Aarushhh/wikipedia-simple-splitted huggingface dataset:
Prussia (; , , Old Prussian: Prūsa or  Prūsija) was a series of countries. Originally it was a historically prominent German state that originated in 1525. Mostly, the name is used for the Kingdom of Prussia, which was in northern Europe. It was part of Germany for a while, and it included land in Poland, France, and Lithuania. The name "Prussian" has had a lot of different meanings in the past and now:
 The land of the Baltic Prussians (today parts of southern Lithuania, Kaliningrad, and north-eastern Poland);
 The lands of the Teutonic Knights (a group of religious soldiers in the 12th century);
 Part of the lands of the Polish Crown, Royal Prussia;
 A fief of the Polish Crown, Ducal Prussia, later under control of the Hohenzollern family of Brandenburg;
 All Hohenzollern land, inside or outside Germany;
 An independent Kingdom, from the 17th century until 1871;
 The largest part of the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, and Nazi Germany from 1871 to 1945.
In 1934, Germany stopped using the name Prussia for that area, and in 1947 the Allies abolished the state of Prussia and divided its territory among themselves and the new States of Germany. Today, the name is only for historical, geographical, or cultural use.

The name Prussia comes from the Borussi or Prussi people who lived in the Baltic region and spoke the Old Prussian language. Ducal Prussia was a fiefdom of the Kingdom of Poland until 1660, and Royal Prussia was part of Poland until 1772. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most German-speaking Prussians started thinking of themselves as part of the German nation. They thought the Prussian way of life was very important: 
 Perfect organization
 Sacrifice (giving other people something you need)
 Obeying the law
Geography 
Prussia's borders have changed over time.  It has not always been the exact same place.  Mostly, Prussia was a small part of what is today northern Poland. After a small number of Prussian people moved there to live, Germans came to live there too. In 1934, Prussia's borders were with France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Lithuania. Some parts of Prussia are in eastern Poland. Before 1918, a lot of western Poland was also in Prussia. Between 1795 and 1807, Prussia also controlled Warsaw and most of central Poland.

Before 1934, these regions were also in Prussia:
 West Prussia and East Prussia, which are now in Poland and Russia
 Pomerania
 Silesia
 Brandenburg
 Lusatia
 Province of Saxony (now Saxony-Anhalt)
 Kingdom of Hanover
 Schleswig-Holstein
 Westphalia
 parts of Hesse
 the Rhineland
 some small areas in the south, for example Württemberg-Hohenzollern, the home of the leaders of Prussia
However, some regions were never part of Prussia, such as Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, and the Hanse city-states.

Northeast Germany was Protestant, so Prussians were mostly Protestant. But there were a lot of Catholic people in the Rhineland, East Prussia, Posen, Silesia, West Prussia, and Ermland. The states of south Germany (especially Austria and Bavaria) were Catholic, so they did not want Prussians to rule them. Prussia was mostly German, but in the late 18th century, the new Polish areas had a lot of Polish people too. In 1918, these Polish areas were given to Poland, and in 1945, Pomerania and East Prussia were given to Poland. Northern East Prussia, specifically Kaliningrad, was given to Russia.
History 
In 1226, Polish Prince Conrad of Mazovia (Mazovia is a place in Northern Poland) asked the Teutonic Knights from Transylvania to come to Mazovia. He wanted them to fight the Prussian tribes on his borders. They fought for more than 100 years. Then they created a new state. After some time, this state controlled most of today's Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and parts of northern Poland. In 1466, the Knights were under the King of Poland and Lithuania. In 1525, the leader of the Knights became a Protestant. He made part of the Knights' land into the Duchy of Prussia, which was then part of the Kingdom of Poland.
At that time, the Duchy of Prussia was only the area east of the place where the Vistula River enters the sea. In 1618, the new Duke of Prussia was the Elector John Sigismund of Brandenburg. He was also Margrave of Brandenburg. Brandenburg was ruled by the Hohenzollern family. The Duchy of Prussia was important to the Hohenzollern family because it was not part of the Holy Roman Empire. The name for the new state was Brandenburg-Prussia. In the middle of the state was Polish land, but Brandenburg-Prussia was moving away from Poland. Under Frederick William, who was called the Great Elector, Prussia took some new land in Magdeburg and areas west of the Rhine.

Kingdom of Prussia
In 1701, the Holy Roman Emperor and Polish King allowed Brandenburg-Prussia to call itself "Kingdom of Prussia" with Frederick I as its king. Under Frederick II ("the Great"), Prussia waged war against Austria and took Silesia. The wars ended in 1763; Prussia was then the most powerful state in eastern Germany. Other parts of Germany, including Pomerania, went to Prussia because of marriage or death.

During this time, the Prussian army got bigger, and so did the administration system. Until 1945, these were at the most important parts of the German state. Between 1772 and 1795, Prussia, Russia and Austria divided Poland into parts (the Partitions of Poland). Prussia controlled land in the far east, including the city of Warsaw. 

Frederick William II had Prussia join the war with France in 1792. He lost at Valmy and gave his western land to France. Frederick William III started a new war, but lost at Jena. He gave more land to France at the Treaty of Tilsit.
In the early 19th century, there were two political groups in Germany.  The liberals wanted a democratic system with one strong central government. The conservatives wanted Germany to be made of a group of independent, weak states . In 1848, revolution came to Europe. Frederick William IV was worried. He allowed a National Assembly and a constitution. The new Frankfurt Parliament wanted to give Frederick William the crown of all Germany, but he did not want it. He said that revolutionaries could not name kings. Now Prussia had a semi-democratic constitution, but really the nobility with land (the Junkers) had the power, especially in the east.

