ejaasaari/simplewiki-2025-04-01 huggingface dataset:
American English, or US English, is the dialect of English that is spoken in the United States. It is different from other types of English like British English. Most types of American English came from local dialects in England. During the 18th and 19th centuries, pronunciation changed less in America than in England. Use. Many people today know about American English even if they live in a country that speaks another type of English. They hear and read American English through the media, such as movies, television, and the Internet, where the most common form of English is American English. Because people all over the world use English, many new words are used. English has been changing that way for hundreds of years. For example, the millions who speak Indian English frequently add American English words to go along with its British English base and many other words from the various Indian languages. Some people learn American English as it is spoken in the United States. For example, in telephone call centers in India and other places, people often learn American English to sound more like their customers who call from America. Those people often keep using American English in everyday life. Spelling. There are many words that sound the same in both American and British English but have different spellings. British English often has more traditional ways of spelling words than American English. Vocabulary. There are also some words in American English that are a bit different from British English.: Regional accents. General American English is the kind most spoken in mass media. It more vigorously pronounces the letter "r" than some other kinds do. Non-rhoticity ("R"-dropping) is frequent in certain places in which "r" is not pronounced after a vowel such as in the words "car" and "card," which sound like "cah" and "cahd" in places like the Boston area.  Here are some regional accents of American English:
Aquaculture is the farming of fish, shrimp, abalones, algae, and other seafood. Aquaculture supplies fish, such as catfish, salmon, and trout. It was developed a few thousand years ago in China. Aquaculture supplies over 20% of all the seafood harvested.  Fish farming has been practiced, in some parts of the world, for thousands of years. Goldfish originated about a thousand years ago in carp farms in China, and the Roman Empire farmed oysters and other seafood. Today, half of the seafood eaten in the U.S. is farmed. To help meet the growing global demand for seafood, aquaculture is growing fast. The environmental impact of fish farming varies widely, depending on the species being farmed, the methods used and where the farm is located. When good practices are used, it's possible to farm seafood in a way that has very little impact to the environment. Such operations limit habitat damage, disease, escapes of farmed fish and the use of wild fish as feed.
An abbreviation is a shorter way to write a word or phrase. People use abbreviations for words that they write a lot.  In English. The English language occasionally uses the apostrophe mark ' to show that a word is written in a shorter way, but some abbreviations do not use this mark.  Borrowed Latin phrases. More often, they use periods, especially the ones that come from the Latin language, which include i.e. [id est] ("that is"), e.g. [exempli gratia] ("for example") and et al. [et alia] ("and others"). Some new abbreviations have been created by scientists, by workers in companies and governments, and by people using the Internet. People often think words are abbreviations when in fact they are acronyms. Examples. Here are examples of common acronyms: The word "radar" is an acronym for "Radio Detection and Ranging". The name of the large computer company IBM comes from the words "International Business Machines". The name of the part of the United States government that sends rockets into outer space is NASA, from the words "National Aeronautics and Space Administration".  When people using the Internet think that something is very funny, they sometimes write "LOL" to mean "Laughing Out Loud". People sometimes write "ASAP" for "As Soon As Possible".
In many mythologies and religions, an angel is a good spirit. The word angel comes from the Greek word "angelos" which means "messenger". Angels appear frequently in the Old Testament, the New Testament, Qur'an and Aqdas. Different references to angels throughout the Bible suggest different kinds and ranks of angels, such as seraphs (Hebrew plural: seraphim) or cherubs (Hebrew plural: cherubim). This resulted in medieval theologians outlining a hierarchy of such divine messengers, including not only cherubs and seraphs, but also archangels, powers, principalities, dominions and thrones. The study of angels is called angelology. In the Bible. Angels are powerful spirits that obey God's commands. They sometimes appear to humans in a human form. They can deliver messages to people in person or in dreams. Angels that are named in the Bible are Michael (called a "chief prince"), Gabriel (known for telling Mary that she would be the mother of Jesus), and Raphael (in the Apocryphal Book of Tobit). The Ethiopian Book of Enoch also lists four Archangels which watch over the four parts of heaven; Michael, Raphael, Gabriel and Uriel. Lucifer is also known as an angel in the Bible. Appearances in Genesis. God, in the Book of Genesis sends an Angel with a sword made out of fire to keep Adam and Eve from going back to the Garden of Eden.  Appearances in Exodus. In the Book of Exodus, an Angel comes to a bush and makes a fire but the bush doesn't burn. When Moses sees this, he comes close to the Bush and he hears God speak to him. On the way to Egypt, Moses forgets to circumcise his son so an Angel tries to kill him but then Zipporah circumcises him and the Angel lets Moses live. Angels are also there when God gives the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. Appearances in Leviticus. In the Book of Leviticus, the Ark of the Covenant, has statues of two angels called Cherubim on top of it. Appearances in Numbers.
