Rikunarita-ORG/Wikinium huggingface dataset:
# Literacy

**Literacy** means the ability to read and write. Being able to read and write is an important skill in modern societies. Usually, people learn how to read and write at school. People who can read and write are called *literate*; those who cannot are called *illiterate*.

According to UNESCO, **illiteracy** is not being able to write or read a simple sentence in any language. They estimated that, in 1998, about 16% of the world's population were illiterate.

World literacy rates by country
Illiteracy is highest amongst the states of the Arabian Peninsula, and in Africa, around the Sahara. In those countries about 30% of men, and 40-50% of women are illiterate, by the UN definition. One of the causes of illiteracy is that someone who can manage to live without being able to read and write often does not have any reason to want to learn to read and write. Cultural factors also play a part, such as having a culture in which the oral tradition (communicating by speaking) is more important than writing. A tribe that mostly herds livestock, for example, may have no need to read or write.

There are two different kinds of illiteracy:

* People with primary illiteracy have never learned how to read or write.
* People who have learned some reading and writing, but not well enough for their work are called functionally illiterate. Perhaps they cannot write well enough to fill out a form, or to understand instructions in a manual. In most industrial countries, the main problem is **functional illiteracy**.

In English the word literacy has traditionally meant to be well educated. It also meant to be familiar with literature (to know about books). In the late 19th century the word came to include the ability to read and write. It still kept its larger meaning. In modern usage, literacy also means being able to read print, visual, and sound texts. To continue learning, students must be literate in more than just reading and writing text.

## Related pages

* Writing
* Reading
* Literacy test
* Aliteracy
* Functional illiteracy
* Right to education
# Government of Japan

Government of Japan|  |
| Government overview |
| Formed | 1867 |
| Headquarters | Tokyo |

The Takaichi cabinet, the current government cabinet since 2025
The **Government of Japan** (**日本国政府** (*Nihonkoku seifu*)) is a constitutional monarchy, like the United Kingdom. The head of state is the Emperor of Japan, Emperor Naruhito, while most executive power rests with the Prime Minister of Japan, currently Sanae Takaichi, and her Cabinet.

The Diet of Japan is the legislative branch or Parliament, made up of two houses. The upper house, called the House of Councillors, has to have a national election every three years. The last election was in July 2022, when half of the seats for six year terms were voted on.

## Related pages

* Japan
* Empire of Japan
* Emperor

## Other websites

* Japanese Consulate-General in San Francisco- FAQ Archived 2013-05-13 at the Wayback Machine
* Asahi website on the Upper House election Archived 2013-07-12 at the Wayback Machine
# Pinyin

Text in pinyin in Shanghai.
**Pinyin** is a way to write letters showing the sound of a word in place of a Chinese character. Today, it almost always has the sense of **Hanyu Pinyin**, the way of writing Mandarin sounds which has been used by the People's Republic of China from the 1950s. Other place like the United States and Taiwan used other ways of spelling Chinese (such as Wade-Giles and Tongyong Pinyin) for a long time, but in the late 20th century, they started to use Hanyu Pinyin as well. It is the standard romanization system in China and in the United Nations and is the most common for Chinese.

Pinyin uses Roman letters in a special way for certain Chinese sounds. For example, the pinyin letter C is pronounced as /ts/ as in the English word "ca**ts**" or the Japanese word "**ts**unami" and does not sound at all like /k/ or /s/ by itself. Pinyin uses special marks to show the four Chinese tones, which are very important in speaking Mandarin correctly.

## Consonants

b p m f w

d t n l

g k ng h

j q x y

z c s

## Vowels

a e i o u ü

## Basic combinations of vowel and consonant

ai ei ao ou

an en ang eng ong

## Tones

There are five tones:

ā, á, ǎ, à, a

## Syllable-dividing mark (*geyin fuhao*)

*Geyin fuhao* is used after syllables that start with a, o, or e: pi'ao.

## Orthography

Pinyin should be divided text by words and write syllables connectedly. For example, "I am a foreigner" should be written as "Wo shi waiguoren" in pinyin.

## Pinyin reading matters

* Pinyin reading matters from Wikibooks
* Pinyin reading matters from Wikimedia

## Other websites

* New Edition Hanyu Pinyin Syllable Table
* Rules for Hanyu Pinyin
* Convert Chinese to Pinyin
* Little Pinyin App 1.0 online Archived 2009-07-06 at the Wayback Machine
# Yayoi period

The **Yayoi period** (弥生時代, *Yayoi jidai*) is a time in the history of Japan which is traditionally dated 300 BC to 300 AD.