Imperial Prussia
Imperial Prussia

In 1862, Prussian King Wilhelm I appointed Otto von Bismarck as the prime minister of Prussia. Bismarck wanted the liberals and the conservatives to lose. He wanted to create a strong, united Germany, but he wanted to do so under the Junker, not under the western German liberals. So, he started three wars:
 with Denmark in 1864 – this gave Prussia control of the Schleswig-Holstein area
 with Austria in 1869 (Austro-Prussian War) – this allowed Prussia to take Hanover and most other northern German territories that had been ruled by Austria
 with France in 1870 (Franco-Prussian War) - so Bismarck could control Mecklenburg, Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, and Saxony.  After this, these states (but not Austria) became part of a united German Empire, and Wilhelm I took the title of Emperor (Kaiser).
This was Prussia's high moment. The economic and political future looked good. But after 99 days, in 1888, the state had a new leader, Kaiser Wilhelm II. He fired Bismarck, who lost his job in 1890, and Wilhelm II started a new foreign policy.  He made the army bigger, and the navy much bigger, and he took risks. This is part of why Germany entered World War I. When the Germans and their allies lost that war, the Prussian Junkers lost power.  The Prussian king and the other German kings had to leave.  Germany became the Weimar Republic. In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles re-created the Polish state, and Prussia had to give up much of its land.  The Polish Corridor was split between East Prussia and Germany.

The end of Prussia
At the end of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles separated West Prussia from the rest of Germany to make the Free City of Danzig and Polish Corridor, so Poland would have access to the ocean instead of being landlocked. Some people also wanted to break Prussia into smaller states, but this did not happen. Prussia became the "Prussian Free State" (Freistaat Preußen), the largest state in the Weimar Republic.   The Prussian Free State made up more than 60% of all the land in the Weimar Republic. The Prussian Free State contained the industrial Ruhr area the city of Berlin, so many people with left-leaning political ideas lived there. The Social Democrats and the Catholic Centre had power for most of the 1920s.
In 1932, Germany's conservative Chancellor Franz von Papen took control of Prussia, ending the state's democratic constitution. It was the end of German democracy too. In 1933, Hermann Göring became Interior Minister of Prussia; he was now very strong. In 1934, the Nazis took the German states' power.   

In 1945, the Soviet Union's army captured all of eastern and central Germany (and Berlin). Poland took everything east of the Oder-Neisse line, e.g. Silesia, Pomerania, eastern Brandenburg, and East Prussia. The Soviet Union took the northern third of East Prussia, including Königsberg, now Kaliningrad.  About ten million Germans had to run away from these areas. Polish and Russian people moved in in their place. Because of this, and because the Communists took control of land in the GDR, also called East Germany, the Junker and Prussia were finished.
The idea of Prussia is not completely dead in Germany. Some people want to put together the states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and Berlin and call them Prussia. But German politicians are not interested in the idea.  The constitution of Berlin allows for Berlin and Brandenburg to become one state, but the people of Berlin voted against doing this on May 5, 1996.

References

Other websites 

 
 
 1660 map of Prussia 1660 
 map of Prussian Provinces
 Part Map of Prussia by Gerard Mercator, Atlas sive cosmographica., Amsterdam 1594 
 Part Map of Prussia by Kasper Henneberger, Koenigsberg 1629 
 Map of Old Prussia by K. Henneberger, 17th century. 
 Map of Prussia by K. Henneberger  in: Christoph Hartknoch, Alt- und neues Preussen..., Frankfurt 1684
 Map of Prussia and Freie Stadt Danzig from 18th c. 
 Map of East Prussia  K. Flemming, F. Handtke, Głogów ca. 1920, after Treaty of Versailles
1525 establishments
House of Hohenzollern
 
States and territories disestablished in the 20th century
1947 disestablishments
16th-century establishments in Germany
1940s disestablishments in Europe

German Empire
The Apocrypha are religious texts that are in some versions of the Catholic Bible. Other versions omit them. The word comes from Ancient Greek  (apokrypha). Apocrypha means those that were hidden. Generally, the term is applied to writings that were not part of the canon. There are several reasons why these texts were not included. The texts might only have been known to few people, or they might have been left out because their content does not fit well into that of the other books of the Bible. Some of the apocrypha were written at a later date, and were therefore not included. 

The Authorized King James Version called these books ‘Apocrypha’. It separated them, because the Bible said so in 2 Esdras 14:46, But keep the seventy last, that thou mayest deliver them only to such as be wise among the people: For in them is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom, and the stream of knowledge.
Roman Catholic Bibles have these books in the Old Testament. They do not call them Apocrypha. They call them deuterocanonical, which means that they belong to the second canon. Canon just means an official list of literary works accepted as representing a field. The first list is of books first written in Hebrew. This second list is of books first written in Greek.