Ad hominem is a Latin word for a type of argument. It is a word often used in rhetoric. Rhetoric is the science of speaking well, and convincing other people of your ideas. Translated to English, "ad hominem" means "against the person". In other words, when someone makes an ad hominem, they are attacking the person they are arguing against, instead of what they are saying. The term comes from the Latin word "homo", which means human. "Hominem" is a gender neutral version of the word "homo". In ancient Rome it referred to all free men, or in other words, all free human beings. Ad hominem can be a way to use reputation, rumors and hearsay to change the minds of other people listening. When a social network has already excluded or exiled one person, or applied a negative label to them, this can work more often. It is most of the time considered to be a weak and poor argument. In courts and in diplomacy ad hominems are not appreciated. Ad hominems are not wrong every time. For example, when people think that someone can't be trusted, things that they have said previously can be doubted. What an ad hominem argument looks like. In logic, a proof is something that starts with premises, and goes through a few logical arguments, to reach a conclusion. Ad hominem example. In this example it can be seen that the (completely unrelated) fact that person A is uneducated and poor is used to prove that abortion should not be illegal.
Native Americans (also called Aboriginal Americans, American Indians, Amerindians, or Indigenous peoples of the Americas) are the indigenous peoples and their descendants, who were in the Americas before Europeans arrived. Name. The people are sometimes called Indians, but that may be confusing, because it is the same word used for people from India. When Christopher Columbus explored the area, he did not know about the Americas. He was in the Caribbean but thought he was in the East Indies and so he called the people Indians. Today, some think that it is racism to use Indian for a Native American. There are different Native American tribes, with many different languages. Some tribes were hunter-gatherers who moved from place to place. Others lived in one place and built cities and kingdoms. Many Native Americans died after the European settlers came to the Americas. One reason is that diseases came with the Europeans but were new to the Native Americans. There were also battles with the Europeans. Many native people were hurt, killed, or forced to leave their homes by settlers, who took their lands. Origins. The ancestors of Native Americans came to the Americas from Asia. Some of them may have come to the Americas 15,000 years ago, when Alaska was connected to Siberia by the Bering land bridge. The earliest people in the Americas came from Siberia when there was an ice bridge across the Bering Strait. The cold but mainly grassy plain, called Beringia, was a land bridge that connected Siberia with Canada. It is believed that a few thousand people arrived in Beringia from eastern Siberia during the Last Glacial Maximum and that they moved into the Americas sometime after 16,500 years before the present (BP). That would have occurred as the American glaciers blocking the way southward melted but before the land bridge was covered by the sea about 11,000 years BP. Before the European colonization of the Americas and Russian expansion to the Russian Far East, Beringia was inhabited by the Yupik peoples on both sides of the straits. The culture remains in the region today, with others. In 2012, the governments of Russia and the United States announced a plan to formally establish "a transboundary
An apple is the edible fruit of a number of trees, known for its juicy green or red fruit. The tree (Malus spp.) is grown worldwide. The fruit is low-cost, popular, and common all over the earth.  Applewood is a type of wood that comes from this tree.  The apple tree comes from southern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and northwestern part of China. Apples have been grown for thousands of years in Asia and Europe. They were brought to North America by European settlers. Apples have religious and mythological significance in many cultures. Apples are generally grown by grafting, although wild apples grow readily from seed. Apple trees are large if grown from seed, but small if grafted onto roots (rootstock). There are more than 10000 known variants of apples, with a range of desired characteristics. Different variants are bred for various tastes and uses: cooking, eating raw and cider production are the most common uses. In addition to that, when it comes to food toxicity, the seeds in apples can be fatal, but only if they've been crushed. Apples contain amygdalin, which can release cyanide when digested. Though the amount in apple seeds is generally low and requires significant ingestion to be harmful (killing or paralyzing you) but it is still important to address such issue.  Trees and fruit are attacked by fungi, bacteria and pests. In 2010, the fruit's genome was sequenced as part of research on disease control and selective breeding in apple production.  Worldwide production of apples in 2013 was 90.8 million tonnes. China grew 49% of the total. Botanical information. The apple tree is a small, leaf-shedding tree that grows up to tall. The apple tree has a broad crown with thick twigs. The leaves are alternately arranged simple ovals. They are 5 to 12 centimetres long and 3–6 centimetres (1.2–2.4 in) wide. It has a sharp top with a soft underside. Blossoms come out in spring at the same time that the leaves begin to bud. The flowers are
The Abrahamic religions, are a group of religious communities of faith that claim descent from the religion of the ancient Israelites and the worship of the God of Abraham. The Abrahamic religions are monotheistic. The term derives from patriarch Abraham, a major biblical figure from The Hebrew Bible. The major Abrahamic religions are Christianity, Islam, Judaism and the Bahá'í Faith.