## History

Early evidence of Yayoi culture is found on the island of Kyūshū. Over time, it spread to the island of Honshū.

Iron and bronze were first used in Japan at about the same time. Iron was used for tools and weapons. Bronze was used for ritual objects such as mirrors, daggers and spears.

The Yayoi tools included as axes and hoes for agriculture etc., but also weapons such as arrowheads and swords.

## Yayoi people

Modern distribution of haplogroup O.
The **Yayoi people** (弥生人 *Yayoi jin*) were ancient people that migrated to the Japanese archipelago from southeastern China and Korea during the Yayoi period (300 BCE–300 CE). Modern Japanese people are direct descedants of the Yayoi and have about 97% Yayoi DNA.

The Yayoi and the modern Japanese people are closely related to other East Asian (or Mongoloid) people, such as Chinese people or Koreans. They belonged to the haplogroup O and spoke the proto-Japonic languages. Most scientists and linguists suggest that they originated somewhere in southeastern China or Korea and migrated from there into Japan.

## Other websites

 Media related to Yayoi period at Wikimedia Commons

* Metropolitan Museum of Art, Yayoi Culture
* Japan-guide.com, Early Japan
# Morpheme

A **morpheme** is the smallest linguistic part of a word that can have a meaning. In other words, it is the smallest meaningful part of a word. Examples of morphemes are the parts "un-", "break", and "-able" in the word "unbreakable".

There are five types of morpheme:

1. *Free morpheme*: a morpheme that can be joined either with other morphemes (such as un**break**able) or on its own (such as **break**)
2. *Bound morpheme*: a morpheme that can be used only when joined to other morphemes (such as **un**breakable)
3. *Derivational morpheme*: a morpheme that can be derived (added) to another morpheme to create a new word (such as adding **-ness** to *happy* to form the new word *happiness*)
4. *Inflectional morpheme*: a morpheme that can change a word's tense, number etc. (such as adding **-s** to *dog* to form the plural *dogs*)
5. *Allomorphs*: different types of the same morpheme (for example, the morpheme *ed* can have the sound 'id' in the word *hunt**ed, the sound 't' in the word *fish**ed or the sound 'd' in the word *buzz**ed)
# Telephone

Cordless phone
Older telephone
A **telephone**, also known as a **phone**, is a communication tool. People use it to talk with people far away. Originally, it was an electric tool sending analogue speech through wires. Many telephones in the 21st century are electronic tools sending digital signals on wires or radio transmission. Using a telephone, two people who are in different places can talk to each other. Early telephones needed to be connected with wires which are called fixed or landline telephones. Modern mobile phones use radio waves.

## History

Alexander Graham Bell was the first person to patent the telephone, in 1876. Early telephones were wired directly to each other and could only talk to the phone that they were connected to. Later, telephone exchanges allowed connecting to other telephones. During the 20th century the machines that made the connections were automated.

## Types of telephones

There are many different types of telephones. A telephone that can be carried around is called a mobile phone or cell phone. These became popular in the 1980s. It has become common for people to carry mobile phones and in many places it is unusual to not have one. The majority are smartphones, which can be used as computers. Some mobile phones can make telephone calls using communications satellites instead of masts on the ground, which means people can make calls from anywhere in the world.

In most countries there were public payphones. To use one, people paid with coins, a credit card or a prepaid card.

Computers can use a machine called a modem or a Digital subscriber line router to talk to other computers over a telephone line. This allows a computer to connect to other computer networks including the Internet.

Most countries have a telephone network. The telephones in one place are connected to a telephone exchange. The exchanges are connected together in a world-wide network. In developing countries cell phones are used as a cheaper and faster way to connect the countryside to the network.

## Telephone number

Most telephones have their own number. Today, telephone numbers are about seven to ten digits long. In many countries, part of the telephone number is called the *area code*. Area codes are used to make sure the numbers are not the same in two different places. Areas have their own area code, and countries have their own country code.

## Usage

By the end of 2009, there were nearly 6 billion mobile and fixed-line telephone subscribers worldwide. This included 1.26 billion fixed-line subscribers and 4.6 billion mobile subscribers.