Some say 
These books were kept in Catholic Bibles because it is believed that the Bible which Jesus read was a Bible that included the books of the "Apocrypha," the deuterocanonical books. It is known that the most popular Bible at the time of Jesus was the Greek Septuagint version - which includes these extra books. That is why early Church fathers quoted from Bibles including these books.
Others say 
Christians disagree about the ‘Apocrypha’. Others point out that the ‘Apocrypha’ was in every Christian Bible until 1828.
In 1828 these books were taken out of some Bibles. The translators of the King James Bible said that these books were written to prepare the people for Jesus, in the same way as John the Baptist did. They said that the apostles used these books. And modern day members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (sometimes referred to as Mormons) also have hints in the  Book of Mormon.
There is no question that these books have always been part of the Bible in Oriental Orthodox Churches, so they were definitely not added in the 1500s. Around the year 80 AD, the Jewish Council (Sanhedrin) decided to cut the books from the Hebrew Bible, but they stayed in the Christian Bible. Then soon after Christianity became the only religion of Roman Empire in the 4th century, the Romans decided to cut out all of the same books that the Sanhedrin had cut out, and they moved some of them to the "apocrypha".

Texts of the Apocrypha 
Books of the Apocrypha (they may not be in order):
 Esdras
 Book of Tobit (the Vulgate, and Luther call it "Tobias")
 Book of Judith
 Book of Wisdom
 Ecclesiasticus
 Baruch
 Susanna
 1st & 2nd Maccabees

Note: Other candidates for Apocryphal scriptures include supposedly lost portions of Daniel, Esther and Sirach.

There are also Apocrypha candidates for the New Testament:
The Gospel of Peter was probably written during the 2nd century. It was discovered in a monk's grave in Egypt in 1886/1887. This grave contained a papyrus from the 9th century.
 Excerpts from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri
 Egerton Gospel
 Gospel of Thomas
 A fragment of the Secret Gospel of Mark

Books of the Bible
Sodium is a chemical element with an atomic number of 11. Its symbol is Na (from its Latin name natrium). It is an alkali metal. Although sodium has many isotopes, most decay in a short time. Because of this, all sodium in nature (mainly found in seawater) is of the isotope 11Na23. The atomic mass of sodium is 22.9898.

Properties 
Sodium is a light-weight, silver-colored metal. Sodium is soft, and because of that, someone could easily cut it with a knife. When someone cuts it, the exposed part will become white over time. It reacts with air to form sodium hydroxide and sodium carbonate. Sodium is a little less dense than water; when someone puts it in water, it floats and reacts instantly, producing hydrogen and sodium hydroxide. This reaction has a lot of heat, usually causing the hydrogen to light on fire. When this happens, sodium melts because of its low melting point. Sodium is highly reactive because it has one valence electron, which is easily removed.
Compared with other alkali metals, sodium is less reactive than potassium and more reactive than lithium.

Chemical compounds 
These are chemical compounds that contain sodium ions. Sodium only exists in one oxidation state: +1.
Sodium aluminum fluoride, used to make aluminum
Sodium amide, very strong base
Sodium arsenite, colorless solid, very toxic
Sodium arsenate, oxidizing agent, very toxic
Sodium azide, used in airbags
Sodium bicarbonate, baking soda, used in cooking
Sodium bismuthate, oxidizing agent, used to test for manganese
Sodium bisulfate, acidic, used to lower pH
Sodium bromate, oxidizing agent, used to dye hair
Sodium bromide, rare, used in some medicine
Sodium carbonate, used to make glass
Sodium chlorate, used in some explosives
Sodium chlorite, used in disinfectants
Sodium chloride, table salt
Sodium chromate, yellow, oxidizing agent, toxic
Sodium dichromate, orange, oxidizing agent, toxic
Sodium fluoride, used in toothpaste, bitter, toxic in large doses
Sodium hydroxide, lye, used in soap, strong base
Sodium hypochlorite, bleach, disinfectant
Sodium hypophosphite, reducing agent, poisonous
Sodium iodate, oxidizing agent, prevents iodine deficiency
Sodium iodide, a weak reducing agent, prevents iodine deficiency
Sodium manganate, rare green solid
Sodium nitrate, used in blasting powder
Sodium nitrite, used in food preservation
Sodium periodate, oxidizing agent
Sodium permanganate, less common than potassium permanganate, oxidizing agent
Sodium phosphate, various uses
Sodium phosphide, catalyst, used to speed up chemical reactions
Sodium phosphite, toxic, reducing agent
Sodium selenate, strong oxidizing agent, other selenium compounds
Sodium selenide, strong reducing agent, reactive
Sodium selenite, weak oxidizing agent, vitamin supplement
Sodium sulfate, bitter, laxative
Sodium sulfite, a weak reducing agent, used to preserve dried food
Sodium tellurate, strong oxidizing agent
Sodium telluride, a strong reducing agent, reacts with air easily
Sodium tellurite, main tellurite compound
Discovery and name origins 
Sodium was discovered by Sir Humphrey Davy, an English scientist, in 1807. He created it by electrolyzing sodium hydroxide. Davy named the element after soda, a name for sodium hydroxide or sodium carbonate.

Use as element 
Scientists can use it in the creation of organic compounds. People also use it in orange streetlights and lamps that emit ultraviolet light.

Use in compounds 
Sodium compounds are used in soaps, toothpaste, baking, and antacids.

Occurrence and production 
Sodium does not occur as an element in nature, because it is not stable enough. It exists only in chemical compounds. Sodium ions are found in the ocean and in the Earth's crust. 

