title: Carlota of Mexico

text: Several authors put forward an origin caused by intoxication. This hypothesis is notably put forward by Joan Haslip, who reveals that one of the Mexican court doctors added bromide to Charlotte's coffee without her knowing. In Mexico, from July 1867, rumours spread that the madness of the Empress was attributed to a poison which had been given to her regularly in small doses. Roger Heim's research corroborates this possibility, namely that Charlotte could have been "little by little intoxicated while she was still in Mexico, by the introduction in her food for a prolonged time of a psychotropic drug". When she made an official visit to Yucatán, Charlotte wrote to her husband on 8 December 1865: "The doctor is very nice. Without her well-suited little medications, I would probably have fallen ill and could not have taken all of this. On several occasions it seemed to me that there was poison in the air".


title: Carlota of Mexico

text: Other authors, such as Laurence Van Ypersele, Émile Meurice, Dominique Paoli and Coralie Vankerkhoven, relying both on Charlotte's correspondence (in the year 1869 alone, from February to June, she wrote some 400 letters and notes) and on the reports written by the doctors who examined her, favoured the study of the psychological aspect of the pathology of Charlotte. They evoke biographical and personal influences to explain the Empress' dementia, namely: the loss of her mother at only 10 years old (who originated the radical transformation of her playful and expansive character towards introversion), her keen sense of duty, her high religiosity, her latent mysticism, her euphoria during her engagement, her idealization of Maximilian, the absence of conjugal life, the disenchantments and disillusions in Italy, and then in Mexico. Coralie Vankerkhoven also mentions the first warning signs of the disease: notably, the discomfort she felt in Uxmal (where the first signs of her psychosis arose from the strangeness of the conditions during her stay in Yucatán), and her reaction to the successive announcements of the deaths of her father and grandmother, until her arrival in Europe where her delusional disorder will settle permanently.


title: Carlota of Mexico

text: At her birth, as the daughter of King Leopold I, Charlotte was titled Princess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Duchess in Saxony, with the predicate of "Royal Highness", according to the titles of her house, and bears the unofficial title of Princess of Belgium, which would be officially regularized by Royal Decree dated 14 March 1891.


title: Carlota of Mexico

text: In 2018, Dargaud published the first volume of a series of biographical comics, "Charlotte impératrice - La Princesse et l'Archiduc", by Matthieu Bonhomme (drawing) and Fabien Nury (screenplay). The second volume, entitled "Charlotte impératrice - L'Empire", appears on 12 June 2020 and two other volumes are planned.


title: Carlota of Mexico

text: In 1866, the liberal writer Vicente Riva Palacio composed a satirical song called "Adiós, mamá Carlota" (Goodbye, mother Carlota), criticizing Carlota, the imperialists and conservative politicians. It's based on the poem "Adiós, oh Patria mía" (Goodbye, my homeland) written in 1842 by Ignacio Rodríguez Galván.


title: Carlota of Mexico

text: The American composer Charles Wakefield Cadman composed a work in 1944 for violoncello and piano called "A Mad Empress Remembers", inspired by Carlota's last years.


title: BonziBuddy

text: BonziBuddy ( , stylized as BonziBUDDY) was a freeware desktop virtual assistant created by Joe and Jay Bonzi. Upon a user's choice, it would share jokes and facts, manage downloads, sing songs, and talk, among other functions.


title: BonziBuddy

text: BonziBuddy was described as spyware and adware, and discontinued in 2004 after the company behind it faced lawsuits regarding the software and was ordered to pay fines. Bonzi's website remained open after the discontinuation of BonziBuddy, but was shut down at the end of 2008.


title: BonziBuddy

text: The software used Microsoft Agent technology similar to Office Assistant, and originally sported Peedy, a green parrot and one of the characters available with Microsoft Agent. Later versions of BonziBuddy in May 2000 featured its own character: Bonzi, the purple gorilla. The program also used a text-to-speech voice to interact with the user. The voice was called Sydney and taken from an old Lernout & Hauspie Microsoft Speech API 4.0 package. It is often referred to in some software as Adult Male #2.


title: BonziBuddy

text: A number of sources identify BonziBuddy as spyware, a claim the company disputed. In 2002, an article in Consumer Reports "Web Watch" labelled BonziBuddy as spyware, stating that it contains a backdoor trojan that collects information from users. The activities the program is said to engage in include constantly resetting the user's web browser homepage to bonzi.com without the user's permission, prompting and tracking various information about the user, installing a toolbar, and serving advertisements.


title: BonziBuddy

text: Trend Micro and Symantec have both classified the software as adware. "Spyware Guide"s entry on the program also states that it is adware.


title: BonziBuddy

text: In April 2007, "PC World" readers voted BonziBuddy the sixth on a list named "The 20 Most Annoying Tech Products". One reader was quoted as criticizing the program because it "kept popping up and obscuring things you needed to see".


title: BonziBuddy

text: One of the last newspaper articles written about BonziBuddy while it was still in distribution described it as spyware and a "scourge of the Internet". Another article found in 2006 on the BusinessWeek website described BonziBuddy as "the unbelievably annoying spyware trojan horse".


title: BonziBuddy

text: "Internetnews.com" reported the settlement of a class action suit on 27 May 2003. Originally brought against Bonzi Software on 4 December 2002, the suit accused Bonzi of using its banner advertisements to deceptively imitate Windows computer alerts, alerting the user that their IP address is being broadcast. In the settlement, Bonzi Software agreed to modify their ads so that they looked less like Windows dialog boxes and more like actual advertisements.


title: BonziBuddy

text: On February 18, 2004, the Federal Trade Commission released a statement indicating that Bonzi Software, Inc. was ordered to pay $75,000 in fees, among other aspects, for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting personal information from children under the age of 13 with BonziBuddy.


title: 5-MeO-DMT

text: 5-MeO-DMT (5-methoxy-"N","N"-dimethyltryptamine) or O-methyl-bufotenin is a psychedelic of the tryptamine class. It is found in a wide variety of plant species, and also is secreted by the glands of at least one toad species, the Colorado River toad. Like its close relatives DMT and bufotenin (5-HO-DMT), it has been used as an entheogen in South America. Slang terms include Five-methoxy, The power, and Toad venom.


title: 5-MeO-DMT

text: 5-MeO-DMT was first synthesized in 1936, and in 1959 it was isolated as one of the psychoactive ingredients of "Anadenanthera peregrina" seeds used in preparing Yopo snuff. It was once believed to be a major component of the psychoactive effects of the snuff, although this has recently been shown to be unlikely, due to the limited or sometimes even non-existent quantity contained within the seeds, which instead achieve their psychoactivity from the "O"-demethylated metabolite of 5-MeO-DMT, bufotenin. It is metabolized mainly by CYP2D6.


title: 5-MeO-DMT

text: Depending on whether smoked or insufflated, total duration of experience can last between 10 minutes for the former, or up to 2 hours for the latter. Effects vary and can range from radical perspective shifting and perception of new insights, euphoria, immersive experiences, dissociation and non-responsiveness, sensual/erotic enhancement, to dysphoria, fear, terror, and panic.


title: 5-MeO-DMT

text: The Church of the Tree of Life, founded in California in 1971 by John Mann but now defunct, declared the use of 5-MeO-DMT to be a sacrament. From approximately 1971 to the late 1980s, 5-MeO-DMT was discreetly available to its members. Between 1970 and 1990, smoking of 5-MeO-DMT on parsley was probably one of the two most common forms of ingestion in the United States.


title: 5-MeO-DMT

text: 5-MeO-DMT is a methoxylated derivative of DMT. While most common psychedelics are believed to primarily elicit psychological effects through agonism of serotonin 5-HT receptors, 5-MeO-DMT shows 1000-fold greater affinity for 5-HT over 5-HT; further, its activity in rats was attenuated with the 5-HT selective antagonist WAY-100635 while 5-HT selective antagonist volinanserin failed to demonstrate any change. Additional mechanisms of action such as inhibition of monoamine reuptake may be involved. A 2019 European study with 42 volunteers showed that a single inhalation produced sustained enhancement of satisfaction with life, and easing of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).


title: 5-MeO-DMT

text: In 2018, researchers also discovered that 5-MeO-DMT is a psychoplastogen, which refers to a compound capable of promoting rapid and sustained neural plasticity.


title: 5-MeO-DMT

text: 5-MeO-DMT is being developed and evaluated for potential therapeutic effects in patients with Treatment-Resistant Depression (TRD). Biopharmaceutical company GH Research has sponsored a completed phase 1 study in healthy volunteers and phase 1/2 study in TRD patients where 87.5% of patients with TRD were brought into remission on day 7 in the phase 2 part of the study. GH Research is currently planning a phase 2b study in TRD patients and have received approval for studies in patients with bipolar II disorder and a current depressive episode and patients with postpartum depression.


title: 5-MeO-DMT

text: Beckley Psytech in collaboration with King's College London research the safety and tolerability of intranasal 5-MeO-DMT in healthy subjects, in a phase 1 study. Beckley Psytech CEO Cosmo Feilding-Mellen sees a potential in the short-acting nature of 5-MeO-DMT compared to psilocybin: "Requiring one or two therapists to sit in a room with a single patient for the entire duration of an MDMA or psilocybin experience, which is essentially a whole working day, is probably going to be very resource-intensive and expensive. There is already a global shortage of psychotherapists, and this poses a potential bottleneck to patient access in the future."


title: 5-MeO-DMT

text: As a structural analog of "N","N"-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), 5-MeO-DMT is a prohibited substance under the Poisons Standard.


