title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In December 2017, Disney announced plans to purchase 21st Century Fox (21CF) for $52.4 billion. In preparation for integration of 21st Century Fox assets in March 2018, Disney created a new segment named Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer and International, merging two segments and transferring various units to the new segment, including the Janice Marinelli-led Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. On June 28, 2018, DisneyToon Studios was shut down.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: On June 8, 2018, Disney announced Lasseter would be leaving the company by the end of the year, but would take on a consulting role until then. On June 19, 2018, Pete Docter and Jennifer Lee were announced as Lasseter's replacements as chief creative officers of Pixar and Disney Animation, respectively.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In December 2018, the studio surpassed $7 billion in global box office for the calendar year. It was the second time in history that any studio had surpassed the $7 billion mark, after Disney's own industry-record global gross of $7.6 billion in 2016.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: Following the acquisition of 21st Century Fox, Disney announced that the film divisions of Fox Entertainment Group (including 20th Century Fox, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Fox 2000 Pictures, 20th Century Fox Animation, Blue Sky Studios, and Fox Family) would be folded into the Walt Disney Studios. Fox's filmed entertainment CEO Stacey Snider exited following the acquisition. Fox executives Emma Watts, Nancy Utley and Stephen Gilula joined the Walt Disney Company on March 20, 2019. On March 21, 2019, Disney announced that the Fox 2000 label would be shut down by the end of the year after releasing its films in production. 20th Century Fox Animation was also repositioned to directly report to chairman Horn. 20th Century Fox and its related studios will keep their headquarters on their studio lot in Century City, thanks to a seven-year lease from the Fox Corporation.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: On May 1, 2019, president Alan Bergman was promoted to co-chairman. Horn added the new title of the studio's chief creative officer.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: Disney announced a round of layoffs for the studio, mostly from 20th Century Fox, in the production and visual effects departments. They also announced on July 31, 2019, that the Fox Research Library will be folded into the Walt Disney Archives and the Imagineering Research Library by January 2020. The studio announced a 10-year lease of most of the Pinewood Studios near London from the Pinewood Group in September 2019 to start in 2020.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In August 2019, Disney became the first studio to have five films to gross over $1 billion at the worldwide box office in a single year. Walt Disney Studios became the first major studio to reach $10 billion at the global box office in December 2019, breaking their previous record in 2016. The studio ended 2019 eventually earning $13.2 billion in worldwide box office. Disney achieved this on the strength of "", "The Lion King", "Captain Marvel", "Toy Story 4", "Aladdin", "Frozen II" and "" all earning over $1 billion.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: On January 17, 2020, Disney announced it would drop the “Fox” name from the studio's 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures branding. The two studios were renamed as 20th Century Studios and Searchlight Pictures, respectively. Similar to other Disney film units, films produced under the 20th Century Studios banner are distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Searchlight Pictures continues to operate their autonomous distribution unit.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In December 2020, it was announced that effective January 1, 2021, Bergman would become chairman, Disney Studios Content, overseeing creative, production, marketing, and operations for it, while Horn would remain as the studios' Chief Creative Officer, focusing solely on Disney's creative pipeline, and working in conjunction with Bergman on the studio's creative plans.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: On February 9, 2021, Disney announced that Blue Sky Studios would be closed effective April 2021, due in part to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic's continued economic impact on the company's businesses; it was no longer sustainable for Disney to run a third feature animation studio. The studio's film library and intellectual properties would still be retained by Disney.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: Walt Disney Pictures is the namesake studio that encompasses the release of its own live-action productions, in addition to films produced by the company's animation studios, mainly Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios. Marvel Studios—acquired through Disney's purchase of Marvel Entertainment in 2009—produces superhero films based on Marvel Comics characters, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise. Lucasfilm—acquired by Disney in 2012—develops and produces films, including those in the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" franchises. 20th Century Studios and Searchlight Pictures—acquired by Disney in 2019 and together former members of the "Big Six" studios—produce a varied slate of mainstream films, with the latter focusing on specialty prestige films. 20th Century also releases films produced by the animated film unit of 20th Century Animation. Disneynature is an independent film label devoted to producing nature documentary films.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: Disney Theatrical Group is the division producing live theatrical and stage events. It is currently under the leadership of Thomas Schumacher. The Disney Theatrical Productions division has been responsible for the production of many different musicals, touring events, ice shows and other live theatrical events. Their shows include: "Beauty and the Beast", "The Lion King", "Aida", "Tarzan", "Mary Poppins", "Newsies" and numerous incarnations of Disney on Ice.


title: Walt Disney Studios (division)

text: In its history, Disney has created or acquired other film banners that have since been closed, divested, or retired.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Sripathi Panditaradhyula Balasubrahmanyam (4 June 1946 – 25 September 2020), also referred to as SPB or SP Balu or Balu, was an Indian playback singer, television presenter, actor, music composer, dubbing artist, and film producer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Indian singers of all time. He predominently worked in Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, and Hindi films and sang in a total of 16 languages.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam debuted as a playback singer on 15 December 1966 with the Telugu film "Sri Sri Sri Maryada Ramanna" scored by his mentor, S. P. Kodandapani"." In career spanning over five decades, he has won six National Film Awards for Best Male Playback Singer for his works in four different languages – Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Hindi; 25 Andhra Pradesh state Nandi Awards for his work in Telugu cinema; and numerous other state awards from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu governments. In addition, he won six Filmfare Awards South and a Filmfare Award. According to some sources, he held the Guinness World Record for recording the highest number of songs by a singer with over 40,000 songs in 16 languages. On 8 February 1981, he created a record by recording 21 songs in Kannada from 9 am to 9 pm. In addition, he recorded 19 songs in Tamil, and 16 songs in Hindi in a day, which has also been called a record.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: In 2012, he received the state NTR National Award for his contributions to Indian cinema. In 2015, he received the Harivarasanam Award from the Government of Kerala. In 2016, he was honoured with the Indian Film Personality of the Year award at the 47th International Film Festival of India. He was a recipient of the Padma Shri (2001), Padma Bhushan (2011), and Padma Vibhushan (posthumously) (2021) from the Government of India.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: On 25 September 2020, S. P. Balasubrahmanyam died in Chennai after being hospitalized for over a month for complications due to COVID-19.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Balasubrahmanyam was born in Nellore, in present-day Andhra Pradesh into a Telugu Brahmin family. His father, S. P. Sambamurthy, was a Harikatha artist who also acted in plays. His mother was Sakunthalamma, who died on 4 February 2019. He had two brothers and five sisters, including singer S. P. Sailaja. His son S. P. Charan is also a popular South Indian singer, actor and producer.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Balasubrahmanyam developed an interest in music at an early age, studied musical notations and learned music. He enrolled at the JNTU College of Engineering Anantapur with the intention of becoming an engineer. He often said that, at the time his only dream was to fulfil his father's ambition and become an engineer and get a government job.""


