title: King Ghidorah

text: Director Shūsuke Kaneko had originally planned on using Varan as Godzilla's principal antagonist, but was pressured by Toho chairman Isao Matsuoka to use the more recognizable and profitable King Ghidorah, as the previous film in the franchise, "Godzilla vs. Megaguirus", which featured an original and unfamiliar antagonist, was a box office and critical failure. In order to emphasize Ghidorah's heroic role in the movie, the creature's size was greatly reduced, and was portrayed by Akira Ohashi, who moved the creature's heads as hand puppets.


title: King Ghidorah

text: Ghidorah is referenced by Metphies in a post-credits scene for "" and is featured in "". The anime incarnation of Ghidorah is markedly different from his original portrayal, having evolved to the point of discarding his physical body in favor of a form of pure astral energy with two tails, two wings, and three necks that reach at least 20 kilometers in length, stretching out of three black hole-like portals to devour planets sacrificed to him by the Exif cult with his gravitational powers while his torso remains within an alternate dimension. In this state, King Ghidorah is completely invulnerable as long as his 'anchor' remains alive, and is capable of completely ignoring the laws of physics of the dimensions he invades, with his powers including intangibility, the manipulation of thermodynamics, gravity and time through time dilation.


title: King Ghidorah

text: In the anime, Ghidorah is the deity worshipped by the Exif under the titles of "Wings of Death", "Golden Demise", and "God of Destruction". He is summoned to Earth by Metphies and his cult in order to destroy Godzilla and devour Earth just as they fed him other planets they visited and converted to the Exif faith. Virtually invincible due to his defiance of physics, it is only when his link to this universe (in this case, Metphies) is broken that he can be affected by conventional physical laws, allowing Godzilla to disperse, defeat, and effectively banish him back to his realm of reality for the time being.


title: King Ghidorah

text: In 2014, Legendary Pictures announced their acquisition of the licenses to Rodan, Mothra and King Ghidorah from Toho to use in their MonsterVerse franchise. The trio were introduced in "" in a post-credits scene depicting cave paintings of all three monsters, including Godzilla.


title: King Ghidorah

text: In June 2017, a press release confirmed Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah would all be featured in "". In April 2018, Jason Liles, Alan Maxson, and Richard Dorton were cast to provide the motion capture performances of the heads of King Ghidorah, with Liles performing the middle head, Maxson performing the right head, and Dorton performing the left head. Other actors would perform the rest of King Ghidorah's body. This version of Ghidorah stands 521 ft (158.8 m) tall, weighing 141,056 tons with an unknown wingspan that allows it to fly at a maximum speed of 550 knots. Unlike previous incarnations of the character, here Ghidorah's three heads are portrayed with independent personalities from each other, although Ghidorah still exhibits the inherent sadism of most incarnations: the middle head is the leader and more prominently sadistic than the other two, the right head is angry and thirsty for battle, and the left head is curious and slightly more docile - the heads are officially named Ichi, Ni and San respectively (meaning "One", "Two" and "Three" in Japanese). It is referred to as "Monster Zero" (a reference to "Invasion of Astro-Monster") by the organization Monarch. According to Monarch's database, ancient civilizations called the monster "Ghidorah".


title: King Ghidorah

text: In the film, King Ghidorah is portrayed as a rival apex predator to Godzilla that originated from another world (how exactly it traveled through space to Earth is unclear), who actively seeks to usurp Godzilla's domination of the other monsters, and unlike Godzilla, he is actively hostile towards humanity whilst threatening to destroy Earth's natural order. It's briefly speculated in the film that Ghidorah's motive for attempting to inflict an extinction event on the Earth's ecosphere might be terraforming the planet into a more ideal environment for himself, but the novelization at one point suggests when discussing the said theory that maybe Ghidorah is just motivated by hatred of every living thing that isn't him. Referenced in various myths and said to be the inspiration for the beasts in humanity's various Chaoskampf stories, King Ghidorah is shown through ancient cave paintings to have fought against Godzilla and/or its species in the past before, but its nature scared ancient humans enough that the info contained in those myths was left incomplete. King Ghidorah ended up being frozen in Antarctica, discovered sometime after 1973 by Monarch who proceeded to study the monster until it was freed by eco-terrorists led by Alan Jonah. Godzilla is attracted to Ghidorah's activity and they engage in a short battle, but Ghidorah retreats when Monarch's military forces intervene; proceeding to Mexico, where Rodan is awoken from its hibernation inside a volcano.


title: King Ghidorah

text: Ghidorah forces Rodan into submission but is then attacked by Godzilla again, who manages to gain the upper hand by dragging the flying monster into the ocean. Godzilla is nearly victorious after he completely bites off Ghidorah's left head, but in desperation, the human military attempts to kill both Ghidorah and Godzilla by detonating a new weapon called the Oxygen Destroyer. Caught in the blast's center; the weapon almost kills Godzilla but is revealed to have no effect on Ghidorah, who flies back to land and within minutes, fully regenerates his severed head, which would eventually allow the humans to discover that he is in fact an alien. With Godzilla seemingly defeated, Ghidorah becomes the new "alpha" or "king of the monsters", and puts out a worldwide call that awakens all of the Earth's Titans, and commands them to aid him in destroying human civilization and inflicting an extinction event that could wipe out all complex life on Earth, with Rodan as his right hand. Ghidorah even starts causing massive electrical storms in the eastern United States, radically altering climate conditions.


title: King Ghidorah

text: When Ghidorah comes to Boston to destroy the Orca device that is negating its hold over the Titans, it battles a revived Godzilla while Mothra fights Rodan. This time, Ghidorah defeats Godzilla after empowering himself by feeding on the city's energy supply and throwing Godzilla from a high altitude but is stopped from killing him thanks to distractions from Mothra (who is killed by Ghidorah in an act of self-sacrifice) and the humans. Godzilla recovers by absorbing Mothra's life force and uses the resulting power boost to unleash a series of thermonuclear pulses that obliterate Ghidorah completely. In a post-credits scene, Jonah and his men are shown a previously-decapitated head of Ghidorah from a fisherman in Mexico. He tells the fisherman, "We'll take it."


title: King Ghidorah

text: In the 2021 sequel, "Godzilla vs. Kong", set 5 years after the events of "King of the Monsters", Ghidorah's severed head is being used by Apex Cybernetics' Ren Serizawa (portrayed by Shun Oguri) to telepathically interface with Mechagodzilla's body. Godzilla senses his fallen rival's presence, which prompts him to attack the Apex facilities where Mechagodzilla is being built. Eventually, what's left of Ghidorah's consciousness takes control of the cybernetic Titan, killing Apex CEO Walter Simmons and electrocuting Ren Serizawa, before battling Godzilla in Hong Kong. Ghidorah's influence on Mechagodzilla is evident from his desire for unabridged destruction and the senseless killing of humans. Mechagodzilla is finally destroyed by the combined efforts of Godzilla and Kong. In the novelization, Ren's death is changed so that instead of being electrocuted, his mind is trapped inside Mechagodzilla and overwritten by the Ghidorah-derived mind, and the novel drops hints that Ghidorah's consciousness may have possessed Ren's body and escaped afterwards.


title: King Ghidorah

text: In "Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster", the first incarnation is shown travelling through space within a meteor capable of generating magnetic fields.


title: King Ghidorah

text: The Mecha-King Ghidorah version is equipped with a Triple Laser Cannon fired from its robotic head, electrified grapples and a mechanical arm in its chest for capturing Godzilla.


title: King Ghidorah

text: In "Rebirth of Mothra III", King Ghidorah gains energy from eating victims and can construct a dome to house its victims for future consumption. It is also portrayed as capable of firing lightning bolts from its wings, hypnotize, spit fireballs and regenerating its entire body from severed body parts.


title: King Ghidorah

text: In ""(G.M.K) King Ghidorah can inflict electric shocks to his enemies by biting them, gain power by absorbing the energy of dead monsters and form an energy shield capable of deflecting Godzilla's atomic breath.


title: King Ghidorah

text: In "", the third part of an animated trilogy, Ghidorah is depicted as an evolved entity from a universe with different physical laws that are worshiped by the Exif, who he influenced to become nihilists upon mastering advanced Gematron mathematics. While Ghidorah consumed the Exifs' homeworld, their first offering to him, through his gravitational powers, a few priests were spared and traveled to other worlds where they established cults while meeting the conditions for Ghidorah to physically manifest as a shadow to consume sacrificial offering through their shadows before his heads finally emerge through black holes. His necks extend to infinite lengths, nigh-invisible to machines save for the gravitational energy he emanates, strong enough to deflect Godzilla's heat ray or actually bend space. As long as someone native to the dimension he invades acts as his guiding anchor and witness, Ghidorah can defy that universe's physics, able to render himself intangible to enemy attacks whilst still capable of assaulting foes normally. He can even distort space-time and erode reality, able to change people's chronological perception of events and nearly succeeding in "erasing" Godzilla from existence. Though his avatar was rendered tangible to physics by the loss of connection to the priest serving as his key witness (thus allowing Godzilla to destroy his projection through reality), Ghidorah was simply banished back to his dimension, awaiting for another individual to serve as his link to open up his next chance to enter reality and feast.


