvageable victims can die. Simple shock victims will die in about two hours. Trapped children will die of thirst in 24 hours, trapped adults and shut-ins in 48. In mass emergencies, pretrained, volunteer community emergency response teams (CERTs) can rescue the 95% of victims that need only basic first-aid or light search and rescue skills. CERTs also can locate most of the roughly 5% of victims that require professional rescue skills. With a twenty-fold reduction in demand, and less need to search for victims, the professionals can then complete the most demanding rescues in ten to fifteen hours. Most salvageable people will be rescued. The CERTs can also form neighborhood shelter and support groups, and arrange professional rescues, with triaged medical evacuation to prepared medical organizations via pre-arranged communcations with the emergency operations center. The CERTs also provide a powerful method for informing and organizing mass evacuations to mass shelters. Response mobilizes emergency services, such as firemen, police, and community emergency response teams, and sheltering groups such as Red Cross. The emergency operations center is essential to this effort, because centrally-directed services are much more efficient at saving lives and property.

Recovery

Recovery rebuilds damaged infrastructure, and restores people to normal work. Often recovery can be greatly aided by small amounts of infrastructure. For example, a subsidized "tourist" ferry can help a city on a river recover from an earthquake or flood-damaged bridges in a few hours, rather than weeks, by letting emergency traffic immediately restart. The first practical response is to discover funding. This is usually a political process. Next, recovery needs are prioritized. This prioritization may occur in the EOC, although for many recovery items, priorities will have to be set politically. The usual recovery is to repair essential bridges, roads, power, water and sewage systems. Some cities with crucial bridges "back them up" by subsidizing a "tourist" ferry, that can carry emergency traffic when a bridge goes down. Some advocates believe that government should change building codes to require autonomous buildings in order to reduce civil societies' dependence on complex, fragile networks of social services. In the United States, disaster relief is undertaken by governmental entities, including municipalities, states, the Federal Government, and by non-governmental organizations such as the American Red Cross, Salvation Army, and local churches.

Personal mitigation

The basic thing is to make one's home safe against likely disasters in one's area. The most common disasters are floods and storms. Preparation against floods is easy: don't buy a building in a flood plain. Ideally, one should at least consider living in an area without violent storms. Most of the U.S. (including the east coast and mid-west) is subject to rare, extremely violent earthquakes. The safest area from earthquakes is in the middle of a large shield of unmoving rock, such as the Canadian Shield, or the central eurasian shield. In earthquake areas, the basic mitigation is to install cabinet child-locks (to keep items in the cabinets), and mount furniture, refrigerators, water heaters and breakables to the walls. In California and Japan, special silicone putty kits are available to stick display crockery to shelves.

Personal Preparations

If violent storms occur, have a storm shelter, or have warning devices and an evacuation route. New designs can build a shelter as a concrete-block bathroom, using approved methods. Some coastal cities in California have disasters as often as every two years. These areas have developed powerful techniques for personal preparedness. As in civil preapredness, they combine mitigation, preparation, response and recovery. People have a bag or knapsack filled with gear and attached to their bed. In an earthquake or major storm, a bag merely under a bed is lost when the bed moves. Many disasters cause windows to break at night. One of the most common disaster injuries occurs when people try to run on broken glass in bare feet. This causes immediate casualties who cannot self-evacuate. To prevent foot injuries, train yourself to put on shoes at night, and train children to stay in bed and wait for you to come for them, unless they see flame, smell smoke or feel heat. Many disasters cause power failures, and happen at night. At night, without street lights or lights, it is difficult to self-rescue. The gear in the bag should therefore include at least shoes and a flashlight. A plastic grocery bag with tennis shoes and a flashlight is immensely better than nothing. Do it now, and improve it later. Attaching the bag to the bed assures that it remains in a known place even if the disaster occurs at night and rearranges the furniture or damages the structure. Some otherwise prepared people lost the bags under their beds when their furniture moved during the 1994 earthquake in Northridge, California. Other suggested items for the bag are keys, money, medicines, food, water, insurance and ID information, and rescue tools including gloves, a knife, a light saw and a prybar. Useful protective clothing includes a helmet, goggles, and dust mask.

Confinement at home

In a home confinement scenario, a family should be prepared to survive and treat moderate medical problems for a minimum of three days (two weeks is better) without deliveries of entertainment, food, fuel, utilities, water, or power, or pickups of trash and sewage. Likely scenarios include flood, loss of bridges or roads, extreme weather, earthquakes (which occur in all parts of the world), and civil disorder. Homes in areas with extreme weather should have appropriate radios and storm shelters. Consider making these dual-use shelters for fallout. (See storm cellar or fallout shelter) Entertainment is helpful. Have a selection of favorite non-electronic toys, books and games, and enjoy them at other times so they seem familiar and fun. Musical instruments are helpful. Inexpensive long-lasting lighting is also helpful. With these, a mild disaster can be fun. Without them, it can be awful. The most exteme home confinement scenarios have radiological disasters followed by famines of up to a year. Planners for these usually buy bulk foods and appropriate storage and preparation equipment, and eat the food as part of normal life (bulk foods are substantially less expensive than grovery foods). A simple balanced diet can be constructed from vitamin pills, whole-kernel wheat, beans, dried milk, corn, and cooking oil (see www.fema.gov). However such a simple diet is apt to cause starvation by appetite exhaustion (extreme boredom with the food). One should add vegetables, fruits, spices and meats, both prepared and fresh-gardened, if possible. The lowest cost provider of bulk foods is usually a feed store.

