title: Esperanto

text: In modern times, conscious attempts have been made to eliminate perceived sexism in the language, such as Riism. Many words with now have alternative spellings with and occasionally , so that may also be spelled ; see Esperanto phonology for further details of replacement. Reforms aimed at altering country names have also resulted in a number of different options, either due to disputes over suffixes or Eurocentrism in naming various countries.


title: Esperanto

text: There have been numerous objections to Esperanto over the years. For example, there has been criticism that Esperanto is not neutral enough, but also that it should convey a specific culture, which would make it less neutral; that Esperanto does not draw on a wide enough selection of the world's languages, but also that it should be more narrowly European.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperantists often argue for Esperanto as a culturally neutral means of communication. However, it is often accused of being Eurocentric. This is most often noted in regard to the vocabulary, but applies equally to the orthography, phonology, and semantics, all of which are thoroughly European. The vocabulary, for example, draws about three-quarters from Romance languages, and the remainder primarily from Greek, English and German. The syntax was inspired by Romance, and the phonology and semantics by Slavic and Germanic languages. The grammar is arguably more European than not. Supporters have argued that the agglutinative grammar and verb regularity of Esperanto has more in common with Asian languages than with European ones. A 2010 typological study concluded that "Esperanto is indeed somewhat European in character, but considerably less so than the European languages themselves."


title: Esperanto

text: Critics argue that a truly neutral language would draw its vocabulary from a much wider variety of languages, so as not to give an unfair advantage to speakers of any of them. Although a truly representative sampling of the world's thousands of languages would be unworkable, a derivation from, e.g. the Romance, Germanic, Semitic, Indo-Aryan, Bantu, and Sino-Tibetan language families would strike many as being fairer than Esperanto-like solutions, as these families cover about 60% of the world's population, compared to a fifth for Romance and Germanic.


title: Esperanto

text: Esperanto is frequently accused of being inherently sexist, because the default form of some nouns is masculine while a derived form is used for the feminine, which is said to retain traces of the male-dominated society of late 19th-century Europe of which Esperanto is a product. These nouns are primarily titles and kin terms, such as "sinjoro" "Mr, sir" vs. "sinjorino" "Ms, lady" and "patro" "father" vs. "patrino" "mother". In addition, nouns that denote persons and whose definitions are not explicitly male are often assumed to be male unless explicitly made female, such as "doktoro," a PhD doctor (male or unspecified) versus "doktorino," a female PhD. This is analogous to the situation with the English suffix "-ess," as in the words "baron/baroness", "waiter/waitress", etc. On the other hand, the pronoun "ĝi" ("it") may be used generically to mean he/she/they; the pronoun "li" ("he") is always masculine and "ŝi" ("she") is always female, despite some authors' arguments.


title: Esperanto

text: Speakers of languages without grammatical case or adjectival agreement frequently complain about these aspects of Esperanto. In addition, in the past some people found the Classical Greek forms of the plural (nouns in "-oj," adjectives in "-aj)" to be awkward, proposing instead that Italian "-i" be used for nouns, and that no plural be used for adjectives. These suggestions were adopted by the Ido reform. A reply to that criticism is that the presence of an accusative case allows much freedom in word order, e.g. for emphasis ("Johano batis Petron", John hit Peter; "Petron batis Johano", it is Peter whom John hit), that its absence in the "predicate of the object" avoids ambiguity ("Mi vidis la blankan domon", I saw the white house; "Mi vidis la domon blanka", the house seemed white to me) and that adjective agreement allows, among others, the use of hyperbaton in poetry (as in Latin, cf. Virgil's Eclogue 1:1 "Tityre, tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi…" where "patulæ" (spread out) is epithet to "fagi" (beech) and their agreement in the genitive feminine binds them notwithstanding their distance in the verse).


title: Esperanto

text: The Esperanto alphabet uses two diacritics: the circumflex and the breve. The alphabet was designed with a French typewriter in mind, and although modern computers support Unicode, entering the letters with diacritic marks can be more or less problematic with certain operating systems or hardware. One of the first reform proposals (for Esperanto 1894) sought to do away with these marks and the language Ido went back to the basic Latin alphabet.


title: Esperanto

text: One common criticism is that Esperanto has failed to live up to the hopes of its creator, who dreamed of it becoming a universal second language. Because people were reluctant to learn a new language which hardly anyone spoke, Zamenhof asked people to sign a promise to start learning Esperanto once ten million people made the same promise. He "was disappointed to receive only a thousand responses."


title: Esperanto

text: However, Zamenhof had the goal to "enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally accepted or not", as he wrote in 1887. The language is currently spoken by people living in more than 100 countries; there are about 2,000 native Esperanto speakers and probably up to 100,000 people who use the language regularly.


title: Esperanto

text: In this regard, Zamenhof was well aware that it might take much time for Esperanto to achieve his desired goals. In his speech at the 1907 World Esperanto Congress in Cambridge he said, "we hope that earlier or later, maybe after many centuries, on a neutral language foundation, understanding one another, the nations will build ... a big family circle."


title: Esperanto

text: The poet Wisława Szymborska expressed doubt that Esperanto could "produce works of lasting value," saying it is "an artificial language without variety or dialects" and that "no one thinks in Esperanto." Esperantists have replied that "lasting value" is a statement of opinion, that Esperanto grew "naturally" by the actions of its speakers on Zamenhof's intentionally elementary "Fundamento", and that the last sentence ("No one thinks in Esperanto") is false-to-fact.


title: Esperanto

text: J. R. R. Tolkien wrote in support of the language in a 1932 "British Esperantist" article, but criticised those who sought to adapt or "tinker" with the language, which, in his opinion, harmed unanimity and the goal of achieving wide acceptance.