title: King Ghidorah

text: In "", Ghidorah has a divergent frontal lobe density in each of its heads, rendering each head capable of independent thoughts. Its scales are capable of running bioelectrical currents through its body and its dermal layer is coated with aurum. It can generate "hurricane-force" winds (recorded at 217 mph, later stated to be 400 mph according to the graphic novel Kingdom Kong) due to the hyper-tensile muscle tendons of the wings as he flies at 550 knots (Mach 0.8, as opposed to the Mach 3 flight speed of previous incarnations). Its body's electro-receptor molecular biology can create electrical currents and localized storm systems as it travels. This results in the stratosphere being torn open by thunder and lightning as it takes flight. After ‘consuming’ all of Boston's electric power grid by chomping down on a power substation, King Ghidorah is able to unleash chain lightning from the tips of the bones in his wings (referencing his Rebirth of Mothra 3 incarnation) and later shows more of his vampiric, energy-draining capabilities when he chomps down on Godzilla in a nearly successful attempt to siphon away Godzilla's remaining nuclear energy along with the power boost Mothra's ashes provided him (referencing a similar attempt made by Kaiser Ghidorah in Godzilla: Final Wars). As an alpha, Ghidorah's roar is able to awaken and influence other titans around the world into rampaging in the wake of Godzilla's supposed death, having taken over as king. Halfway through the film, he displays two "unnatural" abilities that were attributed to - and served as evidence of - his alien nature. The first is the durability to withstand the Oxygen Destroyer, emerging unscathed from the same detonation which severely injured Godzilla and killed all Earth-based lifeforms within a two-mile radius. The second is the possession of highly accelerated regenerative properties, having regrown the left head minutes after Godzilla tore it off, retaining the memories and personality since Ghidorah's neurons are spread throughout his body like in an octopus. However, according to the official novelization, a store of energy must be absorbed to do so, which Ghidorah acquired from the highly-radioactive lava of Rodan's volcano. Later on, the same power substation Ghidorah consumed to boost himself also healed up the wounds on his wing membranes immediately after he fired lightning from the tips of his wings. Eventually, Godzilla succeeded in incinerating Ghidorah's wings, side heads, body, and finally, the middle head, to prevent the alien dragon from coming back. However, Ghidorah was not entirely destroyed, for the head Godzilla bit off during the fight in Mexico remained intact and was salvaged.


title: King Ghidorah

text: In "Godzilla vs. Kong", it is revealed that Ghidorah's heads communicated with each other via telepathy, as his necks were so long that communication via the nervous system was impractical. Apex Cybernetics, which has acquired Ghidorah's skull and brain, is using these telepathic abilities as the basis of a psychic control system for Mechagodzilla. Once Mechagodzilla received an energy source sufficient to power it properly, Ghidorah's mind suddenly transferred itself to this new body, frying the pilot to death as he seized total control of the robot.


title: King Ghidorah

text: The character has been well-received and is considered to be the most famous enemy of Godzilla. IGN listed the creature as #2 on their "Top 10 Japanese Movie Monsters" list. "Complex" listed the character as #4 on its "The 15 Most Badass Kaiju Monsters of All Time" list, calling it "iconic" and saying that it "... simply looks cooler than some of the more powerful bugs, crabs, and robots."


title: King Ghidorah

text: In his review of "Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster", Ethan Reed of "Toho Kingdom" praised King Ghidorah, calling it "a fantastic addition to the franchise" and "no less than pure evil, a relentless force of destruction that wipes out the life of entire planets just for the sake of it" and concluded that "King Ghidorah is not only one [of] the best characters in the series, but one [of] the best movie villains as well." Similar views were expressed in "Paste", which listed Ghidorah as #5 on its "10 Best Movie Dragons", describing it as "probably the deadliest beast in all of Godzilla lore".


title: King Ghidorah

text: Godzilla historian Steve Ryfle, however, has criticized Ghidorah's design in "Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah", citing its stiff movements and recycled Rodan roar, as well as noting that it did not deviate enough from Eiji Tsuburaya's original design.


title: King Ghidorah

text: Following the release of "King of the Monsters", Ghidorah's left head has gained the nickname "Kev/Kevin". This was following an announcement by Mike Dougherty who released a tweet with the names of Ghidorah's head. Due to his seemingly unique personality, Kevin has become the subject of memes.


title: King Ghidorah

text: King Ghidorah appeared in a brief piece of stock footage in "Terror of Mechagodzilla". The mechanical head of Mecha-King Ghidorah appears briefly in the opening of "Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II". Stock footage of King Ghidorah was used in four episodes of "Courage the Cowardly Dog": "Courage in the Big Stinkin' City", "The Tower of Dr. Zalost", Fishy Business and "Nowhere TV". Spin-off characters based on King Ghidorah (although quadrupedal in appearance) were featured in other Toho films: Desghidorah in "Rebirth of Mothra" and Keizer Ghidorah in "". A post-credits scene in "" depicts cave paintings of Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra and King Ghidorah. It was implied that King Ghidorah took over Mechagodzilla's conscience in "Godzilla vs. Kong".


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: The CONCACAF Gold Cup (, ) is the main association football competition of the men's national football teams governed by CONCACAF, determining the continental champion of North America, which includes Central America and the Caribbean. The Gold Cup is held every two years. The tournament succeeded the CONCACAF Championship (1963–1989), with its inaugural edition being held in 1991.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: North American Football Union's members Canada, United States and Mexico are the only three nations to have won the tournament.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: Before the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) was formed in 1961, association football in the region was divided into smaller, regional divisions. The two main bodies consisted of the Confederación Centroamericana y del Caribe de Fútbol (CCCF) founded in 1938 (consisting of Central America and most of the Caribbean) and the North American Football Confederation (NAFC) founded in 1946 (consisting of the North American nations of United States, Mexico, Canada, and Cuba). Each confederation held its own competition, the CCCF Championship and the NAFC Championship. The CCCF held 10 championships from 1941 to 1961 with Costa Rica winning seven times. The NAFC held four championships in 1947 and 1949, and after 41 years of absence, in 1990 and 1991 for the North American zone as the North American Nations Cup with Mexico winning three times and Canada winning once.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: CONCACAF was founded in 1961 through the merging of NAFC and CCCF which resulted in a single championship being held for the continent. The first CONCACAF tournament was held in 1963 in El Salvador with Costa Rica becoming the first champion. The CONCACAF Campeonato de Naciones, as it was called, was held every two years from 1963 to 1973. The second tournament was held in Guatemala in 1965 when Mexico defeated the host country in the final of a six-team tournament. The 1967 competition was held in Honduras and saw a third champion crowned, Guatemala. Costa Rica won their second title as hosts in 1969, knocking off Guatemala, while two years later, Mexico won their second championship as the tournament moved to Trinidad & Tobago, the first time in the Caribbean. In 1973, the tournament kept the same format of six teams playing a single round-robin, but there were bigger stakes attached: CONCACAF's berth in the FIFA World Cup tournament in 1974. In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the host country pulled off an upset by winning the tournament and claiming a spot in the World Cup in West Germany.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: With the Campeonato de Naciones doubling as the final World Cup qualifying tournament, the next two editions were held in Mexico City and Tegucigalpa, Honduras in 1977 and 1981, respectively. In each case the host country was crowned champion and earned a spot in the World Cup. In 1985 and 1989, the winner of the World Cup qualifying tournament was again crowned Confederation champion. Canada and Costa Rica were named champions in 1985 and 1989, receiving a trophy.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: In 1990, CONCACAF renamed and restructured the CONCACAF Championship as the CONCACAF Gold Cup, with the United States hosting the first competition in 1991, and hosting or co-hosting every subsequent iteration of the tournament (as of 2021). The host country was the inaugural champion of the eight-team tournament. Mexico dominated the remainder of the decade, winning three consecutive CONCACAF Gold Cup titles in 1993, 1996 and 1998.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: In 1996, the Gold Cup field included its first guest team, the defending FIFA World Cup Champions Brazil. Guests were invited to participate in the six Gold Cup tournaments from 1996 to 2005. Starting with the 2000 Gold Cup, the tournament field was increased to twelve teams and for the 2007 tournament, the Gold Cup again was contested exclusively by nations within CONCACAF.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: The 2007 Gold Cup hosts successfully defended their title beating Mexico in the final 2–1 in Chicago; Canada and Guadeloupe shared third place. Mexico won the 2009 Gold Cup by beating the United States 5–0. In the 2011 Gold Cup, Mexico defeated the USA 4–2 in the final while the USA won the 2013 Gold Cup by beating Panama 1–0.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: Since the formation of the Gold Cup in 1991, the CONCACAF Championship has been won eight times by Mexico, seven times by the United States, and once by Canada. Runners-up include Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama, and Jamaica.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: Before 2015, when the Gold Cup did not fall in the same year as the FIFA Confederations Cup, the winner, or highest-placed team that is a member of both CONCACAF and FIFA, qualified for the next staging of that tournament. In 2015, the winners of the previous two Gold Cups (the 2013 and 2015 editions) faced each other in CONCACAF Cup – a playoff to determine the CONCACAF entrant to the 2017 Confederations Cup.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: In January 2017, Victor Montagliani announced the expansion of the Gold Cup from 12 to 16 teams, starting with the 2019 tournament. In November 2018, Costa Rica was announced as one of the hosts of the 2019 tournament, with a group B double-header set to be held at the Estadio Nacional. In April 2019, it was announced that Jamaica would host a doubleheader in group C at Independence Park.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: The number of teams and the format of each final tournament have varied over the years. In most tournaments, the tournament consists of a round-robin group stage followed by a single-elimination knockout stage.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: The 1996 CONCACAF Gold Cup was the first iteration to have a guest from a different confederation, Brazil from CONMEBOL. In spite of bringing their under-23 team, Brazil finished as runner-ups to Mexico and outplaced seven teams from CONCACAF. For the next decade, six countries from three confederations would make appearances in the Gold Cup, with seven of the eleven appearances finishing within the top four. Starting in 2007, CONCACAF would no longer invite guests from other confederations. This is primarily due to giving more opportunities from teams in the region to compete, as there was a rise in performances from the region hinted by the FIFA World Ranking.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: After a 16 year hiatus from guest nations, Qatar were invited and participated in the 2021 CONCACAF Gold Cup, losing in the semi-finals to the United States. Qatar are also scheduled to participate in 2023.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: In the United States, the CONCACAF Gold Cup airs on Fox Sports and Univision (since 2000). In Mexico it airs on Televisa and TV Azteca. In Canada, after years on Sportsnet and TSN, it has been broadcast exclusively on OneSoccer since 2021.


title: CONCACAF Gold Cup

text: The Gold Cup trophy is awarded to the champions of the tournament. The design of the trophy has changed multiple times since its inaugural version. Changes include scaling down of the size as well as replacing the original flat rectangular base with an elevated round pedestal. The base includes engravings of the champion nation with the year in which they won the trophy.


Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis is an American talk show hosted by comedian Zach Galifianakis which features celebrity guests. Episodes last several minutes, in which the interviewer (Galifianakis) and guests trade barbs and insults. In addition to the online series, there is a Comedy Central television special, and a Netflix original movie "". The series' theme music is Dave Blume's arrangement of Bernard Herrmann's theme from "Taxi Driver", which is on the original "Taxi Driver" soundtrack album but was not included in the film.


title: Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis

text: As the show's title suggests, host Zach Galifianakis interviews celebrities while sitting between two potted ferns. The set intentionally resembles a low-budget amateur production for public-access television, with on-screen graphics containing deliberate comedic errors. For example, in a 2014 episode, Brad Pitt's name is spelled "Bart Pit" and his film "12 Years a Slave"—the winner of the 2013 Academy Award for Best Picture—entitled ""12 Years a Salve"".


text: Galifianakis maintains a very awkward and often antagonistic demeanor with his guests, asking them bizarre, inappropriate or insulting questions mixed with offhand "non-sequiturs". The guests' responses are mostly improvised, despite pre-interviews. Episodes often include a segment in which Galifianakis awkwardly interrupts his guests to promote a sponsor's product. Examples include bananas, the video game "", and (most frequently) Speed Stick deodorant. Some advertisements, like the graphics, are based around aspects of or events related to the interviewee. For example, the episode featuring Hillary Clinton included one of Donald Trump's campaign commercials.


text: The show originated as a short film on Scott Aukerman and B. J. Porter's Fox sketch pilot "The Right Now! Show", a spin-off of their "Comedy Death-Ray" live show. After the network declined to pick up the show, the duo put the short up on the website Funny Or Die, where it made a successful transition to an internet series.


text: Discussing the show on "ABC News Now", Galifianakis said, "The ic way that Hollywood machine runs – it's fun to make fun of it. That's how "Between Two Ferns" started." Guests aren't told what will happen in advance, according to Galifianakis, "They agree to come. There is no discussion beforehand...It just happens, no real prep, no organization whatsoever." He continues, "Inappropriateness is really fun to me...That is kind of the take on "Between Two Ferns" – inappropriate humor."


text: The "Chicago Tribune" described it as "surreal improv...a talk show that's more of a charming critique of the faked intimacy of celebrity interviews than a talk show."


text: A 30-minute television special, "Between Two Ferns: A Fairytale of New York", aired on Comedy Central on May 6, 2012. The show featured interviews with Tina Fey, Jon Stewart, and Richard Branson.


text: The episode featuring President Barack Obama was timed to encourage Americans to sign up for health insurance at Healthcare.gov. Funnyordie.com became the top referrer to the government site during this time. The September 2013 episode featuring Justin Bieber also received significant media attention. The show opened with Galifianakis telling him, "It's really exciting to talk to you. Especially right in the middle of your public meltdown."


text: In the 2014 episode featuring Brad Pitt, the actor was referred to as both "Bradley Pitts" and "Bart Pit", and Galifianakis referred to Pitt's latest film, "Fury" as ""Furry"", and asked Pitt, "Is it hard for you to maintain a suntan...because you live in your wife's shadow?" Galifianakis also asked Pitt if his relationship with wife, Angelina Jolie, was anything like "Ross and Rachel" from "Friends", the show that made a star of Pitt's ex-wife, Jennifer Aniston.


text: In a January 2016 interview with the "Los Angeles Times", while promoting "Baskets", Galifianakis discussed the status of "Between Two Ferns", stating: "I don't know what else to do ... ["Between Two Ferns" has] kind of run its course a bit." Galifianakis also expressed his desire to interview the Pope on the show. "Between Two Ferns"' first new episode in almost two years aired in September 2016. It featured then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and received over 30 million views in its first 24 hours, the highest viewership in FunnyorDie.com's history.


text: "", a film adaptation of the show directed by Aukerman and written by Galifianakis and Aukerman, premiered on Netflix on September 20, 2019. Uncut interviews from the film featuring David Letterman, Paul Rudd, Awkwafina, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brie Larson, Keanu Reeves, Hailee Steinfeld, and Adam Scott were released on the Netflix Is A Joke YouTube channel and FunnyOrDie.com under the title "Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: The Movie, Sorta Uncut Interviews", which received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Variety Series nomination.


title: Les Invalides

text: The Hôtel des Invalides (), commonly called Les Invalides (), is a complex of buildings in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France, containing museums and monuments, all relating to the military history of France, as well as a hospital and a retirement home for war veterans, the building's original purpose. The buildings house the Musée de l'Armée, the military museum of the Army of France, the Musée des Plans-Reliefs, and the Musée d'Histoire Contemporaine. The complex also includes the former hospital chapel, now national cathedral of the French military, and the adjacent former Royal Chapel known as the , the tallest church building in Paris at a height of 107 meters. The latter has been converted into a shrine of some of France's leading military figures, most notably the tomb of Napoleon.


title: Les Invalides

text: Louis XIV initiated the project by an order dated 24 November 1670, as a home and hospital for aged and disabled () soldiers. The initial architect of Les Invalides was Libéral Bruant. The selected site was in the then suburban plain of Grenelle ("plaine de Grenelle"). By the time the enlarged project was completed in 1676, the façade fronting the Seine measured in width, and the complex had fifteen courtyards, the largest being the cour d'honneur designed for military parades.


title: Les Invalides

text: The church-and-chapel complex of the Invalides was designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart from 1676, taking inspiration from his great-uncle François Mansart's design for a to be built behind the chancel of the Basilica of Saint-Denis, the French monarch's necropolis since ancient times. Several projects were submitted in the mid-1660s by both Mansart and Gian Lorenzo Bernini who was residing in Paris at the time. Mansart's second project is very close to Hardouin-Mansart's concept of the Royal Chapel or Dome Church at Les Invalides, both in terms of its architecture and of its relationship with the adjacent church. Architectural historian Allan Braham has hypothesized that the domed chapel was initially intended to be a new burial place for the Bourbon Dynasty, but that project was not implemented. Instead, the massive building was designated as private chapel of the monarch, from which he could attend church service without having to mingle with the disabled veterans. It was barely used for that purpose. The Dôme des Invalides remains as one of the prime exemplars of French Baroque architecture, at high, and also as an iconic symbol of France's absolute monarchy.


title: Les Invalides

text: The interior of the dome was painted by Le Brun's disciple Charles de La Fosse with a Baroque illusionistic ceiling painting. The painting was completed in 1705.


title: Les Invalides

text: Meanwhile, Hardouin-Mansart assisted the aged Bruant on the chapel, which was finished to Bruant's design after the latter's death in 1697. This chapel is known as the church of Saint-Louis-des-Invalides. Daily attendance of the veterans in the church services was required. Shortly after the veterans' chapel was started, Louis XIV commissioned Mansart to construct a separate private royal chapel, now known as the from its most striking feature. The Dome chapel was finished in 1706.


title: Les Invalides

text: Because of its location and significance, the Invalides served as the scene for several key events in French history. On 14 July 1789 it was stormed by Parisian rioters who seized the cannons and muskets stored in its cellars to use against the Bastille later the same day. Napoleon was entombed under the Dome of the Invalides with great ceremony in 1840.


title: Les Invalides

text: The separation between the two churches was reinforced in the 19th century with the erection of Napoleon's tomb, the creation of the two separate altars and then with the construction of a glass wall between the two chapels.


title: Les Invalides

text: The building retained its primary function of a retirement home and hospital for military veterans ("invalides") until the early twentieth century. In 1872 the musée d'artillerie (Artillery Museum) was located within the building to be joined by the musée historique des armées (Historical Museum of the Armies) in 1896. The two institutions were merged to form the present musée de l'armée in 1905. At the same time the veterans in residence were dispersed to smaller centres outside Paris. The reason was that the adoption of a mainly conscript army, after 1872, meant a substantial reduction in the numbers of veterans having the twenty or more years of military service formerly required to enter the Hôpital des Invalides. The building accordingly became too large for its original purpose. The modern complex does however still include the facilities detailed below for about a hundred elderly or incapacitated former soldiers.


title: Les Invalides

text: When the Army Museum at Les Invalides was founded in 1905, the veterans' chapel was placed under its administrative control. It is now the cathedral of the Diocese of the French Armed Forces, officially known as Cathédrale Saint-Louis-des-Invalides.


title: Les Invalides

text: On the north front of Les Invalides, Hardouin-Mansart's Dome chapel is large enough to dominate the long façade, yet harmonizes with Bruant's door under an arched pediment. To the north, the courtyard (cour d'honneur) is extended by a wide public esplanade ("Esplanade des Invalides") where the embassies of Austria and Finland are neighbors of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, all forming one of the grand open spaces in the heart of Paris. At its far end, the Pont Alexandre III links this grand urbanistic axis with the Petit Palais and the Grand Palais. The Pont des Invalides is next, downstream the Seine river.


title: Les Invalides

text: The buildings still comprise the Institution Nationale des Invalides, a national institution for disabled war veterans. The institution comprises:


title: Les Invalides

text: The Dome chapel became a military necropolis when Napoleon in September 1800 designated it for the relocation of the tomb of Louis XIV's celebrated general Turenne, followed in 1807–1808 by Vauban. In 1835, the underground gallery below the church received the remains of 14 victims of the Giuseppe Marco Fieschi's failed assassination attempt on Louis-Philippe I. The major development came with the building's designation to become Napoleon's tomb by a law of 10 June 1840, as part of the political project of the orchestrated by king Louis-Philippe I and his minister Adolphe Thiers (the reference to Napoleon's or "ashes" is actually to his mortal remains, as he had not been cremated). The creation of the crypt and of Napoleon's massive sarcophagus took twenty years to complete and was finished in 1861. By then, it was emperor Napoleon III who was in power and oversaw the ceremony of the transfer of his remains from a chapel of the church to the crypt beneath the dome.