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Balasubrahmanyam continued to pursue music during his engineering studies and won awards at singing competitions. He discontinued his studies early due to typhoid and joined as an associate member of the Institution of Engineers, Chennai. In 1964, he won the first prize in a music competition for amateur singers organized by the Madras-based Telugu Cultural Organization.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: He was the leader of a light music troupe composed of Anirutta (on the harmonium), Ilaiyaraaja (on guitar and later on harmonium), Baskar (on percussion) and Gangai Amaran (on guitar). He was selected as the best singer in a singing competition which was judged by S. P. Kodandapani and Ghantasala. Often visiting music composers seeking opportunities, his first audition song was "Nilave Ennidam Nerungadhe". It was rendered by veteran playback singer P. B. Sreenivas, who used to write and give him multi-lingual verses in Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Sanskrit, English and Urdu.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Balasubrahmanyam debuted as a playback singer on 15 December 1966 with the song 'Emiyee Vinta Moham' for "Sri Sri Sri Maryada Ramanna", a Telugu film scored by his mentor, S. P. Kodandapani. The first non-Telugu song that he recorded just eight days after his debut Telugu song was in Kannada in 1966 for the film "Nakkare Ade Swarga", starring Kannada comedy stalwart T. R. Narasimharaju. He recorded his first Tamil song "Athaanodu Ippadi Irundhu Eththanai Naalaachu", a duet with L. R. Eswari under the musical direction of M. S. Viswanathan for the film "Hotel Ramba", which never released. The song "Medante Meda Kaadu" from the film "Sukha Dukhalu" (1968) composed by Kondandapani brought him recognition in Telugu cinema.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Other early songs he sang were duets with P. Susheela, "Iyarkai Ennum Ilaya Kanni" in the 1969 film "Shanti Nilayam", starring Gemini Ganesh, and "Aayiram Nilavae Vaa" for M. G. Ramachandran in "Adimaippenn". His first song with S. Janaki was "Pournami Nilavil Pani Vizhum Iravil" in Kannippenn. He was then introduced to the Malayalam film industry by G. Devarajan in the film "Kadalppalam". As per Balasubrahmanyam, "Ye Divilo Virisina Parijathamo" from the 1973 Telugu film "" composed by Satyam gave an amazing turning point to his singing career.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Balasubrahmanyam had the distinction of rendering the most songs on a single day by any singer. He had recorded 21 songs in Kannada for the composer Upendra Kumar in Bangalore from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm on 8 February 1981 and 19 songs in Tamil, 16 songs in Hindi in a day. In his words, "There were days when I used to record 15–20 songs, but only for Anand Milind. And I would take the last flight back to Chennai." In the 1970s, he also worked with M. S. Viswanathan in Tamil movies for actors such as M. G. Ramachandran, Sivaji Ganesan and Gemini Ganesan. He recorded duets with P. Susheela, S. Janaki, Vani Jayaram and L. R. Eswari. Balasubrahmanyam's association with Ilaiyaraaja began even before Ilaiyaraaja came to the cine field. In the early days, he used to sing in towns and villages all over south India and Ilaiyaraaja, then an unknown harmonium and guitar player accompanied him in his concerts.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Balasubrahmanyam came to international prominence with the 1980 film "Sankarabharanam". The film is considered to be one of the best films ever to emerge from the Telugu film industry. Directed by K. Viswanath, the film's soundtrack was composed by K. V. Mahadevan and led to an increase in the usage of Carnatic music in Telugu cinema as well as in other languages. Not a classically trained singer, he used a "film music" aesthetic in recording the songs. Balasubrahmanyam received his first National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer for his work. His first work in Hindi films was in the following year, in "Ek Duuje Ke Liye" (1981), for which he received another National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Balasubrahmanyam began to record more songs in Telugu and other South Indian languages, especially for Ilaiyaraaja with S. Janaki, the trio considered to be highly successful in the Tamil film industry from the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. The songs were based on classical music, such as in "Saagara Sangamam" (1983) and "Rudraveena" (1988), for which both Ilaiyaraaja and Balasubrahmanyam won National Awards for Best Music Director and Best Male Playback Singer respectively. South Indian actor Chiranjeevi admits that <nowiki>SPB</nowiki> voice is one of the main reasons of his success.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: In 1989, Balasubrahmanyam was the playback singer for actor Salman Khan in the blockbuster "Maine Pyar Kiya". The soundtrack for the film was very successful and he won a Filmfare Award for Best Male Playback Singer for the song "Dil Deewana". For much of the next decade, Balasubrahmanyam continued as the "romantic singing voice" on the soundtracks of Khan's films. Notable among these was "Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!" which became the highest-grossing Hindi film of all time. Balasubrahmanyam's duet with Lata Mangeshkar, "Didi Tera Devar Deewana", was very popular. This solidified Balasubrahmanyam as one of the biggest playback singers in India. SP Balasubrahmanyam became identified as Salman Khan's voice in the 90s just like Kishore Kumar became Rajesh Khanna's voice through the 70s.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: In the 1990s, he worked with composers such as Vidyasagar, M. M. Keeravani, Hamsalekha, S. A. Rajkumar and Deva among others, but his association with A.R.Rahman turned out be a major success.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Balasubrahmanyam recorded three songs for A. R. Rahman in the latter's debut film "Roja". He had a long-time association with Rahman right from "Roja". Other popular songs include "July Maadham" from "Pudhiya Mugam", which also marked the debut of singer Anupama, "Mannoothu Manthayilae" from "Kizhakku Cheemayile" which was a folk number and he almost sang all songs in the musical love story "Duet" and "Thanga Thaamarai" from "Minsara Kanavu" which fetched him, the sixth and latest of his National Film Awards for Best Male Playback Singer to date.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Balasubrahmanyam's association with Hamsalekha began after the latter's successful venture "Premaloka" in Kannada. Balasubrahmanyam sang the most songs for Hamsalekha in Kannada. He received his fourth National Film Award for Best Male Playback Singer for the song "Umandu Ghumandu" from the Kannada film "Ganayogi Panchakshari Gavayi" (1995), which was a Hindustani classical music-based composition by Hamsalekha.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: In 2013, Balasubrahmanyam recorded the title song for "Chennai Express", singing for the lead actor Shah Rukh Khan, under the music direction of Vishal–Shekhar, breaking his 15-year hiatus from Hindi cinema music.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: SPB is the only singer having a long spanning career of 54 years having at least two songs to record per day, even in his last days.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: In May 2020, SPB crooned a song on humanity titled "Bharath Bhoomi" which was composed by Ilaiyaraaja as a tribute to the people such as police, doctors, nurses and janitors who have been significantly working amid COVID-19 pandemic. The video song was officially unveiled by Ilaiyaraaja through his official YouTube account on 30 May 2020 in both Tamil and Hindi languages.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Balasubrahmanyam accidentally became a dubbing artist with K. Balachander's film "Manmadha Leela" (1976), the dubbed Telugu version of "Manmadha Leelai", providing voice-over for Kamal Haasan. He has also provided voice-overs for various artists, including Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth, Vishnuvardhan, Salman Khan, K. Bhagyaraj, Mohan, Anil Kapoor, Girish Karnad, Gemini Ganesan, Arjun Sarja, Nagesh, Karthik and Raghuvaran in various languages. He was assigned as the default dubbing artist for Kamal Haasan in Telugu-dubbed versions of Tamil films. For the Telugu version of "Dasavathaaram", he gave voice to seven characters (including the female character) out of ten characters played by Kamal Haasan. He was awarded the Nandi Award for Best Male Dubbing Artist for the films "Annamayya" and "Sri Sai Mahima". He dubbed for Nandamuri Balakrishna for the Tamil version of the movie "Sri Rama Rajyam" in 2012. He also dubbed for Ben Kingsley in the Telugu-dubbed version of "Gandhi".


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Balasubrahmanyam hosted and judged Telugu musical reality TV show "Padutha Theeyaga", which marked his television debut. Starting from 1996, the show is credited for unearthing singing talents from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Singers like Usha, Kousalya, Gopika Poornima, Mallikarjun, Hemachandra, N. C. Karunya, Smita etc., have debuted in the show. He also hosted and judged Kannada musical reality TV show "Ede Thumbi Haaduvenu". Balasubrahmanyam also appeared in other shows such as "Paadalani Undi, Endaro Mahanubahvulu" and "Swarabhishekam."


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Balasubrahmanyam was married in 1969 to Savithri and has two children, a daughter Pallavi, and a son S. P. Charan, also a playback singer and film producer.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Balasubrahmanyam considered S. P. Kodandapani, who gave him his first singing offer and mentored him in his early career, to be his guru. He would reminisce about him throughout his life and would often pay tributes to him. He named his recording theatre after him. He also named his film production company after him as 'Sri Kodandapani Film Circuits'.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: On 5 August 2020, Balasubrahmanyam tested positive for COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic in India and was admitted to MGM Healthcare in Chennai. Subsequently, his health deteriorated and he was shifted to the intensive care unit in a critical state. He required a ventilator and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) support. It is stated that it was due to his age (74 years) and multiple comorbidities he had (like diabetes) that his condition worsened. His son Charan provided periodic updates over social media, while members of the Tamil film industry engaged in a mass prayer via Zoom on 20 August and candlelight vigils were held by fans outside the hospital. Similarly many actors of Telugu film industry urged people to pray for his life, many Tollywood music composers also organised virtual mass prayers. Members of the Kannada film industry got together for another mass prayer on 4 September 2020 in Bengaluru. On 7 September 2020, Balasubrahmanyam tested negative for the coronavirus, although he remained using a ventilator and ECMO. He started showing signs of recovery, including light speech and physical activities. However, the hospital released a statement on 24 September stating that he became "extremely critical" and was on "maximal life support".


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Balasubrahmanyam died on 25 September 2020 at 1:04 pm (IST) of cardio-respiratory arrest after over a month-long hospitalisation. He was buried at his farm house in Thamaraipaakkam, Thiruvallur district with state honours on 26 September 2020.


title: S. P. Balasubrahmanyam

text: Throughout his career, Balasubrahmanyam has won awards not only for playback singing, but also for music direction, acting, dubbing and producing.


title: Mark McGwire

text: Mark David McGwire (born October 1, 1963), nicknamed "Big Mac", is an American former professional baseball first baseman who played 16 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1986 to 2001 for the Oakland Athletics and the St. Louis Cardinals. He won two World Series championships, one with Oakland as a player in 1989 and one with St. Louis as a coach in 2011. One of the most prolific home run hitters in baseball history, McGwire hit 583 home runs during his career, which ranked 5th-most in MLB history at the time of his retirement and currently ranks 11th. He holds the major-league career record for at bats per home run ratio (10.6), and is the former record holder for both home runs in a single season (70 in 1998) and home runs hit by a rookie (49 in 1987).


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire led the major leagues in home runs in five different seasons, and set the major-league record for home runs hit in a four-season period from 1996 to 1999 with 245. He demonstrated exemplary patience as a batter, producing a career .394 on-base percentage (OBP) and twice leading the major leagues in bases on balls. McGwire also led the league in runs batted in once, on-base percentage twice, and slugging percentage four times. Injuries cut short even greater potential, as he reached 140 games played in just eight of 16 total seasons. Injuries particularly cut into his playing time in 2000 and 2001 and factored into his decision to retire. A right-handed batter and thrower, McGwire stood tall and weighed during his playing career.


title: Mark McGwire

text: With the Cardinals in 1998, McGwire joined Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa in a chase for the single-season home-run record set by Roger Maris in 1961. McGwire surpassed Maris and finished with 70 home runs, a record that Barry Bonds would break three years later with 73.


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire was one of several central figures in baseball's steroids scandal. In 2010, McGwire publicly admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs during a large portion of his career.


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire was born in the Los Angeles suburb of Pomona, California. His father was a dentist. He attended Damien High School in La Verne, California, where he played baseball, golf, and basketball. He was drafted in the 8th round by the Montreal Expos in the 1981 amateur draft but did not sign. He played college baseball at the University of Southern California (where he was a teammate of Randy Johnson, Jack Del Rio and Rodney Peete) under coach Rod Dedeaux.


title: Mark McGwire

text: He was a member of the silver medal-winning entry of the United States national team that same year at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, with Japan finishing ahead for gold medal.


title: Mark McGwire

text: After three years at USC and a stint on the 1984 U.S. Olympic team, McGwire was drafted tenth overall in the 1984 Major League Baseball draft by the Oakland Athletics.