Evacuating

In an evacuation scenario, a family should plan to evacuate by car with the maximum amount of supplies, including a tent for shelter. The plan should also include equipment for evacuation on foot with at least three days of supplies and rain-tight bedding (a tarp and a bedroll of blankets is the minimum) . Likely scenarios include flooding, extreme weather, tsunami, chemical and radiological accidents, and war.

External links

- [http://www.ready.gov/ Ready.gov] (United States Department of Homeland Security)
- [https://disasterhelp.gov/ The Disaster Help page from the US Federal Government]
- [http://www.nukepills.com/ Radiation Emergency Preparedness Products and Information]
- [http://www.interieur.gouv.fr/rubriques/divers/anglais/ddsc The French Emergency Preparedness Directorate]
- [http://www.preparingforemergencies.gov.uk/ Preparing For Emergencies] - a UK attempt, with little more than common sense information. See also the [http://www.preparingforemergencies.co.uk/ parody].
- [http://www.emacintl.com Disaster and Emergency Management Training and Consulting]
- [http://training.fema.gov/ Free FEMA Emergency Management Related Training]
- [http://projectassimilate.org Project Assimilate™] Matching refugees with volunteers for long-term integration and an opportunity for a new start in a new area.
- [http://www.oriongraphix.com/katrina TheVictimsOfKatrina.com - An online forum dedicated to the victims of Hurricane Katrina]
- [http://www.swemorph.com/pdf/sra.pdf Modelling Society’s Capacity to Manage Extraordinary Events] At the Swedish Morphological Society category:Disaster preparation Category:Emergency services

Politics

Politics is the process by which decisions are made for a given society. The method of making decisions for groups varies, but the act of decision making is the key component that characterises politics. Although it is generally applied to governments, politics is also observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. Political science is the study of political behavior and examines the acquisition and application of power, i.e. the ability to impose one's will on another. One theorist, Harold Lasswell, has defined politics as "who gets what, when, and how." Another definition of 'politics' is: "how power is distributed within a group or system".

A natural state

In 1651, Thomas Hobbes published his most famous work, Leviathan, in which he proposed a model of early human development to justify the creation of human associations. Hobbes described an ideal state of nature wherein every person had equal right to every resource in nature and was free to use any means to acquire those resources. He noted that such an arrangement created a “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes). Further, he noted that men would enter into a social contract and would give up absolute rights for certain protections. While it appears that social cooperation and dominance hierarchies predate human societies, Hobbes’s model illustrates a rationale for the creation of societies (polities).

Early history

V.G. Childe describes the transformation of human society that took place around 6000 BCE as an urban revolution. Among the features of this new type of civilization were the institutionalization of social stratification, non-agricultural specialised crafts (including priests and lawyers), taxation, and writing. All of which require clusters of densely populated settlements - city-states. The word "Politics" is derived from the Greek word for city-state, "Polis". Corporate, religious, academic and every other polity, especially those constrained by limited resources, contain dominance hierarchy and therefore politics. Politics is most often studied in relation to the administration of governments. The oldest form of government was tribal organization. Rule by elders was supplanted by monarchy, and a system of Feudalism as an arrangement where a single family dominated the political affairs of a community. Monarchies have existed in one form or another for the past 5000 years of human history.

Definitions

- Power is the ability to impose one's will on another. It implies a capacity for force, i.e violence.
- Authority is the power to enforce laws, to exact obedience, to command, to determine, or to judge.
- Legitimacy is an attribute of government gained through the acquisition and application of power in accordance with recognized or accepted standards or principles.
- A government is the body that has the authority to make and enforce rules or laws.

Political power

Samuel Gompers’ often paraphrased maxim,"Reward your friends and punish your enemies," hints at two of the five types of power recognized by social psychologists: incentive power (the power to reward) and coercive power (the power to punish). Arguably the other three grow out of these two. Legitimate power, the power of the policeman or the referee, is the power given to an individual by a recognized authority to enforce standards of behavior. Legitimate power is similar to coercive power in that unacceptable behavior is punished by fine or penalty. Referent power is bestowed upon individuals by virtue of accomplishment or attitude. Fulfillment of the desire to feel similar to a celebrity or a hero is the reward for obedience. Expert power springs from education or experience. Following the lead of an experienced coach is often rewarded with success. Expert power is conditional to the circumstances. A brain surgeon is no help when your pipes are leaking.