Sodium is normally made by electrolysis of sodium chloride, which is mined from the Earth's crust.
Use in organisms 
The human body needs sodium ions, taken in the form of sodium chloride, to live, but too much of it can cause health problems. Many organisms in the ocean depend on the concentration of sodium ions in water to survive.

Related pages
 List of common elements
 Hyponatremia (a medical problem caused by not having enough sodium in the body)

References 

Alkali metals
Dice are objects used in games when something random needs to be done, such as moving a game piece a random number of places on a board. Most dice are cubes that have the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 on the faces. Dice are sometimes made in other polyhedral shapes than cubes, but the six-sided die (die is the singular of "dice") is the most common. A die is usually rolled by the player’s hand. When adding together opposite sides of typical cubical dice, the sum is always 7.

Some games are played with two or more dice and some use only one. Some games that use dice are Monopoly, Yahtzee, Risk, and many more.

Weights can be put inside a die to make it only land on a certain number once it is rolled. This is sometimes used as a way of cheating.

Types of dice 

There are many different types of dice. Some dice have different numbers of sides. These are called polyhedral dice. They are used in some games like Dungeons & Dragons.
Some dice do not have numbers on them at all. Instead, they have letters, pictures, or other symbols on them. Some games use these when they need something random that is not a number. For example, some word games use dice with letters to give the players random letters they have to use in the game.

Related pages 
Alea iacta est
In mathematics, a matrix (plural: matrices) is a rectangle of numbers, arranged in rows and columns. The rows are each left-to-right (horizontal) lines, and the columns go top-to-bottom (vertical). The top-left cell is at row 1, column 1 (see diagram at right).

Matrices are often represented by capital roman letters such as ,  and , and there are rules for adding, subtracting and "multiplying" matrices together, but the rules are different than for numbers. As an example, the product  does not always give the same result as , which is the case for the multiplication of ordinary numbers. A matrix can have more than 2 dimensions, such as a 3D matrix. Also, a matrix can be one-dimensional, as a single row or a single column.
Many natural sciences use matrices quite a lot. In many universities, courses about matrices (usually called linear algebra) are taught very early, sometimes even in the first year of studies. Matrices are also very common in computer science, engineering, physics, economics, and statistics.

Definitions and notations 
The horizontal lines in a matrix are called rows. The vertical lines are called columns. A matrix with m rows and n columns is called an m-by-n matrix (or m×n matrix). m and n are called its dimensions. 

The places in the matrix where the numbers are, are called entries. The entry of a matrix called "A" that is in the row number i and column number j is called the i,j entry of A. This is written as A[i,j] or ai,j.

 defines a m × n matrix called A. Each entry in this matrix is called ai,j  when "i" is between 1 and m, and when j is between 1 and n.

Example 
The matrix

is a 4×3 matrix. This matrix has m=4 rows, and n=3 columns.

The element A[2,3] or a2,3 is 7.

Operations
Operations

Addition 
The sum of two matrices is the matrix, which (i,j)-th entry is equal to the sum of the (i,j)-th entries of two matrices:

The two matrices have the same dimensions. Here,  is true (and is true in general for matrices of equal dimensions).

Multiplication of two matrices 
The multiplication of two matrices is a bit more complicated: 

This is an example with numbers:

Sometimes, two matrices can be multiplied with each other even if they have different dimensions. For this, the number of columns in the first matrix has to be equal to the number of rows in the second matrix.
The result of the multiplication is called the product. The product is another matrix. It has the same number of rows as the first matrix and the same number of columns as the second matrix.
The multiplication of matrices is not commutative, which means that in general, .
The multiplication of matrices is associative, which means that .

Special matrices 
There are some matrices that are special.

Square matrix
Square matrix 

A square matrix has the same number of rows as columns, so m=n.

An example of a square matrix is 

This matrix has 3 rows and 3 columns: m=n=3.

Identity 

Every square dimension set of a matrix has a special counterpart called the "identity matrix", represented by the symbol . The identity matrix has nothing but zeroes except on the main diagonal, where there are all ones. For example:

is an identity matrix. There is exactly one identity matrix for each square dimension set. An identity matrix is special because when multiplying any matrix by the identity matrix, the result is always the original matrix with no change.

Inverse matrix 

An inverse matrix is a matrix that, when multiplied by another matrix, equals the identity matrix. For example:

 is the inverse of 
.

The formula for the inverse of a 2x2 matrix,  is:

Where  is the determinant of the matrix. In a 2x2 matrix, the determinant is equal to:
One column matrix 
A matrix, that has many rows, but only one column, is called a column vector.

Determinants 

The determinant takes a square matrix and calculates a simple number, a scalar. To understand what this number means, take each column of the matrix and draw it as a vector. The parallelogram drawn by those vectors has an area, which is the determinant. For all 2x2 matrices, the formula is very simple:

For 3x3 matrices the formula is more complicated:

There are no simple formulas for the determinants of larger matrices, and many computer programmers study how to get computers to quickly find large determinants.
Properties of determinants 
There are three rules that all determinants follow. These are:
 The determinant of an identity matrix is 1
 If two rows or two columns of the matrix are exchanged, then the determinant is multiplied by -1. Mathematicians call this alternating.
 If all the numbers in one row or column are multiplied by another number n, then the determinant is multiplied by n. Also, if a matrix M has a column v that is the sum of two column matrices  and , then the determinant of M is the sum of the determinants of M with  in place of v and M with  in place of v. These two conditions are called multi-linearity.