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire debuted in the major leagues in August 1986, hitting three home runs and nine runs batted in in 18 games.


title: Mark McGwire

text: Retaining his rookie status in 1987, McGwire took center stage in baseball with his home-run hitting. He hit just four in the month of April, but followed in May with 15 and another nine in June. Before the All-Star break arrived, he had totaled 33 home runs and earned a spot on the American League All-Star team. On August 11, he broke Al Rosen's AL rookie record of 37 home runs. Three days later, McGwire broke the major-league record of 38, which Frank Robinson and Wally Berger had jointly held. In September, McGwire hit nine more home runs while posting monthly personal bests of a .351 batting average, .419 on-base percentage (OBP) and 11 doubles (2B). With 49 home runs and two games remaining in the regular season for him to reach 50 home runs, he missed the games in order to attend the birth of his first child. McGwire also totaled 118 runs batted in, a .289 batting average, 97 runs scored, 28 doubles, a .618 slugging percentage and a .370 on-base percentage (OBP). McGwire's 49 home runs as a rookie stood as a major league record until Aaron Judge hit 52 for the New York Yankees in 2017.


title: Mark McGwire

text: Not only did McGwire lead the AL in home runs in 1987, but he also tied for the major-league lead with Chicago Cubs right fielder Andre Dawson. McGwire also led the major leagues in slugging, finished second in the AL in adjusted on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS+, 164) and total bases (344) and placed third in RBI and on-base plus slugging (OPS, .987). He was unanimously chosen as the AL Rookie of the Year Award and finished sixth overall in the AL Most Valuable Player Award voting.


title: Mark McGwire

text: From 1988 to 1990, McGwire followed with 32, 33, and 39 home runs, respectively, becoming the first Major Leaguer to hit 30+ home runs in each of his first four full seasons. On July 3 and 4, 1988, he hit game-winning home runs in the 16th inning of both games. Through May 2009, McGwire was tied for third all-time with Joe DiMaggio in home runs over his first two calendar years in the major leagues (71), behind Chuck Klein (83) and Ryan Braun (79).


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire's most famous home run with the A's was likely his game-winning solo shot in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 3 of the 1988 World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers and former A's closer Jay Howell. McGwire's game-winner brought the A's their only victory in the 1988 World Series, which they lost in five games; however, McGwire and his fellow Bash Brother, José Canseco, played a large part in the 1989 championship club that defeated the San Francisco Giants in the famous "Earthquake Series."


title: Mark McGwire

text: Working diligently on his defense at first base, McGwire bristled at the notion that he was a one-dimensional player. He was generally regarded as a good fielder in his early years, even winning a Gold Glove Award in 1990, the only one that the Yankees' Don Mattingly would not win between 1985 and 1994. In later years, his mobility decreased along with his defensive ability. His batting averages after his rookie season plummeted to .260, .231, and .235 from 1988 to 1990. In 1991, he bottomed out with a .201 average and 22 homers. Manager Tony La Russa sat him for the final game of the season to avoid causing his batting average to dip below .200. Despite the declining averages during this time of his career, McGwire's high base-on-balls totals allowed him to maintain an acceptable on-base percentage. In fact, when he hit .201, his OPS+ was 103, just over the league average.


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire stated in an interview with "Sports Illustrated" that 1991 was the "worst year" of his life, with his on-field performance and marriage difficulties, and that he "didn't lift a weight" that entire season. With all that behind him, McGwire rededicated himself to working out harder than ever and received visual therapy from a sports vision specialist.


title: Mark McGwire

text: The "new look" McGwire hit 42 homers and batted .268 in 1992, with an outstanding OPS+ of 175 (the highest of his career to that point), and put on a victorious home-run-hitting show at the Home Run Derby during the 1992 All-Star break. His performance propelled the A's to the American League West Division title in 1992, their fourth in five seasons. The A's lost in the playoffs to the eventual World Series champion Toronto Blue Jays.


title: Mark McGwire

text: Foot injuries limited McGwire to a total of 74 games in 1993 and 1994, and just nine home runs in each of the two seasons. He played just 104 games in 1995, but his proportional totals were much improved, as he hit 39 home runs in 317 at-bats. In 1996, McGwire belted a major-league-leading 52 homers in 423 at-bats. He also hit for a career-high .312 average and led the league in both slugging and on-base percentage.


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire's total of 363 home runs with the Athletics surpassed the previous franchise record. He was selected or voted to nine American League All-Star teams while playing for the A's, including six consecutive appearances from 1987 through 1992. On April 21, 1997, McGwire became the fourth and final player to hit a home run over the left-field roof of Detroit's Tiger Stadium, joining Harmon Killebrew, Frank Howard and Cecil Fielder. The blast was estimated to have traveled 491 feet.


title: Mark McGwire

text: On July 31, having already amassed 34 home runs in the 1997 season, McGwire was traded from the Oakland Athletics to the St. Louis Cardinals for T. J. Mathews, Eric Ludwick and Blake Stein. Despite playing just two-thirds of the season in the American League, he finished ninth in home runs. In 51 games with the Cardinals to finish the 1997 season, McGwire compiled a .253 batting average, 24 home runs, and 42 RBI. Overall in 1997, McGwire led the majors with 58 home runs. He also finished third in the major leagues in slugging percentage (.646), fourth in OPS (1.039), fifth in OPS+ (170), tenth in RBI (123), and ninth in walks (101). He placed 16th in the NL MVP voting.


title: Mark McGwire

text: It was the last year of his contract, so there was speculation that McGwire would play for the Cardinals only for the remainder of the season, then seek a long-term deal, possibly in Southern California, where he still lived; however, McGwire signed a contract to stay in St. Louis. It is also believed that McGwire later encouraged Jim Edmonds, another Southern California resident who was traded to St. Louis, to forgo free agency and sign a contract with the Cardinals in 2000.


title: Mark McGwire

text: As the 1998 season progressed, it became clear that McGwire, Seattle Mariners outfielder Ken Griffey Jr., and Chicago Cubs outfielder Sammy Sosa were all on track to break Roger Maris's single-season home run record. The race to break the record first attracted media attention as the home-run leader changed often throughout the season. On August 19, Sosa hit his 48th home run to move ahead of McGwire; however, later that day McGwire hit his 48th and 49th home runs to regain the lead.


title: Mark McGwire

text: On September 8, 1998, McGwire hit a pitch by the Cubs' Steve Trachsel over the left-field wall for his record-breaking 62nd home run, setting off massive celebrations at Busch Stadium. The fact that the game was against the Cubs meant that Sosa was able to congratulate McGwire personally on his achievement. Members of Maris's family were also present at the game. The ball was given to McGwire in a ceremony on the field by the stadium worker who found it.


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire finished the 1998 season with 70 home runs (including five in his last three games), four ahead of Sosa's 66, a record that was broken three seasons later in 2001 by Barry Bonds with 73.


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire was honored with the inaugural Babe Ruth Home Run Award for leading Major League Baseball in home runs. Although McGwire had the prestige of the home-run record, Sammy Sosa (who had fewer home runs but more RBI and stolen bases) won the 1998 NL MVP award, as his contributions helped propel the Cubs to the playoffs (the Cardinals finished third in the NL Central). Many credited the Sosa-McGwire home run chase in 1998 with "saving baseball" by attracting new, younger fans and bringing back old fans soured by the 1994–95 Major League Baseball strike.


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire kept his high level of offensive production from 1998 going in 1999 while setting or extending several significant records. For the fourth consecutive season, he led MLB in home runs with 65. It was also his fourth consecutive season with at least 50 home runs, extending his own major league record. Sosa, who hit 63 home runs in 1999, again trailed McGwire. Thus, they became the first, and still only, players in major league history to hit 60 or more home runs in consecutive seasons. McGwire also set a record from 1998 to 1999 for home runs in a two-season period with 135. He also owned the highest four-season home-run total, with 245 from 1996 to 1999. In 1999, he drove in an NL-leading 147 runs while only having 145 hits, the highest RBI-per-hit tally for a season in baseball history.


title: Mark McGwire

text: In 2000 and 2001, McGwire's statistics declined relative to previous years as he struggled to avoid injury, hitting 32 home runs in 89 games in 2000 and 29 in 97 games in 2001. He retired after the 2001 season.


title: Mark McGwire

text: After his playing career ended, McGwire demonstrated coaching ability, personally assisting players such as Matt Holliday, Bobby Crosby and Skip Schumaker before accepting an official role as hitting coach with an MLB team. On October 26, 2009, Cardinals manager Tony La Russa confirmed that McGwire would become the club's fifth hitting coach of La Russa's tenure with the Cardinals, replacing Hal McRae. McGwire received a standing ovation prior to the Cardinals' home opener on April 12, 2010. In his three seasons as Cardinals hitting coach, the team's prolific offense led the National League in batting and on-base percentage, and the team finished second in runs scored.


title: Mark McGwire

text: In early November 2012, McGwire rejected a contract extension to return as Cardinals hitting coach for the 2013 season. Instead, he accepted an offer for the same position with the Los Angeles Dodgers in order to be closer to his wife and five children.


title: Mark McGwire

text: On June 11, 2013, McGwire was ejected for the first time as a coach during a bench-clearing brawl with the Arizona Diamondbacks. He was suspended for two games starting the next day.


title: Mark McGwire

text: On December 2, 2015, he was named bench coach for the San Diego Padres. He left the team after the 2018 season.


title: Mark McGwire

text: Known as one of the top sluggers of his era, McGwire ended his career with 583 home runs, which was fifth-most in history when he retired. When he hit his 500th career home run in 1999, he did so in 5,487 career at-bats, the fewest in major league history. He led all of MLB in home runs in five different seasons: 1987 and each season from 1996 to 1999. His total of 245 home runs from 1996 to 1999 is the highest four-season home-run output in major league history. In each of those four seasons, he exceeded 50 home runs, becoming the first player to do so. He was also the first player to hit 49 or more home runs five times, including his rookie-season record of 49 in 1987. With a career average of one home every 10.61 at-bats, he holds the MLB record for most home runs per at-bat, leading second-place Babe Ruth by more than a full at-bat (11.76).


title: Mark McGwire

text: As of 2015, McGwire owned three of the four lowest single-season AB/HR ratios in MLB history, which covered his 1996, 1998 and 1999 seasons; they were actually the top three seasons in MLB history until Bonds broke his single-season home-run record in 2001. McGwire's 1997 season ranked 13th. Considered one of the slowest runners in the game, McGwire had the fewest career triples (six) of any player with 5,000 or more at-bats, and had just 12 stolen bases while being caught stealing eight times.


title: Mark McGwire

text: In a 1999 list of the 100 greatest baseball players, "The Sporting News" ranked McGwire at number 91. The list had been compiled during the 1998 season and included statistics through the 1997 season. That year, he was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. In 2005, "The Sporting News" published an update of its list with McGwire at number 84.