Authority and legitimacy

Max Weber identified three sources of legitimacy for authority known as (tripartite classification of authority). He proposed three reasons why people followed the orders of those who gave them:

Traditional

Traditional authorities receive loyalty because they continue and support the preservation of existing values, the status quo. Traditional authority has the longest history. Patriarchal (and more rarely Matriarchal) societies gave rise to hereditary monarchies where authority was given to descendants of previous leaders. Followers submit to this authority because "we've always done it that way." Examples of traditional authoritarians include kings and queens.

Charismatic

Charismatic authority grows out of the personal charm or the strength of an individual personality (see cult of personality for the most extreme version). Charismatic regimes are often short lived, seldom outliving the charismatic figure that leads them. Examples include Hitler, Napoleon, and Mao.

Legal-rational

Legal-Rational authorities receive their ability to compel behavior by virtue of the office that they hold. It is the authority that demands obedience to the office rather than the office holder. Modern democracies are examples of legal-rational regimes.

References

GOMPERS,SAMUEL; “Men of Labor! Be Up and Doing,” editorial, American Federationist, May 1906, p. 319

War

A common perception of war is a series of military campaigns between at least two opposing sides involving a dispute over sovereignty, territory, resources, religion or a host of other issues. A war to liberate an occupied country is sometimes characterised as a "war of liberation", while a war between internal elements of the same state may constitute a civil war.

History of war

:Main article: History of warfare War seems as old as human society, and certainly features prominently in the recorded histories of state-cultures. But it is a complex issue. Some hunter-gatherer societies engaged in skirmishes over territory and resources, although many did not. The earliest city states and empire in Mesopotamia became the first to employ standing armies. Organization and structure has since been central to warfare, as illustrated by the success of highly disciplined troops of the Roman Empire. As well as organizational change, technology has played a central role in the evolution of warfare. Inventions created for warfare have also played an important role in other fields. The continued advance of technology has led to an increase in the destructiveness and cost of warfare throughout human history. The study of warfare is known as military history.

Morality of war

military history Throughout history war has been the source of serious moral questions. Although many ancient nations and some more modern ones viewed war as noble, over the sweep of history concerns about the morality of war have gradually increased. Today war is almost unanimously seen as undesirable and morally problematic. Many now believe that wars should only be fought as a last resort. Some, known as pacifists, believe that war is inherently immoral and no war should ever be fought. This position was passionately defended by the Indian leader Mohandas K. Gandhi (called "Mahatma" or "Great Soul"). The negative view of war has not always been held as widely as it is today. Many thinkers, such as Heinrich von Treitschke saw war as humanity's highest activity where courage, honour, and ability were more necessary than in any other endeavour. At the outbreak of World War I the writer Thomas Mann wrote, "Is not peace an element of civil corruption and war a purification, a liberation, an enormous hope?" This attitude was embraced by many societies from Sparta in Ancient Greece and the Ancient Romans to the fascist states of the 1930s. The defeat and repudiation of the fascist states and their militarism in the Second World War, combined with the unquestioned horror of nuclear war have contributed to the current negative view of war. Today, some see only Just Wars as legitimate, and it is the goal of organizations such as the United Nations to unite the world against wars of unjust aggression.

Limitations on war

At times throughout history, societies have attempted to limit the cost of war by formalizing it in some way. Limitations on the targeting of civilians, what type of weapons can be used, and when combat is allowed have all fallen under these rules in different conflicts. Total war is the modern term for the targeting of civilians and the mobilization of an entire society. While culture, law, and religion have all been factors in causing wars, they have also acted as restraints at times. In some cultures, for example, conflicts have been highly ritualized to limit actual loss of life. In modern times, increasing international attention has been paid to peacefully resolving conflicts which lead to war. The United Nations is the latest and most comprehensive attempt to, as stated in the preamble of the [http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter U.N. Charter], "save succeeding generations from the scourge of war." A number of treaties regulate warfare, collectively referred to as the laws of war. The most pervasive of those are the Geneva Conventions, the earliest of which began to take effect in the mid 1800s. Treaty signing has since been a part of international diplomacy, and too many treaties to mention in this scant article have been signed. A couple of examples are: Resolutions of the Geneva International Conference, Geneva, 26 October-29 October 1863 and Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 75 U.N.T.S. 135, entered into force 21 October 1950. It must be noted that in war such treaties are generally thrown to one side if they interfere with the vital interests of either side; some have criticised such conventions as simply providing a fig leaf for the inhuman practice of war. By only illegalising "war against the rules", it is alleged, such treaties and conventions, in effect, sanction certain types of war.