Related pages 

 Determinant
 Eigenvalues and eigenvectors
Matrix analysis
Matrix function
Numerical linear algebra
 System of linear equations
 Transpose

References

Other websites

 History
MacTutor: Matrices and determinants 
Matrices and Linear Algebra on the Earliest Uses Pages
Earliest Uses of Symbols for Matrices and Vectors

 Online books
 
 
Online Calculus Courses
Hawaiian can be:
The Hawaiian Islands
The Hawaiian language
Native Hawaiians, the Polynesian Hawaiian people (a kanaka ‘oiwi or kanaka māoli)
having to do with the U.S. state of Hawaii
The British Isles are an archipelago (a group of islands) in north-western Europe.  They have a long geographical and geological history. The first people were in Britain by 800,000 years ago (Happisburgh footprints).

The biggest islands are called Great Britain and Ireland, followed by the Isle of Man.  Great Britain, the biggest island, is home to three countries. These are England, Wales and Scotland.  The island of Ireland is divided into Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Great Britain is the biggest island of Europe and Ireland is the third biggest.

England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland join together to make the United Kingdom.

Some people include the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Sark in the term "British Isles", but they are a lot closer to France than to Great Britain.  In politics, they are British islands but in geology they are French islands.
The writings of the Roman cartographer Ptolemy used the name "Great Britain" for the larger island in the 2nd century AD. He used the name "Megale Britannia" or "Great Britain" () to show the difference between this island and Ireland. For Ireland, Ptolemy used the name "Mikra Britannia" or "Little Britain" ().

References
Mandarin Chinese, or simply Mandarin, (; ) is the language of government and education of the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, with the notable exceptions of Hong Kong and Macau where a local dialect of Chinese called Cantonese is more often used.

Mandarin is one of five major regional languages of China. It spreads wider than any other regional variety, from the whole northern part of China to Yunnan Province in the southwest corner of China. In that big area there are many regional differences in vocabulary, so somebody who moves from Beijing to Yunnan could not understand people there who were speaking their own dialect, Yunnanhua. The problem is bigger than for a person in Great Britain or the United States to go to Australia. Therefore, starting in the 1920s, the Chinese government set up a national language based on the Beijing dialect and on the most widely understood words and pronunciations.
Mandarin is a standard language. It is nobody's native language, but a good average between various language forms and a common language everyone can understand and communicate with. Although it is based on the Beijing dialect, it is not the same as Beijing dialect.

Schools use a dialect called Standard Mandarin, Putonghua (普通话/普通話) meaning "common (spoken) language" or Hanyu (汉语/漢語) meaning "language of the Han". In places such as Malaysia, it is known as Huayu (华语/華語). In Taiwan, it is known as Guoyu (国语/國語) meaning "national language." There are some minor differences in these standards.

Mandarin is spoken by over 800 million people around the world, more than any other language. Most people emigrating from the Greater China region now speak Mandarin, while in past centuries most spoke Cantonese or Taishanese, another local Chinese dialect.

Standard Mandarin is one of the six official languages at the United Nations. The others are English, French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic.

Writing
Writing 

Mandarin is written with Chinese characters called Hànzì (漢字 or 汉字) which literally means "Han characters". Each Hànzì has its own pronunciation and meaning. An ordinary dictionary will contain about 10,000 characters.  Spoken Mandarin uses very many compound words, words that combine meanings the way English does in such terms as "machine gun," "fire truck," "playground," etc.

The Hanzi are ideograms: one character means one idea. The various concepts are derived from the ideograms by combining them. Mandarin can also be written phonetically (that is: written as it is spoken) with the Latin alphabet as you really cannot see the spelling from Hanzi characters. That is called transliteration. The most popular transliteration system is called Pinyin.
Some Chinese characters were originally fairly concrete pictures of the things they represent. As time went on, people chose to write simpler versions that are easier to write but do not look so much like the real thing, just as people sometimes draw stick men rather than drawing people with real-looking bodies, arms, legs, etc. Here are some examples:

Most characters, however, are made by combining pictures, using one to give a general meaning, and the other to represent a sound. For instance, "媽 mā" (mom) is made by adding 女 (nǚ, human female) to 馬 (mǎ, horse). The "ma" part is only there to represent the sound.

In most dialects of ancient Chinese, one character was generally enough for one word, but modern spoken Mandarin uses mostly compounds like "媽媽 māma," which is just "mama,"

Other examples show different ways of combining components:

火車 huǒ chē (lit. fire vehicle) locomotive, train
大人 dà rén (lit. big person) adult
打開 dǎ kāi (lit. strike open) open up (door, window, envelope, etc.)
Just as the English used in Great Britain favors "petrol" but the English used in the United States almost always uses "gasoline," different regional languages in China may use different compound words to name the same thing.

In Spoken Mandarin, most words are character compounds because over time Mandarin lost many sounds that existed in earlier forms of Chinese. Due to the loss of sounds, many Chinese words ended up becoming homophones, thus more characters were added to words to tell them apart. For example, the Chinese title of the poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den 施氏食狮史 is pronounced "Shī Shì Shí Shī Shǐ", and every character in the poem is pronounced with the same syllable, but with different tones. In older forms of Chinese, one could have been to tell apart the different characters making up the title, as they could have sounded noticeably different from each other.