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire first became eligible for Hall of Fame voting in 2007. For election, a player needs to be listed on 75% of ballots cast; falling under 5% removes a player from future consideration. Between 2007 and 2010, McGwire's performance held steady, receiving 128 votes (23.5%) in 2007, 128 votes (23.6%) in 2008, 118 votes (21.9%) in 2009, and 128 votes (23.7%) in 2010. The 2011 ballot resulted in his first sub-20% total of 115 votes (19.8%), and McGwire's total votes continued to decline (112 votes (19.5%) in 2012, 96 votes (16.9%) in 2013, 63 votes (11.0%) in 2014 and 55 votes (10.0%) in 2015) until he was eliminated after receiving only 54 votes (12.3%) in 2016.


title: Mark McGwire

text: A five-mile stretch of Interstate 70 in Missouri in St. Louis and near Busch Stadium was named Mark McGwire Highway to honor his 70-home-run achievement, along with his various good works for the city. In May 2010, St. Louis politicians succeeded in passing a state bill to change the name to Mark Twain Highway.


title: Mark McGwire

text: In 16 seasons playing major league baseball (1986–2001), McGwire accumulated the following career totals:


title: Mark McGwire

text: In a 1998 article by Associated Press writer Steve Wilstein, McGwire admitted to taking androstenedione, an over-the-counter muscle enhancement product that had already been banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, the NFL, and the IOC; however, use of the substance was not prohibited by Major League Baseball at the time, and it was not federally classified as an anabolic steroid in the United States until 2004.


title: Mark McGwire

text: Jose Canseco released a book, "", in 2005. In it, he wrote positively about steroids and made various claims—among them, that McGwire had used performance-enhancing drugs since the 1980s and that Canseco had personally injected him with them.


title: Mark McGwire

text: In 2005, McGwire and Canseco were among 11 baseball players and executives subpoenaed to testify at a congressional hearing on steroids. During his testimony on March 17, 2005, McGwire declined to answer questions under oath when he appeared before the House Government Reform Committee. In a tearful opening statement, McGwire said:


title: Mark McGwire

text: On January 11, 2010, McGwire admitted to using steroids on and off for a decade and said, "I wish I had never touched steroids. It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era." He admitted using them in the 1989/90 offseason and then after he was injured in 1993. He admitted using them on occasion throughout the 1990s, including during the 1998 season. McGwire said that he used steroids to recover from injuries.


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire's decision to admit using steroids was prompted by his decision to become hitting coach of the St. Louis Cardinals. According to McGwire, he took steroids for health reasons rather than to improve performance.


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire's brother Dan McGwire was a quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks and Miami Dolphins of the NFL in the early 1990s, and was a first-round draft choice out of San Diego State University. He has another brother, Jay McGwire, a bodybuilder, who wrote a book in 2010 detailing their shared steroid use.


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire married Stephanie Slemer—a former pharmaceutical sales representative from the St. Louis area—in Las Vegas on April 20, 2002. On June 1, 2010, their triplet girls were born: Monet Rose, Marlo Rose, and Monroe Rose. They join brothers Max and Mason. Mason was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the eighth round of the 2022 MLB draft. They reside in a gated community in Shady Canyon, Irvine, California. Together they created the Mark McGwire Foundation for Children to support agencies that help children who have been sexually and physically abused come to terms with a difficult childhood. Mark has a son, Matthew (b. 1987), from a previous marriage (1984–1990, divorced) to Kathleen Hughes.


title: Mark McGwire

text: Prior to admitting to using steroids, McGwire avoided the media and spent much of his free time playing golf. He also worked as a hitting coach for Major League players Matt Holliday, Bobby Crosby, Chris Duncan and Skip Schumaker.


title: Mark McGwire

text: McGwire provided his voice for a 1999 episode of "The Simpsons" titled "Brother's Little Helper", where he played himself.


title: Austronesian languages

text: The Austronesian languages () are a language family widely spoken throughout Maritime Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan (by Taiwanese indigenous peoples). There are also a number of speakers in continental Asia. They are spoken by about 386 million people (4.9% of the world population). This makes it the fifth-largest language family by number of speakers. Major Austronesian languages include Malay (around 250–270 million in Indonesia alone in its own literary standard named "Indonesian"), Javanese, Sundanese, and Tagalog (Filipino). According to some estimates, the family contains 1,257 languages, which is the second most of any language family.


title: Austronesian languages

text: In 1706, the Dutch scholar Adriaan Reland first observed similarities between the languages spoken in the Malay Archipelago and by peoples on islands in the Pacific Ocean. In the 19th century, researchers (e.g. Wilhelm von Humboldt, Herman van der Tuuk) started to apply the comparative method to the Austronesian languages. The first extensive study on the history of the phonology was made by the German linguist Otto Dempwolff. It included a reconstruction of the Proto-Austronesian lexicon. The term Austronesian was coined by Wilhelm Schmidt. The word is derived from the German "austronesisch", which is based on Latin "auster" "south" and Greek "νῆσος" ( "island").


title: Austronesian languages

text: Most Austronesian languages are spoken by island dwellers. Only a few languages, such as Malay and the Chamic languages, are indigenous to mainland Asia. Many Austronesian languages have very few speakers, but the major Austronesian languages are spoken by tens of millions of people. For example, Indonesian is spoken by 199 million people. This makes it the eleventh most-spoken language in the world. Approximately twenty Austronesian languages are official in their respective countries (see the list of major and official Austronesian languages).


title: Austronesian languages

text: By the number of languages they include, Austronesian and Niger–Congo are the two largest language families in the world. They each contain roughly one-fifth of the world's languages. The geographical span of Austronesian was the largest of any language family before the spread of Indo-European in the colonial period. It ranged from Madagascar off the southeastern coast of Africa to Easter Island in the eastern Pacific. Hawaiian, Rapa Nui, Māori, and Malagasy (spoken on Madagascar) are the geographic outliers.


title: Austronesian languages

text: According to Robert Blust (1999), Austronesian is divided into several primary branches, all but one of which are found exclusively in Taiwan. The Formosan languages of Taiwan are grouped into as many as nine first-order subgroups of Austronesian. All Austronesian languages spoken outside Taiwan (including its offshore Yami language) belong to the Malayo-Polynesian (sometimes called "Extra-Formosan") branch.


title: Austronesian languages

text: Most Austronesian languages lack a long history of written attestation. This makes reconstructing earlier stages—up to distant Proto-Austronesian—all the more remarkable. The oldest inscription in the Cham language, the Đông Yên Châu inscription dated to the mid-6th century AD at the latest, is the first attestation of any Austronesian language.


title: Austronesian languages

text: The Austronesian languages overall possess phoneme inventories which are smaller than the world average. Around 90% of the Austronesian languages have inventories of 19–25 sounds (15–20 consonants and 4–5 vowels), thus lying at the lower end of the global typical range of 20–37 sounds. However, extreme inventories are also found, such as Nemi (New Caledonia) with 43 consonants.


title: Austronesian languages

text: The canonical root type in Proto-Austronesian is disyllabic with the shape CV(C)CVC (C = consonant; V = vowel), and is still found in many Austronesian languages. In most languages, consonant clusters are only allowed in medial position, and often, there are restrictions for the first element of the cluster. There is a common drift to reduce the number of consonants which can appear in final position, e.g. Buginese, which only allows the two consonants /ŋ/ and /ʔ/ as finals, out of a total number of 18 consonants. Complete absence of final consonants is observed e.g. in Nias, Malagasy and many Oceanic languages.


title: Austronesian languages

text: Unlike in the languages of Mainland Southeast Asia, tonal contrasts are extremely rare in Austronesian languages. Exceptional cases of tonal languages are Moklen and a few languages of the Chamic, South Halmahera–West New Guinea and New Caledonian subgroups.


title: Austronesian languages

text: Most Austronesian languages are agglutinative languages with a relatively high number of affixes, and clear morpheme boundaries. Most affixes are prefixes (Malay and Indonesian "ber-jalan" 'walk' < "jalan" 'road'), with a smaller number of suffixes (Tagalog "titis-án" 'ashtray' < "títis" 'ash') and infixes (Roviana "t<in>avete" 'work (noun)' < "tavete" 'work (verb)').


title: Austronesian languages

text: Reduplication is commonly employed in Austronesian languages. This includes full reduplication (Malay and Indonesian "anak-anak" 'children' < "anak" 'child'; Karo Batak "nipe-nipe" 'caterpillar' < "nipe" 'snake') or partial reduplication (Agta "taktakki" 'legs' < "takki" 'leg', "at-atu" 'puppy' < "atu" 'dog').


title: Austronesian languages

text: It is difficult to make generalizations about the languages that make up a family as diverse as Austronesian. Very broadly, one can divide the Austronesian languages into three groups: Philippine-type languages, Indonesian-type languages and post-Indonesian type languages:


title: Austronesian languages

text: The Austronesian language family has been established by the linguistic comparative method on the basis of cognate sets, sets of words from multiple languages, which are similar in sound and meaning which can be shown to be descended from the same ancestral word in Proto-Austronesian according to regular rules. Some cognate sets are very stable. The word for "eye" in many Austronesian languages is mata (from the most northerly Austronesian languages, Formosan languages such as Bunun and Amis all the way south to Māori).


title: Austronesian languages

text: Other words are harder to reconstruct. The word for "two" is also stable, in that it appears over the entire range of the Austronesian family, but the forms (e.g. Bunun dusa; Amis tusa; Māori rua) require some linguistic expertise to recognise. The Austronesian Basic Vocabulary Database gives word lists (coded for cognateness) for approximately 1000 Austronesian languages.


title: Austronesian languages

text: The internal structure of the Austronesian languages is complex. The family consists of many similar and closely related languages with large numbers of dialect continua, making it difficult to recognize boundaries between branches. The first major step towards high-order subgrouping was Dempwolff's recognition of the Oceanic subgroup (called "Melanesisch" by Dempwolff). The special position of the languages of Taiwan was first recognized by André-Georges Haudricourt (1965), who divided the Austronesian languages into three subgroups: Northern Austronesian (= Formosan), Eastern Austronesian (= Oceanic), and Western Austronesian (all remaining languages).