title: Les Invalides

text: The most notable tomb at Les Invalides is that of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), designed by Louis Visconti with sculptures by James Pradier, Pierre-Charles Simart and Francisque Joseph Duret. Napoleon was initially interred on Saint Helena, but King Louis Philippe arranged for his remains to be brought to France in 1840, an event known as "le retour des cendres". Napoléon's remains were kept in the Saint Jerome (southwestern) chapel of the Dome church for more than two decades until his final resting place, a tomb made of red quartzite and resting on a green granite base, was finished in 1861.


title: Les Invalides

text: Other military figures and members of Napoleon's family also buried at the Dome church, by year of burial there:


title: Les Invalides

text: 82 additional military figures, including 28 Governors of Les Invalides, are in the underground gallery known as the beneath the Saint-Louis Cathedral:


title: Les Invalides

text: Two of these, Gabriel Malleterre and Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, are also honored with a plaque inside the Saint-Louis-des-Invalides cathedral. Another plaque honors Jean de Lattre de Tassigny (1889–1952), posthumous Marshal of France, commander of the French First Army during World War II and later commander in the First Indochina War, who is buried in Mouilleron-en-Pareds.


title: General Mills

text: General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company originally gained fame for being a large flour miller. Today, the company markets many well-known North American brands, including Gold Medal flour, Annie's Homegrown, Lärabar, Cascadian Farm, Betty Crocker, Yoplait, Nature Valley, Totino's, Pillsbury, Old El Paso, Häagen-Dazs, as well as breakfast cereals under the General Mills name, including Cheerios, Chex, Lucky Charms, Trix, Cocoa Puffs and Count Chocula and the other monster cereals.


title: General Mills

text: The company can trace its history to the Minneapolis Milling Company, incorporated in 1856. The company was founded by Illinois Congressman Robert Smith, who leased power rights to flour mills operating along the west side of Saint Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Cadwallader C. Washburn acquired the company shortly after its founding and hired his brother William D. Washburn to assist in the company's development. In 1866 the Washburns got into the business themselves, building the Washburn "B" Mill at the falls. At the time, the building was considered to be so large and output so vast that it could not possibly sustain itself. However, the company succeeded, and in 1874 he built the even bigger Washburn "A" Mill.


title: General Mills

text: In 1877, the mill entered a partnership with John Crosby to form the Washburn-Crosby Company, producing winter wheat Flour. That same year Washburn sent William Hood Dunwoody to England to open the market for spring wheat. Dunwoody was successful and became a silent partner.


title: General Mills

text: In 1878, the "A" mill was destroyed in a flour dust explosion along with five nearby buildings, an event known as the Great Mill Disaster. The ensuing fire led to the death of 18 workers.


title: General Mills

text: Construction of a new mill began immediately. Not only was the new mill safer but it also was able to produce a higher quality flour after the old grinding stones were replaced with automatic steel rollers, the first ever used.


title: General Mills

text: In 1880, Washburn-Crosby flour brands won gold, silver and bronze medals at the Millers' International Exhibition in Cincinnati, causing them to launch the Gold Medal flour brand.


title: General Mills

text: In 1924, the company acquired a failing Twin Cities radio station, WLAG, renaming it WCCO (from Washburn-Crosby Company).


title: General Mills

text: General Mills itself was created on June 20, 1928 when Washburn-Crosby President James Ford Bell merged Washburn-Crosby with three other mills. In the same year, General Mills acquired the Wichita Mill and Elevator Company of the industrialist Frank Kell of Wichita Falls, Texas. With the sale, Kell acquired cash plus stock in the corporation.


title: General Mills

text: Shares of the new company's stock were first sold on the New York Stock Exchange on November 30, 1928, at $65 per share. The newly merged company paid a dividend in 1928, and has continued the dividend uninterrupted ever since – one of only a few companies to pay a dividend every year since its founding.


title: General Mills

text: In 1946, General Mills established their Aeronautical Research Division with chief engineer Otto C. Winzen. This division developed high altitude balloons in conjunction with the United States Navy Office of Naval Research (ONR), such as the Skyhook balloon.


title: General Mills

text: The Aeronautical work of General Mills done around the time of the second World War is continued by the company Raven Industries in their Raven Aerostar department.


title: General Mills

text: The General Mills Electronics division developed the DSV "Alvin" submersible, which is notable for being used in investigating the wreck of "Titanic" among other deep-sea exploration missions.


title: General Mills

text: Beginning in 1929, General Mills products contained box top coupons, known as Betty Crocker coupons, with varying point values, which were redeemable for discounts on a variety of housewares products featured in the widely distributed Betty Crocker catalog. The coupons and the catalog were discontinued by the company in 2006.


title: General Mills

text: General Mills became the sponsor of the popular radio show "The Lone Ranger" in 1941. The show was then brought to television, and, after 20 years, their sponsorship came to an end in 1961.


title: General Mills

text: Beginning in 1959, General Mills sponsored the "Rocky and His Friends" television series, later known as "The Bullwinkle Show". Until 1968, Rocky and Bullwinkle were featured in a variety of advertisements for General Mills. General Mills was also a sponsor of the Saturday-morning cartoons from the Total Television productions studio, including Tennessee Tuxedo. The company also was a sponsor of the ABC western series "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp", starring Hugh O'Brian. The company, along with its subsidiary The Program Exchange, backed DiC Entertainment in syndicating the "Dennis the Menace" animated series based on the comic strip of the same name created by Hank Ketcham in 1986. From 1997 until May 31, 2004, General Mills sponsored and syndicated the first 82 episodes of the original "Sailor Moon" English dub (the remaining 17 of 82 episodes premiered on Cartoon Network's programming block Toonami in 1998).


title: General Mills

text: The first venture General Mills took into the toy industry was in 1965. The company bought Rainbow Crafts, which was the manufacturer of Play-Doh. General Mills' purchase of the company was significant because it brought production costs down and tripled the revenue.


title: General Mills

text: General Mills came out with their "Monster Cereals" in the 1970s. The cereals are now produced and sold seasonally around Halloween.


title: General Mills

text: In 1970, General Mills acquired a five-unit restaurant company called Red Lobster and expanded it nationwide. Soon, a division of General Mills titled General Mills Restaurants developed to take charge of the Red Lobster chain. In 1980, General Mills acquired the California-based Good Earth health food restaurant chain. The company eventually converted the restaurants into other chain restaurants they were operating, such as Red Lobster. In 1982, General Mills Restaurants founded a new Italian-themed restaurant chain called Olive Garden. Another themed restaurant, China Coast, was added before the entire group was spun off to General Mills shareholders in 1995 as Darden Restaurants.


title: General Mills

text: During the same decade, General Mills ventured further, starting the General Mills Specialty Retail Group. They acquired two clothing and apparel companies, Talbots and Eddie Bauer. The acquisition was short-lived. Talbots was purchased by a Japanese company, then known as JUSCO, and the Spiegel company purchased Bauer. Spiegel later declared bankruptcy, yet Bauer still remains, albeit in a smaller presence in the United States today.


title: General Mills

text: From 1976 to 1985, General Mills went to court as the parent company of Parker Brothers, which held the rights on the brand name and gaming idea of the board game "Monopoly", claiming that the so-called Anti-Monopoly game of an economics professor infringed their trademark. The dispute extended up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled against them, saying that while they have exclusive rights to the game "Monopoly", they cannot prevent others from using the word "monopoly" in the name of a game.


title: General Mills

text: In 1985, General Mills' toy division was separated from its parent as Kenner Parker Toys, Inc. There were many potential acquirers of the business but it was floated on the stock exchange with General Mills' shareholders getting equivalent shares in Kenner Parker. This was more tax efficient for General Mills.


title: General Mills

text: In 1990, a joint venture with Nestlé S.A. called Cereal Partners was formed which markets cereals (including many existing General Mills cereal brands) outside the US and Canada under the Nestlé name.


title: General Mills

text: In 2001, the company purchased Pillsbury (sans Burger King) from Diageo, although it was officially described as a "merger".


title: General Mills

text: Since 2004, General Mills has been producing more products targeted to the growing ranks of health-conscious consumers. The company has chosen to switch its entire breakfast cereal line to whole grain. The company also started manufacturing their child-targeted cereals with less sugar. General Mills has reduced the level of sugar in all cereals advertised to children to 11 grams per serving.


title: General Mills

text: In April 2011, General Mills announced that it will switch all 1 million eggs it uses each year to cage-free.


title: General Mills

text: General Mills was ranked #181 on the 2012 Fortune 500 list of America's largest corporations, 161 in 2015 and was the third-largest food consumer products company in the United States. During June 2012, the company's vice-president for diversity stated that General Mills opposes a Minnesota amendment banning gay marriage, stating that the company values "inclusion". The company received positive feedback for its stand which might attract people to its global workforce.


title: General Mills

text: The company announced in September 2014 that it would acquire organic food producer Annie's Inc. for a fee of around $820 million, as part of its strategy to expand in the US natural foods market. In October 2014, General Mills announced plans to cut 700 to 800 jobs, mostly in U.S., in corporate restructuring planned to be completed by the end of 2015.


title: General Mills

text: In 2015, citing climate change, General Mills promised to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent over 10 years. In December 2016, the company announced it would be restructuring, splitting into four business groups based on global region, and cutting as many as 600 jobs.


title: General Mills

text: In February 2018, the company entered into the pet products industry, paying $8 billion to buy Blue Buffalo Pet Products, Inc. As of 2018, the company ranked 182nd on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by revenue.


title: General Mills

text: Having launched its first regenerative agriculture pilot program in March 2019, the company has plans to improve soil health on 1 million acres of farmland by 2030.


title: General Mills

text: In February 2020, General Mills was recognized by CDP as a global leader in corporate sustainability and received a place on the CDP "A List" for both climate change and water security.