Thus, one-character words in Classical Chinese like

became the Mandarin compound words
to clearly distinguish such words from their homophones, otherwise the already mentioned characters could be mistaken for similar sounding characters like

thus making spoken language difficult to understand without the compound words.

Difference between Mandarin (Beijing Accent) and Beijing Dialect 
Mandarin is defined and designed based on Beijing accent. In China, there are over 600,000 dialects and more accents although they all use Chinese language and characters, but their pronunciation and some expressions are totally different. China must find a standard pronunciation to allow all people to understand each other and communicate. Beijing has been the capital city of China for more than 1,000 years, so China defined Beijing Accent as standard Mandarin.
Beijing also has some local dialects that are not included by Mandarin or standard Chinese language yet. But with Beijing being the capital city as well as the political, economic, cultural and education center of China, more and more new Beijing dialects have been or will be accepted as Mandarin or standard Chinese language. The other dialects, such as Shanghainese, Cantonese, Hakka etc., have few opportunities to be included into Mandarin or standard Chinese language or be accepted by the whole of China.

The following samples are some Beijing dialects which are not yet accepted as standard Mandarin. 倍儿: bèi'ér means 'very much'; 拌蒜: bànsuàn means 'stagger'; 不吝: bùlìn means 'do not worry about'; 撮: cuò means 'eat'; 出溜: chūliū means 'slip'; 大老爷儿们儿: dàlǎoyérmenr means 'men, males';
The following samples are some Beijing dialects which have been already accepted as Mandarin in recent years. 二把刀: èrbǎdāo means 'not very skillful'; 哥们儿: gēmenr means 'good male friends'; 抠门儿: kōuménr means 'parsimony'; 打小儿: dǎxiǎo'ér means 'since childhood'

Examples 
 你好 nǐ hǎo －hello
 你好吗？nǐ hǎo ma?－How are you?
 我 wǒ－me, I
 你 nǐ －you
 您 nín －you (Used only when out of respect)

Related pages
 Chinese language
 Standard Chinese (language)

References
References

Other websites 
 General Introduction of  Mandarin Language
Pinyin Annotator  Automatically adds phonetic symbols (pinyin) on top of Chinese characters.
I Love Chinese Learning Chinese Magazine
Free Chinese Character Input Software  Google Pinyin Input Software
Learn Mandarin 11 Free Mandarin learning lessons
Mandarin Pinyin In order to learn standard Chinese, one must learn its phonetic system first.
Yellow Bridge An online resource for students of the Chinese language
Zhongwen Red  Free set of systematic lessons for Mandarin Chinese.
 Mandarin Language -Citizendium

Sino-Tibetan languages
Tonal languages
Algeria ( or ), officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in North Africa, the tenth largest country in the world, and the largest country in Africa. It is part of the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa. 

Algiers is the capital of the country. It has borders with many nations. Algeria borders Tunisia to the northeast, Libya to the east, Niger to the southeast, Mauritania and Mali to the southwest, Western Sahara to the west, and Morocco to the northwest.
History
People have lived in Algeria for thousands of years, which can be seen in the cave paintings at Tassili National Park that date to around 7000 BC. By 600 BC, Phoenicians were in Hippo Regius (now called Annaba), Rusicade (now Skikda), and Tipasa in the central coastal part of the country. The Romans would annex (take over) the region by the conclusion of the Punic Wars in 146BC, with what is now modern-day Algeria staying in Roman hands till the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century and the region being taken over by the Germanic Vandals.
Algeria would become part of the Islamic world when the first Muslim Arabs came to Algeria in the mid-7th century, resulting in many people converting to the new religion of Islam. In the 11th century, the Arab tribes of Banu Hilal and Banu Sulaym were living between Tunisia and eastern Algeria (Constantois). The famous mathematician, Fibonacci (1170—1250) lived in Algeria as a teenager. This is where he learned the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. Algeria was made part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517. Enslavement of black people was practiced there as it was throughout the empire.

In the 1500s and 1700s, the Spanish Empire ruled a lot of Algeria. Spain was expelled from Algeria by the Ottomans. France colonized Algeria starting in 1830. In 1954, the National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale or FLN) wanted freedom from France. They fought a war against France to free Algeria. It became independent from France on July 5, 1962.

In 1963, Ahmed Ben Bella became the first President of Algeria.
The Algerian Civil War began in 1991 and ended in 2002. The government decided to end the state of emergency on February 24, 2011.

Geography
A large part of southern Algeria is the Sahara Desert. The Aures and Nememcha mountain ranges are in the north. The highest point is Mount Tahat (3,003 m).

Languages
The two official languages of Algeria are Arabic and Berber. 

Berber was made an official language in 2002. 

Many Algerians speak French. French is considered the lingua franca of Algeria.

Economy 
In Algeria, the government plays a big role in the economy. They have large stakes in many companies. 

Algeria has a lot of oil and gas reserves.

Population
Algeria's population is about 45 million people. There are over 40 cities with more than 100,000 people.

Islam is the country's main religion. 