Redefining "war" for legal reasons

Sometimes the term "war" is restricted by legal definition to those conflicts where one or both belligerents have formally declared war. This has resulted in wars (in the sense defined in the introduction to this article) without formal declaration and combatants who officially choose terms other than "war," such as:
- "armed conflict";
- "state aggression by armed force";
- "police action";
- "crime against international peace". For example, the United States Government referred to the Korean War as a "police action", and the British Government was very careful to use the term "armed conflict" instead of "war" during the Falklands War in 1982 to comply with the letter of international law. Sometimes the term "war" will not be used in order to circumvent national constitutions which restrict the power of the executive to wage war without the agreement of other branches of government.

Causes of war

There is great debate over why wars happen, even when most people do not want them to. Representatives of many different academic disciplines have attempted to explain war.

Historical theories

Historians tend to be reluctant to look for sweeping explanations for all wars. A. J. P. Taylor famously described wars as being like traffic accidents. There are some conditions and situations that make them more likely but there can be no system for predicting where and when each one will occur. Social scientists criticize this approach arguing that at the beginning of every war some leader makes a conscious decision and that they cannot be seen as purely accidental.

Psychological theories

Psychologists such as E.F.M. Durban and John Bowlby have argued that human beings, especially men, are inherently violent. While this violence is repressed in normal society it needs the occasional outlet provided by war. This combines with other notions, such as displacement where a person transfers their grievances into bias and hatred against other ethnic groups, nations, or ideologies. While these theories can explain why wars occur, they do not explain when or how they occur. In addition, they raise the question why there are sometimes long periods of peace and other eras of unending war. If the innate psychology of the human mind is unchanging, these variations are inconsistent. A solution adopted to this problem by militarists such as Franz Alexander is that peace does not really exist. Periods that are seen as peaceful are actually periods of preparation for a later war or when war is suppressed by a state of great power, such as the Pax Britannica. If war is innate to human nature, as is presupposed by many psychological theories, then there is little hope of ever escaping it. One alternative is to argue that war is only, or almost only, a male activity and if human leadership was in female hands wars would not occur. This theory has played an important role in modern feminism. Critics, of course, point to various examples of female political leaders who had no qualms about using military force, such as Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi. Other psychologists have argued that while human temperament allows wars to occur, they only do so when mentally unbalanced men are in control of a nation. This extreme school of thought argues leaders that seek war such as Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin were mentally abnormal. A distinct branch of the psychological theories of war are the arguments based on evolutionary psychology. This school tends to see war as an extension of animal behaviour, such as territoriality and competition. However, while war has a natural cause, the development of technology has accelerated human destructiveness to a level that is irrational and damaging to the species. We have the same instincts of a chimpanzee but overwhelmingly more power. The earliest advocate of this theory was Konrad Lorenz. These theories have been criticized by scholars such as John G. Kennedy, who argue that the organized, sustained war of humans differs more than just technologically from the territorial fights between animals. In his fictional book Nineteen-Eighty-Four, George Orwell talks about war being used as one of many ways to distract people. War inspires fear and hate among the people of a nation, and gives them a 'legitimate' enemy upon whom they can focus this fear and hate. Thus the people are prevented from seeing that their true enemy is in fact their own repressive government. By this theory, war is another 'opiate of the masses' by which a totalitarian state controls its people and prevents revolution.

Anthropological theories

Several anthropologists take a very different view of war. They see it as fundamentally cultural, learned by nurture rather than nature. Thus if human societies could be reformed, war would disappear. To this school the acceptance of war is inculcated into each of us by the religious, ideological, and nationalistic surroundings in which we live. Many anthropologists also see no links between various forms of violence. They see the fighting of animals, the skirmishes of hunter-gatherer tribes, and the organized warfare of modern societies as distinct phenomena each with their own causes. Theorists such as Ashley Montagu emphasize the top down nature of war, that almost all wars are begun not by popular pressure but by the whims of leaders and that these leaders also work to maintain a system of ideological justifications for war.

Sociological theories

Sociology has long been very concerned with the origins of war, and many thousands of theories have been advanced, many of them contradictory. Some use detailed formulas taking into account hundreds of demographic and economic values to predict when and where wars will break out. The statistical analysis of war was pioneered by Lewis Fry Richardson following World War I. More recent databases of wars and armed conflict have been assembled by the Correlates of War Project, Peter Brecke and the Uppsala Department of Peace and Conflict Research. So far none of these formulas have successfully predicted the outbreak of future conflicts. A detailed study by Michael Haas found that no single variable has a strong correlation to the occurrence of wars. One correlation that has found much support is that states that are democracies do not go to war with each other, an idea known as the democratic peace theory. Many sociologists have attempted to divide wars into types to get better correlations, but this has also produced mixed results. Data looked at by R.J. Rummel has found that civil wars and foreign wars are very different in origin, but Jonathan Wilkenfield using different data found just the opposite. Sociology has thus divided into a number of schools. One based on the works of Eckart Kehr and Hans-Ulrich Wehler sees war as the product of domestic conditions, with only the target of aggression being determined by international realities. Thus World War I was not a product of international disputes, secret treaties, or the balance of power but a product of the economic, social, and political situation within each of the states involved. This differs from the traditional approach of Carl von Clausewitz and Leopold von Ranke that argue it is the decisions of statesmen and the geopolitical situation that leads to war.