title: Austronesian languages

text: In a study that represents the first lexicostatistical classification of the Austronesian languages, Isidore Dyen (1965) presented a radically different subgrouping scheme. He posited 40 first-order subgroups, with the highest degree of diversity found in the area of Melanesia. The Oceanic languages are not recognized, but are distributed over more than 30 of his proposed first-order subgroups. Dyen's classification was widely criticized and for the most part rejected, but several of his lower-order subgroups are still accepted (e.g. the Cordilleran languages, the Bilic languages or the Murutic languages).


title: Austronesian languages

text: Subsequently, the position of the Formosan languages as the most archaic group of Austronesian languages was recognized by Otto Christian Dahl (1973), followed by proposals from other scholars that the Formosan languages actually make up more than one first-order subgroup of Austronesian. Robert Blust (1977) first presented the subgrouping model which is currently accepted by virtually all scholars in the field, with more than one first-order subgroup on Taiwan, and a single first-order branch encompassing all Austronesian languages spoken outside of Taiwan, viz. Malayo-Polynesian. The relationships of the Formosan languages to each other and the internal structure of Malayo-Polynesian continue to be debated.


title: Austronesian languages

text: In addition to Malayo-Polynesian, thirteen Formosan subgroups are broadly accepted. The seminal article in the classification of Formosan—and, by extension, the top-level structure of Austronesian—is . Prominent Formosanists (linguists who specialize in Formosan languages) take issue with some of its details, but it remains the point of reference for current linguistic analyses. Debate centers primarily around the relationships between these families. Of the classifications presented here, links two families into a Western Plains group, two more in a Northwestern Formosan group, and three into an Eastern Formosan group, while also links five families into a Northern Formosan group. Harvey (1982), Chang (2006) and Ross (2012) split Tsouic, and Blust (2013) agrees the group is probably not valid.


title: Austronesian languages

text: Other studies have presented phonological evidence for a reduced Paiwanic family of Paiwanic, Puyuma, Bunun, Amis, and Malayo-Polynesian, but this is not reflected in vocabulary. The Eastern Formosan peoples Basay, Kavalan, and Amis share a homeland motif that has them coming originally from an island called "Sinasay" or "Sanasay" . The Amis, in particular, maintain that they came from the east, and were treated by the Puyuma, amongst whom they settled, as a subservient group.


title: Austronesian languages

text: This classification retains Blust's East Formosan, and unites the other northern languages. proposes a Proto-Formosan (F0) ancestor and equates it with Proto-Austronesian (PAN), following the model in Starosta (1995). Rukai and Tsouic are seen as highly divergent, although the position of Rukai is highly controversial.


title: Austronesian languages

text: Blust (2013) debunks Li's Northern Formosan: of the five shared innovations posited by Li, he finds that none of them define that group of languages.


title: Austronesian languages

text: Sagart (2004) proposes that the numerals of the Formosan languages reflect a nested series of innovations, from languages in the northwest (near the putative landfall of the Austronesian migration from the mainland), which share only the numerals 1–4 with proto-Malayo-Polynesian, counter-clockwise to the eastern languages (purple on map), which share all numerals 1–10. Sagart (2021) finds other shared innovations that follow the same pattern. He proposes that pMP *lima 'five' is a lexical replacement (from 'hand'), and that pMP *pitu 'seven', *walu 'eight' and *Siwa 'nine' are contractions of pAN *RaCep 'five', a ligature *a or *i 'and', and *duSa 'two', *telu 'three', *Sepat 'four', an analogical pattern historically attested from Pazeh. The fact that the Kradai languages share the numeral system (and other lexical innovations) of pMP suggests that they are a coordinate branch with Malayo-Polynesian, rather than a sister family to Austronesian.


title: Austronesian languages

text: The Malayo-Polynesian languages are—among other things—characterized by certain sound changes, such as the mergers of Proto-Austronesian (PAN) *t/*C to Proto-Malayo-Polynesian (PMP) *t, and PAN *n/*N to PMP *n, and the shift of PAN *S to PMP *h.


title: Austronesian languages

text: There appear to have been two great migrations of Austronesian languages that quickly covered large areas, resulting in multiple local groups with little large-scale structure. The first was Malayo-Polynesian, distributed across the Philippines, Indonesia, and Melanesia. The second migration was that of the Oceanic languages into Polynesia and Micronesia.


title: Austronesian languages

text: From the standpoint of historical linguistics, the place of origin (in linguistic terminology, "Urheimat") of the Austronesian languages (Proto-Austronesian language) is most likely the main island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa; on this island the deepest divisions in Austronesian are found along small geographic distances, among the families of the native Formosan languages.


title: Austronesian languages

text: According to Robert Blust, the Formosan languages form nine of the ten primary branches of the Austronesian language family (). noted this when he wrote: ... the internal diversity among the... Formosan languages... is greater than that in all the rest of Austronesian put together, so there is a major genetic split within Austronesian between Formosan and the rest... Indeed, the genetic diversity within Formosan is so great that it may well consist of several primary branches of the overall Austronesian family.At least since , writing in 1949, linguists have generally accepted that the chronology of the dispersal of languages within a given language family can be traced from the area of greatest linguistic variety to that of the least. For example, English in North America has large numbers of speakers, but relatively low dialectal diversity, while English in Great Britain has much higher diversity; such low linguistic variety by Sapir's thesis suggests a more recent origin of English in North America. While some scholars suspect that the number of principal branches among the Formosan languages may be somewhat less than Blust's estimate of nine (e.g. ), there is little contention among linguists with this analysis and the resulting view of the origin and direction of the migration. For a recent dissenting analysis, see .


title: Austronesian languages

text: The protohistory of the Austronesian people can be traced farther back through time. To get an idea of the original homeland of the populations ancestral to the Austronesian peoples (as opposed to strictly linguistic arguments), evidence from archaeology and population genetics may be adduced. Studies from the science of genetics have produced conflicting outcomes. Some researchers find evidence for a proto-Austronesian homeland on the Asian mainland (e.g., ), while others mirror the linguistic research, rejecting an East Asian origin in favor of Taiwan (e.g., ). Archaeological evidence (e.g., ) is more consistent, suggesting that the ancestors of the Austronesians spread from the South Chinese mainland to Taiwan at some time around 8,000 years ago.


title: Austronesian languages

text: Evidence from historical linguistics suggests that it is from this island that seafaring peoples migrated, perhaps in distinct waves separated by millennia, to the entire region encompassed by the Austronesian languages . It is believed that this migration began around 6,000 years ago . However, evidence from historical linguistics cannot bridge the gap between those two periods. The view that linguistic evidence connects Austronesian languages to the Sino-Tibetan ones, as proposed for example by , is a minority one. As states:Implied in... discussions of subgrouping [of Austronesian languages] is a broad consensus that the homeland of the Austronesians was in Taiwan. This homeland area may have also included the P'eng-hu (Pescadores) islands between Taiwan and China and possibly even sites on the coast of mainland China, especially if one were to view the early Austronesians as a population of related dialect communities living in scattered coastal settlements.Linguistic analysis of the Proto-Austronesian language stops at the western shores of Taiwan; any related mainland language(s) have not survived. The only exceptions, the Chamic languages, derive from more recent migration to the mainland .


title: Austronesian languages

text: Genealogical links have been proposed between Austronesian and various families of East and Southeast Asia.


title: Austronesian languages

text: An Austro-Tai proposal linking Austronesian and the Kra-Dai languages of the southeastern continental Asian mainland was first proposed by Paul K. Benedict, and is supported by Weera Ostapirat, Roger Blench, and Laurent Sagart, based on the traditional comparative method. proposes a series of regular correspondences linking the two families and assumes a primary split, with Kra-Dai speakers being the people who stayed behind in their Chinese homeland. suggests that, "if" the connection is valid, the relationship is unlikely to be one of two sister families. Rather, he suggests that proto-Kra-Dai speakers were Austronesians who migrated to Hainan Island and back to the mainland from the northern Philippines, and that their distinctiveness results from radical restructuring following contact with Hmong–Mien and Sinitic. An extended version of Austro-Tai was hypothesized by Benedict who added the Japonic languages to the proposal as well.


title: Austronesian languages

text: A link with the Austroasiatic languages in an 'Austric' phylum is based mostly on typological evidence. However, there is also morphological evidence of a connection between the conservative Nicobarese languages and Austronesian languages of the Philippines. Robert Blust supports the hypothesis which connects the lower Yangtze neolithic Austro-Tai entity with the rice-cultivating Austro-Asiatic cultures, assuming the center of East Asian rice domestication, and putative Austric homeland, to be located in the Yunnan/Burma border area. Under that view, there was an east-west genetic alignment, resulting from a rice-based population expansion, in the southern part of East Asia: Austroasiatic-Kra-Dai-Austronesian, with unrelated Sino-Tibetan occupying a more northerly tier.


title: Austronesian languages

text: French linguist and Sinologist Laurent Sagart considers the Austronesian languages to be related to the Sino-Tibetan languages, and also groups the Kra–Dai languages as more closely related to the Malayo-Polynesian languages. Sagart argues for a north-south genetic relationship between Chinese and Austronesian, based on sound correspondences in the basic vocabulary and morphological parallels. Laurent Sagart (2017) concludes that the possession of the two kinds of millets in Taiwanese Austronesian languages (not just Setaria, as previously thought) places the pre-Austronesians in northeastern China, adjacent to the probable Sino-Tibetan homeland. Ko et al.'s genetic research (2014) appears to support Laurent Sagart's linguistic proposal, pointing out that the exclusively Austronesian mtDNA E-haplogroup and the largely Sino-Tibetan M9a haplogroup are twin sisters, indicative of an intimate connection between the early Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan maternal gene pools, at least. Additionally, results from Wei et al. (2017) are also in agreement with Sagart's proposal, in which their analyses show that the predominantly Austronesian Y-DNA haplogroup O3a2b*-P164(xM134) belongs to a newly defined haplogroup O3a2b2-N6 being widely distributed along the eastern coastal regions of Asia, from Korea to Vietnam. Sagart also groups the Austronesian languages in a recursive-like fashion, placing Kra-Dai as a sister branch of Malayo-Polynesian. His methodology has been found to be spurious by his peers.


title: Austronesian languages

text: Several linguists have proposed that Japanese is genetically related to the Austronesian family, cf. Benedict (1990), Matsumoto (1975), Miller (1967).