Algeria used to have one of the oldest and largest Jewish communities in the world. Jews have been in the country since the first century. Now only 200 Jews live in the country.
Politics
The Parliament of Algeria is made up of two chambers:

The Council of the Nation (Upper Chamber)
The People's National Assembly (Lower Chamber)

Provinces
There are 58 provinces in Algeria. In 2019, the number of provinces was changed from 48 to 58. The provinces are:

 1 Adrar
 2 Chlef
 3 Laghouat
 4 Oum el Bouaghi
 5 Batna
 6 Bejaia
 7 Biskra
 8 Bechar
 9 Blida
 10 Bouira
 11 Tamanghasset
 12 Tebessa
 13 Tlemcen
 14 Tiaret
 15 Tizi Ouzou

 16 Algiers
 17 Djelfa
 18 Jijel
 19 Setif
 20 Saïda
 21 Skikda
 22 Sidi Bel Abbes
 23 Annaba
 24 Guelma
 25 Constantine
 26 Medea
 27 Mostaganem
 28 M'Sila
 29 Mascara
 30 Ouargla

 31 Oran
 32 El Bayadh
 33 Illizi
 34 Bordj Bou Arréridj
 35 Boumerdès
 36 El Tarf
 37 Tindouf
 38 Tissemsilt
 39 El Oued
 40 Khenchela
 41 Souk Ahras
 42 Tipasa
 43 Mila
 44 Ain Defla
 45 Naama
46 Ain Temouchent
 47 Ghardaia
 48 Relizane
 49 El M'Ghair
 50 El Menia
 51 Ouled Djellal
 52 Bordj Baji Mokhtar
 53 Béni Abbès
 54 Timimoun
 55 Touggourt
 56 Djanet
 57 In Salah
 58 In Guezzam

UNESCO World Heritage Sites
There are several UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Algeria including Al Qal'a of Beni Hammad, the first capital of the Hammadid empire; Tipasa, a Phoenician and later Roman town; and Djémila and Timgad, both Roman ruins; M'Zab Valley, a limestone valley containing a large urbanized oasis; also the Casbah of Algiers is an important citadel. The only natural World Heritage Sites is the Tassili n'Ajjer, a mountain range.

References

Notes

Other websites

 
Members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation
1962 establishments in Africa
North African countries
Plymouth () is a city and unitary authority in South West England. It is on the south coast of Devon, about  south-west of Exeter and  south-west of London. Cornwall is to its west and south-west.

Humans in the Plymouth area started in the Bronze Age when a first settlement was made at Mount Batten. This settlement continued as a place for trading for the Roman Empire, until the nearby village of Sutton started in the ninth century was used instead, which is now called Plymouth. In 1588, an English fleet from Plymouth defeated the Spanish Armada. In 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers left Plymouth for the New World and started Plymouth Colony, the second English settlement in what is now Massachusetts, United States. During the English Civil War, the town was held by the Parliamentarians.
Through the Industrial Revolution, Plymouth became a global port, with boats from the United States carrying passengers and goods. The nearby town of Devonport became important to the Royal Navy for its shipyards and dockyards.  In 1914, three towns (the county borough of Plymouth, the County Borough of Devonport, and the urban district of East Stonehouse were merged, becoming the County Borough of Plymouth. In 1928, it became a city.  During World War II, due to the city being important to the navy, the German military destroyed some of the city by bombing, an act known as the Plymouth Blitz.  After the war, the city centre was completely rebuilt.  Plymouth grew and the towns of Plympton, Plymstock became part of it in 1967.
The city has a population of  () people, making it the 30th-most populous built-up area in the United Kingdom and the second-largest city in the South West, after Bristol. It is governed locally by Plymouth City Council and nationally by two MPs. Plymouth's economy is based mostly on ships.  It has ferry links to France (Roscoff and St Malo) and to Spain (Santander). It has the largest working naval base in Western Europe, HMNB Devonport, and also has the University of Plymouth. Plymouth is called a "Small-Port City" using the Southampton System for port-city classification.
History
The Roman Catholic Bishop of Plymouth has his cathedral here. Plymouth was badly affected by German bombing during the Second World War, when many buildings were destroyed. The Plymouth Fathers and the Plymouth Brethren were both named after Plymouth. Plymouth is linked to Saltash in Cornwall by two bridges across the River Tamar: the Royal Albert Bridge (built in 1859) carries the railway line to Penzance and the Tamar Bridge the A38 main road. On Plymouth Hoe is the third lighthouse, which used to stand on the Eddystone Rock in the English Channel.

Sports
It has a football team called Plymouth Argyle and a rugby football team called Plymouth Albion.