title: 5-MeO-DMT

text: "Sveriges riksdags" health ministry classified 5-MeO-DMT, listed as 5-metoxi-N,N-dimetyltryptamin (5-MeO-DMT) in their regulation SFS 2004:696, as "health hazard" under the act (translated "Act on the Prohibition of Certain Goods Dangerous to Health") in October 2004, making it illegal to sell or possess.


title: 5-MeO-DMT

text: As of 2001 5-MeO-DMT is listed as a controlled substance. Attachement I BtMG. BGBl. I 2001, 1180 - 1186;


title: 5-MeO-DMT

text: Alexander Shulgin in his book TiHKAL experimented with different dosing regiments and forms of delivery for 5-MeO-DMT including: smoking, oral, and even IV injection. In his commentary on the bottom of the entry for 5-MeO-DMT he noted that the very potent effects attributed to this drug only seemed to exist when smoking it. Moreover, this curious feature was not found among most of the other related drugs including the parent compound DMT itself which can produce roughly equivalent experiences across all means of administration. The non-effect of Shulgin's oral dosing of 5-MeO-DMT can be dismissed as the result of monoamine oxidases degrading the drug in the digestive tract. This, however, does not explain why his IV dosing produced both much milder and rather different effects then his smoking regimen did. As a result, Shulgin speculates that there is a possibility that the active species actually responsible for the intense experience attributed to 5MeO-DMT may actually be an as-of-yet unknown compound that forms in the smoke of 5-MeO-DMT. A related possibility is that smoking 5MeO-DMT produces some unknown key enhancer compound whose co-administration with 5MeO-DMT mixed in the smoke is critical for the "traditional" 5MeO-DMT experience.


title: Postman Pat

text: Postman Pat is a British stop-motion animated television series first produced by Woodland Animations. The series follows the adventures of Pat Clifton, a postman who works for Royal Mail postal service in the fictional village of Greendale (inspired by the real valley of Longsleddale near Kendal).


title: Postman Pat

text: "Postman Pat" first 13-episode series was screened on BBC One in 1981. John Cunliffe wrote the original treatment and scripts for the series, which was directed by animator Ivor Wood, who also worked on "The Magic Roundabout", "The Wombles", "Paddington", and "The Herbs". Following the success of the first series, four TV specials and a second series of 13 episodes were produced during the 1990s. In this series, Pat had a family shown on screen for the first time (though his wife had been mentioned in a number of episodes).


title: Postman Pat

text: A new version of the series was produced by Cosgrove Hall Films from 2003 to 2008 and expanded on many aspects of the original series. The show ended on 29 March 2017, after 8 series and 12 specials. Reruns of this series continue to air on CBeebies on the weekends.


title: Postman Pat

text: Each episode follows the adventures of Patrick Clifton, a friendly country postman, and his black and white cat Jess, as he delivers the post through the valley of Greendale. Although he initially concentrates on delivering his letters, he nearly always becomes distracted by a concern of one of the villagers, and is always keen to help resolve their problems. Notable villagers include the postmistress, Mrs. Goggins; farmer couple Alf and Dorothy Thompson; PC Selby, the police constable; Jeff Pringle, the school teacher; Peter Fogg, a farm hand; George Lancaster, a chicken farmer; Miss Hubbard, an upper-class woman; Julia Pottage, who runs Greendale Farm and Ted Glen, the local handyman and inventor.


title: Postman Pat

text: "Postman Pat" is set in the fictional village of Greendale and the nearby town of Pencaster, on the border between Cumbria and North Yorkshire.


title: Postman Pat

text: Greendale has a different character in the various "Postman Pat" series. In the original series (1 and 2), it was a small village with narrow, winding roads. The gentle pace of life allowed Pat plenty of time to enjoy the countryside as he passed through, or even stop on quiet days to have a picnic.


title: Postman Pat

text: In the more recent series, Greendale became a big, busy village situated in the heart of the Cumbrian countryside. Running through the centre of the village is the High Street, home to Mrs Goggins's Post Office and shop, an unofficial meeting place for residents. Located on the edge of the village is the railway station, home to the Greendale Rocket. Nisha Bains runs a popular café there with Sara while her husband Ajay runs a regular schedule on the Greendale Rocket to the nearby town of Pencaster.


title: Postman Pat

text: In the second series of the show, which aired in 1996, the village at the centre of the series was briefly referred to as Garner Bridge, while Greendale was the name of the valley in which Garner Bridge was situated. In the episode "Postman Pat and the Suit of Armour", Greendale Post Office is referred to as "Garner Bridge Post Office".


title: Postman Pat

text: Pencaster is a large, bustling, modern town located within easy commuting distance for the villagers of Greendale. Situated on the waterfront, Pencaster is a hive of activity, boasting a market square in the centre surrounded by shops, houses, a large railway station, state-of-the-art buildings, and a boat jetty. It bears some resemblance to Lancaster, the county town of Lancashire, which likewise is a short commute from Longsleddale, the area used as the inspiration for Greendale.


title: Postman Pat

text: Ingledale is another large, busy village town situated in the heart of the North Yorkshire countryside, only seen once in a special in 1991, set to make a second appearance in the revival.


title: Postman Pat

text: Cunliffe, interviewed about the series, has said that he chose the character of a postman since he needed a character who could visit the countryside and interact with many different people.


title: Postman Pat

text: The inspiration for the post office itself comes from one located on the Kendal street where Cunliffe lived when he was writing the original treatment. The post office, at 10 Greenside, closed in 2003.


title: Postman Pat

text: Cunliffe did not retain rights to the character, and was disappointed by some of the tie-in media later released. He wrote the stories to the series "Rosie and Jim", which he also presented, as a show which he could have more creative control over.


title: Postman Pat

text: While Cunliffe visited post offices for inspiration, he has said that the character and village was not based on any one place or person. He commented in 2015 that "I got maybe half a dozen people last year saying they were the inspiration."


title: Postman Pat

text: In Series 1, Ken Barrie voiced all the characters and narrated the series. In Series 2, Carole Boyd joined to voice all the female characters and child characters except Granny Dryden who was still voiced by Barrie. In Series 3, Kulvinder Ghir, Janet James, and Archie Panjabi joined to voice the new characters and the child characters, while Boyd continued to voice the adult females, Charlie and Sarah, Melissa Sinden and Jimmy Hibbert also joined to perform the animal characters' vocal effects and Angela Griffin joined in Series 5 to voice a new character. In Series 6, Lewis MacLeod replaced Barrie as Pat. In Series 7, Barrie left completely and MacLeod, Bradley Clarkson, and Dan Milne took over the rest of Barrie's characters. Joe Trill joined in Series 8 to voice a new character.


title: Postman Pat

text: In the spin-off series, "Postman Pat: Special Delivery Service", Postman Pat has been promoted to Head of the SDS and is now called upon to deliver anything. Each episode follows Postman Pat on a Special Delivery mission, from rescuing a runaway cow to delivering a giant ice cube. In his new role, Postman Pat commutes to the nearby town of Pencaster where he collects his special deliveries from the Pencaster Mail Centre. Postman Pat now has a newer fleet of vehicles including a bigger van, gyrocopter, 4x4 Jeep and motorbike, complete with side-car for Jess. He has a new boss, Ben, who tends to give him instructions (whereas he was his own master before the "promotion"). Pat also seems to make more mistakes in his work since moving to SDS, largely because the new format is always based on one delivery, which has to go wrong somehow (thus often because of Pat's errors).


title: Postman Pat

text: The series features an expanded and diverse cast, a fleet of new vehicles, a world full of gadgets and the new town of Pencaster. "Postman Pat: Special Delivery Service" first screened on BBC2 on 29 September 2008. The new series was commissioned by the BBC and produced by Entertainment Rights and Cosgrove Hall Films.


title: Postman Pat

text: "", a British-American 3D computer-animated comedy children's feature film version of the British stop-motion animated children's television show, was theatrically released on 23 May 2014 in the United Kingdom. The film was distributed and produced by Lionsgate and Icon Productions and animated by Rubicon Group Holding. The story revolves around Pat entering a talent show audition which leads to robots taking over his postal service whilst he is away. The film stars Stephen Mangan as the voice of Pat and also features Jim Broadbent, Rupert Grint, David Tennant, Ronan Keating (as Pat's singing voice), Susan Duerden, Sandra Teles, TJ Ramini and Peter Woodward.


title: Postman Pat

text: A CGI spin-off to the series was made called "Guess with Jess" which follows Pat's cat Jess now with the ability to talk and his adventures with the farm animals. The series debuted on 9 November 2009 and ended in 2013.


title: Postman Pat

text: Music for the original 1981 series was by Bryan Daly, who wrote a number of songs including the well-known theme tune. For the 2003 series, pop writer Simon Woodgate scored the show and wrote new songs, including a new closing theme "What's in His Bag?". The theme tune "Postman Pat & His Black and White Cat" was sung by Ken Barrie for the original series in the 1980s and '90s. An extended version of the tune was released as a single in the UK where it reached number 44 in the charts in July 1982.


title: Postman Pat

text: The theme tune and songs for "Postman Pat Special Delivery Service" (including "Special Delivery Service, What's It Going to Be Today?"), was recorded by Simon Woodgate at Echobass Studios.


title: Postman Pat

text: In 2013, DreamWorks Classics released "Postman Pat SDS" series 2. The new 26-episode series retained Bryan Daly's original theme tune and Simon Woodgate's closing song, however new character themes and incidental music was composed by Sandy Nuttgens.


title: Postman Pat

text: There is also an album called "Postman Pat: Songs and Music From the TV Series", released by Post Music in 1982.


title: Postman Pat

text: The theme song has undergone several adaptations; from 1994 to 2006, the theme tune had additional instruments such as synthesised strings and a tambourine. A similar edit had already been made to the 1993 album version, which was an edit of the original 1982 album version.