title: Esperanto

text: There are some geographical and astronomical features named after Esperanto, or after its creator L. L. Zamenhof. These include Esperanto Island in Antarctica, and the asteroids 1421 Esperanto and 1462 Zamenhof discovered by Finnish astronomer and Esperantist Yrjö Väisälä.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Marfan syndrome (MFS) is a multi-systemic genetic disorder that affects the connective tissue. Those with the condition tend to be tall and thin, with long arms, legs, fingers, and toes. They also typically have exceptionally flexible joints and abnormally curved spines. The most serious complications involve the heart and aorta, with an increased risk of mitral valve prolapse and aortic aneurysm. The lungs, eyes, bones, and the covering of the spinal cord are also commonly affected. The severity of the symptoms is variable.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: MFS is caused by a mutation in "FBN1", one of the genes that makes fibrillin, which results in abnormal connective tissue. It is an autosomal dominant disorder. In about 75% of cases, it is inherited from a parent with the condition, while in about 25% it is a new mutation. Diagnosis is often based on the Ghent criteria.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: There is no known cure for MFS. Many of those with the disorder have a normal life expectancy with proper treatment. Management often includes the use of beta blockers such as propranolol or atenolol or, if they are not tolerated, calcium channel blockers or ACE inhibitors. Surgery may be required to repair the aorta or replace a heart valve. Avoiding strenuous exercise is recommended for those with the condition.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: About 1 in 5,000 to 1 in 10,000 people have MFS. Rates of the condition are similar in different regions of the world. It is named after French pediatrician Antoine Marfan, who first described it in 1896.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: More than 30 signs and symptoms are variably associated with Marfan syndrome. The most prominent of these affect the skeletal, cardiovascular, and ocular systems, but all fibrous connective tissue throughout the body can be affected.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Most of the readily visible signs are associated with the skeletal system. Many individuals with Marfan syndrome grow to above-average height, and some have disproportionately long, slender limbs with thin, weak wrists and long fingers and toes.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: The Steinberg sign, also known as the thumb sign, is one of the clinical examination tests for Marfan disease in the hands. It is a clinical test in which the tip of the thumb extends beyond the palm when the thumb is clasped in the clenched hand.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Besides affecting height and limb proportions, people with Marfan syndrome may have abnormal lateral curvature of the spine scoliosis, thoracic lordosis, abnormal indentation ("pectus excavatum") or protrusion ("pectus carinatum") of the sternum, abnormal joint flexibility, a high-arched palate with crowded teeth and an overbite, flat feet, hammer toes, stooped shoulders, and unexplained stretch marks on the skin. It can also cause pain in the joints, bones, and muscles. Some people with Marfan have speech disorders resulting from symptomatic high palates and small jaws. Early osteoarthritis may occur. Other signs include limited range of motion in the hips due to the femoral head protruding into abnormally deep hip sockets.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: In Marfan syndrome, the health of the eye can be affected in many ways, but the principal change is partial lens dislocation, where the lens is shifted out of its normal position. This occurs because of weakness in the ciliary zonules, the connective tissue strands which suspend the lens within the eye. The mutations responsible for Marfan syndrome weaken the zonules and cause them to stretch. The inferior zonules are most frequently stretched resulting in the lens shifting upwards and outwards, but it can shift in other directions as well. Nearsightedness (myopia), and blurred vision are common due to connective tissue defects in the eye. Farsightedness can also result particularly if the lens is highly subluxated. Subluxation (partial dislocation) of the lens can be detected clinically in about 60% of people with Marfan syndrome by the use of a slit-lamp biomicroscope. If the lens subluxation is subtle, then imaging with high-resolution ultrasound biomicroscopy might be used.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Other signs and symptoms affecting the eye include increased length along an axis of the globe, myopia, corneal flatness, strabismus, exotropia, and esotropia. Those with MFS are also at a high risk for early glaucoma and early cataracts.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: The most serious signs and symptoms associated with Marfan syndrome involve the cardiovascular system: undue fatigue, shortness of breath, heart palpitations, racing heartbeats, or chest pain radiating to the back, shoulder, or arm. Cold arms, hands, and feet can also be linked to MFS because of inadequate circulation. A heart murmur, abnormal reading on an ECG, or symptoms of angina can indicate further investigation. The signs of regurgitation from prolapse of the mitral or aortic valves (which control the flow of blood through the heart) result from cystic medial degeneration of the valves, which is commonly associated with MFS (see mitral valve prolapse, aortic regurgitation). However, the major sign that would lead a doctor to consider an underlying condition is a dilated aorta or an aortic aneurysm. Sometimes, no heart problems are apparent until the weakening of the connective tissue (cystic medial degeneration) in the ascending aorta causes an aortic aneurysm or aortic dissection, a surgical emergency. An aortic dissection is most often fatal and presents with pain radiating down the back, giving a tearing sensation.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Because underlying connective tissue abnormalities cause MFS, the incidence of dehiscence of prosthetic mitral valve is increased. Care should be taken to attempt repair of damaged heart valves rather than replacement.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Individuals with Marfan Syndrome may be affected by various lung-related problems. One study found that only 37% of the patient sample studied (mean age 32±14 years; M 45%) had normal lung function. Spontaneous pneumothorax is common. In spontaneous unilateral pneumothorax, air escapes from a lung and occupies the pleural space between the chest wall and a lung. The lung becomes partially compressed or collapsed. This can cause pain, shortness of breath, cyanosis, and, if not treated, death. Other possible pulmonary manifestations of MFS include sleep apnea and idiopathic obstructive lung disease. Pathologic changes in the lungs have been described such as cystic changes, emphysema, pneumonia, bronchiectasis, bullae, apical fibrosis and congenital malformations such as middle lobe hypoplasia.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Dural ectasia, the weakening of the connective tissue of the dural sac encasing the spinal cord, can result in a loss of quality of life. It can be present for a long time without producing any noticeable symptoms. Symptoms that can occur are lower back pain, leg pain, abdominal pain, other neurological symptoms in the lower extremities, or headachessymptoms which usually diminish when lying flat. On X-ray, however, dural ectasia is not often visible in the early stages. A worsening of symptoms might warrant an MRI of the lower spine. Dural ectasia that has progressed to this stage would appear in an MRI as a dilated pouch wearing away at the lumbar vertebrae. Other spinal issues associated with MFS include degenerative disc disease, spinal cysts, and dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Each parent with the condition has a 50% risk of passing the genetic defect on to any child due to its autosomal dominant nature. Most individuals with MFS have another affected family member. About 75% of cases are inherited. On the other hand, about 15–30% of all cases are due to "de novo" genetic mutations; such spontaneous mutations occur in about one in 20,000 births. Marfan syndrome is also an example of dominant negative mutation and haploinsufficiency. It is associated with variable expressivity; complete penetrance has been definitively documented.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Marfan syndrome is caused by mutations in the "FBN1" gene on chromosome 15, which encodes fibrillin 1, a glycoprotein component of the extracellular matrix. Fibrillin-1 is essential for the proper formation of the extracellular matrix, including the biogenesis and maintenance of elastic fibers. The extracellular matrix is critical for both the structural integrity of connective tissue, but also serves as a reservoir for growth factors. Elastic fibers are found throughout the body, but are particularly abundant in the aorta, ligaments and the ciliary zonules of the eye; consequently, these areas are among the worst affected. It can also be caused by a range of intravenous crystal treatments in those susceptible to the disorder.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: A transgenic mouse has been created carrying a single copy of a mutant fibrillin-1, a mutation similar to that found in the human gene known to cause MFS. This mouse strain recapitulates many of the features of the human disease and promises to provide insights into the pathogenesis of the disease. Reducing the level of normal fibrillin 1 causes a Marfan-related disease in mice.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) plays an important role in MFS. Fibrillin-1 directly binds a latent form of TGF-β, keeping it sequestered and unable to exert its biological activity. The simplest model suggests reduced levels of fibrillin-1 allow TGF-β levels to rise due to inadequate sequestration. Although how elevated TGF-β levels are responsible for the specific pathology seen with the disease is not proven, an inflammatory reaction releasing proteases that slowly degrade the elastic fibers and other components of the extracellular matrix is known to occur. The importance of the TGF-β pathway was confirmed with the discovery of the similar Loeys–Dietz syndrome involving the "TGFβR2" gene on chromosome 3, a receptor protein of TGF-β. Marfan syndrome has often been confused with Loeys–Dietz syndrome, because of the considerable clinical overlap between the two pathologies.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Marfanoid–progeroid–lipodystrophy syndrome (MPL), also referred to as Marfan lipodystrophy syndrome (MFLS), is a variant of MFS in which Marfan symptoms are accompanied by features usually associated with neonatal progeroid syndrome (also referred to as Wiedemann–Rautenstrauch syndrome) in which the levels of white adipose tissue are reduced. Since 2010, evidence has been accumulating that MPL is caused by mutations near the 3'-terminus of the "FBN1" gene. It has been shown that these people are also deficient in asprosin, a gluco-regulatory protein hormone which is the C-terminal cleavage product of profibrillin. The levels of asprosin seen in these people were lower than expected for a heterozygous genotype, consistent with a dominant negative effect.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Diagnostic criteria of MFS were agreed upon internationally in 1996. However, Marfan syndrome is often difficult to diagnose in children, as they typically do not show symptoms until reaching pubescence. A diagnosis is based on family history and a combination of major and minor indicators of the disorder, rare in the general population, that occur in one individualfor example: four skeletal signs with one or more signs in another body system such as ocular and cardiovascular in one individual. The following conditions may result from MFS, but may also occur in people without any known underlying disorder.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: In 2010, the Ghent nosology was revised, and new diagnostic criteria superseded the previous agreement made in 1996. The seven new criteria can lead to a diagnosis:


title: Marfan syndrome

text: The thumb sign (Steinberg's sign) is elicited by asking the person to flex the thumb as far as possible and then close the fingers over it. A positive thumb sign is where the entire distal phalanx is visible beyond the ulnar border of the hand, caused by a combination of hypermobility of the thumb as well as a thumb which is longer than usual.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: The wrist sign (Walker-Murdoch sign) is elicited by asking the person to curl the thumb and fingers of one hand around the other wrist. A positive wrist sign is where the little finger and the thumb overlap, caused by a combination of thin wrists and long fingers.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Many other disorders can produce the same type of body characteristics as Marfan syndrome. Genetic testing and evaluating other signs and symptoms can help to differentiate these. The following are some of the disorders that can manifest as "marfanoid":


title: Marfan syndrome

text: There is no cure for Marfan syndrome, but life expectancy has increased significantly over the last few decades and is now similar to that of the average person.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Regular checkups are recommended to monitor the health of the heart valves and the aorta. Marfan syndrome is treated by addressing each issue as it arises and, in particular, preventive medication even for young children to slow progression of aortic dilation. The goal of this treatment strategy is to slow the progression of aortic dilation and prevent any damage to heart valves by eliminating heart arrythmias, minimizing the heart rate, and lowering the person's blood pressure.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: The American Heart Association made the following recommendations for people with Marfan syndrome with no or mild aortic dilation:


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Management often includes the use of beta blockers such as propranolol or if not tolerated calcium channel blockers or ACE inhibitors. Beta blockers are used to reduce the stress exerted on the aorta and to decrease aortic dilation.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: If the dilation of the aorta progresses to a significant-diameter aneurysm, causes a dissection or a rupture, or leads to failure of the aortic or other valve, then surgery (possibly a composite aortic valve graft or valve-sparing aortic root replacement) becomes necessary. Although aortic graft surgery (or any vascular surgery) is a serious undertaking it is generally successful if undertaken on an elective basis. Surgery in the setting of acute aortic dissection or rupture is considerably more problematic. Elective aortic valve/graft surgery is usually considered when aortic root diameter reaches , but each case needs to be specifically evaluated by a qualified cardiologist. New valve-sparing surgical techniques are becoming more common. As people with Marfan syndrome live longer, other vascular repairs are becoming more common, e.g., repairs of descending thoracic aortic aneurysms and aneurysms of vessels other than the aorta.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: The skeletal and ocular manifestations of Marfan syndrome can also be serious, although not life-threatening. These symptoms are usually treated in an appropriate manner for the condition, such as with pain medications or muscle relaxants. Because Marfan syndrome may cause asymptomatic spinal abnormalities, any spinal surgery contemplated on a person Marfan should only follow detailed imaging and careful surgical planning, regardless of the indication for surgery. The ocular complications of MFS can often be treated with surgery. Ectopia lentis can be treated, as artificial lenses can be surgically implanted. In addition, surgery can address glaucoma and cataracts.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Treatment of a spontaneous pneumothorax is dependent on the volume of air in the pleural space and the natural progression of the individual's condition. A small pneumothorax might resolve without active treatment in one to two weeks. Recurrent pneumothoraces might require chest surgery. Moderately sized pneumothoraces might need chest drain management for several days in a hospital. Large pneumothoraces are likely to be medical emergencies requiring emergency decompression.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: As an alternative approach, custom-built supports for the aortic root are also being used. As of 2020 this procedure has been used in over 300 people with the first case occurring in 2004.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: During pregnancy, even in the absence of preconception cardiovascular abnormality, women with Marfan syndrome are at significant risk of aortic dissection, which is often fatal even when rapidly treated. Women with Marfan syndrome, then, should receive a thorough assessment prior to conception, and echocardiography should be performed every six to 10 weeks during pregnancy, to assess the aortic root diameter. For most women, safe vaginal delivery is possible.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Prenatal testing can be performed in females with Marfan syndrome to determine if the condition has been inherited in their child. At 10 to 12 weeks of pregnancy, examining a piece of placental tissue through a test called chorionic villus sampling can be performed to make a diagnosis. Another prenatal test can be performed called amniocentesis at 16 to 18 weeks of pregnancy.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Marfan syndrome is expressed dominantly. This means a child with one parent a bearer of the gene has a 50% probability of getting the syndrome. In 1996, the first preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) therapy for Marfan was conducted; in essence PGT means conducting a genetic test on early-stage IVF embryo cells and discarding those embryos affected by the Marfan mutation.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Prior to modern cardiovascular surgical techniques and medications such as losartan, and metoprolol, the prognosis of those with Marfan syndrome was not good: a range of untreatable cardiovascular issues was common. Lifespan was reduced by at least a third, and many died in their teens and twenties due to cardiovascular problems. Today, cardiovascular symptoms of Marfan syndrome are still the most significant issues in diagnosis and management of the disease, but adequate prophylactic monitoring and prophylactic therapy offers something approaching a normal lifespan, and more manifestations of the disease are being discovered as more patients live longer. Women with Marfan syndrome live longer than men.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Marfan syndrome affects males and females equally, and the mutation shows no ethnic or geographical bias. Estimates indicate about 1 in 5,000 to 10,000 individuals have Marfan syndrome.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: Marfan syndrome is named after Antoine Marfan, the French pediatrician who first described the condition in 1896 after noticing striking features in a five-year-old girl. The gene linked to the disease was first identified by Francesco Ramirez at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City in 1991.


title: Marfan syndrome

text: In addition the following historical figures and celebrities often appear on lists of people with Marfan syndrome, but from case to case the evidence is speculative, questionable, or even refuted.


title: Korean language

text: Korean (South Korean: , "hangugeo"; North Korean: , "chosŏnmal") is the native language for about 80 million people, mostly of Korean descent. It is the official and national language of both North Korea and South Korea (geographically Korea), but over the past years of political division, the two Koreas have developed some noticeable vocabulary differences. Beyond Korea, the language is recognised as a minority language in parts of China, namely Jilin Province, and specifically Yanbian Prefecture and Changbai County. It is also spoken by Sakhalin Koreans in parts of Sakhalin, the Russian island just north of Japan, and by the in parts of Central Asia. The language has a few extinct relatives which—along with the Jeju language (Jejuan) of Jeju Island and Korean itself—form the compact Koreanic language family. Even so, Jejuan and Korean are not mutually intelligible with each other. The linguistic homeland of Korean is suggested to be somewhere in contemporary Northeast China. The hierarchy of the society from which the language originates deeply influences the language, leading to a system of speech levels and honorifics indicative of the formality of any given situation.


title: Korean language

text: Modern Korean is written in the Korean script ( in South Korea, in North Korea), a system developed during the 15th century for that purpose, although it did not become the primary script until the 20th century. The script uses 24 basic letters ("jamo") and 27 complex letters formed from the basic ones. When first recorded in historical texts, Korean was only a spoken language; all written records were maintained in Classical Chinese, which, even when spoken, is not intelligible to someone who speaks only Korean. Later, Chinese characters adapted to the Korean language, "Hanja" (), were used to write the language for most of Korea's history and are still used to a limited extent in South Korea, most prominently in the humanities and the study of historical texts.


title: Korean language

text: Since the turn of the 21st century, aspects of Korean culture have spread to other countries through globalization and cultural exports. As such, interest in Korean language acquisition (as a foreign language) is also generated by longstanding alliances, military involvement, and diplomacy, such as between South Korea–United States, China–North Korea and North Korea–Russia since the end of World War II and the Korean War. Along with other languages such as Chinese and Arabic, Korean is ranked at the top difficulty level for English speakers by the U.S. Department of Defense.