References

 
Port cities and towns of England
Plymouth is the name of various places:

Plymouth is an English city in Devon and the first to bear the name

United States
 Plymouth, Connecticut
 Plymouth, Illinois 
 Plymouth, Indiana 
 Plymouth, Iowa
 Plymouth, Massachusetts, the first city in New England 
 Plymouth, Michigan 
 Plymouth, Minnesota 
 Plymouth, New Hampshire 
 Plymouth, New York 
 Plymouth, North Carolina 
 Plymouth, Ohio 
 Plymouth, Pennsylvania 
 Plymouth, Washington
 Plymouth, Wisconsin 
 Plymouth Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania
 Plymouth Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
 Plymouth Township, Michigan
Related pages
 Plymouth, Montserrat - destroyed Montserrat capital
 New Plymouth, New Zealand
 New Plymouth, Idaho, United States
 Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, United States
 Plymouth Argyle F.C. - association football club from Plymouth, England.
 Plymouth (automobile)
 Plymouth Brethren - a religious group
 Plymouth Colony
 Plymouth County
 Plymouth Gin
 Plymouth Locomotive Works
 Plymouth is a made-for-TV movie about a Moon base
George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, at his family’s plantation on Pope’s Creek in Westmoreland County, in the British colony of Virginia, to Augustine Washington (1694-1743) and his second wife, Mary Ball Washington (1708-89). George, the eldest of Augustine and Mary Washington’s six children, spent much of his childhood at Ferry Farm, a plantation near Fredericksburg, Virginia. As a teenager, Washington, who had shown an aptitude for mathematics, became a successful surveyor. His surveying expeditions into the Virginia wilderness earned him enough money to begin acquiring land of his own. In 1751, Washington made his only trip outside of America, when he traveled to Barbados with his older half-brother Lawrence Washington (1718-52), who was suffering from tuberculosis and hoped the warm climate would help him recuperate. Shortly after their arrival, George contracted smallpox. He survived, although the illness left him with permanent facial scars
. In 1752, Lawrence, who had been educated in England and served as Washington’s mentor, died.
Before the Revolutionary War
In December 1752, Washington, who had no previous military experience, was made a commander of the Virginia militia.
He failed and many of his men were killed. The fight opened the French and Indian War, bringing Britain into the Seven Years' War. In 1758 he was elected to the Virginia legislature.
In January 1759, he married Martha Dandridge Custis (Martha Washington) (1731-1802), a wealthy widow with two children.

The Revolution 
Washington proved to be a better general than military strategist. His strength lay not in his genius on the battlefield but in his ability to keep the struggling colonial army together. His troops were poorly trained and lacked food, ammunition and other supplies (soldiers sometimes even went without shoes in winter). However, Washington was able to give them direction and motivation. His leadership during the winter of 1777-1778 at Valley Forge was a testament to his power to inspire his men to keep going.
By the late 1760s, Washington had experienced firsthand the effects of rising taxes imposed on American colonists by the British and came to believe that it was in the best interests of the colonists to declare independence from England.

Washington was a delegate to the First Continental Congress, which was created by the Thirteen Colonies to respond to various laws passed by the British government. The Second Continental Congress chose him to be the commanding general of the Continental Army. Washington led the army from 1775 until the end of the war in 1783. After losing the big Battle of Long Island, and being chased across New Jersey, Washington led his troops back across the Delaware River on Christmas Day, 1776, in a surprise attack on Hessian mercenaries at the small Battle of Princeton and Trenton, New Jersey. The British had more troops and more supplies than Washington, however, Washington kept his troops together and won these small battles.
Overall, Washington did not win many battles, but he never let the British destroy his army. With the help of the French army and navy, Washington made a British army surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, as the final major battle of the Revolutionary War. The war officially ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

After the War
When the Revolutionary War ended, Washington was considered a national hero.  He was offered a government position that would have been considered a dictatorship over the colonies, but in a surprising move, Washington refused, left the army, and returned to Mount Vernon.  He wanted the colonies to have a strong government but did not wish to head that government, nor did he want the colonies to be run by a tyrant.                 .
Washington was one of the men who said the country needed a new constitution.  The Constitutional Convention met in 1787, with Washington presiding.  The delegates wrote the Constitution of the United States, and all the states ratified it and joined the new government.

Presidency
On January 7, 1789, Washington was elected president without any competition, making him the first President of the United States. John Adams (1735-1826), who received the second-largest number of votes, became the nation’s first vice president. The 57-year-old Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789, in New York City. Because Washington, D.C., America’s future capital city wasn’t yet built, he lived in New York and Philadelphia. While Washington did not belong to any political party, he agreed with certain Federalist Party policies, such as the country should have a standing army and a national bank.  While in office, he signed a bill establishing a future, permanent U.S. capital along the Potomac River—the city later named Washington, D.C., in his honor. He was re-elected to a second term.  After his second term, Washington decided not to run for re-election, despite his popularity remaining high.  His decision, to stop at 2 terms, set a precedent that every president followed until Franklin D
. Roosevelt in 1940.
In Washington's farewell address in 1796, he warned the country not to divide into political parties and not to get involved in wars outside of the United States.  Washington's non-intervention foreign policy was supported by most Americans for over one hundred years.  His advice to avoid political parties was completely ignored, as parties were already active.

Retirement 
Washington went back home to Mount Vernon (Virginia) after his second term ended in 1797.

Death 
In December 1799, Washington caught a cold after inspecting his properties in the rain. The cold developed into a throat infection called epiglottitis and Washington died on the night of December 14, 1799, at the age of 67. He was entombed at Mount Vernon, which in 1960 was designated a national historic landmark. Some think that the main cause of his death was bloodletting. This treatment was common at the time. For centuries, It was believed that the best way to extend a person's life or heal them was to "balance the humors"
Wealth 
From his marriage, George Washington owned a large amount of farm land, where he grew tobacco, wheat, and vegetables. Washington also owned more than 100 slaves, who were freed upon his death. He did not have much money in cash and had to borrow money while he was president. At his death, Washington's estate was worth over $500,000.