title: Postman Pat

text: As of 2009, over 12 million books, including storybooks, integrated learning books, colouring books, and multi-character magazines, have been sold worldwide.


title: Postman Pat

text: The "Postman Pat" characters and setting have also been used in the UK and Australia in television advertisements for the company Specsavers.


title: Postman Pat

text: VHS releases of the series were common in the United Kingdom and more uncommon in other regions. DVD releases of classic Postman Pat were limited in availability in various regions. In the UK, only one volume with three episodes from Series 2 was released by Universal Studios Home Video and Right Entertainment in 2004 under the title "Postman Pat in a Muddle". The same year saw the entire original series released on DVD in Spain, featuring both English and Spanish audio options.


title: Postman Pat

text: However, for Series 1, the original opening titles which featured Pat driving in the original version of his van with a crown logo (which Pat used until Pat's Thirsty Day) was replaced with an edited version of the shot for shot remake of the original intro (which had Pat driving the Royal Mail Van) as used when the show aired in countries like France and Australia. The edits made to the intro on the DVD involved some shots being replaced by scenes from "Pat's Difficult Day", "Pat Takes A Message", and "Pat's Foggy Day". This edited intro was also used when CBeebies reran the show.


title: Postman Pat

text: While no further releases were seen in the UK until 2011, Classic Media issued all four specials from 1991 to 1994 on the DVD "Happy Birthday Postman Pat". On 3 February 2014, the first and second series were made available in their entirety for the first time in the UK, However, the titles are both season 2 with the season 3 theme which came under scrutiny from classic fans and also credits Carole Boyd as doing voices in series 1, despite it being only Ken Barrie at the time.


title: Postman Pat

text: In Scotland, Postman Pat is shown not only in English but also sometimes broadcast as Pàdraig Post, in the Gaelic language, on BBC Scotland.


title: Postman Pat

text: Longleat Safari Park had an outdoor reproduction of Greendale village, including the Post Office, the Cliftons' house and the Greendale station. It also had a miniature model of Greendale. It was installed during the 1990s, was relocated during 2008 in preparation for a new animal area and was revamped a third time for 2013. The attraction was closed at the end of 2015 and was permanently removed in 2016.


title: Postman Pat

text: In 2006, Postman Pat was nominated for "Best Pre-school Animation Series" at the BAFTA Children's Awards.


title: Only the Family

text: Only the Family, often abbreviated as OTF, is a rap collective from Chicago, Illinois. The group was formed by rapper Lil Durk in 2010. The group is home to recording artists including the late rapper King Von.


title: Only the Family

text: The OTF label was part of French Montana's Coke Boys, and as a result, adopted the nickname 'OTF Coke Boys'. This saw OTF members feature on the subsequent Coke Boys album. The label has since grown to be independent from the Coke Boys imprint and is nowadays cooperating with Empire Distribution, except for Lil Durk, who signed to Alamo Records and Interscope Records in 2018 (after being released from his Def Jam Recordings Contract); his releases for Alamo are nowadays distributed by Sony Music after the latter acquired the label in June 2021.


Only the Family


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" is a song by Canadian rock band Crash Test Dummies, and written by its singer Brad Roberts. It was released in October 1993 as the lead single from their second album, "God Shuffled His Feet." The song was released to positive critical reviews and commercial success worldwide. It reached number four on the United States' "Billboard" Hot 100 and topped the national charts of Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, and the US Modern Rock Tracks chart. It also became a top-five hit on both the UK Singles Chart and the all-genre US "Billboard" Hot 100 (their only major hit on that chart to date), but in the band's native Canada, it stalled at number 14 on the "RPM" Top Singles chart. In later years, however, the song made its way to several lists of bad songs.


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: Each of the three verses describes the isolation and suffering of a different child, two of whom have a physical abnormality. In the first verse, a boy is injured in a car accident and misses school for an extended period; when he returns to class, his hair has changed color from black to bright white. In the second verse, a girl refuses to change clothes in the presence of other girls due to the birthmarks that cover her body. The third child is a boy whose parents require that he come directly home after school; during services at their church, they "shake and lurch" across the floor. During a 2010 live performance for the Dutch radio station Kink FM, Roberts whispered "Pentecostal" during the third verse, suggesting this is the denomination of the church.


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: Most of the lyrics are based on childhood experiences of Roberts. For example, he was in a few serious car crashes as a child, which inspired the first verse; he has a birthmark at the base of his spine which made him a bullying target as a child, inspiring the second verse; and he knew a girl who went to a Pentecostal church, where members were known to speak in tongues, inspiring the third. He got the idea of a boy's hair turning from black into bright white from stories he had heard about this phenomenon happening to survivors of perilous experiences, including a man who almost went over the Niagara Falls, and his great uncle who fought in Japan in World War II and heard Japanese soldiers yelling threats in broken English.


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: An alternative version sometimes performed at live concerts replaced the third verse with one concerning a boy whose mother disposed of his tonsils after a tonsillectomy, thus depriving him of the possibility of bringing them to show and tell.


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: Larry Flick from "Billboard" called the song a "shimmering acoustic/rock jewel". He added that it "marries a worldwise vocal with a textured arrangement that is chock full of aural goodies. Given justice (and promotional tender loving care), this one will soon blossom into the across-the-board smash it should be." Dave Sholin from the "Gavin Report" stated, "If there's an Alternative outlet in town, you can hear how great this sounds on the air." Robert Hilburn from "Los Angeles Times" wrote, "The exaggerated vocal narration makes this sound like a novelty, but it is a deceptively original work about how kids are often tormented for falling outside the norm." Music writer James Masterton joked in his weekly UK chart commentary, "The unusual song probably holds the record for the longest song title not to include a vowel in the title." Pan-European magazine "Music & Media" commented, "It takes one weirdo to dig another, so Dummy Brad Roberts and "Talking Head" Harrison make an ideal pair. This ballad is deceivingly ACE until you listen to the lyrics." Alex Kadis from "Smash Hits" said it is "a truly beautiful masterpiece". Troy J. Augusto from "Variety" declared it as "an unlikely yet quite hummable pop tune." The track received a nomination for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, which it lost to "I Swear" by All-4-One.


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: Although highly successful when it was released, "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" has since been frequently included on lists of bad songs. The song was number 15 on VH1's "50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever", named by "Rolling Stone" as the "15th Most Annoying Song", and ranked at number 31 on "Blender's" list of the "50 Worst Songs Ever". "The Huffington Post" Canada ranked this song at number 29 on its list of "50 Worst Canadian Songs Ever". Contrasting, VH1 named "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" as the 31st greatest one-hit wonder of the 1990s in 2011.


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: In a 1994 essay in which he makes the case that modern life is better than life in the past, humorist P.J. O'Rourke writes, "Even the bad things are better than they used to be. Bad music, for instance, has gotten much briefer. Wagner's Ring Cycle takes four days to perform while 'Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm' by the Crash Test Dummies lasts little more than three minutes."


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: In 1994, "Weird Al" Yankovic parodied the song as the lead-off single for his compilation box set "" after his record label insisted he record a new song to promote it. The parody, titled "Headline News", combined the music of the original song with new lyrics about three popular news stories from the preceding months. He also produced and starred in a nearly frame-for-frame parody of the original song's music video, featuring several celebrities playing the parts of those referred to in the lyrics.


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: In The Venture Bros., the Pirate Captain plays a rendition of the song, calling it "an old pirate dirge", at Jonas Venture Jr.'s funeral, to Rusty's annoyance.


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: Outside their home country of Canada, the single became the band's most successful song, reaching number four in the United States and number two in the United Kingdom—the group's biggest hit in both countries. It also reached number one on the Modern Rock Chart in the United States and in Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: While the Crash Test Dummies had six singles reach the Canadian top ten, "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" was not one of them, instead stalling at number 14.


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: The music video was directed by Dale Heslip and premiered in October 1993. It sets the song's lyrics as the script for a series of one-act plays performed by schoolchildren. Throughout, the scenes of the performance are intercut with scenes of the Crash Test Dummies performing the song at stage side.


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: All three one-act plays included nicknames for their lead characters, to provide Heslip with easy references:


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: These nicknames were all revealed in an installment of "Pop-Up Video". The same installment also revealed that Brad Roberts had decided to hum, rather than actually sing, the refrain of "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" because humming the refrain sounded more resigned to him and that he never wrote lyrics for it.


title: Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm

text: The music video for "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" was published on YouTube in March 2018. It has amassed over 25 million views as of January 2022.


title: Fragile States Index

text: The Fragile States Index (FSI; formerly the Failed States Index) is an annual report published by the United States think tank the Fund for Peace and the American magazine "Foreign Policy" from 2005 to 2018, then by The New Humanitarian since 2019. The list aims to assess states' vulnerability to conflict or collapse, ranking all sovereign states with membership in the United Nations where there is enough data available for analysis. Taiwan, the Palestinian Territories, Northern Cyprus, Kosovo and Western Sahara are not ranked, despite being recognized as sovereign by one or more other nations. Ranking is based on the sum of scores for 12 indicators (see below). Each indicator is scored on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being the lowest intensity (most stable) and 10 being the highest intensity (least stable), creating a scale spanning 0−120.


title: Fragile States Index

text: The index's ranks are based on twelve indicators of state vulnerability, grouped by category: Cohesion, Economic, Political, Social. The ranking is a critical tool in highlighting not only the normal pressures that all states experience, but also in identifying when those pressures are outweighing a states’ capacity to manage those pressures. By highlighting pertinent vulnerabilities which contribute to the risk of state fragility, the Index — and the social science framework and data


title: Fragile States Index

text: analysis tools upon which it is built — makes political risk assessment and early warning of conflict accessible to policy-makers and the public at large.