Information theories

A popular new approach is to look at the role of information in the outbreak of wars. This theory, advanced by scholars of international relations such as Geoffrey Blainey, argues that all wars are based on a lack of information. If both sides at the outset knew the result neither would fight, the loser would merely surrender and avoid the cost in lives and infrastructure that a war would cause. This is based on the notion that wars are reciprocal, that all wars require both a decision to attack and also a decision to resist attack. This notion is generally agreed to by almost all scholars of war since Clausewitz. This notion is made harder to accept because it is far more common to study the cause of wars rather than events that failed to cause wars, and wars are far more memorable. However, throughout history there are as many invasions and annexations that did not lead to a war, such as the U.S.-led invasion of Haiti in 1994, the Nazi invasions of Austria and Czechoslovakia preceding the Second World War, and the annexation of the Baltic states by the Soviet Union in 1940. On the other hand, Finland's decision to resist a similar Soviet aggression in 1939 led to the Winter War. The leaders of these nations chose not to resist as they saw the potential benefits being not worth the loss of life and destruction such resistance would cause. Lack of information may not only be to who wins in the immediate future. The Norwegian decision to resist the Nazi invasion was taken with the certain knowledge that Norway would fall. The Norwegians did not know whether the German domination would be permanent and also felt that noble resistance would win them favour with the Allies and a position at the peace settlement in the event of an Allied victory. If in 1940 it had been known with certainty the Germans would dominate central Europe for many decades, it is unlikely the Norwegians would have resisted. If it had been known for certainty that the Third Reich would collapse after only a few years of war, the Nazis would not have launched the invasion at all. This theory is predicated on the notion that the outcome of wars is not randomly determined, but fully determined on factors such as doctrine, economies, and power. While purely random events, such as storms or the right person dying at the right time, might have had some effect on history, these only influence a single battle or slightly alter the outcome of a war, but would not mean the difference between victory and defeat. There are two main objectives in the gathering of intelligence. The first is to find out the ability of an enemy, the second their intent. In theory to have enough information to prevent all wars both need to be fully known. The Argentinean dictatorship knew that the United Kingdom had the ability to defeat them, but their intelligence failed them on the question of whether the British would use their power to resist the annexation of the Falklands. The American decision to enter the Vietnam War was made with the full knowledge that the communist forces would resist them, but did not believe that the guerrillas had the capability to long oppose American forces. One major difficulty is that in a conflict of interests, some deception or at least not telling everything, is a standard tactical component on both sides. If you think that you can convince the opponent that you will fight, the opponent might desist. For example, Sweden made efforts to deceive Nazi Germany that it would resist an attack fiercely partly by playing on the myth of Aryan superiority, and by making sure that Hermann Göring only saw Elite troops in action, often dressed up as regular soldiers, when he came to visit.

Economic theories

Another school of thought argues that war can be seen as an outgrowth of economic competition in a chaotic and competitive international system. That wars begin as a pursuit of new markets, of natural resources, and of wealth. Unquestionably a cause of some wars, from the empire building of Britain to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in pursuit of oil this theory has been applied to many other conflicts including the Iraq invasion of the United States. It is most often advocated by those to the left of the political spectrum who argue that such wars serve only the interests of the wealthy but are fought by the poor.

Marxist theories

The economic theories also form a part of the Marxist theory of war, which argues that all war grows out of the class war. It sees wars as imperial ventures to enhance the power of the ruling class and divide the proletariat of the world by pitting them against each other for contrived ideals such as nationalism or religion. Wars are a natural outgrowth of the free market and class system, and will not disappear until a world revolution occurs.

Types of war and warfare

Smaller armed conflicts are often called riots, rebellions, coups, etc. When one country sends armed forces to another, allegedly to restore order or prevent genocide or other crimes against humanity, or to support a legally recognized government against insurgency, that country sometimes refers to it as a police action. This usage is not always recognized as valid, however, particularly by those who do not accept the connotations of the term. "Conventional warfare" descibes either:
- A war between nation-states
- War where nuclear or biological weapons are not used. (Compare with unconventional warfare and nuclear warfare.) A war where the forces in conflict belong to the same country or empire or other political entity is known as a civil war. Asymmetrical warfare is a conflict between two populations of drastically different levels of military mechanization. This type of war often results in guerrilla tactics. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a common example of asymmetrical warfare.