title: Korean language

text: Modern Korean descends from Middle Korean, which in turn descends from Old Korean, which descends from the Proto-Koreanic language which is generally suggested to have its linguistic homeland. Whitman (2012) suggests that the proto-Koreans, already present in northern Korea, expanded into the southern part of the Korean Peninsula at around 300 BC and coexisted with the descendants of the Japonic Mumun cultivators (or assimilated them). Both had influence on each other and a later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families.


title: Korean language

text: Since the Korean War, through 70 years of separation, North–South differences have developed in standard Korean, including variations in pronunciation and vocabulary chosen, but these minor differences can be found in any of the Korean dialects, which are still largely mutually intelligible.


title: Korean language

text: Chinese characters arrived in Korea (see Sino-Xenic pronunciations for further information) together with Buddhism during the Proto-Three Kingdoms era in the 1st century BC. They were adapted for Korean and became known as Hanja, and remained as the main script for writing Korean for over a millennium alongside various phonetic scripts that were later invented such as Idu, Gugyeol and Hyangchal. Mainly privileged elites were educated to read and write in Hanja. However, most of the population was illiterate.


title: Korean language

text: In the 15th century, King Sejong the Great personally developed an alphabetic featural writing system known today as Hangul. He felt that Hanja was inadequate to write Korean and that caused its very restricted use; Hangul was designed to either aid in reading Hanja or to replace Hanja entirely. Introduced in the document , it was called (colloquial script) and quickly spread nationwide to increase literacy in Korea. Hangul was widely used by all the Korean classes but was often treated as ("script for women") and disregarded by privileged elites, and Hanja was regarded as ("true text"). Consequently, official documents were always written in Hanja during the Joseon era. Since few people could understand Hanja, Korean kings sometimes released public notices entirely written in Hangul as early as the 16th century for all Korean classes, including uneducated peasants and slaves. By the 17th century, the elite class of had exchanged Hangul letthera with slaves, which suggests aa high literacy rate of Hangul during the Joseon era.


title: Korean language

text: Today, Hanja is largely unused in everyday life because of its inconvenience, but it is still important for historical and linguistic studies. Neither South Korea nor North Korea opposes the learning of Hanja, but they are not officially used in North Korea anymore, and their usage in South Korea is mainly reserved for specific circumstances like newspapers, scholarly papers, and disambiguation.


title: Korean language

text: The Korean names for the language are based on the names for Korea used in both South Korea and North Korea. The English word "Korean" is derived from Goryeo, which is thought to be the first Korean dynasty known to Western nations. Korean people in the former USSR refer to themselves as and/or (literally, "Koryo/Goryeo person(s)"), and call the language . Some older English sources also use the spelling "Corea" to refer to the nation, and its inflected form for the language, culture and people, "Korea" becoming more popular in the late 1800s.


title: Korean language

text: In South Korea, the Korean language is referred to by many names including ("Korean language"), ("Korean speech") and ("our language"); "" is taken from the name of the Korean Empire (). The "" () in and is derived from Samhan, in reference to the Three Kingdoms of Korea (not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula), while "" and "" mean "language" and "speech", respectively. Korean is also simply referred to as , literally "national language". This name is based on the same Han characters ( "nation" + "language") that are also used in Taiwan and Japan to refer to their respective national languages.


title: Korean language

text: In North Korea and China, the language is most often called , or more formally, . This is taken from the North Korean name for Korea (Joseon), a name retained from the Joseon dynasty until the proclamation of the Korean Empire, which in turn was annexed by the Empire of Japan.


title: Korean language

text: In mainland China, following the establishment of diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992, the term or the short form "Cháoyǔ" has normally been used to refer to the standard language of North Korea and Yanbian, whereas "Hánguóyǔ" or the short form "Hányǔ" is used to refer to the standard language of South Korea.


title: Korean language

text: Korean is a member of the Koreanic family along with the Jeju language. Some linguists have included it in the Altaic family, but the core Altaic proposal itself has lost most of its prior support. The Khitan language has several vocabulary items similar to Korean that are not found in other Mongolian or Tungusic languages, suggesting a Korean influence on Khitan.


title: Korean language

text: The hypothesis that Korean could be related to Japanese has had some supporters due to some overlap in vocabulary and similar grammatical features that have been elaborated upon by such researchers as Samuel E. Martin and Roy Andrew Miller. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (1991) found about 25% of potential cognates in the Japanese–Korean 100-word Swadesh list.


title: Korean language

text: Some linguists concerned with the issue between Japanese and Korean, including Alexander Vovin, have argued that the indicated similarities are not due to any genetic relationship, but rather to a "sprachbund" effect and heavy borrowing, especially from Ancient Korean into Western Old Japanese. A good example might be Middle Korean "sàm" and Japanese "asá", meaning "hemp". This word seems to be a cognate, but although it is well attested in Western Old Japanese and Northern Ryukyuan languages, in Eastern Old Japanese it only occurs in compounds, and it is only present in three dialects of the Southern Ryukyuan language group. Also, the doublet "wo" meaning "hemp" is attested in Western Old Japanese and Southern Ryukyuan languages. It is thus plausible to assume a borrowed term. (See Classification of the Japonic languages or Comparison of Japanese and Korean for further details on a possible relationship.)


title: Korean language

text: Hudson & Robbeets (2020) suggested that there are traces of a pre-Nivkh substratum in Korean. According to the hypothesis, ancestral varieties of Nivkh (also known as "Amuric") were once distributed on the Korean peninsula before the arrival of Koreanic speakers.


title: Korean language

text: Korean syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), consisting of an optional onset consonant, glide and final coda surrounding a core vowel.


title: Korean language

text: The IPA symbol (a subscript double straight quotation mark, shown here with a placeholder circle) is used to denote the Tensed consonants . Its official use in the Extensions to the IPA is for 'strong' articulation, but is used in the literature for faucalized voice. The Korean consonants also have elements of stiff voice, but it is not yet known how typical this is of faucalized consonants. They are produced with a partially constricted glottis and additional subglottal pressure in addition to tense vocal tract walls, laryngeal lowering, or other expansion of the larynx.


title: Korean language

text: Traditionally, was disallowed at the beginning of a word. It disappeared before , and otherwise became . However, the inflow of western loanwords changed the trend, and now word-initial (mostly from English loanwords) are pronounced as a free variation of either or . The traditional prohibition of word-initial became a morphological rule called "initial law" () in South Korea, which pertains to Sino-Korean vocabulary. Such words retain their word-initial in North Korea.


title: Korean language

text: All obstruents (plosives, affricates, fricatives) at the end of a word are pronounced with no audible release, .


title: Korean language

text: Hangul spelling does not reflect these assimilatory pronunciation rules, but rather maintains the underlying, partly historical morphology. Given this, it is sometimes hard to tell which actual phonemes are present in a certain word.


title: Korean language

text: One difference between the pronunciation standards of North and South Korea is the treatment of initial , and initial . For example,


title: Korean language

text: Grammatical morphemes may change shape depending on the preceding sounds. Examples include "-eun/-neun" () and "-i/-ga" ().


title: Korean language

text: Sometimes sounds may be inserted instead. Examples include "-eul/-reul" (), "-euro/-ro" (), "-eseo/-seo" (), "-ideunji/-deunji" () and "-iya/-ya" ().


title: Korean language

text: Korean is an agglutinative language. The Korean language is traditionally considered to have nine parts of speech. Modifiers generally precede the modified words, and in the case of verb modifiers, can be serially appended. The sentence structure or basic form of a Korean sentence is subject–object–verb (SOV), but the "verb" is the only required and immovable element and word order is highly flexible, as in many other agglutinative languages.


title: Korean language

text: The relationship between a speaker/writer and their subject and audience is paramount in Korean grammar. The relationship between the speaker/writer and subject referent is reflected in "honorifics", whereas that between speaker/writer and audience is reflected in "speech level".