title: Fragile States Index

text: Scores are obtained via a process involving content analysis, quantitative data, and qualitative review. In the content analysis phase, millions of documents from over 100,000 English-language or translated sources (social media are excluded) are scanned and filtered through the Fund for Peace's Conflict Assessment Systems Tool (CAST), which utilizes specific filters and search parameters to sort data based on Boolean phrases linked to indicators, and assigns scores based on algorithms. Following CAST analysis, quantitative data from sources such as the United Nations (UN), World Health Organization (WHO), World Factbook, Transparency International, World Bank, and Freedom House are incorporated, which then leads to the final phase of qualitative reviews of each indicator for each country.


title: Fragile States Index

text: Considered together in the index, the indicators are a way of assessing a state's vulnerability to collapse or conflict, ranking states on a spectrum of categories labeled "sustainable", "stable", "warning", and "alert". Within each bracket, scores are also subdivided by severity. The score breakdown is as follows:


title: Fragile States Index

text: All countries in the top three categories display features that make their societies and institutions vulnerable to failure. However, the FSI is not intended as a tool to predict when states may experience violence or collapse, as it does not measure direction or pace of change. It is possible for a state sorted into the 'stable' zone to be deteriorating at a faster rate than those in the more fragile 'warning' or 'alert' zones, and could experience violence sooner. Conversely, states in the red zone, though fragile, may exhibit positive signs of recovery or be deteriorating slowly, giving them time to adopt mitigating strategies.


title: Fragile States Index

text: Twelve conflict risk indicators are used to measure the condition of a state at any given moment. The indicators provide a snapshot in time that can be measured against other snapshots in a time series to determine whether conditions are improving or worsening. Below is the list of indicators used both in the CAST framework and also in the Fragile States Index.


title: Fragile States Index

text: Years of controversy over the "failed state" terminology in the index's name contributed to change in 2014, with a shift from the Failed States Index to the Fragile States Index. Critics had argued that the term established a false binary division, or false dichotomy, between states that were salvageable and those that were beyond recovery. Krista Hendry, FFP's executive director, explained the change in part as a reaction to the debate the term "failed state" had generated, noting that "the name was negatively impacting our ability to get the right kind of attention for the FSI".


title: Fragile States Index

text: Several academics and journalists have also criticized the FSI for a lack of utility and its measurement criteria. Authors writing for "The National Interest" and "The Washington Post" have argued that the FSI sends a message that the solution to problems in the developing world is "more state-building", when in fact state-building could be viewed as a cause of instability or fragility. Claire Leigh, writing for "The Guardian" in 2012, condemned the index as a "useless policy tool" which focused only on the symptoms of struggling states, ignoring causes or potential cures.


title: Fragile States Index

text: Critics have also identified flaws with the FSI's measurement criteria, as well as the lack of transparency surrounding its base data analysis. For example, indicators related to refugees and human flight have allowed North Korea's score to improve as human emigration has declined; while this may indicate a stronger security apparatus in the state, it should not necessarily be recognized as an improvement. Additionally, analysis of the indicators has led several commentators to conclude that a combination of too many categories and a failure to distinguish between "government" and "state" (sometimes allowing political moves, such as Iran agreeing to negotiations with the West, to positively impact a score) complicates efforts to utilize findings. Several have argued for greater transparency in scoring methods, a reworking of the criteria to give the index predictive value, and a consolidation of indicators into umbrella groups for easier comparison.


title: Fragile States Index

text: Furthermore, criticism related to the way the ranking is put together since it was first published seventeen years ago in Foreign Policy magazine, seems to be disappearing as the ranking is focused on trends and rate-of-change. In addition, it is worth mentioning that the ranking focuses on measuring a country's performance over time against itself rather than against other countries' performance. The attention is then paid to a country’s individual indicator scores instead of only its total composite score.


title: Fragile States Index

text: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has based its annual Fragile States Report, now named ‘States of Fragility,’ on the FSI, as well as on data from the World Bank (which publishes its own lists of fragile states), since 2005.