Geographic warfare

The terrain over which a war is fought has a big impact on the type of combat which takes place. This in turn means that soldiers have to be trained to fight in a specific type of terrain. These include:
- Arctic warfare
- Ski warfare
- Desert warfare
- Jungle warfare
- Naval warfare or Aquatic warfare
- Sub-aquatic warfare
- Mountain warfare (sometimes called alpine warfare)
- Urban warfare
- Air warfare
- Space warfare

References

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External links

- [http://www.warcrimes.info/ Documents and Resources on War, War Crimes and Genocide]
- [http://www.umich.edu/~cowproj/ Correlates of War Project]
- [http://cow2.la.psu.edu/ Correlates of War 2]
- [http://www.inta.gatech.edu/peter/PSS99_paper.html Article by Peter Brecke]
- [http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/4th_gen_war_gazette.htm The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation]
- [http://www.pcr.uu.se/ Uppsala Department of Peace and Conflict Research]
- [http://www.unesco.org/shs/human_rights/hrfv.htm 1986 Seville Statement on Violence]
- [http://www.culture-of-peace.info/ssov/title-page.html The Seville Statement on Violence: A Progress Report]
- [http://www.culture-of-peace.info/myth/title-page.html The Myth That War Is Intrinsic to Human Nature Discourages Action for Peace by Young People]
- [http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm Rough estimates of the number of deaths in various wars and conflicts]
- [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry] War Violence ms:Peperangan ja:戦争 simple:War

Defense industry

The defense industry refers primarily to:
- Defense contractors: business organizations or individuals that provide products or services to a defense department of a government.
- The Arms industry, which produces guns, ammunition, missiles, military aircraft, and their associated consumables and systems. It can also include:
- Private military contractors: private companies that provide logistics, manpower, and other expenditures for a military force.
- The Military-industrial complex, which is generally the combination of the U.S. armed forces, arms industry and associated political and commercial interests, although it can also be used to describe any such relationship of industry and military.
- European defence procurement, which is more or less analagous to the U.S. "military-industrial complex."

Defense (legal)

In most litigation under the common law adversarial system the defendant, perhaps with the assistance of counsel, may allege or present defenses (or defences) in order to avoid liability, civil or criminal.

Criminal law defenses

In criminal law these defenses can be grouped into 4 categories:
- Alibis;
- Justifications;
- Excuses;
- Procedural defenses, and the so-called
- "Innovative defenses." With the exception of alibis; these defenses do not argue that the defendant didn't commit a criminal act (which broke the law); but rather, that the defendant should not be held criminally liable for said act. Note that apart from this defense against prosecution and liability, there is also defense against an attacker, which can be a legal justification, see self defense and defense of others, defense of property.

Civil law defenses

In civil law affirmative defenses are presented to limit or avoid liability, they are numerous and include:
- Pleading;
- The statute of limitations;
- Lack of personal or subject matter jurisdiction of the court, or
- Failure to state a cause of action.

Defense against an attacker

Note that apart from this defense against prosecution and liability, there is also defense against an attacker, which can be a legal justification, see self defense and defense of others, defense of property.

Justification (jurisprudence)

In jurisprudence, justification is a defense in which a defendant argues that although they broke the law, they should not be held liable for, or found guilty of, a crime, as some special or extenuating circumstance(s) existed such that the illegal action was, for some reason or other, reasonable and acceptable. Possible justifications include: consent, self defense and defense of others, defense of property, necessity, resisting unlawful arrest. Category:Law

Defense of property

The defense of property is a possible justification for breaking the law. Defendants who use this defense are arguing that they should not be held liable for a crime, since the action taken was intended to protect the defendant's property. Courts have generally ruled that "deadly force" is generally not acceptable in defending property, although it may be acceptable in self-defense or in some areas the defense of ones home. As deadly force is not allowed, the setting of booby-traps is also not allowed. Category:Criminal defenses Category:Tort law

American English

American English (AmE) is the dialect of the English language used mostly in the United States of America. Crystal (1997) estimates that approximately two thirds of native speakers of English live in the United States. American English is also sometimes called United States English or U.S. English.

History

English was inherited from British colonization. The first wave of English-speaking immigrants was settled in North America in the 17th century. In that century, there were also speakers in North America of the Dutch, French, German, myriad Native American, Spanish, Swedish, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Finnish languages.