title: Korean language

text: When talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer usually uses special nouns or verb endings to indicate the subject's superiority. Generally, someone is superior in status if they are an older relative, a stranger of roughly equal or greater age, or an employer, teacher, customer, or the like. Someone is equal or inferior in status if they are a younger stranger, student, employee, or the like. Nowadays, there are special endings which can be used on declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences, and both honorific or normal sentences.


title: Korean language

text: Honorifics in traditional Korea were strictly hierarchical. The caste and estate systems possessed patterns and usages much more complex and stratified than those used today. The intricate structure of the Korean honorific system flourished in traditional culture and society. Honorifics in contemporary Korea are now used for people who are psychologically distant. Honorifics are also used for people who are superior in status. For example, older people, teachers, and employers.


title: Korean language

text: There are seven verb paradigms or "speech levels" in Korean, and each level has its own unique set of verb endings which are used to indicate the level of formality of a situation. Unlike honorifics—which are used to show respect towards the referent (the person spoken of)—"speech levels" are used to show respect towards a speaker's or writer's audience (the person spoken to). The names of the seven levels are derived from the non-honorific imperative form of the verb ("hada", "do") in each level, plus the suffix ("che", Hanja: ), which means "style".


title: Korean language

text: The three levels with high politeness (very formally polite, formally polite, casually polite) are generally grouped together as "jondaenmal" (), whereas the two levels with low politeness (formally impolite, casually impolite) are "banmal" () in Korean. The remaining two levels (neutral formality with neutral politeness, high formality with neutral politeness) are neither polite nor impolite.


title: Korean language

text: Nowadays, younger-generation speakers no longer feel obligated to lower their usual regard toward the referent. It is common to see younger people talk to their older relatives with banmal (). This is not out of disrespect, but instead it shows the intimacy and the closeness of the relationship between the two speakers. Transformations in social structures and attitudes in today's rapidly changing society have brought about change in the way people speak.


title: Korean language

text: In general, Korean lacks grammatical gender. As one of the few exceptions, the third-person singular pronoun has two different forms: 그 "geu" (male) and 그녀 "geunyeo" (female). Before 그녀 was invented in need of translating 'she' into Korean, 그 was the only one third-person singular pronoun, and had no grammatical gender. Its origin causes 그녀 never to be used in spoken Korean but appearing only in writing.


title: Korean language

text: To have a more complete understanding of intricacies of gender in Korean, three models of language and gender that have been proposed: the deficit model, the dominance model, and the cultural difference model. In the deficit model, male speech is seen as the default, and any form of speech that diverges from that norm (female speech) is seen as lesser than. The dominance model sees women as lacking in power due to living within a patriarchal society. The cultural difference model proposes that the difference in upbringing between men and women can explain the differences in their speech patterns. It is important to look at the models to better understand the misogynistic conditions that shaped the ways that men and women use the language. Korean's lack of grammatical gender makes it different from most European languages. Rather, gendered differences in Korean can be observed through formality, intonation, word choice, etc.


title: Korean language

text: However, one can still find stronger contrasts between genders within Korean speech. Some examples of this can be seen in: (1) softer tone used by women in speech; (2) a married woman introducing herself as someone's mother or wife, not with her own name; (3) the presence of gender differences in titles and occupational terms (for example, a "sajang" is a company president, and "yŏsajang" is a female company president); (4) females sometimes using more tag questions and rising tones in statements, also seen in speech from children.


title: Korean language

text: Between two people of asymmetric status in a Korean society, people tend to emphasize differences in status for the sake of solidarity. Koreans prefer to use kinship terms, rather than any other terms of reference. In traditional Korean society, women have long been in disadvantaged positions. Korean social structure traditionally was a patriarchically dominated family system that emphasized the maintenance of family lines. That structure has tended to separate the roles of women from those of men.


title: Korean language

text: Cho and Whitman (2019) explain that the different categories like male and female in social conditions influence Korean's features. What they noticed was the word "Jagi (자기)". Before explaining the word "Jagi (자기)", one thing that needs to be clearly distinguished is that "Jagi (자기)" can be used in a variety of situations, not all of which mean the same thing, but they depend on the context. Parallel variable solidarity and affection move the convention of speech style, especially terms of address that Jagi (자기 'you') has emerged as a gender-specific second-person pronoun used by women. However, young Koreans use the word "Jagi (자기)" to their lovers or spouses regardless of gender. Among middle-aged women, the word "Jagi (자기)" is sometimes used to call someone who is close to them.


title: Korean language

text: Korean society's prevalent attitude towards men being in public (outside the home) and women living in private still exists today. For instance, the word for "husband" is bakkat|yangban (바깥양반 'outside' 'nobleman'), but a husband introduces his wife as an|saram (안사람 an 'inside' 'person'). Also in kinship terminology, "we" (외 'outside' or 'wrong') is added for maternal grandparents, creating "we-harabeoji" and "we-hal-meoni" (외할아버지, 외할머니 'grandfather and grandmother'), with different lexicons for males and females and patriarchal society revealed. Further, in interrogatives to an addressee of equal or lower status, Korean men tend to use "haetnya" (했냐? 'did it?’)' in aggressive masculinity, but women use "haetni" (했니? 'did it?’)' as a soft expression. However, there are exceptions. Korean society used the question endings "-ni" (니) and "-nya" (냐), the former prevailing not only among women but also among men until a few decades ago. In fact, '-nya" (냐) was characteristic of the Jeolla and Chungcheong dialects. However, since the 1950s, large numbers of people have moved to Seoul from Chungcheong and Jeolla, and athey began to influence the way men speak. Recently, women also have also used the "-nya" (냐). As for "-ni" (니), it is usually used toward people to be polite even to someone not close or younger. As for "-nya" (냐), it is used mainly to close friends regardless of gender.


title: Korean language

text: Like the case of "actor" and "actress," it also is possible to add a gender prefix for emphasis: "biseo" (비서 'secretary') is sometimes is combined with "yeo" (여 'female') to form "yeo-biseo" (여비서 'female secretary'); "namja" (남자 'man') often is added to "ganhosa" (간호사 'nurse') to form "namja-ganhosa" (남자간호사 'male nurse'). That is not about omissuon; it is about addition. Words without those prefixes neither sound awkward nor remind listeners of political correctness.


title: Korean language

text: Another crucial difference between men and women is the tone and the pitch of their voices and how they affects the perception of politeness. Men learn to use an authoritative falling tone, and in Korean culture, a deeper voice is associated with being more polite. In addition to the deferential speech endings being used, men are seen as more polite as well as impartial and professional. Compared to women who use a rising tone in conjunction with "-yo" (요), they are not perceived to be as polite as men. The -yo (요) also indicates uncertainty since the ending has many prefixes that indicate uncertainty and questioning. The deferential ending does not have any prefixes and do can indicate uncertainty. The "-hapnida" (합니다) ending is the most polite and formal form of Korea, and the "-yo" (요) ending is less polite and formal, which causes the perception of women as less professional.


title: Korean language

text: Hedges soften an assertion, and their function as a euphemism in women's speech in terms of discourse difference. Women are expected to add nasal sounds "neyng", "neym", "ney-e', more frequently than men do in the last syllable. Often, "l" is often added in women's for female stereotypes and so "igeolo" (이거로 'this thing') become "igeollo" (이걸로 'this thing') to refer a lack of confidence and passive construction.


title: Korean language

text: Women use more linguistic markers such as exclamation "eomeo" (어머 'oh') and "eojjeom" (어쩜 'what a surprise') than men do in co-operative communication.