title: General Mills

text: On May 15, 2021, General Mills announced that it was acquiring Tyson Foods' pet treat business, including True Chews, Nudges and Top Chews, for $1.2 billion. The acquisition was completed on July 7, 2021.


title: General Mills

text: In April of 2022, there were increasing news reports and complaints that the company's Lucky Charms cereal was somehow making individuals ill, with the most common complaints being gastrointestinal in nature, such as nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. The episodes have not yet resulted in a company- or FDA-initiated recall; an FDA spokesperson said they were investigating approximately 100 reports. These reports came as Norovirus was circulating in some areas of the U.S. It is relatively rare for cereals, as opposed to other foods, to be contaminated by microbes, because they must be baked, although it is possible if conditions are unsanitary.


title: General Mills

text: On May 12, 2022, General Mills announced that it was acquiring TNT Crust, a supplier of frozen pizza crusts, from Peak Rock Capital.


title: General Mills

text: On May 25, 2022, General Mills announced that it was selling its Hamburger Helper and Suddenly Salad businesses to Eagle Family Foods Group for $610 million. This sale is expected to close later this year. The sale closed on July 5, 2022.


title: General Mills

text: In April 2014, the company announced that it had changed its legal terms on its website to introduce an arbitration clause requiring all disputes with General Mills to be resolved in small claims court or arbitration and not as a participant in a class action. The change was made shortly after a judge's March 26, 2014, denial of a motion to dismiss a class action regarding the marketing of the company's Nature Valley brand products. Users would be deemed to accept the terms by interacting with General Mills on its website in various ways, such as downloading coupons, subscribing to newsletters, or participating in Internet forums hosted on the website. "The New York Times" stated that the agreement could be interpreted to additionally construe purchasing General Mills products at a grocery store or liking the company's Facebook page as assent to the terms; General Mills disclaimed that interpretation, calling it a "mischaracterization". The change in terms resulted in a massive backlash of protests via consumer groups and social media, and General Mills reverted the terms back to the original content after only a few days.


title: General Mills

text: On 12 February 2020, the United Nations published a database of companies doing business related in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as well as in the occupied Golan Heights. General Mills was listed on the database on account of the activities of its subsidiary General Mills Israel in Israeli settlements in these occupied territories, which are considered illegal under international law.


title: General Mills

text: Some brands are marketed outside the US and Canada by the Cereal Partners joint venture using the Nestlé brand.


title: General Mills

text: It also produces fruit snacks, including Fruit by the Foot, Fruit Gushers, Fruit Roll-Ups, and Fruit Shapes.


title: General Mills

text: It also produces organic foods, via Cascadian Farm, which they took over when they bought Small Planet Foods, and Muir Glen. More recently, as of 2014, it has purchased Annie's Homegrown.


title: General Mills

text: Other company brands include Annie's, Blue Buffalo, Frescarini, Latina, Totino's, Jeno's, Progresso, Colombo, Lärabar, and Yoplait (51%). It also produces Häagen-Dazs ice cream outside of the U.S. and Canada. General Mills acquired the meat-based brand Epic Provisions in 2016.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The lord chancellor, formally the lord high chancellor of Great Britain, is the highest-ranking traditional minister among the Great Officers of State in Scotland and England in the United Kingdom, nominally outranking the prime minister. The lord chancellor is appointed by the sovereign on the advice of the prime minister. Prior to their Union into the Kingdom of Great Britain, there were separate lord chancellors for the Kingdom of England (including Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland; there were lord chancellors of Ireland until 1922.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The lord chancellor is a member of the Cabinet and is, by law, responsible for the efficient functioning and independence of the courts. In 2005, there were a number of changes to the legal system and to the office of the lord chancellor. Formerly, the lord chancellor was also the presiding officer of the House of Lords, the head of the judiciary of England and Wales and the presiding judge of the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 transferred these roles to the Lord Speaker, the Lord Chief Justice and the Chancellor of the High Court respectively. The current lord chancellor, as of October 2022, is Dominic Raab, who is also the Secretary of State for Justice.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: One of the lord chancellor's responsibilities is to act as the custodian of the Great Seal of the Realm, kept historically in the Lord Chancellor's Purse. A lord keeper of the Great Seal may be appointed instead of a lord chancellor. The two offices entail exactly the same duties; the only distinction is in the mode of appointment. Furthermore, the office of lord chancellor may be exercised by a committee of individuals known as Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal, usually when there is a delay between an outgoing chancellor and their replacement. The office is then said to be "in commission". Since the 19th century, however, only lord chancellors have been appointed, the other offices having fallen into disuse.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The office of lord chancellor may trace its origins to the Carolingian monarchy, in which a chancellor acted as the keeper of the royal seal. In England, the office dates at least as far back as the Norman Conquest (1066), and possibly earlier. Some give the first chancellor of England as Angmendus, in 605. Other sources suggest that the first to appoint a chancellor was Edward the Confessor, who is said to have adopted the practice of sealing documents instead of personally signing them. A clerk of Edward's, Regenbald, was named "chancellor" in some documents from Edward's reign. In any event, the office has been continuously occupied since the Norman Conquest. The staff of the growing office became separate from the king's household under Henry III and in the 14th century located in Chancery Lane. The chancellor headed the chancery (writing office).


title: Lord Chancellor

text: Formerly, the lord chancellor was almost always a member of the clergy, as during the Middle Ages the clergy were amongst the few literate men of the realm. The lord chancellor performed multiple functions—he was the Keeper of the Great Seal, the chief royal chaplain, and adviser in both spiritual and temporal matters. Thus, the position emerged as one of the most important ones in government. He was only outranked in government by the Justiciar (now obsolete).


title: Lord Chancellor

text: As one of the King's ministers, the lord chancellor attended the "curia regis" (royal court). If a bishop, the lord chancellor received a writ of summons; if an ecclesiastic of a lower degree or, if a layman, he attended without any summons. The "curia regis" would later evolve into Parliament, the lord chancellor becoming the prolocutor of its upper house, the House of Lords. As was confirmed by a statute passed during the reign of Henry VIII, a lord chancellor could preside over the House of Lords even if not a lord himself.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The lord chancellor's judicial duties also evolved through his role in the "curia regis". Petitions for justice were normally addressed to the king and the "curia", but in 1280, Edward I instructed his justices to examine and deal with petitions themselves as the Court of King's Bench. Important petitions were to be sent to the lord chancellor for his decision; the more significant of these were also to be brought to the king's attention. By the reign of Edward III, this chancellery function developed into a separate tribunal for the lord chancellor. In this body, which became known as the High Court of Chancery, the lord chancellor would determine cases according to fairness (or "equity") instead of according to the strict principles of common law. The lord chancellor also became known as the "keeper of the king's conscience". Churchmen continued to dominate the chancellorship until the 16th century. In 1529, after Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who was lord chancellor and archbishop of York, was dismissed for failing to procure the annulment of Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, laymen tended to be more favoured for appointment to the office. Ecclesiastics made a brief return during the reign of Mary I, but thereafter, almost all lord chancellors have been laymen. Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (1672–73) was the last lord chancellor who was not a lawyer, until the appointment of Chris Grayling in 2012. The three subsequent holders of the position, Michael Gove (2015–2016), Liz Truss (2016–2017) and David Lidington (2017–2018) are also not lawyers. However, the appointment of David Gauke in January 2018 meant that once again the lord chancellor was a lawyer.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: At the Union of England and Scotland, the lord keeper of the Great Seal of England became the first lord high chancellor of Great Britain, but Lord Seafield continued as lord chancellor of Scotland until 1708; was re-appointed in 1713; and sat as an extraordinary lord of session in that capacity until his death in 1730, since which time the office of lord chancellor of Scotland has been in abeyance.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: Formerly, when the office was held by ecclesiastics, a "Keeper of the Great Seal" acted in the lord chancellor's absence. Keepers were also appointed when the office of lord chancellor fell vacant, and discharged the duties of the office until an appropriate replacement could be found. When Elizabeth I became queen, Parliament passed an Act providing that a lord keeper of the Great Seal would be entitled to "like place, pre-eminence, jurisdiction, execution of laws, and all other customs, commodities, and advantages" as a lord chancellor. The only difference between the two offices is the mode of appointment—a lord chancellor is appointed by formal letters patent, but a Lord Keeper is appointed by the delivery of the Great Seal into their custody.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: Formerly, it was customary to appoint commoners to the office of Lord Keeper, and peers to the office of lord chancellor. A Lord Keeper who acquired a peerage dignity would subsequently be appointed lord chancellor. The last Lord Keeper was Robert Henley, who was created a Baron in 1760 and was appointed lord chancellor in 1761. Since then, commoners as well as peers have been appointed to the post of lord chancellor; however, until the 21st-century changes to the office, a commoner would normally have been created a peer shortly after appointment.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: It is also possible to put the office of lord chancellor into commission (that is to say, to entrust the office to a group of individuals rather than a single person). The individuals who exercise the office became known as "Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal". Lords commissioners of the Great Seal have not been appointed since 1850.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: Formerly, there were separate chancellors of England, Scotland and Ireland. When the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain under the Act of Union 1707 the offices of the chancellor of England and the lord chancellor of Scotland were combined to form a single office of lord chancellor for the new state. Similar provision was not made when Great Britain and Ireland merged into the United Kingdom under the Act of Union 1800. Thus, the separate office of lord chancellor of Ireland continued to exist until the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922. The office of lord chancellor of Ireland was abolished, and its duties transferred to the governor of Northern Ireland, and later the secretary of state for Northern Ireland. Thus, the lord chancellor remains "Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain" and not "Lord High Chancellor of the United Kingdom".