Algebra (from Arabic: الجبر, transliterated "al-jabr", meaning "completion") is a part of mathematics. It uses variables to represent a value that is not yet known or can be replaced with any value. When an equals sign (=) is used, this is called an equation. A very simple equation using a variable is: formula_1. In this example, formula_2, or it could also be said that "formula_3 equals five". This is called "solving for" formula_3. Besides equations, there are inequalities ("less than" and "greater than"). A special type of equation is called the function. This is often used in making graphs because it always turns one input into one output. Algebra can be used to solve real problems because the rules of algebra work in real life and numbers can be used to represent the values of real things. Physics, engineering and computer programming are areas that use algebra all the time. It is also useful to know in surveying, construction and business, especially accounting. People who do algebra use the rules of numbers and mathematical operations used on numbers. The simplest are adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. More advanced operations involve exponents, starting with squares and square roots. Algebra was first used to solve equations and inequalities. Two examples are linear equations (the equation of a straight line, formula_5 or formula_6) and quadratic equations, which has variables that are squared (multiplied by itself, for example: formula_7, formula_8, or formula_9). History. Early forms of algebra were developed by the Babylonians and Greek geometers such as Hero of Alexandria. However the word "algebra" is a Latin form of the Arabic word "Al-Jabr" ("casting") and comes from a mathematics book "Al-Maqala fi Hisab-al Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah", ("Essay on the Computation of Casting and Equation") written in the 9th century by a Persian mathematician, Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, who was a Muslim born in Khwarizm in Uzbekistan. He flourished under Al-M
An atom is an extremely small piece of matter. All normal matter – everything that has mass – is made of atoms. This includes solids, liquids, and gases. The atom cannot be broken to parts by chemistry, so people once thought it was the smallest piece of matter that could exist. There are over 100 different kinds of atoms, called chemical elements. Each kind has the same basic structure, but a different number of parts.  Atoms are very small, but their exact size depends on the type. Atoms are from 0.1 to 0.5 nanometers across. One nanometer is about 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. This makes one atom impossible to see without special tools. Scientists learn how they work by doing experiments. Atoms are made of three kinds of subatomic particles. These are protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons have much more mass. These are in the middle of the atom, called the nucleus. Lightweight electrons move quickly around them. The electromagnetic force holds the nucleus and electrons together. Atoms with the same number of protons belong to the same chemical element. Examples of elements are carbon and gold. Atoms with the same number of protons, but different numbers of neutrons, are called isotopes. Usually an atom has the same number of electrons as protons. If an atom has more or less electrons than protons, it is called an ion, and has an electric charge. Atoms can join by chemical bonds. Many things are made of more than one kind of atom. These are chemical compounds or mixtures. A group of atoms connected by chemical bonds is called a molecule. For example, a water molecule is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. The forming or breaking of bonds is a chemical reaction. Atoms split if the forces inside are too weak to hold them together. This is what causes radioactivity. Atoms can also join to make larger atoms at very high temperatures, such as inside a star. These changes are studied in nuclear physics. Most atoms on Earth are not radioactive. They are rarely made, destroyed, or changed into another kind of atom. History
Astronomy is the scientific study of celestial bodies. Stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets and nebulae are studied, as are supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, and cosmic microwave background radiation. Astronomy includes the development, physics, chemistry, meteorology and movement of celestial bodies. The big questions are the structure and development of the universe. Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences. The patterns of stars in the night sky were called constellations by the Arabs. They used the positions of the stars to navigate, and to find when was the best time to plant crops. Astrophysics is an important part of astronomy. A related subject, cosmology, is concerned with studying the universe as a whole, and the way the universe changed over time. Astronomy is not the same as "astrology", a belief that the motion of the stars and the planets may affect human lives. There are two main types of astronomy, "observational" and "theoretical" astronomy. Observational astronomy uses telescopes and cameras to "observe" or look at stars, galaxies and other astronomical objects. Theoretical astronomy explains what we see. It predicts what might happen. Observations show whether the predictions work. The main work of astronomy is to explain puzzling features of the Universe. For many years the most important issue was the motions of planets. Many other topics are now studied. Day-time astronomy is possible. First, there's the Sun, but observing directly is dangerous. It is too bright, and can burn your eyes and can cause permanent blindness. To look at the Sun you need proper shields and equipment. Some other individual bright stars and planets can be seen during daylight hours through a telescope or a powerful pair of binoculars. History of astronomy. Ancient history. Early astronomers used only their eyes to look at the stars. They made maps of the constellations and stars for religious reasons and calendars to work out the time of year. Early civilisations such as the Maya people and the Ancient Egyptians built simple observatories and drew maps of the stars positions. They also began to think about the place of Earth in the universe. For a long time people thought Earth was the center of the universe