Phonology

In many ways, compared to British English, American English is conservative in its phonology. The conservatism of American English is largely the result of the fact that it represents a mixture of various dialects from the British Isles. Dialect in North America is most distinctive on the East Coast of the continent; this is largely because these areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of British English at a time when those varieties were undergoing changes. The interior of the country was settled by people who were no longer closely connected to England, as they had no access to the ocean during a time when journeys to Britain were always by sea. As such the inland speech is much more homogeneous than the East Coast speech, and did not imitate the changes in speech from England. East Coast-influenced non-rhotic pronunciations may be found among blacks throughout the country.]]Most North American speech is rhotic, as English was in most places in the 17th century. Rhoticity was further supported by Hiberno-English, Scottish English, and West Country English. In most varieties of North American English, the sound corresponding to the letter "R" is a retroflex semivowel rather than a trill or a tap. The loss of syllable-final r in North America is confined mostly to the accents of eastern New England, New York City and surrounding areas, South Philadelphia, and the coastal portions of the South. Dropping of syllable-final r sometimes happens in natively rhotic dialects if r is located in unaccented syllables or words and the next syllable or word begins in a consonant. In England, lost 'r' was often changed into (schwa), giving rise to a new class of falling diphthongs. Furthermore, the 'er' sound of (stressed) fur or (unstressed) butter, which is represented in IPA as stressed or unstressed is realized in American English as a monophthongal r-colored vowel. This does not happen in the non-rhotic varieties of North American speech. Some other British English changes in which most North American dialects do not participate:
- The shift of to (the so-called "broad A") before alone or preceded by . This is the difference between the British Received Pronunciation and American pronunciation of bath and dance. In the United States, only linguistically conservative eastern-New-England speakers took up this innovation.
- The shift of intervocalic to glottal stop , as in for bottle. This change is not universal for British English (and in fact is not considered to be part of Received Pronunciation), but it does not occur in most North American dialects. Newfoundland English and the dialect of New Britain, Connecticut are notable exceptions. On the other hand, North American English has undergone some sound changes not found in Britain, at least not in standard varieties. Many of these are instances of phonemic differentiation and include
- The merger of and , making father and bother rhyme. This change is nearly universal in North American English, occurring almost everywhere except for parts of eastern New England, like the Boston accent.
- The replacement of the lot vowel with the strut vowel in what, was, of, from, everybody, nobody, somebody, anybody, because, and in some dialects want.
- The merger of and . This is the so-called cot-caught merger, where cot and caught are homophones. This change has occurred in eastern New England, in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas, and from the Great Plains westward.
- Vowel merger before intervocalic . Which (if any) vowels are affected varies between dialects.
- The merger of and after palatals in some words, so that cure, pure, mature and sure rhyme with fir in some speech registers for some speakers.
- Dropping of after alveolar consonants so that new, duke, Tuesday, suit, resume, lute are pronounced , , , , , .
- Æ-tensing in environments that vary widely from accent to accent. In some accents, particularly those from Philadelphia to New York City, and can even contrast sometimes, as in Yes, I can vs. tin can .
- Laxing of , and to , and before , causing pronunciations like , and for pair, peer and pure.
- The flapping of intervocalic and to alveolar tap before reduced vowels. The words ladder and latter are mostly or entirely homophonous, possibly distinguished only by the length of preceding vowel. For some speakers, the merger is incomplete and 't' before a reduced vowel is sometimes not tapped following or when it represents underlying 't'; thus greater and grader, and unbitten and unbidden are distinguished. Even among those words where and are flapped, words that would otherwise be homophonous are, for some speakers, distinguished if the flapping is immediately preceded by the diphthongs or ; these speakers tend to pronounce writer with and rider with . This is called Canadian raising; it is general in Canadian English, and occurs in some northerly versions of American English as well (often just applying to the diphthong , but not to ).
- Both intervocalic and may be realized as or , making winter and winner homophones. This does not occur when the second syllable is stressed, as in entail.
- The pin-pen merger, by which is raised to before nasal consonants, making pairs like pen/pin homophonous. This merger originated in Southern American English but is now widespread in the Midwest and West as well. Some mergers found in most varieties of both American and British English include:
- The horse-hoarse merger of the vowels and before 'r', making pairs like horse/hoarse, corps/core, for/four, morning/mourning etc. homophones.
- The wine-whine merger making pairs like wine/whine, wet/whet, Wales/whales, wear/where etc. homophones. Many older varieties of southern and western American English still keep these distinct, but the merger appears to be spreading.

Differences in British English and American English

Main article: American and British English differences American English has both spelling and grammatical differences from British English (or Commonwealth English), some of which were made as part of an attempt to rationalize the English spelling used by British English at the time. Unlike many 20th century language reforms (for example, Turkey's alphabet shift, Norway's spelling reform) the American spelling changes were not driven by government, but by textbook writers and dictionary makers. The first American dictionary was written by Noah Webster in 1828. At the time America was a relatively new country and Webster's particular contribution was to show that the region spoke a different dialect from Britain, and so he wrote a dictionary with many spellings differing from the standard. Many of these changes were initiated unilaterally by Webster. Webster also argued for many "simplifications" to the idiomatic spelling of the period. Somewhat ironically, many, although not all, of his simplifications fell into common usage alongside the original versions, resulting in a situation even more confused than before. Many words are shortened and differ from other versions of English. Spellings such as center are used instead of centre in other versions of English. Conversely, American English sometimes favors words that are morphologically more complex, whereas British English uses clipped forms, such as AmE transportation and BrE transport or where the British form is a back-formation, such as AmE burglarize and BrE burgle (from burglar).