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The lord chancellor is a member of the Privy Council and of the Cabinet. The ministerial department the lord chancellor heads was known as the Lord Chancellor's Office between 1885 and 1971, and the Lord Chancellor's Department between 1971 and 2003. In 2003 the department was renamed the Department for Constitutional Affairs, and the lord chancellor was appointed Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. In 2007 this post was renamed Secretary of State for Justice, and the department became the Ministry of Justice.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: By law, the lord chancellor is responsible for the administration of the courts, prison system, legal aid, and probation services in England and Wales. Furthermore, the lord chancellor has a role in appointing many judges in the courts of England and Wales. Senior judges – i.e. Justices of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, Lords Justices of Appeal and the heads of the divisions of the High Court – are officially appointed by the sovereign on the advice of the lord chancellor, but since 2005 the lord chancellor has been consulted by an independent Judicial Appointments Commission and can only choose whether to accept or reject its recommendations. Similarly the lord chancellor no longer determines which barristers are to be raised to the rank of King's Counsel but merely supervises the process of selection by an independent panel. In addition, the lord chancellor officiates a ceremony in Westminster Abbey at the beginning of the legal year in front of all the judges. The ceremony is followed by a reception known as the lord chancellor's breakfast which is held in Westminster Hall.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: Separately, custody of the Great Seal of the Realm is entrusted to the lord chancellor. Documents to which the Great Seal is affixed include letters patent, writs of summons and election and royal proclamations, among many other instruments. The actual sealing of documents is performed by order of the lord chancellor under the supervision of the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery, who holds the separate office of Permanent Secretary to the Lord Chancellor's Office. The lord chancellor is not keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland, the Great Seal of Northern Ireland, or the Welsh Seal; rather the First Minister of Scotland, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and the First Minister of Wales are the lawful custodians.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: Whenever the sovereign appoints lords commissioners to perform certain actions on his or her behalf (for example, to formally declare in Parliament that the royal assent has been granted, or to prorogue or dissolve Parliament), the lord chancellor usually serves as the principal or senior lord commissioner. The other lords commissioners, by convention, are members of the House of Lords who are privy counsellors (generally the leaders of the three main parties and the convenor of the crossbenches). In this role the lord chancellor wears parliamentary robes—a full-length scarlet wool gown decorated with miniver fur. The lord chancellor wears a tricorne hat, but the other lords commissioners wear bicorne hats. During the period that Jack Straw, an MP, was lord chancellor, he was officially named as one of the lords commissioners, but did not take part in the formal ceremonies of granting royal assent and proroguing Parliament. The Lord Speaker has been appointed a lord commissioner and does take part in the ceremonies. The role of principal lord commissioner during this period has been taken by the leader of the House of Lords. There is an exception: when John Bercow was presented for royal approbation for the office of speaker of the House of Commons in 2009, and again when Bercow's successor Sir Lindsay Hoyle was presented for approbation in 2019, the lord chancellor (Straw and Buckland, respectively) were the principal lord commissioner, and the lord speaker was not in the commission. This precedent has continued since then. It is unclear how these arrangements would change if a future lord chancellor were appointed from the House of Lords.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: Lord chancellors perform various functions relating to the established Church of England. They appoint clergy in such of the ecclesiastical livings under the patronage of the Crown as are officially listed as being worth less than £20 "per annum". Furthermore, they exercise the same prerogative in regard to the less valuable livings in the Duchy of Cornwall when there is no duke of Cornwall, or when the duke of Cornwall is a minor. (The heir-apparent to the Crown, if he is the sovereign's eldest son, is automatically duke of Cornwall.) Finally, the lord chancellor is in some cases the patron of an ecclesiastical living in his own right. In total, the lord chancellor appoints clergymen in over four hundred parishes and twelve cathedral canonries.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: By law, the lord chancellor must be consulted before appointments may be made to certain ecclesiastical courts. Judges of Consistory Courts, the Arches Court of Canterbury, the Chancery Court of York and the Court of Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved are appointed only after consultation with the lord chancellor.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The lord chancellor is, "ex officio", one of the thirty-three Church Commissioners, who manage the assets of the Church of England.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: Formerly, Roman Catholics were thought to be ineligible for the office of lord chancellor, as the office entailed functions relating to the Church of England. Most legal restrictions on Roman Catholics were lifted by the Catholic Relief Act 1829, which, however, provides: "nothing herein contained shall [...] enable any Person, otherwise than as he is now by Law enabled, to hold or enjoy the Office of Lord High Chancellor, Lord Keeper or Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal". The words "as he is now by Law enabled", however, caused considerable doubt, as it was unclear if Roman Catholics were disqualified from holding the office in the first place. For the removal of all doubt, Parliament passed the Lord Chancellor (Tenure of Office and Discharge of Ecclesiastical Functions) Act 1974, declaring that there was never any impediment to the appointment of a Roman Catholic. The Act nevertheless provides that, if a Roman Catholic were to be appointed to the office, then the sovereign may temporarily transfer the lord chancellor's ecclesiastical functions to the prime minister or another minister.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: Under the Regency Act 1937, the lord chancellor is one of the five persons who participate in determining the capacity of the sovereign to discharge his or her functions—the other individuals so empowered are the sovereign's spouse, the speaker of the House of Commons, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales and the master of the rolls. If any three or more of these individuals, based on evidence that, as required by statute, shall include evidence provided by physicians, determine and declare by an instrument in writing, lodged with the Privy Council, that the sovereign suffers from a mental or physical infirmity that prevents him or her from personally discharging the duties of head of state, the royal functions are transferred to a regent, who discharges them in the name and on behalf of the monarch.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The lord chancellor is also the Keeper of the King's Conscience. As such, the lord chancellor was once also the chief judge of the Court of Chancery in London, dispensing equity to soften the harshness of the law.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The lord chancellor acts as the visitor of many universities, colleges, schools, hospitals and other charitable organisations throughout the United Kingdom. When the rules of the organisation do not designate a visitor or, when a vacancy in the office arises, the sovereign serves as visitor, but delegates the functions to the lord chancellor. Furthermore, some organisations explicitly provide that the lord chancellor is to act as visitor; these bodies include St. George's Chapel, Windsor, the Royal Institution, Newcastle University and three colleges of the University of Oxford (namely St. Antony's College, Worcester College, and University College).


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The power to appoint members of certain organisations is vested in the lord chancellor. These organisations include the governing bodies of Harrow School, Rugby School and Charterhouse School.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The Lord Chancellor is responsible for making a speech and raising the toast to the Lord Mayor at the Lord Mayor’s dinner in July each year.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The lord chancellor performed several different roles as head of the English and Welsh judiciary. He sat as a judge in the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords (the highest domestic Court in the United Kingdom), and was a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (the senior tribunal of the British Empire (except for the United Kingdom) and, latterly, parts of the Commonwealth). He was the president of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, and therefore supervised the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, the High Court of Justice of England and Wales and the Crown Court of England and Wales. He was also, "ex officio", a judge in the Court of Appeal and the president of the Chancery Division. In modern times, these judicial functions were exercised very sparingly. The functions in relation to the House of Lords and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council were usually delegated to the senior lord of appeal in ordinary. The task of presiding over the Chancery Division was delegated to the vice-chancellor, a senior judge (now known as the chancellor of the High Court). Most lord chancellors by the end of the twentieth century gave judgments only in cases reaching the House of Lords. The last lord chancellor to preside as a judge was Lord Irvine of Lairg (in office 1997–2003), who did so as a member of the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords. However, concerns were already being expressed, including by the judiciary, at the propriety of a cabinet minister sitting as a professional judge, and his successor, Lord Falconer, never performed such a role, even before his right to do so was abolished.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: When peers had the right to be tried for felonies or for high treason by other peers in the House of Lords (instead of commoners on juries), the lord high steward, instead of the lord chancellor, would preside. This also occurred in impeachment trials. The office of lord high steward has generally remained vacant since 1421. Whenever a peer was to be tried in the House of Lords, a lord high steward would be appointed "pro hac vice" [for this occasion]. In many cases, the lord chancellor would merely be elevated to the office of lord high steward temporarily. Trials of peers in the House of Lords were abolished in 1948, and impeachment is considered obsolete, so this is unlikely to occur again.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The judicial functions of the lord chancellor (as opposed to his role in the administration of the court system) were removed by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The lord chancellor used to be the presiding officer of the House of Lords by right of prescription. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 removed this function, leaving the choice of a presiding officer to the House of Lords itself. Ultimately, the Lords chose to elect a lord speaker, which title was already used in the Standing Orders.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The lord high chancellor outranks all other great officers of state with the exception of the lord high steward, which has generally been vacant since the 15th century. Under modern conventions, the office of lord high steward is only filled on the day of a new monarch's coronation; thus, at all other times, the lord chancellor remains the highest ranking great officer. The importance of the office is reflected by the Treason Act 1351, which makes it high treason to slay the lord chancellor. A lord high treasurer would be entitled to the same protection—but the office is now held in commission—as would a judge whilst actually in court, determining a case.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The lord chancellor's position in the modern order of precedence is an extremely high one; generally being outranked only by the royal family and high ecclesiastics. In England, the lord chancellor precedes all non-royal individuals except the archbishop of Canterbury. In Scotland, they precede all non-royal individuals except the lord high commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Although lord chancellor "of Great Britain", they maintain a position in the order of precedence in Northern Ireland; there, they outrank all non-royal individuals with the exception of the Anglican and Roman Catholic archbishops of Armagh, the Anglican and Roman Catholic archbishops of Dublin and the moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. Throughout the United Kingdom, the lord chancellor technically outranks the prime minister, although the latter generally possesses more power. The precedence of a lord keeper of the Great Seal is equivalent to that of a lord chancellor. The precedence of lords commissioners of the Great Seal is much lower (see United Kingdom order of precedence).


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The lord chancellor is entitled to an annual emolument of £227,736 and to an annual pension of £106,868. The lord chancellor's salary is higher than that of any other public official, including even the prime minister, although sometimes the officeholder may voluntarily decide to receive a reduced salary (recent holders have taken the salary of a secretary of state).