Architecture is the process of designing structures and buildings. It uses both art and engineering. Examples include houses, churches, hotels, office buildings, roads, tunnels and bridges.  Architecture is the profession of an architect. Usually, a person must study at an institution of higher education (university) to become an architect. There were architects long before there was higher education. They learnt by being an apprentice to an established architect.  Architecture can do small designs, such as for a garage, or large designs, such as for a whole new town. The capital cities of Brasília, and Canberra were designed. Architects often work with structural engineers to make structurally sound buildings. History. In the past, people built huts and wood houses to protect themselves from the weather. For safety, they were often close together. Great civilizations like the Ancient Egyptians built large temples and structures, like the Great Pyramids of Giza. The Ancient Greeks and Romans made what we now call "Classical Architecture". The Romans, working over 2000 years ago, copied the arch from the Etruscans, who copied it from the Mesopotamians.  Classical architecture was formal, and it always obeyed laws. It used symmetry, which really means balance, and it used proportion between shapes. The Golden Mean was a rule which said, (to put it simply) if you are making a room, or any other thing, it will work best if you always make the long side 1.6 times as long as the short side. There are many 'laws' in classical architecture, like how high the middle of an arched bridge needs to be (which depends on how wide the bridge needs to be). These laws were learned from thousands of years of experience and they are often used today. However, today more notice is taken of specific facts, such as what wind speeds occur once or twice in a century. Several bridges have blown down because that was not properly taken into consideration. In some parts of the world, like India, the architecture is famous for carving the stone on temples and palaces. Different architectural styles occur in China, Japan, Southeast Asia, Africa, Mexico, and Central and South America. Architects in
Anatomy is the study of the bodies of people and other animals. Anatomy is the study of the inside of the body and outside the body. Anatomy notes the position and structure of organs such as muscles, glands and bones. A person who studies anatomy is an anatomist.  The history of anatomy dates back to 1600 BC when Egyptians began studying human anatomy. They discovered the functions of many organs like the liver, spleen, kidneys, heart etc. and were the first to discover the structure and functions of the lymphatic system. For long periods the dissection of deceased people was forbidden, and correct ideas about human anatomy was a long time coming. Academic human anatomists are usually employed by universities, medical schools and teaching hospitals. They are often involved in teaching and research. Gross anatomy studies parts of the body that are big enough to see. Micro-anatomy studies smaller parts. Body systems. There are different organ systems, such as the cardiovascular system, also known as the circulatory system (the system that gets blood around the body), the muscular system (the system that contains muscles), the nervous system (the system that controls the nerves,and the brain) and the skeleton (the bones). Anatomy, physiology and biochemistry are similar basic medical sciences.
An asteroid is a minor planet that orbits within the inner solar system. It is a small object in the Solar System that travels around the Sun. It is like a planet but smaller. They range from very small (smaller than a car) to 600 miles (1000 km) across. A few asteroids have an asteroid moon. The name "asteroid" means "like a star" in the ancient Greek language. Asteroids may look like small stars in the sky, but they really do move around the Sun. Like planets, asteroids do not make their own light. Because of this, some people think "asteroids" is not a good name, and think that the name "planetoid" ("like a planet") would be a better name. Asteroids are the leftover rock and other material from the formation of the Solar System. These rocks were too small to come together to make a planet. Some are made of carbon or metal. Depending on what's on the surface, they are classified into various asteroid spectral types including Type M (metal), Type S (stone), and Type C (carbon). Most asteroids in our Solar System are in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Many are not in the main asteroid belt. The ones that come close to Earth are called Near-Earth asteroids. Some scientists think asteroids striking the Earth killed off all the dinosaurs and caused some of the other extinction events. Media told in 2025, about the chemical substances that were (found on, or) sampled from asteroid Bennu: "traces of brine" and "all five nucleobases that make up DNA and RNA: adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine, and uracil". The sample was taken in 2020, and the space capsule with sample, landed in the United States in 2023. History. Giuseppe Piazzi found the first asteroid, in 1801. He called it Ceres, and it is the biggest object in the asteroid belt. Others, like Juno, Pallas, and Vesta were found later. In the 1850s, so many had been found that they were numbered by a Minor planet designation starting with 1 Ceres. Today, astronomers using computerized telescopes find thousands of asteroids every month. Asteroid impact prediction is one of their purposes.