title: Korean language

text: The core of the Korean vocabulary is made up of "native Korean" words. However, a significant proportion of the vocabulary, especially words that denote abstract ideas, are "Sino-Korean" words (of Chinese origin). To a much lesser extent, some words have also been borrowed from Mongolian and other languages. More recent loanwords are dominated by English.


title: Korean language

text: North Korean vocabulary shows a tendency to prefer native Korean over Sino-Korean or foreign borrowings, especially with recent political objectives aimed at eliminating foreign influences on the Korean language in the North. In the early years, the North Korean government tried to eliminate Sino-Korean words. Consequently, South Korean may have several Sino-Korean or foreign borrowings which are not in North Korean.


title: Korean language

text: Therefore, just like other words, Korean has two sets of numeral systems. English is similar, having native English words and Latinate equivalents such as "water-aqua", "fire-flame", "sea-marine", "two-dual", "sun-solar", "star-stellar". However, unlike English and Latin which belong to the same Indo-European languages family and bear a certain resemblance, Korean and Chinese are genetically unrelated and the two sets of Korean words differ completely from each other. All Sino-Korean morphemes are monosyllabic as in Chinese, whereas native Korean morphemes can be polysyllabic. The Sino-Korean words were deliberately imported alongside corresponding Chinese characters for a written language and everything was supposed to be written in Hanja, so the coexistence of Sino-Korean would be more thorough and systematic than that of Latinate words in English.


title: Korean language

text: The exact proportion of Sino-Korean vocabulary is a matter of debate. Sohn (2001) stated 50–60%. In 2006 the same author gives an even higher estimate of 65%. Jeong Jae-do, one of the compilers of the dictionary "Urimal Keun Sajeon", asserts that the proportion is not so high. He points out that Korean dictionaries compiled during the colonial period include many unused Sino-Korean words. In his estimation, the proportion of Sino-Korean vocabulary in the Korean language might be as low as 30%.


title: Korean language

text: The vast majority of loanwords other than Sino-Korean come from modern times, approximately 90% of which are from English. Many words have also been borrowed from Western languages such as German via Japanese ( ("areubaiteu") "part-time job", ("allereugi") "allergy", ("gibseu" or "gibuseu") "plaster cast used for broken bones"). Some Western words were borrowed indirectly via Japanese during the Japanese occupation of Korea, taking a Japanese sound pattern, for example "dozen" > "dāsu" > "daseu". Most indirect Western borrowings are now written according to current "Hangulization" rules for the respective Western language, as if borrowed directly. There are a few more complicated borrowings such as "German(y)" (see names of Germany), the first part of whose endonym "Deutschland" the Japanese approximated using the kanji "doitsu" that were then accepted into the Korean language by their Sino-Korean pronunciation:  "dok" +  "il" = "Dogil". In South Korean official use, a number of other Sino-Korean country names have been replaced with phonetically oriented "Hangeulizations" of the countries' endonyms or English names.


title: Korean language

text: Because of such a prevalence of English in modern South Korean culture and society, lexical borrowing is inevitable. English-derived Korean, or "Konglish" (), is increasingly used. The vocabulary of the South Korean dialect of the Korean language is roughly 5% loanwords (excluding Sino-Korean vocabulary). However, due to North Korea's isolation, such influence is lacking in North Korean speech.


title: Korean language

text: Korean uses words adapted from English in ways that may seem strange or unintuitive to native English speakers. For example, "fighting" ( "hwaiting" / "paiting") is a term of encouragement, like 'come on'/'go (on)' in English. Something that is 'service' ( "seobiseu") is free or 'on the house'. A building referred to as an 'apart' ( "apateu") is an 'apartment' (but in fact refers to a residence more akin to a condominium) and a type of pencil that is called a 'sharp' () is a mechanical pencil. Like other borrowings, many of these idiosyncrasies, including all the examples listed above, appear to be imported into Korean via Japanese, or influenced by Japanese. Many English words introduced via Japanese pronunciation have been reformed, as in 멜론 (melon) which was once called 메론 (meron) as in Japanese.


title: Korean language

text: Before the creation of the modern Korean alphabet, known as Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea and as Hangul in South Korea, people in Korea (known as Joseon at the time) primarily wrote using Classical Chinese alongside native phonetic writing systems that predate Hangul by hundreds of years, including idu, hyangchal, gugyeol, and gakpil. However, the fundamental differences between the Korean and Chinese languages and the large number of characters to be learned made few people in the lower classes have the privilege of education, and they had much difficulty in learning how to write using Chinese characters. To assuage that problem, King Sejong () created the unique alphabet known as Hangul to promote literacy among the common people.


title: Korean language

text: The Korean alphabet was denounced and looked down upon by the "yangban" aristocracy, who deemed it too easy to learn, but it gained widespread use among the common class and was widely used to print popular novels which were enjoyed by the common class. With growing Korean nationalism in the 19th century, the Gabo Reformists' push, and the promotion of Hangul in schools, in 1894, Hangul displaced Hanja as Korea's national script. Hanja are still used to a certain extent in South Korea, where they are sometimes combined with Hangul, but that method is slowly declining in use even though students learn Hanja in school.


title: Korean language

text: Below is a chart of the Korean alphabet's (Hangul) symbols and their Revised Romanization (RR) and canonical International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) values:


title: Korean language

text: The letters of the Korean alphabet are not written linearly like most alphabets, but instead arranged into blocks that represent syllables. So, while the word "bibimbap" (Korean rice dish) is written as eight characters in a row in the Latin alphabet, in Korean it is written 비빔밥, as three "syllabic blocks" in a row. "Mukbang (" 'eating show') is seven characters after romanization but only two "syllabic blocks" before.


title: Korean language

text: Modern Korean is written with spaces between words, a feature not found in Chinese or Japanese (except when Japanese is written exclusively in hiragana, as in children's books). The marks used for Korean punctuation are almost identical to Western ones. Traditionally, Korean was written in columns, from top to bottom, right to left, like traditional Chinese. However, the syllabic blocks are now usually written in rows, from left to right, top to bottom, like English.


title: Korean language

text: Korean has numerous small local dialects (called "mal" () [literally 'speech'], "saturi" (), or "bang'eon" (). The standard language ("pyojun-eo" or "pyojun-mal") of both South Korea and North Korea is based on the dialect of the area around Seoul (which, as Hanyang, was the capital of Joseon-era Korea for 500 years), though the northern standard after the Korean War has been influenced by the dialect of P'yŏngyang. All dialects of Korean are similar to each other and largely mutually intelligible (with the exception of dialect-specific phrases or non-Standard vocabulary unique to dialects), though the dialect of Jeju Island is divergent enough to be sometimes classified as a separate language. One of the more salient differences between dialects is the use of tone: speakers of the Seoul dialect make use of vowel length, whereas speakers of the Gyeongsang dialect maintain the pitch accent of Middle Korean. Some dialects are conservative, maintaining Middle Korean sounds (such as "z, β, ə") which have been lost from the standard language, whereas others are highly innovative.


title: Korean language

text: Kang Yoon-jung et al. (2013), Kim Mi-ryoung (2013), and Cho Sung-hye (2017) suggest that the modern Seoul dialect is currently undergoing tonogenesis, based on the finding that in recent years lenis consonants (ㅂㅈㄷㄱ), aspirated consonants (ㅍㅊㅌㅋ) and fortis consonants (ㅃㅉㄸㄲ) were shifting from a distinction via voice onset time to that of pitch change; however, Choi Ji-youn et al. (2020) disagree with the suggestion that the consonant distinction shifting away from voice onset time is due to the introduction of tonal features, and instead proposes that it is a prosodically conditioned change.