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The lord chancellor, on formal state occasions such as the State Opening of Parliament, wears legal court dress consisting of a black silk velvet cutaway tailcoat with cloth covered buttons, waistcoat and breeches worn with white shirt, lace stock and cuffs, black silk stockings and cut-steel buckled patent court shoes. Over this is worn a black silk damask robe of state with a long train trimmed with gold lace and frogging, with a black silk 'wig bag' attached to the flap collar at the back. A full-bottomed wig is worn and, in the past, a black tricorne hat.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: When the lord chancellor sat in the Lords, they wore an undress version of court dress, consisting of the court dress but made of black superfine cloth rather than silk velvet, and over that a black silk robe with a train with the wig bag attached. The wig and tricorne was also worn.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: Now that the lord chancellor is appointed from the Commons rather than the Lords, they wear a normal business suit and only wear full ceremonial dress for state occasions. There is an unofficial precedent that lord chancellors that do not have a legal background do not get to wear a wig. Jack Straw (a qualified barrister) initially did not wear one but did so afterwards, as did his immediate successor, Kenneth Clarke (a barrister and Queen's Counsel); Chris Grayling, Michael Gove, and Liz Truss (none of whom have legal backgrounds) have not done so. Robert Buckland QC MP, continued the tradition of wearing the full court dress along with the full bottomed wig, as he is a barrister. In 2019 at the Approbation of the new speaker of the Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, he wore full court dress along with the full bottomed wig and a tricorne.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The historic insignia of the lord chancellor is a purse containing the Great Seal and a mace. The Elizabethan play Sir Thomas More opens Scene II as follows: ""Chelsea. A Room in More's House. A table being covered with a green carpet, a state cushion on it, and the Purse and Mace lying thereon, enter Sir Thomas More"".


title: Lord Chancellor

text: In the early 21st century, the Labour government viewed it as untenable that all three political functions (executive, legislative and judicial) should be continued in the historical office of Lord Chancellor. In the Government's view, this infringed Montesquieu's principle of separation of powers which declared that no person should have access to all of the three political functions. The lord chancellor could exercise all three powers, and some, such as Quintin, Lord Hailsham, often did so. The Labour Government also took the view that these powers were inconsistent with the European Convention on Human Rights.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: However, proposals by the Blair government simply to abolish the office met with opposition from those who felt that such an official was necessary to speak on the judiciary's behalf in Cabinet, as well as from many who opposed the sudden abolition of such an ancient office. In 2003, Tony Blair chose his close friend and former flatmate Lord Falconer to be "Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs". At the same time, he announced his intention to abolish the office of lord chancellor and to make many other constitutional reforms. After much surprise and confusion, it became clear that the ancient office of lord chancellor could not be abolished without an Act of Parliament. Thus Lord Falconer duly appeared the following day in the House of Lords to carry out his duties from the Woolsack. The Lord Chancellor's Department was, however, renamed the Department for Constitutional Affairs.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: In January 2004, the Department of Constitutional Affairs published a concordat, outlining the division of authority between lord chancellor and lord chief justice and which was intended as the basis of reform. The Government introduced the Constitutional Reform Bill in the House of Lords in February 2004. The bill sought to abolish the office of lord chancellor, and to transfer its functions to other officials: legislative functions to a speaker of the House of Lords, executive functions to the secretary of state for constitutional affairs and judicial functions to the lord chief justice. The bill also made other constitutional reforms, such as transferring the judicial duties of the House of Lords to a supreme court. However, unlike the responsibilities of other secretaries of state, which can be transferred from one department to another by an order-in-council, several functions of the lord chancellor are linked to the office of lord chancellor as a matter of statute law. Those "protected functions" of the lord chancellor can only be transferred to other ministers by Act of Parliament. As a consequence, it became clear that it was extremely difficult to simply "abolish" the office of lord chancellor.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: In March 2004, however, the Lords upset the Government's plans by sending the bill to a Select committee. Although initially seen as a move to kill the bill, the Government and HM Opposition agreed to permit the bill to proceed through the parliamentary process, subject to any amendments made by the committee. On 13 July 2004, the House amended the Constitutional Reform Bill such that the title of lord chancellor would be retained, although the Government's other proposed reforms were left intact. Then, in November 2004, the Government introduced an amendment in the Lords which wholly removed references to the secretary of state for constitutional affairs, changing them to ones about the lord chancellor, with the positions of secretary of state and lord chancellor envisaged as being held by the same person. The final Constitutional Reform Act received royal assent on 24 March 2005 and the major transfers of the historical functions of the lord chancellor to others (such as the lord chief justice and lord speaker) were complete by mid-2006. However the lord chancellor and secretary of state for constitutional affairs remained a member of the Prime Minister's Cabinet, retaining most of the office's original statutory functions.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: In May 2007, the Department of Constitutional Affairs was abolished and its functions were transferred to a newly created Ministry of Justice which also took charge of certain responsibilities transferred from the Home Office. Lord Falconer retained the title, salary and office of lord chancellor, as well as being created the inaugural Secretary of State for Justice.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: Prior to Tony Blair's premiership, were a person not a peer to be appointed to the office of lord chancellor, he would be raised to the peerage upon appointment, though provision was made in 1539 for non-peers who are great officers of state to sit in between the benches in the House. With enactment of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005 and the subsequent separation of the roles of lord chancellor and speaker of the House of Lords, it is no longer necessary for the lord chancellor to be a peer or to have a legal background. In June 2007, Jack Straw MP was appointed lord chancellor and secretary of state for justice, thus becoming the first lord chancellor to be a member of the Commons, rather than the House of Lords or its predecessor, the Curia Regis, since Christopher Hatton in 1587.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: Both Straw and his immediate successor, Ken Clarke, were barristers. In 2012 Chris Grayling became the first justice secretary without a legal background, in which he was followed by his three immediate successors. One of these, Liz Truss in 2016, became the first woman to serve as lord chancellor.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: A fictional depiction of a lord chancellor occurs in "Iolanthe", the frequently-revived comic opera by W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. The lord chancellor is the central character in the work but is identified only by his title.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: William Rehnquist, late Chief Justice of the United States, was inspired to add four golden stripes to the sleeves of his judicial robes after seeing the costume of the lord chancellor in a production of "Iolanthe". The current chief justice, John Roberts, has not continued the practice.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: A fictional lord chancellor also appears in Charles Dickens' novel "Bleak House" (also identified only by title), presiding over the interminable chancery case of "Jarndyce and Jarndyce".


title: Lord Chancellor

text: Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels feature a number of references to fictitious lord chancellors. The Liberal Lord Weazeling holds the office in the Liberal governments of Mildmay and Gresham in "Phineas Finn" and "Phineas Redux"; the Conservative Lord Ramsden holds the position in the Duke of Omnium's coalition government in "The Prime Minister". In Gresham's final government at the end of "The Prime Minister", the former Liberal Attorney General, Sir Gregory Grogram, is finally given the position, which he had desired for some time.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: "King Hilary and the Beggarman", a children's poem by A. A. Milne, relates the story of a fictional lord high chancellor, "Proud Lord Willoughby", who is dismissed for refusing to obey his king.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: In David Gurr's thriller "A Woman Called Scylla", set in 1977, the main villain is an utterly ruthless and unscrupulous lord chancellor, who grossly abuses his many functions and powers in order to cover up his treason during the Second World War and as a stepping stone towards becoming prime minister. As the writer clearly states, this was not intended to refer to the actual holder of the office at the time of writing or at any other time.


title: Lord Chancellor

text: The Lord Chancellor is portrayed by Preston Lockwood in “Rumpole and the Tap End” episode of the Rumpole of the Bailey TV series. He is shown making himself a necklace/chain of office from coloured paper clips, whilst reprimanding Judge Featherstone.


title: Yoruba language

text: Yoruba (, ; ""; Ajami: ) is a language spoken in West Africa, primarily in Southwestern and Central Nigeria. It is spoken by the ethnic Yoruba people. The number of Yoruba speakers is roughly 50 million, plus about 2 million second-language speakers. As a pluricentric language, it is primarily spoken in a dialectal area spanning Nigeria and Benin with smaller migrated communities in Côte d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone and The Gambia.


title: Yoruba language

text: Yoruba vocabulary is also used in the Afro-Brazilian religion known as Candomblé, in the Caribbean religion of Santería in the form of the liturgical Lucumí language and various Afro-American religions of North America. Practitioners of these religions in the Americas no longer speak or understand the Yorùbá language, rather they use remnants of Yorùbá language for singing songs that for them are shrouded in mystery. Usage of a lexicon of Yorùbá words and short phrases during ritual is also common, but they have gone through changes due to the fact that Yorùbá is no longer a vernacular for them and fluency is not required.


title: Yoruba language

text: As the principal Yoruboid language, Yoruba is most closely related to the languages Itsekiri (spoken in the Niger Delta), Edo (spoken in Edo State) and Igala (spoken in central Nigeria).


title: Yoruba language

text: Yoruba is classified among the Edekiri languages, which is together with the Itsekiri and isolate Igala from the Yoruboid group of languages within the Volta–Niger branch of the Niger–Congo family.


title: Yoruba language

text: The linguistic unity of the Niger–Congo family dates to deep pre-history, estimates ranging around 11,000 years ago (the end of the Upper Paleolithic). In present-day Nigeria, it is estimated that there are around 47 million Yoruba primary and secondary language speakers, as well as several other millions of speakers outside Nigeria, making it the most widely spoken African language outside of the continent.


title: Yoruba language

text: The Yoruba group is assumed to have developed out of undifferentiated Volta–Niger populations by the 1st millennium BC. Settlements of early Yoruba speakers are assumed to correspond to those found in the wider Niger area from about the 4th century BC, especially at Ife.


title: Yoruba language

text: The North-West Yoruba dialects show more linguistic innovation than the Southeast and Central dialects. This, combined with the fact that the latter areas generally have older settlements, suggests a later date for migration into Northwestern Yorubaland. According to the Kay Williamson Scale, the following is the degree of relationship between Itsekiri and other Yoruboid dialects, using a compiled word list of the most common words. A similarity of 100% would mean a total overlap of two dialects, while similarity of 0 would mean two speech areas that have absolutely no relationship.