title: Austronesian languages

text: Some other linguists think it is more plausible that Japanese is not genetically related to the Austronesian languages, but instead was influenced by an Austronesian substratum or adstratum.


title: Austronesian languages

text: Those who propose this scenario suggest that the Austronesian family once covered the islands to the north as well as to the south. Martine Robbeets (2017) claims that Japanese genetically belongs to the "Transeurasian" (= Macro-Altaic) languages, but underwent lexical influence from "para-Austronesian", a presumed sister language of Proto-Austronesian.


title: Austronesian languages

text: The linguist Ann Kumar (2009) proposed that some Austronesians might have migrated to Japan, possibly an elite-group from Java, and created the Japanese-hierarchical society. She also identifies 82 possible cognates between Austronesian and Japanese, however her theory remains very controversial.


title: Austronesian languages

text: proposed that the Austronesian and the Ongan protolanguage are the descendants of an Austronesian–Ongan protolanguage. But this view is not supported by mainstream linguists and remains very controversial. Robert Blust rejects Blevins' proposal as far-fetched and based solely on chance resemblances and methodologically flawed comparisons.


title: Austronesian languages

text: Most Austronesian languages have Latin-based writing systems today. Some non-Latin-based writing systems are listed below.


title: Austronesian languages

text: Below are two charts comparing list of numbers of 1-10 and thirteen words in Austronesian languages; spoken in Taiwan, the Philippines, the Mariana Islands, Indonesia, Malaysia, Chams or Champa (in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam), East Timor, Papua, New Zealand, Hawaii, Madagascar, Borneo, Kiribati, Caroline Islands, and Tuvalu.


title: Breton language

text: Breton (, ; ) is a Southwestern Brittonic language of the Celtic language family spoken in Brittany, part of modern-day France. It is the only Celtic language still widely in use on the European mainland, albeit as a member of the insular branch instead of the continental grouping.


title: Breton language

text: Breton was brought from Great Britain to Armorica (the ancient name for the coastal region that includes the Brittany peninsula) by migrating Britons during the Early Middle Ages, making it an Insular Celtic language. Breton is most closely related to Cornish, another Southwestern Brittonic language. Welsh and the extinct Cumbric, both Western Brittonic languages, are more distantly related.


title: Breton language

text: Having declined from more than one million speakers around 1950 to about 200,000 in the first decade of the 21st century, Breton is classified as "severely endangered" by the UNESCO "Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger". However, the number of children attending bilingual classes rose 33% between 2006 and 2012 to 14,709.


title: Breton language

text: Breton is spoken in Lower Brittany (), roughly to the west of a line linking Plouha (west of Saint-Brieuc) and La Roche-Bernard (east of Vannes). It comes from a Brittonic language community that once extended from Great Britain to Armorica (present-day Brittany) and had even established a toehold in Galicia (in present-day Spain). Old Breton is attested from the 9th century. It was the language of the upper classes until the 12th century, after which it became the language of commoners in Lower Brittany. The nobility, followed by the bourgeoisie, adopted French. The written language of the Duchy of Brittany was Latin, switching to French in the 15th century. There exists a limited tradition of Breton literature. Some philosophical and scientific terms in Modern Breton come from Old Breton. The recognized stages of the Breton language are: Old Breton – c.800 to c.1100, Middle Breton – c.1100 to c.1650, Modern Breton – c.1650 to present.


title: Breton language

text: The French monarchy was not concerned with the minority languages of France, spoken by the lower classes, and required the use of French for government business as part of its policy of national unity. During the French Revolution, the government introduced policies favouring French over the regional languages, which it pejoratively referred to as . The revolutionaries assumed that reactionary and monarchist forces preferred regional languages to try to keep the peasant masses under-informed. In 1794, Bertrand Barère submitted his "report on the " to the Committee of Public Safety in which he said that "federalism and superstition speak Breton".


title: Breton language

text: Since the 19th century, under the Third, Fourth and now Fifth Republics, the French government has attempted to stamp out minority languages—including Breton—in state schools, in an effort to build a national culture. Teachers humiliated students for using their regional languages, and such practices prevailed until the late 1960s.


title: Breton language

text: In the early 21st century, due to the political centralization of France, the influence of the media, and the increasing mobility of people, only about 200,000 people are active speakers of Breton, a dramatic decline from more than 1 million in 1950. The majority of today's speakers are more than 60 years old, and Breton is now classified as an endangered language.


title: Breton language

text: At the beginning of the 20th century, half of the population of Lower Brittany knew only Breton; the other half were bilingual. By 1950, there were only 100,000 monolingual Bretons, and this rapid decline has continued, with likely no monolingual speakers left today. A statistical survey in 1997 found around 300,000 speakers in Lower Brittany, of whom about 190,000 were aged 60 or older. Few 15- to 19-year-olds spoke Breton. In 1993, parents were finally legally allowed to give their children Breton names.


title: Breton language

text: In 1925, Professor Roparz Hemon founded the Breton-language review . During its 19-year run, tried to raise the language to the level of a great international language. Its publication encouraged the creation of original literature in all genres, and proposed Breton translations of internationally recognized foreign works. In 1946, replaced . Other Breton-language periodicals have been published, which established a fairly large body of literature for a minority language.


title: Breton language

text: In 1977, Diwan schools were founded to teach Breton by immersion. Since their establishment, Diwan schools have provided fully immersive primary school and partially immersive secondary school instruction in Breton for thousands of students across Brittany. This has directly contributed to the growing numbers of school-age speakers of Breton.


title: Breton language

text: The "Asterix" comic series has been translated into Breton. According to the comic, the Gaulish village where Asterix lives is in the Armorica peninsula, which is now Brittany. Some other popular comics have also been translated into Breton, including "The Adventures of Tintin", , "Titeuf", "Hägar the Horrible", "Peanuts" and "Yakari".


title: Breton language

text: Some original media are created in Breton. The sitcom, , is in Breton. Radio Kerne, broadcasting from Finistère, has exclusively Breton programming. Some movies ("Lancelot du Lac", "Shakespeare in Love", "Marion du Faouet", "Sezneg") and TV series ("Columbo", "Perry Mason") have also been translated and broadcast in Breton. Poets, singers, linguists, and writers who have written in Breton, including Yann-Ber Kalloc'h, Roparz Hemon, Anjela Duval, Xavier de Langlais, Pêr-Jakez Helias, Youenn Gwernig, Glenmor, Vefa de Saint-Pierre and Alan Stivell are now known internationally.


title: Breton language

text: Today, Breton is the only living Celtic language that is not recognized by a national government as an official or regional language.


title: Breton language

text: The first Breton dictionary, the "Catholicon", was also the first French dictionary. Edited by Jehan Lagadec in 1464, it was a trilingual work containing Breton, French and Latin. Today bilingual dictionaries have been published for Breton and languages including English, Dutch, German, Spanish and Welsh. A monolingual dictionary, was published in 1995. The first edition contained about 10,000 words, and the second edition of 2001 contains 20,000 words.


title: Breton language

text: In the early 21st century, the ("Public Office for the Breton language") began a campaign to encourage daily use of Breton in the region by both businesses and local communes. Efforts include installing bilingual signs and posters for regional events, as well as encouraging the use of the Spilhennig to let speakers identify each other. The office also started an Internationalization and localization policy asking Google, Firefox and SPIP to develop their interfaces in Breton. In 2004, the Breton Wikipedia started, which now counts more than 75,000 articles. In March 2007, the signed a tripartite agreement with Regional Council of Brittany and Microsoft for the consideration of the Breton language in Microsoft products. In October 2014, Facebook added Breton as one of its 121 languages after three years of talks between the and Facebook.


title: Breton language

text: France has twice chosen to enter the Eurovision Song Contest with songs in Breton; once in 1996 in Oslo with "" by Dan Ar Braz and the fifty piece band Héritage des Celtes, and most recently in 2022 in Turin with "" by Alvan Morvan Rosius and vocal trio Ahez. These are two of five times France has chosen songs in one of its minority languages for the contest, the others being in 1992 (bilingual French and Antillean Creole), 1993 (bilingual French and Corsican), and 2011 (Corsican).


title: Breton language

text: Breton is spoken mainly in Lower Brittany, but also in a more dispersed way in Upper Brittany (where it is spoken alongside Gallo and French), and in areas around the world that have Breton emigrants.


title: Breton language

text: The four traditional dialects of Breton correspond to medieval bishoprics rather than to linguistic divisions. They are (, of the county of Léon), (, of Trégor), (, of ), and (, of Vannes). was spoken up to the beginning of the 20th century in the region of Guérande and Batz-sur-Mer. There are no clear boundaries between the dialects because they form a dialect continuum, varying only slightly from one village to the next. , however, requires a little study to be intelligible with most of the other dialects.


title: Breton language

text: As noted, only French is an official language of France. Supporters of Breton and other minority languages continue to argue for their recognition, and for their place in education, public schools, and public life.


title: Breton language

text: In July 2008, the legislature amended the French Constitution, adding article 75-1: (the regional languages belong to the heritage of France).


title: Breton language

text: The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which obliges signatory states to recognize minority and regional languages, was signed by France in 1999 but has not been ratified. On 27 October 2015, the Senate rejected a draft constitutional law ratifying the charter.


title: Breton language

text: Regional and departmental authorities use Breton to a very limited extent. Some bilingual signage has also been installed, such as street name signs in Breton towns. One station of the Rennes metro system has signs in both French and Breton.


title: Breton language

text: Under the French law known as Toubon, it is illegal for commercial signage to be in Breton alone. Signs must be bilingual or French only. Since commercial signage usually has limited physical space, most businesses have signs only in French.


title: Breton language

text: , the Breton language agency, was set up in 1999 by the Brittany region to promote and develop the daily use of Breton. It created the campaign, to encourage enterprises, organisations and communes to promote the use of Breton, for example by installing bilingual signage or translating their websites into Breton.


title: Breton language

text: In the late 20th century, the French government considered incorporating the independent Breton-language immersion schools (called ) into the state education system. This action was blocked by the French Constitutional Council based on the 1994 amendment to the Constitution that establishes French as the language of the republic. Therefore, no other language may be used as a language of instruction in state schools. The Toubon Law implemented the amendment, asserting that French is the language of public education.