title: Fragile States Index

text: On a monthly basis, International Crisis Group (ICG), a transnational non-governmental organization (NGO), publishes CrisisWatch, a bulletin designed to inform readers about the development of state-based conflict across the globe. The reports indicate whether or not situations have improved, deteriorated, or remained unchanged from the previous month, and seek to highlight where there may be risks of new/escalated (or opportunities for resolution of) conflicts in the coming month.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City (; "Swift Water City") is the second most populous city in South Dakota and the county seat of Pennington County. Named after Rapid Creek, where the settlement developed, it is in western South Dakota, on the Black Hills' eastern slope. The population was 74,703 as of the 2020 Census.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Known as the "Gateway to the Black Hills" and the "City of Presidents" because of the life-size bronze president statues downtown, Rapid City is split by a low mountain ridge that divides the city's western and eastern parts. Ellsworth Air Force Base is on the city's outskirts. Camp Rapid, part of the South Dakota Army National Guard, is in the city's western part.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City is home to such attractions as Art Alley, Dinosaur Park, the City of Presidents walking tour, Chapel in the Hills, Storybook Island, and Main Street Square. The historic "Old West" town of Deadwood is nearby. In the neighboring Black Hills are the tourist attractions of Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Memorial, Custer State Park, Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument, and the museum at the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research. To the city's east is Badlands National Park.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: The public discovery of gold in 1874 by the Black Hills Expedition, led by George Armstrong Custer, brought a mass influx of European-American miners and settlers into this region of the Dakota Territory. A group of unsuccessful miners founded Rapid City in 1876, trying to create other chances; they promoted their new city as the "Gateway to the Black Hills"; it was originally known as Hay Camp. The "Gateway" nickname is shared by neighboring Box Elder. In February 1876, John Richard Brennan and Samuel Scott, with a small group of men, laid out Rapid City. It was eventually named for the spring-fed Rapid Creek that flows through it.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: The land speculators measured off a square mile and designated the six blocks in the center as a business section. Committees were appointed to recruit prospective merchants and their families to locate in the settlement. Such merchants soon began selling supplies to miners and pioneers. The city's location on the edge of the Plains and Hills and its large river valley made it a natural hub for the railroads that were constructed in the late 1880s from both the south and east. By 1900, Rapid City had survived a boom and bust and was developing as an important regional trade center for the Upper Midwest.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: The Black Hills had become popular in the late 1890s, but Rapid City became a more important destination in the 20th century. Local entrepreneurs promoted the sights, the availability of the automobile for individual transportation, and construction of improved roadways after World War I led to many more tourists to this area, including President Calvin Coolidge and the First Lady in summer 1927. Coolidge announced that he would not seek reelection in 1928 from his summer office in Rapid City. Gutzon Borglum, already a noted sculptor, began work on Mount Rushmore in 1927, and his son, Lincoln Borglum, continued the work after Gutzon's death in 1941. The work was halted due to the US need to invest in buildup for its entry into World War II; the sculpture was declared complete in 1941. Although tourism had sustained the city throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s, gasoline rationing during World War II decimated such travel. But investments in the defense industry and other war-related growth stimulated the placement of new military installations in the area, bringing more businesses and residents.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: In 1930, the Rapid City Chamber of Commerce sent a letter inviting Al Capone to live in the Black Hills. South Dakota's governor did not support the idea, and Capone declined.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: In the 1940s Rapid City benefited greatly from the opening of Rapid City Army Air Base, later Ellsworth Air Force Base, an Army Air Corps training base. The local population nearly doubled between 1940 and 1948, from almost 14,000 to nearly 27,000. Military families and civilian personnel soon took every available living space in town, and mobile home parks proliferated. Rapid City businesses profited from the military payroll.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: During the Cold War, the government constructed missile installations in the area: a series of Nike Air Defense sites were constructed around Ellsworth in the 1950s. In the early 1960s three Titan missile launch sites were constructed; these contained a total of nine Titan I missiles in Rapid City's general vicinity. Beginning in November 1963, the land for 100 miles east, northeast and northwest of the city was dotted with construction of 150 Minuteman missile silos and 15 launch command centers. They were all deactivated in the early 1990s.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: In 1949, city officials envisioned the city as a retail and wholesale trade center for the region. They developed a plan for growth that focused on a civic center, more downtown parking, new schools, and paved streets. A construction boom continued into the 1950s. Growth slowed in the 1960s.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: After the Black Hills Flood of 1972, the worst natural disaster in South Dakota history, a building boom took place over the next decade to replace damaged structures. On June 9, 1972, heavy rains caused massive flash flooding along Rapid Creek through the city, killing 238 people and destroying more than $100 million in property.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: In response to this devastation, Rapid City received an outpouring of private donations and millions of dollars in federal aid. It was able to complete a major part of its 1949 plan: clearing the area along the Rapid Creek and making the floodplain a public park. In other areas, new homes and businesses were constructed to replace those that had been destroyed. Rushmore Plaza Civic Center and a new Central High School were built in part of the area that was cleared. The high school opened in 1978, with the graduating class that year attending classes in both the original school (housed in what is now Rapid City High School and community theater) and the new one.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: The rebuilding generated construction and related jobs that partly insulated Rapid City from the drop in automotive tourism caused by the 1974 Oil Embargo, but tourism was depressed for most of a decade. In 1978, Rushmore Mall was built on the city's north edge, enhancing the city's status as a local retail center.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: In 1980, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in "United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians" that the federal government had illegally stolen the Black Hills from the Sioux people when it unilaterally broke a treaty guaranteeing the Black Hills to them. As a result, the federal government offered a financial settlement, but the Lakota Sioux declined on the principle that the theft of their land should not be validated. They still demand the return of the land. The settlement funds accrue interest. This land includes Rapid City, by far the largest modern settlement in the Black Hills. As of 2019, the dispute has not been settled.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: In the 1980s, tourism increased again as the city hosted the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally; another decline occurred in the late 1990s. Fears that Ellsworth AFB would be closed under the BRAC review and base closure process in the 1990s and 2000s led to attempts to expand other sectors of the economy. Growth continued and the city expanded significantly during this period.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Today, Rapid City is South Dakota's primary city for tourism and recreation. With the federal government's approval of a Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory at the Homestake Mine site in nearby Lead, Rapid City is primed for advancements in technology, medicine, and scientific research.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: On June 9–10, 1972, extremely heavy rains over the eastern Black Hills of South Dakota produced record floods on Rapid Creek and other streams in the area. Nearly of rain fell in about six hours near Nemo, and more than of rain fell over an area of . According to the Red Cross, the resulting peak floods (which occurred after dark) left 238 people dead and 3,057 people injured. Total property destruction was estimated in excess of $160 million (about $964 million in 2018 dollars), which included 1,335 homes and 5,000 automobiles that were destroyed.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Runoff from this storm produced record floods (highest peak flows recorded) along Battle, Spring, Rapid, and Box Elder creeks. Smaller floods also occurred along Elk and Bear Butte creeks. Canyon Lake Dam, on the west side of Rapid City, broke the night of the flood, unleashing a wall of water down the creek. The 1972 flooding has an estimated recurrence interval of 500 years, which means that a flood of this magnitude will occur on average once every 500 years. Every year there is a 0.2% chance (1 in 500) that a similar event will occur. To prevent similar damage, the city has prohibited residential and business construction on its flood plain. Today the flood plain is used for civic functions such as golf courses, parks, sports arenas, and arboretums, based mostly on the landscape and temporary use by people.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: In 2007, the Rapid City Public Library created a 1972 Flood digital archive that collects survivors' stories, photos and news accounts of the flood. The Journey Museum has an interactive display on the 1972 flood; this is an ongoing project to give future generations the best idea of how the people were affected and what changes the city made as a result of the major losses of life and property. Plans include the memorialization of all those who died from the flood by the preparation of individual biographies, so they may be remembered more fully.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City is located at . The downtown elevation of Rapid City is 3,202 feet (976 m). Rapid City is located in the shadow of Black Elk Peak, which at , is the highest point east of the Rocky Mountains.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 55.49 square miles (143.71 km), of which 55.41 square miles (143.5 km) is land and 0.08 square mile (0.2 km) is water.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City is located on the eastern edge of the Black Hills, and has developed on each side of the Dakota Hogback. Rapid City's "Westside" is located in the Red Valley between the foothills of the Black Hills proper and the Dakota Hogback, so named for the red Spearfish formation soils and the way the valley completely encircles the Black Hills. Rapid City has expanded into the foothills, with developments having been built on both ridges and in valleys developed, especially in the last 20 years. This arid edge area has a higher risk of wildfire, as shown by the Westberry Trails fire in 1988.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Skyline Drive follows the summits of the Dakota Hogback south from near Rapid Gap (where Rapid Creek cuts through the Hogback) to a large high plateau that forms the current south edge of Rapid City. The Central and Eastern portions of Rapid City lie in the wide valley of Rapid Creek outside the Hogback. It includes a number of mesas rising a hundred feet or more above the floodplain.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid Creek flows through Rapid City, emerging from Dark Canyon above Canyon Lake and flowing in a large arc north of downtown. It descends to the southeast where the valley widens. Since the flood damage of 1972, the city has prohibited most development in the floodplain of Rapid Creek. It has adapted this green space for public uses: a series of parks, arboretums, and bike trails, which have reconnected the city to the creek for residents.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: To the north, a series of ridges separate Rapid Creek from Box Elder Creek. Both older and new residential areas and commercial areas have developed here, along I-90. To the south, the terrain rises more steeply to the southern widening of the Dakota Hogback into a plateau dividing the Rapid Creek drainage from Spring Creek.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City features a temperate semi-arid climate (Köppen: BSk) bordering on a hot-summer humid continental climate (Köppen: Dwa), and is part of USDA Hardiness zone 5b. Its location makes its climate unlike both the higher elevations of the Black Hills to the west and the Great Plains to the east. It is characterized by long arid summers and long dry winters, with short but distinct spring and autumn seasons. Precipitation averages annually, but has historically ranged from in 1974 to in 1946.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Winters are cold and dry, with January being the coldest month with a daily average temperature of . Chinook winds can warm temperatures above , doing so on average about 20 times from December to February. Temperature inversions, however, occasionally produce warmer temperatures in the Black Hills. On average, highs do not climb above freezing on 43 days, while the low temperature reaches on an average of 18 nights. Snowfall is frequent but usually not heavy; March and April are typically the snowiest months. The seasonal total averages , although historically ranging from during 1980–81 to during 1985–86. Extensive snow cover does not remain for long, with only nine days seasonally with or more on the ground. Measurable snow has occurred in every month except July.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Compared to locations in the east, the area warms rather gradually early in the year, with the last measurable snow typically occurring in late April and precipitation totals beginning to increase; May snow occurs several times per decade. Toward the middle of the year, storms typically develop over the Black Hills during the afternoon and move onto the plains in the evening. Only in April through June have calendar-day precipitation amounts exceeding been observed. June 15, 1963, with , holds the single-day rainfall record; the record-wettest month is May 1996 with . Rapid City has an average of twenty clear to partly cloudy days and 67% of its possible sunshine in June. This is the traditional "flood" season for Rapid and other creeks in the Eastern Hills. Temperatures warm rapidly as summer approaches.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Summer in Rapid City has relatively pleasant temperatures, and is relatively dry (following a wet spring), and relatively sunny. July is the warmest month of the year, having a daily average temperature of . An average of 32 days reach + highs and 5 with + highs. Due to the elevation and aridity, lows rarely remain at or above and during July and August fall to or below on an average 7.6 days. Rapid City records an average of nine thunderstorm days in August, but only of rain in that month.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Fall is a transition season: the average first freeze occurs in Rapid City on October 4 and in the Black Hills in late August through September. The Rapid City area's first snowfall is usually in October, although higher elevations sometimes receive significant snow in September. Occasional cold fronts moving through the area bring blustery northwest winds.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Sunshine is abundant in the region in all months except December, averaging 2850 hours, 64% of the possible total, per year.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City holds the record for an extreme temperature drop of , which was achieved on January 10, 1911, from to . Official extreme temperatures range from on February 2, 1996, up to on July 15, 2006; the record low daily maximum is on February 2, 1989, while the record high daily minimum is on July 8, 1985, and July 28, 1960.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: As of the census of 2010, there were 67,956 people, 28,586 households, and 16,957 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 30,254 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 80.4% White, 1.1% African American, 12.4% Native American, 1.0% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 0.7% from other races, and 4.1% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 4.1% of the population.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: There were 28,586 households, of which 29.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 41.2% were married couples living together, 13.1% had a female householder with no husband present, 5.1% had a male householder with no wife present, and 40.7% were non-families. 32.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.29 and the average family size was 2.90.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: The median age in the city was 35.6 years. 23.9% of residents were under the age of 18; 10.6% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 25.7% were from 25 to 44; 25% were from 45 to 64; and 14.5% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 49.5% male and 50.5% female.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: As of the census of 2000, there were 59,607 people, 23,969 households, and 15,220 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,336.7 people per square mile (516.1/km). There were 25,096 housing units at an average density of 562.8 per square mile (217.3/km). The racial makeup of the city was 84.33% White, 0.97% African American, 10.14% Native American, 1.0% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 0.73% from other races, and 2.77% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.77% of the population.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: There were 23,969 households, out of which 31.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.7% were married couples living together, 12.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 36.5% were non-families. 29.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 10.0% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.39 and the average family size was 2.96.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: In the city, the population was spread out, with 25.3% under the age of 18, 11.8% from 18 to 24, 28.7% from 25 to 44, 20.9% from 45 to 64, and 13.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.6 males.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: As of 2000 the median income for a household in the city was $35,978, and the median income for a family was $44,818. Males had a median income of $30,985 versus $21,913 for females. The per capita income for the city was $19,445. About 9.4% of families and 12.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 17.6% of those under age 18 and 6.9% of those age 65 or over.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City is a major healthcare center for a five-state region, centered around Monument Health Rapid City Hospital, which operates under the not-for-profit parent company Monument Health, a member of The Mayo Clinic Care Network, Monument Health continues to operate independently and is governed by a volunteer board of directors.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Monument Health Rapid City Hospital has the busiest Emergency Department in South Dakota with 57,000 visits annually, they are a certified level 2 Trauma Center.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Monument Health offers care in 33 medical specialties and serves 20 communities across western South Dakota and in eastern Wyoming. With over 4,500 physicians and caregivers, Monument Health consists of 5 hospitals, 8 specialty and surgical centers and more than 40 medical clinics and health care service centers. In 2017 Monument Health Rapid City Hospital received recognition as one of "America's Best 250 Hospitals for Clinical Excellence" by Healthgrades, only 258 hospitals in the United States received the prestigious award, which equals out to be just 5% of hospitals in the entire country.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: There are several Urgent Care facilities in Rapid City, mainly operated by Monument Health and private for-profit groups. Monument Health has the only nationally accredited Urgent Care centers in the entire state of South Dakota.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Other independent, for-profit medical facilities have been established in the area, centered around Black Hills Surgical Hospital, which is majority owned (54.2% ownership) by Medical Facilities Corporation, a for-profit Canadian holdings company, they trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol DR. Black Hills Neurosurgery and spine, Black Hills Orthopedics, Ballard Gynecology, ProMotion Physical Therapy, Rapid City Medical Center, Rushmore OB/GYN, The Rehab Doctors and West River ENT are all either owner by, operated or affiliated with Black Hills Surgical Hospital and for-profit parent company MFC. Other private for-profit groups exist such as Black Hills Pediatrics, Black Hills Eye Institute, as well as local, smaller providers.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Specialized government health facilities include the Indian Health Service’s Oyate Health Center (formerly Sioux San Hospital), which provides care to the Native American community, and Veterans Affairs hospitals located nearby at Fort Meade and Hot Springs, South Dakota. The VA also has a small, outpatient clinic in Rapid City.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Emergency medical services (EMS) are provided by the Rapid City Fire Department. Emergency medical transportation by rotor and fixed wing aircraft is provided by Black Hills Life Flight, operated by Air Methods Corp. based in Denver, Colorado, and MARC (Medical Air Rescue Company), owned by Dale Aviation and based in Rapid City. Apollo Air Methods also operates Medical Helicopters in the Black Hills area.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: This is also the location of a number of non-profit public health organizations that engage in survey and clinic research, epidemiology, and area-based health promotion disease prevention. The Health Education and Promotion Council and Black Hills Center for American Indian Health are two notable non-profit organizations.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City institutions of higher education include the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Oglala Lakota College's He Sapa College Center, Black Hills State University - Rapid City University Center (includes classes and degrees through five other South Dakota post-secondary Institutions), National American University, Western Dakota Technical Institute, Black Hills Beauty College, John Witherspoon College, and several small sectarian preacher training schools.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Black Hills State University is located in nearby Spearfish and offers several classes in Rapid City. A South Dakota State University nurse training program is based in Rapid City.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: In 2013, 26.6% of Rapid City residents 25 or older had earned a bachelor's degree or higher. This is on par with the average educational attainment in the United States. The highest rates of educational attainment in South Dakota can be found in metropolitan areas of Rapid City and Sioux Falls.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: The local public schools fall under the Rapid City Area Schools school district. There are three high schools within the district: Rapid City Central High School; Stevens High School; and Rapid City High School, which also houses the Performing Arts Center. The middle schools include East, North, South, Southwest, and West. There are 16 elementary schools within the district. These are Black Hawk, Canyon Lake, Corral Drive, General Beadle, Grandview, Horace Mann, Kibben Kuster, Knollwood Heights, Meadowbrook, Pinedale, Rapid Valley, Robbinsdale, South Canyon, South Park, Valley View, and Woodrow Wilson.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: There are also various private schools in Rapid City. The city has four Christian high schools: Saint Thomas More, Rapid City Christian High School, Liberty Baptist Academy, and Open Bible Christian School. Rapid City also has various private grade schools, including St. Paul's Lutheran School of the WELS.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Because of the importance of tourism in the area, and its extensive market area, Rapid City has many cultural resources usually found only in much larger urban areas. Among these are:


