Many farms are very large and can cause damage. In some places farms are many and small, and can also cause damage. Farms provides most of the food for people. Some people farm to eat the food they produce (subsistence agriculture). Other farms, including large ones, sell their products to markets far away in urban areas (commercial or industrial farming). Most subsistence farms are in poorer countries, while industrial farms are in richer countries.
Geography
Geography (from Greek: , "geographia", literally "earth description") is the study of earth and its people. Its features are things like continents, seas, rivers and mountains. Its inhabitants are all the people and animals that live on it. Its phenomena are the things that happen like tides, winds, and earthquakes.
A person who is an expert in geography is a geographer. A geographer tries to understand the world and the things that are in it, how they started and how they have changed.
Geography is divided into two main parts called physical geography and human geography. Physical geography studies the natural environment and human geography studies the human environment. The human environmental studies would include things such as the population in a country, how a country's economy is doing, and more. There is also environmental geography.
Maps are a main tool of geography, so geographers spend much time making and studying them. Making maps is called cartography, and people who specialize in making maps are cartographers.
Physical geography (or physiography) focuses on geography as an Earth science. It aims to understand the physical problems and the issues of lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, pedosphere, and global flora and fauna patterns (biosphere).
Physical geography can be divided into many broad categories, including:
Human geography is the social science that covers the study of people and their communities, cultures, economies and their interaction with the environment. Geographers studying the human environment may look at:
The oldest known world map dates back to ancient Babylon from the 9th century BC. The best known Babylonian world map is the "Imago Mundi" of 600 BC. Star charts (maps of the sky) are of similar age.
During the Middle Ages, people in Europe made fewer maps. People in the Islamic world made more. Abū Zayd al-Balkhī created the "Balkhī school" of mapping in Baghdad.
Grammar
Grammar is the study of words, how they are used in sentences, and how they change in different situations. The Ancient Greeks used to call it "grammatikē tékhnē", the craft of letters. It can have any of these meanings:
When we speak, we use the native person's grammar, or as near as we can. When we write, we try to write with correct grammar. So, speaking and writing a language each have their own style.
All languages have their own grammar. Most European languages are rather similar.
English makes few changes to its word endings ('suffixes'). In the Italic or 'Romance' languages (such as French, Italian, and Spanish), word endings carry a lot of meaning. In English we have just a few: plurals and possessives ("John's") are the most common. In our verbs we have dropped most endings except one: I love, you love, but "she loves". That final 's' comes from the Anglo-Saxon, which had more suffixes. Verbs do have endings which show changes in tense: walked, walking.
Word order is the other big difference. Romance languages normally put adjectives after the nouns to which they refer. For example, in English, a person may say "I like fast cars", but in Spanish, it is "Me gustan los coches rápidos". The order of the words has changed: if just the words, without the grammar, are translated into English, it would mean 'to me they please the cars fast'. This is because Spanish and English have different rules about word order. In German, verbs often come near the end of sentences (as: "Die Katze hat die Nahrung gegessen"), whereas in English we usually put them between subject and object, as: "the cat has eaten the food".
Written grammar changes slowly but spoken grammar is more fluid. Sentences which English speakers find normal today, might have seemed strange 100 years ago. And they might not, because many of our favourite sayings come from the Authorized King James Version of the Bible, and from Shakespeare.
Different people speak with grammar that differs from that of other people. For example, people who use the dialects called General American English and BBC English might say, "I didn't do anything", while someone who speaks what is called African American Vernacular English or AAVE might say, "I didn't do nothing". London working class version: "I ain't done nuffink!" These are called "double negatives", and are found almost entirely in spoken English, and seldom written.
These differences are called dialects. The dialect a person uses is usually decided by where they live. Even though the dialects of English use different words or word order, they still have grammar rules. However, when writing in American English, grammar uses the rules of General American English. When people talk about using 'proper English', they usually mean using the grammar of general British English, as described in standard reference works. The models for "spoken" English in Britain are often called Received Pronunciation or BBC English.
Grammar studies nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, sentences, phrases, clauses, interjections.
Nouns are 'thing' words like 'table and 'chair'. They are objects, things you see in everyday life. Proper nouns are names of specific places, people, or other things like days of the week. The name 'James' is a proper noun, as is 'Wednesday' and 'London'. Nouns can also be abstract things, such as 'suffering' or 'happiness'.
Verbs are words that describe actions: "Ryan threw the ball". State: "I am worried". The basic verb form is called the infinitive. The infinitive for existence is "to be". A famous example is the speech of Hamlet: "To be or not to be, that is the question".
Variations of the infinitive create verb tenses.
Adjectives describe nouns. For example, the pretty in "pretty bicycle" says that the bicycle is pretty. In other words, the "pretty" is describing the bicycle. This can also happen with a place. For example, the tall in "that's a tall building" is describing the building.
Grammar studies syntax which is how the "parts of speech" fit together according to rules and create sentences. Sentences fit together and create paragraphs.
Great Lakes
The Great Lakes are five large lakes in east-central North America. They hold 21% of the world's surface fresh water.
The five lakes are: Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario.
Four of the Great Lakes are on the border between Canada and the United States of America. The other, Lake Michigan, is completely inside the United States.
All together, by volume, they are the largest group of fresh water lakes in the world. No one of the Lakes is larger than Lake Baikal (Russia) or Lake Tanganyika (East Africa).
The cities of Chicago, Illinois (9.8 million people, on Lake Michigan), Toronto, Ontario (5.5 million, on Lake Ontario); Detroit, Michigan (5.3 million, on the Detroit river); Montreal, Quebec (3.9 million, on the St. Lawrence River), Cleveland, Ohio (2.9 million, on Lake Erie), Buffalo, and Ottawa (1.2 million, Ontario, on the Ottawa River) are on the shores of the Great Lakes or their rivers.