title: Breton language

text: The Diwan schools were founded in Brittany in 1977 to teach Breton by immersion. Since their establishment, Diwan schools have provided fully immersive primary school and partially immersive secondary school instruction in Breton for thousands of students across Brittany. This has directly contributed to the growing numbers of school-age speakers of Breton. The schools have also gained fame from their high level of results in school exams, including those on French language and literature. Breton-language schools do not receive funding from the national government, though the Brittany Region may fund them.


title: Breton language

text: Another teaching method is a bilingual approach by ("Two Languages") in the State schools, created in 1979. ("Awakening") was created in 1990 for bilingual education in the Catholic schools.


title: Breton language

text: In 2018, 18,337 pupils (about 2.00% of all pupils in Brittany) attended , and schools, and their number has increased yearly. The goal of Jean-Yves Le Drian (president of the Regional Council) of 20,000, and of “their recognition” for “their place in education, public schools, and public life”, by 2010, was not achieved, but he describes being encouraged by their progress.


title: Breton language

text: In 2007, some 4,500 to 5,000 adults followed such a Breton language course as an evening or correspondence one. The transmission of Breton in 1999 is estimated to be 3 percent.


title: Breton language

text: In addition to bilingual education (including Breton-medium education) the region has introduced the Breton language in primary education, mainly in the department of Finistère. These "initiation" sessions are generally one to three hours per week, and consist of songs and games.


title: Breton language

text: Schools in secondary education ( and ) offer some courses in Breton. In 2010, nearly 5,000 students in Brittany were reported to be taking this option. Additionally, the University of Rennes 2 has a Breton language department offering courses in the language along with a master's degree in Breton and Celtic Studies.


title: Breton language

text: Vowels in Breton may be short or long. All unstressed vowels are short; stressed vowels can be short or long (vowel lengths are not noted in usual orthographies as they are implicit in the phonology of particular dialects, and not all dialects pronounce stressed vowels as long). An emergence of a schwa sound occurs as a result of vowel neutralization in post-tonic position, among different dialects.


title: Breton language

text: All vowels can also be nasalized, which is noted by appending an 'n' letter after the base vowel, or by adding a combining tilde above the vowel (most commonly and easily done for "a" and "o" due to the Portuguese letters), or more commonly by non-ambiguously appending an letter after the base vowel (this depends on the orthographic variant).


title: Breton language

text: Breton nouns are marked for gender and number. While Breton gender is fairly typical of gender systems across western Europe (with the exception of Basque and modern English), Breton number markers demonstrate rarer behaviors.


title: Breton language

text: Breton has two genders: masculine () and feminine (), having largely lost its historic neuter () as has also occurred in the other Celtic languages as well as across the Romance languages. Certain suffixes ("-ach/-aj, -(a)dur, -er, -lec'h, -our, -ti, -va") are masculine, while others ("-enti, -er, -ez, -ezh, -ezon, -i", "-eg", "-ell", and the singulative "-enn") are feminine. The suffix "-eg" can be masculine or feminine.


title: Breton language

text: There are certain non-determinant factors that influence gender assignment. Biological sex is applied for animate referents. Metals, time divisions (except for "hour", "night" and "week") and mountains tend to be masculine, while rivers, cities and countries tend to be feminine.


title: Breton language

text: Number in Breton is primarily based on an opposition between singular and plural. However, the system is full of complexities in how this distinction is realized.


title: Breton language

text: Although modern Breton has lost its ancestral dual number marker, relics of its use are preserved in various nouns pertaining to body parts, including the words for eyes, ears, cheeks, legs, armpits, arms, hands, knees, thighs, and wings. This is seen in a prefix (formed in , or ) that is etymologically derived from the prefixation of the number two. The dual is no longer productive, and has merely been lexicalized in these cases rather than remaining a part of Breton grammar. The (etymologically) already dual words for eyes () and ears () can be pluralized "again" to form and .


title: Breton language

text: Like other Brythonic languages, Breton has a singulative suffix that is used to form singulars out of collective nouns, for which the morphologically less complex form is the plural. Thus, the singulative of the collective "mice" is "mouse". However, Breton goes beyond Welsh in the complications of this system. Collectives can be pluralized to make forms which are different in meaning from the normal collective-- "fish" (singular) is pluralized to , singulativized to , referring to a single fish out of a school of fish, and this singulative of the plural can then be pluralized again to make "fishes".


title: Breton language

text: On top of this, the formation of plurals is complicated by two different pluralizing functions. The "default" plural formation is contrasted with another formation which is said to "emphasize variety or diversity" – thus two semantically different plurals can be formed out of : "parks" and "various different parks". Ball reports that the latter pluralizer is used only for inanimate nouns. Certain formations have been lexicalized to have meanings other than that which might be predicted solely from the morphology: "water" pluralized forms which means not "waters" but instead "rivers", while now has come to mean "running waters after a storm". Certain forms have lost the singular from their paradigm: means "news" and is not used, while has become the regular plural, ‘different news items’.


title: Breton language

text: Meanwhile certain nouns can form doubly marked plurals with lexicalized meanings – "child" is pluralized once into "children" and then pluralized a second time to make "groups of children".


title: Breton language

text: The diminutive suffix also has the somewhat unusual property of triggering double marking of the plural: means "little child", but the doubly pluralized means "little children"; boat has a singular diminutive and a simple plural , thus its diminutive plural is the doubly pluralized .


title: Breton language

text: As seen elsewhere in many Celtic languages, the formation of the plural can be hard to predict, being determined by a mix of semantic, morphological and lexical factors.


title: Breton language

text: The most common plural marker is , with its variant ; most nouns that use this marker are inanimates but collectives of both inanimate and animate nouns always use it as well.


title: Breton language

text: Most animate nouns, including trees, take a plural in . However in some dialects the use of this affix has become rare. Various masculine nouns including occupations as well as the word ("Englishman", plural ) take the suffix , with a range of variants including , , and .


title: Breton language

text: The rare pluralizing suffixes / and are used for a few nouns. When they are appended, they also trigger a change in the vowel of the root: triggers a vowel harmony effect whereby some or all preceding vowels are changed to ( "cousin" → "cousins"; "crow" → "crows"; "'partridge" → "partridges); the changes associated with / are less predictable.


title: Breton language

text: Various nouns instead form their plural merely with ablaut: or in the stem being changed to : "wing" → "wings"; "tooth" → "teeth"; "rope" → "ropes".


title: Breton language

text: Another set of nouns have lexicalized plurals that bear little if any resemblance to their singulars. These include "girl" → , "pig" → , "cow" → , and "dog" → .


title: Breton language

text: As in other Celtic languages as well as English, a variety of verbal constructions is available to express grammatical aspect, for example: showing a distinction between progressive and habitual actions:


title: Breton language

text: As in other modern Celtic languages, Breton pronouns are fused into preceding prepositions to produce a sort of inflected preposition. Below are some examples in Breton, Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx, along with English translations.


title: Breton language

text: Note that in the examples above the Goidelic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx) use the preposition meaning "at" to show possession, whereas the Brittonic languages use "with". The Goidelic languages, however, do use the preposition "with" to express "belong to" (Irish , Scottish , Manx , The book belongs to me).


title: Breton language

text: The Welsh examples are in literary Welsh. The order and preposition may differ slightly in colloquial Welsh (Formal , North Wales , South Wales ).


title: Breton language

text: Breton has four initial consonant mutations: though modern Breton lost the nasal mutation of Welsh (but for rare words such the word "door": "dor" "an nor"), it also has a "hard" mutation, in which voiced stops become voiceless, and a "mixed" mutation, which is a mixture of hard and soft mutations.


title: Breton language

text: Normal word order, like the other Insular Celtic languages, is at its core VSO (verb-subject-object), which is most apparent in embedded clauses. However, Breton finite verbs in main clauses are additionally subject to V2 word order in which the finite main clause verb is typically the second element in the sentence. That make it perfectly possible to put the subject or the object at the beginning of the sentence, largely depending on the focus of the speaker. The following options are possible (all with a little difference in meaning):


title: Breton language

text: Breton uses much more borrowed vocabulary than its relatives further north; by some estimates a full 40% of its core vocabulary consists of loans from French.


title: Breton language

text: The first extant Breton texts, contained in the Leyde manuscript, were written at the end of the 8th century: 50 years prior to the Strasbourg Oaths, considered to be the earliest example of French. Like many medieval orthographies, Old- and Middle Breton orthography was at first not standardised, and the spelling of a particular word varied at authors' discretion. In 1499, however, the "Catholicon", was published; as the first dictionary written for both French and Breton, it became a point of reference on how to transcribe the language. The orthography presented in the "Catholicon" was largely similar to that of French, in particular with respect to the representation of vowels, as well as the use of both the Latinate digraph —a remnant of the sound change /kʷ/ > /k/ in Latin—and Brittonic or to represent /k/ before front vowels.


title: Breton language

text: As phonetic and phonological differences between the dialects began to magnify, many regions, particularly the Vannes country, began to devise their own orthographies. Many of these orthographies were more closely related to the French model, albeit with some modifications. Examples of these modifications include the replacement of Old Breton with to denote word-final /x~h/ (an evolution of Old Breton /θ/ in the Vannes dialect) and use of to denote the initial mutation of /k/ (today this mutation is written ). and thus needed another transcription.


title: Breton language

text: During the early years of the 20th century, a group of writers known as elaborated and reformed Le Gonidec's system. They made it more suitable as a super-dialectal representation of the dialects of Cornouaille, Leon and Trégor (known as from , and in Breton). This KLT orthography was established in 1911. At the same time writers of the more divergent Vannetais dialect developed a phonetic system also based on that of Le Gonidec.


title: Breton language

text: Following proposals made during the 1920s, the KLT and Vannetais orthographies were merged in 1941 to create an orthographic system to represent all four dialects. This ("wholly unified") orthography was significant for the inclusion of the "zh" digraph, which represents a in Vannetais and corresponds to a in the KLT dialects.