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City has invested in public sculptures, which are on display in many parts of the city. The most visible is "The City of Presidents", a series of life-sized bronze statues representing each former President of the United States. The statues are located on street corners in the downtown area. Five South Dakota artists created the statues: Edward E. Hlavka, Lee Leuning, John Lopez, James Michael Maher, and James Van Nuys. The first 42 statues were erected via private donations over a ten-year period between 2000 and 2010. As of 2019, Barack Obama is the most recent president to have a statue erected; currently sitting presidents are ineligible.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City's economy is diverse, but industry is a small portion. Heavy and medium industrial activities include a Portland cement plant (constructed and owned for 84 years by the State of South Dakota and sold in 2003 to Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua, or GCC, a Mexican-based conglomerate); Black Hills Ammunition, an ammunition and reloading supplies manufacturing company; several custom sawmills, a lime plant, a computer peripheral component manufacturing plant, and several farm and ranch equipment manufacturers. Of particular note, this city is the center for the manufacture of Black Hills gold jewelry, a popular product with tourists and Westerners in general. The city is the site of the only American manufacturer of stamping machines used for the labeling of plywood and chipboard products.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Most gold mining has ceased in the Black Hills and was never conducted in or near Rapid City. Regional mining operations include for sand and gravel, as well as the raw materials for lime and Portland cement (including chemical-grade limestone, taconite iron ore, and gypsum) remains an important part of the economy.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: The largest sector of the Rapid City economy is government services, including local, state, and federal. Major employers include Ellsworth Air Force Base, home of the 28th Bomb Wing flying the B-1B long-range bomber; the Army National Guard based at Camp Rapid and hosting annual exercises in the Black Hills, drawing troops from five to ten states; and various federal agencies, including the National Park Service, US Forest Service, and Indian Health Service.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Monument Health covers one of the largest geographic service areas in the United States. The health care sector employs more than 8,000 persons in the Rapid City area.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Tourism constitutes a major portion of the Rapid City economy, due to the proximity of Mount Rushmore, Sturgis, home of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally; Deadwood, and other attractions in the Black Hills. This city provides most services for the Motorcycle Rally. Prepared to satisfy the Rally's demand for motel rooms, camp sites, and other services for tourists during the first week of August, Rapid City has the capacity to host other large events, such as conventions, and numerous associated tourists year-round. Various minor tourist attractions, including wildlife parks, specialty shops, caves, water parks, private museums, and other businesses are found in and near Rapid City.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Other economic sectors include financial service and investing companies such as Waddell and Reed, Citibank, WaMu, Merrill Lynch, and Northwestern Mutual. Rapid City is the headquarters for Assurant Insurance's pre-need division. As noted, the city has a strong medical services sector, and several institutions of higher education. Rapid City is also the major market town for much of five states, drawing commerce from more than half of South Dakota, and large portions of North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and the Nebraska Panhandle.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: The real compound annual growth rate of the gross domestic product of the Rapid City Metropolitan Statistical Area was 2.6% for 2001–2013.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City is served by Rapid City Rapid Ride, which provides fixed route and demand response service to the region.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City is a major transportation hub for the Northern Plains. Rapid City Regional Airport provides flights to the airline hub cities of Denver, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Dallas-Fort Worth, Las Vegas, Phoenix/Mesa, Houston, Atlanta and Chicago. The airport also has extensive General Aviation operations, including wildfire fighting activities, and medical flight support to Rapid City medical facilities and regional Indian Health Service operations.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Historically, Rapid City was served by three railroads. Following extensive restructuring in the industry in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the city is now served only by the Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad (RCP&E). In addition to Rapid City, the RCP&E serves the Northern Black Hills and run east to Minnesota and south through Nebraska to connect with major transcontinental railroads Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Union Pacific. Until the 1950s Chicago and Northwestern Railroad ran a daily passenger train from Chicago to Rapid City. Neither South Dakota nor Wyoming have any Amtrak service.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City's central location on the continent enables it to transport products to both coasts, and points in between. Trucking is a major business activity in the city. Improved connections with Denver and I-80 to the south, via the Heartland Expressway now under construction, will primarily benefit local trucking.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City is located on the boundary of the Western and Eastern power grids. It is served by the hydroelectric plants of the two Mainstem dams on the Missouri River, and the large coal fields and power plants of the Powder River Basin of Wyoming. It is located where the two national power grids connect with each other, allowing switching of electrical power from east to west and vice versa. Rapid City had its own coal-fired power plant but could not afford to meet current air pollution standards and closed it. Closed for similar reasons were coal-fired power stations near Gillette, Wyoming. The Ben French power station located within city boundaries shut down September 2012, more than two years ahead of its scheduled shutdown. Rapid City now obtains much of its power from the Missouri dams and importing it from elsewhere. Following the shut down of the plants dependent on cheap, polluting coal, electrical rates have risen. The city has had to spend more to import electricity over a longer distance.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City obtains most of its water supply from Rapid Creek and the alluvial aquifers associated with the creek, owning significant water rights in Pactola Reservoir located some west of the city, but does also obtain water from some springs in the vicinity, and has the ability to draw water from deep formations that receive water from recharge in areas of the Black Hills where the formations come to the surface. The heavy dependence on shallow alluvial aquifers is of some concern to planners, as most suburbs of Rapid City use septic systems for domestic sewage treatment. However, water supplies remain relatively good for future growth.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: Rapid City has a municipally owned bus service, providing multiple bus stops and a headquarters in the city. It has limited city-to-city bus service along I-90. Charter bus services operate in the area, connecting Rapid City and Deadwood with cities in Colorado, Nebraska, and Iowa.


title: Rapid City, South Dakota

text: The 2020 Census population of the Rapid City Metropolitan Statistical Area (Pennington and Meade) was 139,074. A significant portion of residents from cities and towns in the Black Hills and nearby plains commute to Rapid City for work. Increasingly, some residents of the city commute to outlying areas for work as well.


title: Red-eye flight

text: In commercial aviation, a red-eye flight is a flight scheduled to depart at night and arrive the next morning. Another definition of a red-eye flight is one that takes place overnight but does not provide enough time for passengers to get a full night's sleep.


title: Red-eye flight

text: For the airline, overnight flights will enable more use of aircraft that would otherwise be idle at night. For airports, it may be rational to divert the stream of passengers away from peak hours. In major airports, the capacity for flight operations during daytime may be fully exhausted, and the price of airport slots may be higher at peak hours.


title: Red-eye flight

text: For passengers, the benefits and disadvantages are more subjective. Many will perceive it difficult to arrive well-rested after a night flight, especially if it is at odd hours or too short to fit into a full night's sleep. However, the traffic to and from the airport, as well as the airport experience may be less stressful at these hours. Some passengers may want to arrive early in a city and return the same day, saving on a night's accommodation, or enjoy one full day at the beginning or end of the trip. It has been claimed that red-eye flights are popular among business travelers who benefit from flying at night. Business class seats are often reclinable to a flat position, enabling normal sleep.