title: Yoruba language

text: The result of the wordlist analysis shows that Itsekiri bears the strongest similarity to the South-East Yoruba dialects and most especially Ilaje and Ikale, at 80.4% and 82.3% similarity. According to the language assessment criteria of the International Language Assessment Conference (1992), only when a wordlist analysis shows a lexical similarity of below 70% are two speech forms considered to be different languages. An overlap of 70% and above indicates that both speech forms are the same language, although dialect intelligibility tests would need to be carried out to determine how well speakers of one dialect can understand the other speech form.


title: Yoruba language

text: Thus while the analysis shows that Igala, with an overlap of 60% is a completely different language, all other Yoruboid speech forms are merely dialects of the same Language.


title: Yoruba language

text: The Yoruba dialect continuum itself consists of several dialects. The various Yoruba dialects in the Yorubaland of Nigeria can be classified into five major dialect areas: Northwest, Northeast, Central, Southwest and Southeast. Clear boundaries cannot be drawn, peripheral areas of dialectal regions often having some similarities to adjoining dialects.


title: Yoruba language

text: North-West Yoruba was historically spoken in the Ọyọ Empire. In NWY dialects, Proto-Yoruba velar fricative and labialized voiced velar /gʷ/ have merged into /w/; the upper vowels /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ were raised and merged with /i/ and /u/, just as their nasal counterparts, resulting in a vowel system with seven oral and three nasal vowels.


title: Yoruba language

text: South-East Yoruba was probably associated with the expansion of the Benin Empire after c. 1450. In contrast to NWY, lineage and descent are largely multilineal and cognatic, and the division of titles into war and civil is unknown. Linguistically, SEY has retained the /ɣ/ and /gw/ contrast, while it has lowered the nasal vowels /ĩ/ and /ʊ̃/ to /ɛ̃/ and /ɔ̃/, respectively. SEY has collapsed the second and third person plural pronominal forms; thus, "àn án wá" can mean either 'you (pl.) came' or 'they came' in SEY dialects, whereas NWY for example has "ẹ wá" 'you (pl.) came' and "wọ́n wá" 'they came', respectively. The emergence of a plural of respect may have prevented the coalescence of the two in NWY dialects.


title: Yoruba language

text: Central Yoruba forms a transitional area in that the lexicon has much in common with NWY, and it shares many ethnographical features with SEY. Its vowel system is the least innovative (most stable) of the three dialect groups, having retained nine oral-vowel contrasts and six or seven nasal vowels, and an extensive vowel harmony system. Peculiar to Central and Eastern (NEY, SEY) Yoruba also, is the ability to begin words with the vowel [ʊ:] which in Western Yoruba has been changed to [ɪ:]


title: Yoruba language

text: Literary Yoruba, also known as "Standard Yoruba", "Yoruba koiné", and "common Yoruba", is a separate member of the dialect cluster. It is the written form of the language, the standard variety learned at school and that spoken by newsreaders on the radio. Standard Yoruba has its origin in the 1850s, when Samuel A. Crowther, the first native African Anglican bishop, published a Yoruba grammar and started his translation of the Bible. Though for a large part based on the Ọyọ and Ibadan dialects, Standard Yoruba incorporates several features from other dialects. It also has some features peculiar to itself, for example, the simplified vowel harmony system, as well as foreign structures, such as calques from English which originated in early translations of religious works.


title: Yoruba language

text: Because the use of Standard Yoruba did not result from some deliberate linguistic policy, much controversy exists as to what constitutes 'genuine Yoruba', with some writers holding the opinion that the Ọyọ dialect is the most "pure" form, and others stating that there is no such thing as genuine Yoruba at all. Standard Yoruba, the variety learned at school and used in the media, has nonetheless been a powerful consolidating factor in the emergence of a common Yoruba identity.


title: Yoruba language

text: The earliest evidence of the presence of Islam and literacy goes back to the 14th century. The earliest documented history of the people, which is traced to the latter part of the 17th century, was in Yoruba language but in the Arabic script (Ajami). This makes Yoruba one of the oldest African languages with an attested history of Ajami. (Cf. Mumin & Versteegh 2014; Hofheinz 2018). However, the oldest, extant Yoruba Ajami exemplar is a 19th century Islamic verse (waka) by Badamasi Agbaji (d. 1895- Hunwick 1995). There are several items of Yoruba Ajami in poetry, personal notes, esoteric knowledge (Cf. Bang 2019), among others. Nevertheless, Yoruba Ajami remained idiosyncratic and not socially diffused, as there was no standardized orthography. The plethora of dialects, the absence of a central promotional institution, among others, are responsible.


title: Yoruba language

text: In the 17th century, Yoruba was written in the Ajami script, a form of Arabic script. It is still written in the Ajami writing script in some Islamic circles. Standard Yoruba orthography originated in the early work of Church Mission Society missionaries working among the "Aku" (Yoruba) of Freetown. One of their informants was Crowther, who later would proceed to work on his native language himself. In early grammar primers and translations of portions of the English Bible, Crowther used the Latin alphabet largely without tone markings. The only diacritic used was a dot below certain vowels to signify their open variants and , viz. and . Over the years the orthography was revised to represent tone among other things. In 1875, the Church Missionary Society (CMS) organized a conference on Yoruba Orthography; the standard devised there was the basis for the orthography of the steady flow of religious and educational literature over the next seventy years.


title: Yoruba language

text: The current orthography of Yoruba derives from a 1966 report of the Yoruba Orthography Committee, along with Ayọ Bamgboṣe's 1965 "Yoruba Orthography", a study of the earlier orthographies and an attempt to bring Yoruba orthography in line with actual speech as much as possible. Still largely similar to the older orthography, it employs the Latin alphabet modified by the use of the digraph and certain diacritics, including the underdots under the letters , , and . Previously, the vertical line had been used to avoid the mark being fully covered by an underline, as in ⟨e̩⟩, ⟨o̩⟩, ⟨s̩⟩; however, that usage is no longer common.


title: Yoruba language

text: The Latin letters , , , , are not used as part of the official orthography of Standard Yoruba, however, they exist in several Yoruba dialects.


title: Yoruba language

text: The pronunciation of the letters without diacritics corresponds more or less to their International Phonetic Alphabet equivalents, except for the labial–velar consonant (written ) and (written ), in which both consonants are pronounced simultaneously rather than sequentially. The diacritic underneath vowels indicates an open vowel, pronounced with the root of the tongue retracted (so is pronounced and is ). represents a postalveolar consonant like the English , represents a palatal approximant like English , and a voiced palatal stop , as is common in many African orthographies.


title: Yoruba language

text: In addition to the underdots, three further diacritics are used on vowels and syllabic nasal consonants to indicate the language's tones: an acute accent for the high tone, a grave accent for the low tone, and an optional macron for the middle tone. These are used in addition to the underdots in and . When more than one tone is used in one syllable, the vowel can either be written once for each tone (for example, * for a vowel with tone rising from low to high) or, more rarely in current usage, combined into a single accent. In this case, a caron is used for the rising tone (so the previous example would be written ) and a circumflex for the falling tone.


title: Yoruba language

text: In Benin, Yoruba uses a different orthography. The Yoruba alphabet was standardized along with other Benin languages in the National Languages Alphabet by the National Language Commission in 1975, and revised in 1990 and 2008 by the National Center for Applied Linguistics.


title: Yoruba language

text: In 2011, a Beninese priest-chief by the name of Tolúlàṣẹ Ògúntósìn devised his own system based on a vision received in his sleep believed to have been granted from Oduduwa. This "Oduduwa alphabet" system has also received approval and support from other prominent chiefs in the Yorubaland region.


title: Yoruba language

text: The syllable structure of Yoruba is (C)V(N). Syllabic nasals are also possible. Every syllable bears one of the three tones: high , mid (generally left unmarked), and low . The sentence "n̄ ò lọ" ("I didn't go") provides examples of three syllable types:


title: Yoruba language

text: Standard Yoruba has seven oral and five nasal vowels. There are no diphthongs in Yoruba; sequences of vowels are pronounced as separate syllables. Dialects differ in the number of vowels they have; see above.


title: Yoruba language

text: The status of a fifth nasal vowel, , is controversial. Although the sound occurs in speech, several authors have argued it to be not phonemically contrastive; often, it is in free variation with . Orthographically, nasal vowels are normally represented by an oral vowel symbol followed by (, , , ), except in case of the allophone of (see below) preceding a nasal vowel: "inú" 'inside, belly' is actually pronounced .


title: Yoruba language

text: The voiceless plosives and are slightly aspirated; in some Yoruba varieties, and are more dental. The rhotic consonant is realized as a flap or, in some varieties (notably Lagos Yoruba), as the alveolar approximant due to English influence. It's particularly common with Yoruba-English bilinguals.


title: Yoruba language

text: Like many other languages of the region, Yoruba has the voiceless and voiced labial–velar stops and : "pápá" 'field', "" 'all'. Notably, it lacks the common voiceless bilabial stop so is written as .


title: Yoruba language

text: Yoruba also lacks a phoneme ; the letter is used for the sound in the orthography, but strictly speaking, it refers to an allophone of immediately preceding a nasal vowel.


title: Yoruba language

text: There is also a syllabic nasal, which forms a syllable nucleus by itself. When it precedes a vowel, it is a velar nasal : "n ò lọ" 'I didn't go'. In other cases, its place of articulation is homorganic with the following consonant: "ó ń lọ" 'he is going', "ó ń fò" 'he is jumping'.


title: Yoruba language

text: Yoruba is a tonal language with three-level tones and two or three contour tones. Every syllable must have at least one tone; a syllable containing a long vowel can have two tones. Tones are marked by use of the acute accent for high tone (, ) and the grave accent for low tone (, ); mid is unmarked, except on syllabic nasals where it is indicated using a macron (, ). Examples:


title: Yoruba language

text: When teaching Yoruba literacy, solfège names of musical notes are used to name the tones: low is "do", mid is "re", and high is "mi".