title: Breton language

text: In 1955 François Falc'hun and the group Emgleo Breiz proposed a new orthography. It was designed to use a set of graphemes closer to the conventions of French. This ("University Orthography", known in Breton as ) was given official recognition by the French authorities as the "official orthography of Breton in French education." It was opposed in the region and today is used only by the magazine and the publishing house Emgléo Breiz.


title: Breton language

text: In the 1970s, a new standard orthography was devised — the or . This system is based on the derivation of the words.


title: Breton language

text: Today the majority of writers continue to use the "Peurunvan orthography", and it is the version taught in most Breton-language schools.


title: Breton language

text: Breton is written in the Latin script. "Peurunvan", the most commonly used orthography, consists of the following letters:


title: Breton language

text: The circumflex, grave accent, trema and tilde appear on some letters. These diacritics are used in the following way:


title: Breton language

text: Differences between the two systems are particularly noticeable in word endings. In Peurunvan, final obstruents, which are devoiced in absolute final position and voiced in sandhi before voiced sounds, are represented by a grapheme that indicates a voiceless sound. In OU they are written as voiced but represented as voiceless before suffixes: (big), (bigger).


title: Breton language

text: In addition, Peurunvan maintains the KLT convention, which distinguishes noun/adjective pairs by nouns written with a final voiced consonant and adjectives with a voiceless one. No distinction is made in pronunciation, e.g. ' "Breton language" vs. ' "Breton (adj)".


title: Breton language

text: Visitors to Brittany may encounter words and phrases (especially on signs and posters) such as the following:


title: Vulture

text: A vulture is a bird of prey that scavenges on carrion. There are 23 extant species of vulture (including Condors). Old World vultures include 16 living species native to Europe, Africa, and Asia; New World vultures are restricted to North and South America and consist of seven identified species, all belonging to the Cathartidae family.


title: Vulture

text: A particular characteristic of many vultures is a bald, unfeathered head. This bare skin is thought to keep the head clean when feeding, and also plays an important role in thermoregulation.


title: Vulture

text: Vultures have been observed to hunch their bodies and tuck in their heads in the cold, and open their wings and stretch their necks in the heat. They also urinate on themselves as a means of cooling their bodies.


title: Vulture

text: A group of vultures in flight is called a 'kettle', while the term 'committee' refers to a group of vultures resting on the ground or in trees. A group of vultures that are feeding is termed a 'wake'.


title: Vulture

text: Although New World vultures and Old World vultures share many resemblances, they are not very closely related. Rather, they share resemblance because of convergent evolution.


title: Vulture

text: Early naturalists placed all vultures under one single biological group. Carl Linnaeus had assigned both Old World vultures and New World vultures in a "Vultur" genus, even including the harpy eagle. Soon anatomists split Old and New World vultures, with New World vultures being placed in a new suborder, "Cathartae", later renamed "Cathartidae" as per the Rules of Nomenclature (from Greek: "carthartes", meaning "purifier") by French ornithologist Frédéric de Lafresnaye. The suborder was later recognised as a family, rather than a suborder.


title: Vulture

text: In the late 20th century some ornithologists argued that New World vultures are more closely related to storks on the basis of karyotype, morphological, and behavioral data. Thus some authorities placed them in the Ciconiiformes family with storks and herons; Sibley and Monroe (1990) even considered them a subfamily of the storks. This was criticized, and an early DNA sequence study was based on erroneous data and subsequently retracted. There was then an attempt to raise the New World vultures to the rank of an independent order, Cathartiformes not closely associated with either the birds of prey or the storks and herons.


title: Vulture

text: The Old World vultures found in Africa, Asia, and Europe belong to the family Accipitridae, which also includes eagles, kites, buzzards, and hawks. Old World vultures find carcasses exclusively by sight.


title: Vulture

text: The New World vultures and condors found in warm and temperate areas of the Americas belong to the family Cathartidae. Recent DNA evidence suggests that they should be included within order Accipitriformes along with birds of prey including hawks, eagles, and Old World vultures. Several species have a good sense of smell, unusual for raptors, and are able to smell dead animals from great heights, up to a mile away. The seven species are:


title: Vulture

text: Vultures are scavengers, meaning that they eat dead animals. Outside of the oceans, vultures are the only known obligate scavengers. They rarely attack healthy animals, but may kill the wounded or sick. When a carcass has too thick a hide for its beak to open, it waits for a larger scavenger to eat first. Vast numbers have been seen upon battlefields. They gorge themselves when prey is abundant, until their crops bulge, and sit, sleepy or half torpid, to digest their food. These birds do not carry food to their young in their talons but disgorge it from their crops. The mountain-dwelling bearded vulture is the only vertebrate to specialize in eating bones; it carries bones to the nest for the young, and hunts some live prey.


title: Vulture

text: Vultures are of great value as scavengers, especially in hot regions. Vulture stomach acid is exceptionally corrosive (pH=1.0), allowing them to safely digest putrid carcasses infected with botulinum toxin, hog cholera bacteria, and anthrax bacteria that would be lethal to other scavengers and remove these bacteria from the environment. New World vultures often vomit when threatened or approached. Contrary to some accounts, they do not "projectile vomit" on their attacker in defence, but to lighten their stomach load to ease take-off. The vomited meal residue may distract a predator, allowing the bird to escape.


title: Vulture

text: New World vultures also urinate straight down their legs; the uric acid kills bacteria accumulated from walking through carcasses, and also acts as evaporative cooling.


title: Vulture

text: Vultures in south Asia, mainly in India and Nepal, have declined dramatically since the early 1990s. It has been found that this decline was caused by residues of the veterinary drug Diclofenac in animal carcasses. The government of India has taken very late cognizance of this fact and has banned the drug for animals. However, it may take decades for vultures to come back to their earlier population level, if they ever do: without vultures to pick corpses clean, rabies-carrying dogs have multiplied, feeding on the carrion, and age-old practices like the sky burials of the Parsees are coming to an end, permanently reducing the supply of corpses. The same problem is also seen in Nepal where government has taken some late steps to conserve remaining vultures.


title: Vulture

text: The vulture population is threatened across Africa and Eurasia. There are many anthropogenic activities that threaten vultures such as poisoning and wind energy collision mortality. In Central Africa there have been efforts to conserve the remaining vultures and bring their population numbers back up. This is largely due to the bushmeat trade, "it is estimated that more than of wild animal meat is traded" and vultures take up a large percentage of this bushmeat due to the demand in the fetish market. The substantial drop in vulture populations in the continent of Africa is also said to be the result of both intentional and unintentional poisoning, with one study finding it to be the cause of 61% of the vulture deaths recorded.


title: Vulture

text: A recent study in 2016, reported that "of the 22 vulture species, nine are critically endangered, three are endangered, four are near threatened, and six are least concern".


title: Vulture

text: The conservation status of vultures is of particular concern to humans. For example, the decline of vulture populations can lead to increased disease transmission and resource damage, through increased populations of disease vector and pest animal populations that scavenge carcasses opportunistically. Vultures control these pests and disease vectors indirectly through competition for carcasses.


title: Vulture

text: On 20 June 2019, the corpses of 468 white-backed vultures, 17 white-headed vultures, 28 hooded vultures, 14 lappet-faced vultures and 10 cape vultures, altogether 537 vultures, besides 2 tawny eagles, were found in northern Botswana. It is suspected that they died after eating the corpses of 3 elephants that were poisoned by poachers, possibly to avoid detection by the birds, which help rangers to track poaching activity by circling above where there are dead animals.


title: Vulture

text: In Ancient Egyptian art, Nekhbet, a mythological goddess and patron of both the city of Nekheb and Upper Egypt was depicted as a vulture. Alan Gardiner identified the species that was used in divine iconography as a griffon vulture. Arielle P. Kozloff, however, argues that the vultures in New Kingdom art, with their blue-tipped beaks and loose skin, better resemble the lappet-faced vulture. Many Great Royal Wives wore vulture crowns - a symbol of protection from the goddess Nekhbet.


title: Vulture

text: Ancient Egyptians believed that all vultures were female and were spontaneously born from eggs without the intervention of a male, and therefore linked the birds to purity and motherhood, but also the eternal cycle of death and rebirth for their ability to transform the “death” they feed on – i.e. carrion and waste – into life.


title: Vulture

text: In Pre-Columbian times, vultures were appreciated as extraordinary beings and they had high iconographic status. Vultures appear in many Mesoamerican myths, legends, and fables, with many separate civilizations such as the Mayan and Aztec developing a range of stories around vultures. Many Mesoamerican stories depict vultures negatively, while others contain more positive attitudes.


title: Crossing the Rubicon

text: The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" is an idiom that means "passing a point of no return". Its meaning comes from allusion to the crossing of the river Rubicon by Julius Caesar in early January 49 BC. The exact date is unknown. Scholars usually place it on the night of 10 and 11 January, based on speeds at which messengers could travel at that time.


title: Crossing the Rubicon

text: His crossing of the river precipitated Caesar's civil war, which ultimately led to Caesar's becoming dictator for life ("dictator perpetuo)". Caesar had been appointed to a governorship over a region that ranged from southern Gaul to Illyricum. As his term of governorship ended, the Senate ordered him to disband his army and return to Rome. As it was illegal to bring armies into Italy (the northern border of which was marked by the river Rubicon) his crossing the river under arms amounted to insurrection, treason, and a declaration of war on the state. According to some authors, he uttered the phrase "alea iacta est" ("the die is cast") before crossing.


title: Crossing the Rubicon

text: During the late Roman Republic, the river Rubicon marked the boundary between the Roman province of Cisalpine Gaul to the northeast and Italy proper (controlled directly by Rome and its allies) to the south. On the northwestern side, the border was marked by the river Arno, a much wider and more important waterway, which flows westward from the Apennine Mountains (its source is not far from the Rubicon's source) into the Tyrrhenian Sea.


title: Crossing the Rubicon

text: Governors of Roman provinces were appointed promagistrates with "imperium" (roughly, "right to command") in one or more provinces. The governors then served as generals of the Roman army within the territory they ruled. Roman law specified that only the elected magistrates (consuls and praetors) could hold "imperium" within Italy. Any magistrate who entered Italy at the head of his troops forfeited his "imperium" and was therefore no longer legally allowed to command troops.