title: Red-eye flight

text: One definition of a red-eye flight is one that is too short to allow a full night's sleep. An example would be those flights from Los Angeles to New York City—about six hours' flying time—that depart between 2200 and 0100, and arrive between 0500 and 0700.


title: Red-eye flight

text: The majority of transcontinental flights are operated during the day, but as of 2010, red-eye flights operate from Perth to Sydney, Brisbane, Cairns, Canberra, and Melbourne, and from Darwin to Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. Red-eye flights have previously operated from Australia to New Zealand and Fiji.


title: Red-eye flight

text: Red-eye flights to Australia operate from various locations in Southeast Asia and North America, such as Scoot's flights from Singapore to Gold Coast, Sydney, and Melbourne. Jetstar offers red-eye flights between Melbourne and Wellington with the flight departing Melbourne at 1am and arriving in Wellington at 6am.


title: Red-eye flight

text: Another example would be Qantas flights from Los Angeles to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, and flights from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport to Sydney), generally leaving 10pm to 11pm and arriving from 5am to 8am. While they do fly during the night - this is more a product of large time zone differences - the flights take around 15 hours (giving more time to sleep) and westward flight stretches out the local length of day and night. Furthermore, as the flight crosses the International Date Line, flights arrive roughly 2 days later in local time.


title: Red-eye flight

text: LATAM Brasil, Azul Brazilian Airlines and Gol Transportes Aéreos all offer red-eye flights in Brazil, popularly known as "Great Owl", because of a film session in a late night broadcast by Rede Globo (), with over 50 different routes throughout Brazil, all departing between 10pm and 6am. Usually these flights originate in Brasília, Belo Horizonte, Campinas, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, or São Paulo and are bound for Manaus, Belém, Porto Velho, Northeast Brazil, North America, Argentina, and Europe.


title: Red-eye flight

text: Red-eye flights to Europe were once meant to apply exclusively to the morning arrivals of transatlantic flights from the American East Coast to Western Europe. Such traffic now comprises the busiest of the long-haul air routes. The first of these flights, from the busiest destinations of New York and Washington D.C., will arrive at the major European airports at London Heathrow, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin before 0600 local time (and when still subject to costly night-flying restrictions); and hence in increasing numbers and to and from a wide range of American/European destinations.


title: Red-eye flight

text: Travelling from Europe, are scheduled red-eye flights out of Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Frankfurt. The flight time is of three to five hours, with typical departure around midnight, and arrival around dawn the next day. Most airlines from the Middle East & Asia operate red-eye services from major Western European destinations. One example is at London Heathrow, where the last departures - leaving between 22.30 and 23.00 - are eastbound medium-haul services to destinations such as Moscow and Tel Aviv.


title: Red-eye flight

text: Russian airlines operate similarly to U.S. airlines by connecting Moscow to Yakutsk, Irkutsk, and Vladivostok. They last five to eight hours but due to the northerly latitude the flights can cross as many as eight time zones during this interval, drastically enlarging the time difference. The flights depart Moscow around 6pm and arrive at the eastern cities around 6am the next day. One of the current examples of red-eye flight is Aeroflot's SU783 from Moscow to Magadan, departing 11:05pm Moscow time and arriving 2:00pm Vladivostok Time on the next day, with a flight time of approximately eight hours.


title: Red-eye flight

text: Many medium and long-haul flights to/from South Africa and Europe, other African destinations and the Middle East make use of red-eye flights and longitudinal advantages (similar time zones) so that passengers can arrive at their destinations early in the morning and benefit from minimal time zone changes due to South Africa's geographic position. This makes it an efficient and convenient way to travel between each area.


title: Red-eye flight

text: Red-eye flights frequently connect West Coast cities to East Coast cities. These typically depart the West Coast between 10pm and 1am, and have a flight time of three to six hours but gain between two and four hours due to the time difference, arriving on the East Coast between 5am and 7am. American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Alaska Airlines, Air Canada and other U.S. and Canadian carriers operate red-eye flights that depart from the West Coast at night from cities such as Los Angeles, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Seattle, among others, arriving in Boston, New York, Toronto, Washington, D.C., and other East Coast cities in the morning. Red-eye flights also connect Hawaii or Alaska with West Coast mainland cities. Flights from Tokyo to Honolulu are considered red-eye flights, as the flights are usually overnight flights that are around six hours.


title: Red-eye flight

text: Films involving red-eye flights include "Airport 1975" (1974), "Airplane!" (1980), "The Langoliers" (1995), "Turbulence" (1997), "Red Eye" (2005), "Flightplan" (2005), "Snakes on a Plane" (2006), and "Non-Stop" (2014).


title: Sicilian language

text: Sicilian (, ; ) is a Romance language that is spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands. A variant, "Calabro-Sicilian", is spoken in southern Calabria, where it is called Southern Calabro notably in the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria. Dialects of central and southern Calabria, the southern parts of Apulia (Salentino dialect) and southern Salerno in Campania (Cilentano dialect), on the Italian peninsula, are viewed by some linguists as forming with Sicilian dialects a broader Extreme Southern Italian language group (in Italian ).


title: Sicilian language

text: "Ethnologue" (see below for more detail) describes Sicilian as being "distinct enough from Standard Italian to be considered a separate language", and it is recognized as a minority language by UNESCO. It has been referred to as a language by the Sicilian Region. It has the oldest literary tradition of the Italo-Romance languages. A version of the "UNESCO Courier" is also available in Sicilian.


title: Sicilian language

text: Sicilian is spoken by most inhabitants of Sicily and by emigrant populations around the world. The latter are found in the countries that attracted large numbers of Sicilian immigrants during the course of the past century or so, especially the United States (specifically in the Gravesend and Bensonhurst neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York City), Canada (especially in Montreal, Toronto and Hamilton), Australia, Venezuela and Argentina. During the last four or five decades, large numbers of Sicilians were also attracted to the industrial zones of Northern Italy and areas of the European Union, especially Germany.


title: Sicilian language

text: Although the Sicilian language does not have official status (including in Sicily), in addition to the standard Sicilian of the medieval Sicilian school, academics have developed a standardized form. Such efforts began in the mid-19th century when Vincenzo Mortillaro published a comprehensive Sicilian language dictionary intended to capture the language universally spoken across Sicily in a common orthography. Later in the century, Giuseppe Pitrè established a common grammar in his "Grammatica Siciliana" (1875). Although it presents a common grammar, it also provides detailed notes on how the sounds of Sicilian differ across dialects.


title: Sicilian language

text: In the 20th century, researchers at the Centro di studi filologici e linguistici siciliani developed an extensive descriptivist orthography which aims to represent every sound in the natural range of Sicilian accurately. This system is also used extensively in the Vocabolario siciliano and by Gaetano Cipolla in his "Learn Sicilian" series of textbooks and by Arba Sicula in its journal.


title: Sicilian language

text: In 2017, the nonprofit organisation Cademia Siciliana created an orthographic proposal to help to normalise the language's written form.


title: Sicilian language

text: The autonomous regional parliament of Sicily has legislated Regional Law No. 9/2011 to encourage the teaching of Sicilian at all schools, but inroads into the education system have been slow. The CSFLS created a textbook "Dialektos" to comply with the law but does not provide an orthography to write the language. In Sicily, it is taught only as part of dialectology courses, but outside Italy, Sicilian has been taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Brooklyn College and Manouba University. Since 2009, it has been taught at the Italian Charities of America, in New York City (home to the largest Sicilian speaking community outside of Sicily and Italy) and it is also preserved and taught by family association, church organisations and societies, social and ethnic historical clubs and even Internet social groups, mainly in Gravesend and Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. On 15 May 2018, the Sicilian Region once again mandated the teaching of Sicilian in schools and referred to it as a language, not a dialect, in official communication.


title: Sicilian language

text: The language is officially recognized in the municipal statutes of some Sicilian towns, such as Caltagirone and Grammichele, in which the "inalienable historical and cultural value of the Sicilian language" is proclaimed. Furthermore, the Sicilian language would be protected and promoted under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (ECRML). Although Italy has signed the treaty, the Italian Parliament has not ratified it. It is not included in Italian Law No. 482/1999 although some other minority languages of Sicily are.


title: Sicilian language

text: Alternative names of Sicilian are , , and . The first term refers to the fact that a form of Sicilian is spoken in southern Calabria, particularly in the province of Reggio Calabria. The other two are names for the language in Sicily itself: specifically, the term originally describes one of the larger prehistoric groups living in Sicily (the Italic Sicels or ) before the arrival of Greeks in the 8th century BC (see below). It can also be used as a prefix to qualify or to elaborate further on the origins of a person, for example: Siculo-American () or Siculo-Australian.


title: Sicilian language

text: Because Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and many peoples have passed through it (Phoenicians, Ancient Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantine Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Swabians, Spaniards, Austrians, Italians), Sicilian displays a rich and varied influence from several languages in its lexical stock and grammar. These languages include Latin (as Sicilian is a Romance language itself), Ancient Greek, Spanish, Norman, Lombard, Catalan, Occitan, Arabic and Germanic languages, and the languages of the island's aboriginal Indo-European and pre-Indo-European inhabitants, known as the Sicels, Sicanians and Elymians. The very earliest influences, visible in Sicilian to this day, exhibit both prehistoric Mediterranean elements and prehistoric Indo-European elements, and occasionally a blending of both.


title: Sicilian language

text: Before the Roman conquest (3rd century BC), Sicily was occupied by various populations. The earliest of these populations were the Sicanians, considered to be autochthonous. The Sicels and the Elymians arrived between the second and first millennia BC. These aboriginal populations in turn were followed by the Phoenicians (between the 10th and 8th centuries BC) and the Greeks. The Greek-language influence remains strongly visible, while the influences from the other groups are less obvious. What can be stated with certainty is that in Sicilian remain pre-Indo-European words of an ancient Mediterranean origin, but one cannot be more precise than that: of the three main prehistoric groups, only the Sicels were known to be Indo-European with a degree of certainty, and their speech is likely to have been closely related to that of the Romans.