title: Korean language

text: There is substantial evidence for a history of extensive dialect levelling, or even convergent evolution or intermixture of two or more originally distinct linguistic stocks, within the Korean language and its dialects. Many Korean dialects have basic vocabulary that is etymologically distinct from vocabulary of identical meaning in Standard Korean or other dialects, for example "garlic chives" translated into Gyeongsang dialect (; "jeongguji") but in Standard Korean, it is (; "buchu"). This suggests that the Korean Peninsula may have at one time been much more linguistically diverse than it is at present. See also the Japanese–Koguryoic languages hypothesis.


title: Korean language

text: Nonetheless, the separation of the two Korean states has resulted in increasing differences among the dialects that have emerged over time. Since the allies of the newly founded nations split the Korean peninsula in half after 1945, the newly formed Korean nations have since borrowed vocabulary extensively from their respective allies. As the Soviet Union helped industrialize North Korea and establish it as a communist state, the North Koreans therefore borrowed a number of Russian terms. Likewise, since the United States helped South Korea extensively to develop militarily, economically, and politically, South Koreans therefore borrowed extensively from English.


title: Korean language

text: The differences among northern and southern dialects have become so significant that many North Korean defectors reportedly have had great difficulty communicating with South Koreans after having initially settled into South Korea. In response to the diverging vocabularies, an app called Univoca was designed to help North Korean defectors learn South Korean terms by translating them into North Korean ones. More information can be found on the page North-South differences in the Korean language.


title: Korean language

text: Aside from the standard language, there are few clear boundaries between Korean dialects, and they are typically partially grouped according to the regions of Korea.


title: Korean language

text: Recently, both North and South Korea's usage rate of the regional dialect have been decreasing due to social factors. In North Korea, the central government is urging its citizens to use Munhwaŏ (the standard language of North Korea), to deter the usage of foreign language and Chinese characters: Kim Jong-un said in a speech "if your language in life is cultural and polite, you can achieve harmony and comradely unity among people." In South Korea, due to relocation in the population to Seoul to find jobs and the usage of standard language in education and media, the prevalence of regional dialects has decreased. Moreover, internationally, due to the increasing popularity of K-pop, the Seoul standard language has become more widely taught and used.


title: Korean language

text: The language used in the North and the South exhibit differences in pronunciation, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.


title: Korean language

text: Words that are written the same way may be pronounced differently (such as the examples below). The pronunciations below are given in Revised Romanization, McCune–Reischauer and modified Hangul (what the Korean characters would be if one were to write the word as pronounced).


title: Korean language

text: <nowiki>*</nowiki> In the North, similar pronunciation is used whenever the hanja "" is attached to a Sino-Korean word ending in , or .


title: Korean language

text: <nowiki>*</nowiki> In the South, this rule only applies when it is attached to any single-character Sino-Korean word.


title: Korean language

text: Some words have different spellings and pronunciations in the North and the South. Most of the official languages of North Korea are from the northwest (Pyeongan dialect), and the standard language of South Korea is the standard language (Seoul language close to Gyeonggi dialect). some of which were given in the "Phonology" section above:


title: Korean language

text: In general, when transcribing place names, North Korea tends to use the pronunciation in the original language more than South Korea, which often uses the pronunciation in English. For example:


title: Korean language

text: In the North, guillemets ( and ) are the symbols used for quotes; in the South, quotation marks equivalent to the English ones ( and ) are standard (although and are also used).


title: Korean language

text: Korean is spoken by the Korean people in both South Korea and North Korea, and by the Korean diaspora in many countries including the People's Republic of China, the United States, Japan, and Russia. Currently, Korean is the fourth most popular foreign language in China, following English, Japanese, and Russian. Korean-speaking minorities exist in these states, but because of cultural assimilation into host countries, not all ethnic Koreans may speak it with native fluency.


title: Korean language

text: Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea. It, along with Mandarin Chinese, is also one of the two official languages of China's Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture.


title: Korean language

text: In North Korea, the regulatory body is the Language Institute of the Academy of Social Sciences (, "Sahoe Gwahagweon Eohag Yeonguso"). In South Korea, the regulatory body for Korean is the Seoul-based National Institute of the Korean Language, which was created by presidential decree on 23 January 1991.


title: Korean language

text: Established pursuant to Article 9, Section 2, of the Framework Act on the National Language, the King Sejong Institute is a public institution set up to coordinate the government's project of propagating Korean language and culture; it also supports the King Sejong Institute, which is the institution's overseas branch. The King Sejong Institute was established in response to:


title: Korean language

text: The TOPIK Korea Institute is a lifelong educational center affiliated with a variety of Korean universities in Seoul, South Korea, whose aim is to promote Korean language and culture, support local Korean teaching internationally, and facilitate cultural exchanges.


title: Korean language

text: The institute is sometimes compared to language and culture promotion organizations such as the King Sejong Institute. Unlike that organization, however, the TOPIK Korea Institute operates within established universities and colleges around the world, providing educational materials. In countries around the world, Korean embassies and cultural centers (한국문화원) administer TOPIK examinations.


title: Korean language

text: For native English-speakers, Korean is generally considered to be one of the most difficult foreign languages to master despite the relative ease of learning Hangul. For instance, the United States' Defense Language Institute places Korean in Category IV with Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), and Arabic, requiring 64 weeks of instruction (as compared to just 26 weeks for Category I languages like Italian, French, and Spanish) to bring an English-speaking student to a limited working level of proficiency in which they have "sufficient capability to meet routine social demands and limited job requirements" and "can deal with concrete topics in past, present, and future tense." Similarly, the Foreign Service Institute's School of Language Studies places Korean in Category IV, the highest level of difficulty.


title: Korean language

text: The study of the Korean language in the United States is dominated by Korean American heritage language students, who in 2007 were estimated to form over 80% of all students of the language at non-military universities. However, Sejong Institutes in the United States have noted a sharp rise in the number of people of other ethnic backgrounds studying Korean between 2009 and 2011, which they attribute to rising popularity of South Korean music and television shows. In 2018, it was reported that the rise in K-Pop was responsible for the increase in people learning the language in US universities.


title: Korean language

text: There are two widely used tests of Korean as a foreign language: the Korean Language Proficiency Test (KLPT) and the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK). The Korean Language Proficiency Test, an examination aimed at assessing non-native speakers' competence in Korean, was instituted in 1997; 17,000 people applied for the 2005 sitting of the examination. The TOPIK was first administered in 1997 and was taken by 2,274 people. Since then the total number of people who have taken the TOPIK has surpassed 1 million, with more than 150,000 candidates taking the test in 2012. TOPIK is administered in 45 regions within South Korea and 72 nations outside of South Korea, with a significant portion being administered in Japan and North America, which would suggest the targeted audience for TOPIK is still primarily foreigners of Korean heritage. This is also evident in TOPIK's website, where the examination is introduced as intended for Korean heritage students.


title: Brett Goldstein

text: Brett Goldstein (born 17 July 1980) is a British actor, comedian, and writer. He is best known for writing and starring as Roy Kent in the Apple TV+ sports comedy series "Ted Lasso" (2020–present), for which he received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for each of the first two seasons.


title: Brett Goldstein

text: Goldstein was born in Sutton, London, to a British Jewish family, on 17 July 1980. He attended Sevenoaks School, one of the oldest and most expensive independent schools in the UK. After leaving school he attended the University of Warwick, graduating with a degree in Film Studies.


title: Brett Goldstein

text: Soon afterward, Goldstein briefly relocated to Marbella, Spain, to work at a strip club which his father purchased during a "midlife crisis". He then went to New York to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. While there, he began writing scripts that he would later take to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. For example, he turned his Marbella experience into a stand-up comedy show called "Brett Goldstein Grew Up in a Strip Club" (2011).