English words that arose in the U.S.

A number of words that arose in the United States have become common, to varying degrees, in English as it is spoken internationally. Although its origin is disputed, the most famous word is probably OK, which is sometimes used in other languages as well. Other American introductions include "belittle," "gerrymander" (from Elbridge Gerry), "blizzard", "teenager", and many more.

English words obsolete outside the U.S.

A number of words that originated in the English of the British Isles are still in everyday use in North America, but are no longer used in most varieties of British English. The most conspicuous of these words are fall, the season; to quit, as in "to cease an activity" (as opposed to "to leave a location" as still used in most other Anglophone countries); and gotten as a past participle of get. Americans are more likely than Britons to name a stream whose breadth or volume is judged insufficient for it to be a river or a creek. The word diaper goes back at least to Shakespeare, and usage was maintained in the U.S. and Canada, but was replaced in the British Isles with nappy. Some of these words are still used in various dialects of the British Isles, but not in formal standard British English. Many of these older words have cognates in Lowland Scots. The subjunctive mood is livelier in North American English than it is in British English; it appears in some areas as a spoken usage, and is considered obligatory in more formal contexts in American English. British English has a strong tendency to replace subjunctives with auxiliary verb constructions.

Regional differences

Main article: American English regional differences Spoken American English is not homogeneous throughout the country, and various regional and ethnic variants exist. These differences affect both pronunciation and the lexicon, and can make one accent a little difficult for speakers of another accent to understand. General American is the name given to any American accent that is relatively free of noticeable regional influences. It enjoys high prestige among Americans, but is not a standard accent in the way that Received Pronunciation is in England.

References

External links

- [http://www.pbs.org/speak/ Do You Speak American]: PBS special
- [http://cfprod01.imt.uwm.edu/Dept/FLL/linguistics/dialect/ Dialect Survey] of the United States, by Bert Vaux et al., Harvard University. The answers to various questions about pronunciation, word use etc. can be seen in relationship to the regions where they are predominant.
- [http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/home.html Phonological Atlas of North America] at the University of Pennsylvania
- [http://students.csci.unt.edu/~kun Guide to Regional English Pronunciation] includes working versions of the Telsur Project maps from the Phonologial Atlas site
- [http://www.peak.org/~jeremy/dictionary/ The American•British British•American Dictionary]
- [http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/ Speech Accent Archive]
- [http://www.world-english.org/ World English Organization]
- [http://www.esuus.org English Speaking Union of the United States]
- [http://canadianenglish1.narod.ru American Canadian British English Lexical Differences In One Table]
- [http://australianenglish1.narod.ru Australian American British English Lexical Differences In One Table And More]
- [http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/words_list/british_american.htm British, American, Australian English - Lists and Online Exercises]
- [http://www.globalenglishsalon.com/ Listen to spoken American English (midwest

English language

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

History

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

Classification and related languages

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

Geographic distribution

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

English as a global language

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

Dialects and regional variants

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

Constructed variants of English

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

Sounds

Vowels

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

Consonants

This is the English Consonantal System using symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). #The velar nasal is a non-phonemic allophone of /n/ in some northerly British accents, appearing only before /g/. In all other dialects it is a separate phoneme, although it only occurs in syllable codas. #The alveolar flap is an allophone of /t/ and /d/ in unstressed syllables in

Defense

Commonwealth English

Rationale for the term "Commonwealth English"

Conflict from differences in language

Canadian English's unique position

Words and idioms

Canadian spelling

Australian borrowings

Internal spelling differences

Independent standards within "Commonwealth English"

Limited use

Notes

References and external links

Thesis committee

See also

Defense (military)

See also

Emergency preparedness

Mitigations

Preparations

Response

Recovery

Personal mitigation

Personal Preparations

Confinement at home

Evacuating

See also

External links

Politics

A natural state

Early history

Definitions

Political power

Authority and legitimacy

Traditional

Charismatic

Legal-rational

References

See also

War

History of war

Morality of war

Limitations on war

Redefining "war" for legal reasons

Causes of war

Historical theories

Psychological theories

Anthropological theories

Sociological theories

Information theories

Economic theories

Marxist theories

Types of war and warfare

Geographic warfare

See also

References

External links

Defense industry

Defense (legal)

Criminal law defenses

Civil law defenses

Defense against an attacker

Justification (jurisprudence)

Defense of property

American English

History

Phonology

Differences in British English and American English

English words that arose in the U.S.

English words obsolete outside the U.S.

Regional differences

See also

Further reading

References

External links

English language

History

Classification and related languages

Geographic distribution

English as a global language