title: Sicilian language

text: The following table, listing words for "twins", illustrates the difficulty linguists face in tackling the various substrata of the Sicilian language.


title: Sicilian language

text: A similar qualifier can be applied to many of the words that appear in this article. Sometimes it may be known that a particular word has a prehistoric derivation, but it is not known whether the Sicilians inherited it directly from the indigenous populations, or whether it came via another route. Similarly, it might be known that a particular word has a Greek origin but it is not known from which Greek period the Sicilians first used it (pre-Roman occupation or during its Byzantine period), or once again, whether the particular word may even have come to Sicily via another route. For instance, by the time the Romans had occupied Sicily, the Latin language had made its own borrowings from Greek.


title: Sicilian language

text: The words with a prehistoric Mediterranean derivation often refer to plants native to the Mediterranean region or to other natural features. Bearing in mind the qualifiers mentioned above (alternative sources are provided where known), examples of such words include:


title: Sicilian language

text: There are also Sicilian words with an ancient Indo-European origin that do not appear to have come to the language via any of the major language groups normally associated with Sicilian, i.e. they have been independently derived from a very early Indo-European source. The Sicels are a possible source of such words, but there is also the possibility of a cross-over between ancient Mediterranean words and introduced Indo-European forms. Some examples of Sicilian words with an ancient Indo-European origin:


title: Sicilian language

text: The following Sicilian words are of a Greek origin (including some examples where it is unclear whether the word is derived directly from Greek, or via Latin):


title: Sicilian language

text: From 476 to 535, the Ostrogoths ruled Sicily, although their presence apparently did not affect the Sicilian language. The few Germanic influences to be found in Sicilian do not appear to originate from this period. One exception might be or "to hawk goods, proclaim publicly", from Gothic "to give a signal". Also possible is "diagonal" from Gothic "slanting". Other sources of Germanic influences include the Hohenstaufen rule of the 13th century, words of Germanic origin contained within the speech of 11th-century Normans and Lombard settlers, and the short period of Austrian rule in the 18th century.


title: Sicilian language

text: Many Germanic influences date back to the time of the Swabian kings (amongst whom Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor enjoyed the longest reign). Some of the words below are "reintroductions" of Latin words (also found in modern Italian) that had been Germanicized at some point (e.g. in Latin to in modern Italian). Words that probably originate from this era include:


title: Sicilian language

text: In 535, Justinian I made Sicily a Byzantine province, which returned the Greek language to a position of prestige, at least on an official level. At this time the island could be considered a border zone with moderate levels of bilingualism: Latinisation was mostly concentrated in western Sicily, largely among the upper class, whereas Eastern Sicily remained predominantly Greek. As the power of the Byzantine Empire waned, Sicily was progressively conquered by Saracens from Ifriqiya, from the mid 9th to mid 10th centuries. The Emirate of Sicily persisted long enough to develop a distinctive local variety of Arabic, Siculo-Arabic (at present extinct in Sicily but surviving as the Maltese language). Its influence is noticeable in around 300 Sicilian words, most of which relate to agriculture and related activities. This is understandable because of the Arab Agricultural Revolution; the Saracens introduced to Sicily their advanced irrigation and farming techniques and a new range of crops, nearly all of which remain endemic to the island to this day.


title: Sicilian language

text: Throughout the Islamic epoch of Sicilian history, a significant Greek-speaking population remained on the island and continued to use the Greek language, or most certainly a variant of Greek influenced by Tunisian Arabic. What is less clear is the extent to which a Latin-speaking population survived on the island. While a form of Vulgar Latin clearly survived in isolated communities during the Islamic epoch, there is much debate as to the influence it had (if any) on the development of the Sicilian language, following the re-Latinisation of Sicily (discussed in the next section).


title: Sicilian language

text: By A.D. 1000, the whole of what is today Southern Italy, including Sicily, was a complex mix of small states and principalities, languages and religions. The whole of Sicily was controlled by Saracens, at the elite level, but the general population remained a mix of Muslims and Christians who spoke Greek, Siculo-Arabic. There were also a component of immigrants from Ifriqiya. The far south of the Italian peninsula was part of the Byzantine empire although many communities were reasonably independent from Constantinople. The Principality of Salerno was controlled by Lombards (or Langobards), who had also started to make some incursions into Byzantine territory and had managed to establish some isolated independent city-states. It was into this climate that the Normans thrust themselves with increasing numbers during the first half of the 11th century.


title: Sicilian language

text: When the two most famous of Southern Italy's Norman adventurers, Roger of Hauteville and his brother, Robert Guiscard, began their conquest of Sicily in 1061, they already controlled the far south of Italy (Apulia and Calabria). It took Roger 30 years to complete the conquest of Sicily (Robert died in 1085). In the aftermath of the Norman conquest of Sicily, the reintroduction of Latin in Sicily had begun, and some Norman and Norman-French words would be absorbed.


title: Sicilian language

text: The Northern Italian influence is of particular interest. Even to the present day, Gallo-Italic of Sicily exists in the areas where the Northern Italian colonies were the strongest, namely Novara, Nicosia, Sperlinga, Aidone and Piazza Armerina. The Siculo-Gallic dialect did not survive in other major Italian colonies, such as Randazzo, Caltagirone, Bronte and Paternò (although they influenced the local Sicilian vernacular). The Gallo-Italic influence was also felt on the Sicilian language itself, as follows:


title: Sicilian language

text: It was during the reign of Frederick II (or Frederick I of Sicily) between 1198 and 1250, with his patronage of the Sicilian School, that Sicilian became the first of the modern Italic languages to be used as a literary language. The influence of the school and the use of Sicilian itself as a poetic language was acknowledged by the two great Tuscan writers of the early Renaissance period, Dante and Petrarch. The influence of the Sicilian language should not be underestimated in the eventual formulation of a "lingua franca" that was to become modern Italian. The victory of the Angevin army over the Sicilians at Benevento in 1266 not only marked the end of the 136-year Norman-Swabian reign in Sicily but also effectively ensured that the centre of literary influence would eventually move from Sicily to Tuscany. While Sicilian, as both an official and a literary language, would continue to exist for another two centuries, the language would soon follow the fortunes of the kingdom itself in terms of prestige and influence.


title: Sicilian language

text: Following the Sicilian Vespers of 1282, the kingdom came under the influence of the Crown of Aragon, and the Catalan language (and the closely related Aragonese) added a new layer of vocabulary in the succeeding century. For the whole of the 14th century, both Catalan and Sicilian were the official languages of the royal court. Sicilian was also used to record the proceedings of the Parliament of Sicily (one of the oldest parliaments in Europe) and for other official purposes. While it is often difficult to determine whether a word came directly from Catalan (as opposed to Occitan), the following are likely to be such examples:


title: Sicilian language

text: By the time the crowns of Castille and Aragon were united in the late 15th century, the Italianisation of written Sicilian in the parliamentary and court records had commenced. By 1543 this process was virtually complete, with the Tuscan dialect of Italian becoming the "lingua franca" of the Italian peninsula and supplanting written Sicilian.


title: Sicilian language

text: Spanish rule lasted over three centuries (not counting the Aragonese and Bourbon periods on either side) and had a significant influence on the Sicilian vocabulary. The following words are of Spanish derivation:


title: Sicilian language

text: Since the Italian Unification (the Risorgimento of 1860–1861), the Sicilian language has been significantly influenced by (Tuscan) Italian. During the Fascist period it became obligatory that Italian be taught and spoken in all schools, whereas up to that point, Sicilian had been used extensively in schools. This process has quickened since World War II due to improving educational standards and the impact of mass media, such that increasingly, even within the family home, Sicilian is not necessarily the language of choice. The Sicilian Regional Assembly voted to make the teaching of Sicilian a part of the school curriculum at primary school level, but as of 2007 only a fraction of schools teach Sicilian. There is also little in the way of mass media offered in Sicilian. The combination of these factors means that the Sicilian language continues to adopt Italian vocabulary and grammatical forms to such an extent that many Sicilians themselves cannot distinguish between correct and incorrect Sicilian language usage.


title: Sicilian language

text: Sicilian has a number of consonant sounds that set it apart from the other major Romance languages. The most unusual sounds include the retroflex consonants.


title: Sicilian language

text: Sicilian has five phonemic vowels: , , , , . The mid-vowels and do not occur in unstressed position in native words but may do so in modern borrowings from Italian, English, or other languages. Historically, Sicilian and each represent the confluence of three Latin vowels (or four in unstressed position), hence their high relative frequency compared to and in, say, Italian or Spanish.


title: Sicilian language

text: In unstressed position, and show reduction to and respectively. As in Italian, vowels are allophonically lengthened in stressed open syllables.


title: Sicilian language

text: In the vast majority of instances in which the originating word had an initial , Sicilian has dropped it completely. That has also happened when there was once an initial and, to a lesser extent, and : "important", "ignorant", "enemy", "interesting", "to illustrate", "image", "icon", "American".


title: Sicilian language

text: In Sicilian, gemination is distinctive for most consonant phonemes, but a few can be geminated only after a vowel: , , , , and . Rarely indicated in writing, spoken Sicilian also exhibits syntactic gemination (or ), which means that the first consonant of a word is lengthened when it is preceded by certain words ending by a vowel: .


title: Sicilian language

text: The letter at the start of a word can have two separate sounds depending on what precedes the word. For instance, in ("day"), it is pronounced , . However, after a nasal consonant or if it is triggered by syntactic gemination, it is pronounced as in ("one day") or ("three days") .