title: Brett Goldstein

text: Goldstein began acting in short films and had his first feature film role in the self-written thriller "Wish You Were Here" (2005), which was later remade as "Slave" (2009). In 2009, he made his television debut in two episodes of ITV's long-running police drama "The Bill". From 2012 to 2016, he appeared in several comedy series, such as BBC One's "Uncle", E4's "Drifters" and Channel 4's "Derek", starring, written and directed by Ricky Gervais. He also played American TV legend David Hasselhoff's personal trainer, Danny, in Dave's mockumentary series "Hoff the Record" (2015–2016).


title: Brett Goldstein

text: In 2013, Goldstein wrote and played the leading role of a Peckham postman-turned-superhero in the low-budget romantic comedy "SuperBob" (2015). At the end of filming, comedian Catherine Tate, who starred in the film as his character's boss at the Ministry of Defence, invited him to co-write the BBC One sitcom "Catherine Tate's Nan" (2014–2015), a spin-off of "The Catherine Tate Show" about her popular sweary old-lady character Joanie Taylor. The two continued to collaborate, with Goldstein joining Tate on her first ever live tour in 2016 and later co-writing the feature film "The Nan Movie" (2022).


title: Brett Goldstein

text: In 2016, he won the BIFA Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Brendan in the comedy film "Adult Life Skills", starring Jodie Whittaker as the lead character. Two years later, he again appeared alongside Whittaker in the BBC's long-running science fiction drama "Doctor Who", in an episode called "The Tsuranga Conundrum" (2018). Later that year, in July 2018, he began his career as a podcaster with "Films to Be Buried With", a comedy podcast featuring guests talking about films that have been important in their lives. Goldstein has also written and performed four solo stand-up shows.


title: Brett Goldstein

text: TV producer Bill Lawrence hired Goldstein as a writer for the 2020 Apple TV+ show "Ted Lasso", starring Jason Sudeikis. His writing on the show led to him being cast as the character of aging footballer Roy Kent. "Rolling Stone"'s Emily Zemler stated that Goldstein "felt such a kinship with this stoic tough guy, in fact, that he emailed a self-taped audition of five scenes to the production team. The tapes, which included the 'If I don't hear silence I'm gonna start punching dicks' scene from the pilot, ended up scoring him the role. The rest is history." He later won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series two years in a row, in 2021 and 2022, for his work on the show.


title: Brett Goldstein

text: Together with "Black Mirror" writer Will Bridges, Goldstein created and wrote the six-part science fiction anthology series "Soulmates" for AMC, based on their short film "For Life" (2013). The series premiered in October 2020 and starred Sarah Snook, Malin Akerman, Betsy Brandt and Charlie Heaton. In 2022, he signed a multi-year overall deal with Warner Bros. Television. Later that year, Goldstein appeared as Hercules in the mid-credits scene of "" and is expected to play the character in future Marvel Cinematic Universe properties.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant. The Sea has played a central role in the history of Western civilization. Although the Mediterranean is sometimes considered a part of the Atlantic Ocean, it is usually referred to as a separate body of water. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The Mediterranean Sea covers an area of about , representing 0.7% of the global ocean surface, but its connection to the Atlantic via the Strait of Gibraltar—the narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from Morocco in Africa—is only wide. In oceanography, it is sometimes called the "Eurafrican Mediterranean Sea", the "European Mediterranean Sea" or the "African Mediterranean Sea" to distinguish it from mediterranean seas elsewhere. The Mediterranean Sea encompasses a vast number of islands, some of them being of volcanic origin. The two by far largest islands are Sicily and Sardinia.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The Mediterranean Sea has an average depth of and the deepest recorded point is ± in the Calypso Deep in the Ionian Sea. It lies between latitudes 30° and 46° N and longitudes 6° W and 36° E. Its west–east length, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Gulf of Alexandretta, on the southeastern coast of Turkey, is about . The north–south length varies greatly between different shorelines and whether only straight routes are considered. Also including longitudal changes, the shortest shipping route between the multinational Gulf of Trieste and the Libyan coastline of Gulf of Sidra is about . The water temperatures are mild in winter and warm in summer and give name to the mediterranean climate type due to the majority of precipitation falling in the cooler months. Its southern and eastern coastlines are lined with hot deserts not far inland, but the immediate coastline on all sides of the Mediterranean tends to have strong maritime moderation.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The sea was an important route for merchants and travelers of ancient times, facilitating trade and cultural exchange between peoples of the region. The history of the Mediterranean region is crucial to understanding the origins and development of many modern societies. The Roman Empire maintained nautical hegemony over the sea for centuries.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The countries surrounding the Mediterranean in clockwise order are Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco; Malta and Cyprus are island countries in the sea. In addition, the disputed territory of North Cyprus, and some enclaves, notably Gibraltar and Ceuta, have coastlines on the sea. Alexandria is the largest coastal settlement. The drainage basin encompasses a large number of other countries, the Nile being the longest river ending in the Mediterranean Sea.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Major ancient civilizations were located around the Mediterranean. The sea provided routes for trade, colonization, and war, as well as food (from fishing and the gathering of other seafood) for numerous communities throughout the ages.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The most notable Mediterranean civilizations in classical antiquity were the Greek city states, Persians and the Phoenicians, both of which extensively colonized the coastlines of the Mediterranean. Later, when Augustus founded the Roman Empire, the Romans referred to the Mediterranean as "Mare Nostrum" ("Our Sea"). For the next 400 years, the Roman Empire completely controlled the Mediterranean Sea and virtually all its coastal regions from Gibraltar to the Levant.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Darius I of Persia, who conquered Ancient Egypt, built a canal linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. Darius's canal was wide enough for two triremes to pass each other with oars extended, and required four days to traverse.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: In 2019, the archaeological team of experts from Underwater Research Center of the Akdeniz University (UA) revealed a shipwreck dating back 3,600 years in the Mediterranean Sea in Turkey. 1.5 tons of copper ingots found in the ship were used to estimate its age. The Governor of Antalya Munir Karaloğlu described this valuable discovery as the "Göbeklitepe of the underwater world”. It has been confirmed that the shipwreck, dating back to 1600 BC, is older than the "Uluburun Shipwreck" dating back to 1400 BC.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The Western Roman Empire collapsed around 476 AD. Temporarily the east was again dominant as Roman power lived on in the Byzantine Empire formed in the 4th century from the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Another power arose in the 7th century, and with it the religion of Islam, which soon swept across from the east; at its greatest extent, the Arabs, under the Umayyads, controlled most of the Mediterranean region and left a lasting footprint on its eastern and southern shores.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The Arab invasions disrupted the trade relations between Western and Eastern Europe while disrupting trade routes with Eastern Asian Empires. This, however, had the indirect effect of promoting the trade across the Caspian Sea. The export of grains from Egypt was re-routed towards the Eastern world. Products from East Asian empires, like silk and spices, were carried from Egypt to ports like Venice and Constantinople by sailors and Jewish merchants. The Viking raids further disrupted the trade in western Europe and brought it to a halt. However, the Norsemen developed the trade from Norway to the White Sea, while also trading in luxury goods from Spain and the Mediterranean. The Byzantines in the mid-8th century retook control of the area around the north-eastern part of the Mediterranean. Venetian ships from the 9th century armed themselves to counter the harassment by Arabs while concentrating trade of Asian goods in Venice.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The Fatimids maintained trade relations with the Italian city-states like Amalfi and Genoa before the Crusades, according to the Cairo Geniza documents. A document dated 996 mentions Amalfian merchants living in Cairo. Another letter states that the Genoese had traded with Alexandria. The caliph al-Mustansir had allowed Amalfian merchants to reside in Jerusalem about 1060 in place of the Latin hospice.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The Crusades led to flourishing of trade between Europe and the "outremer" region. Genoa, Venice and Pisa created colonies in regions controlled by the Crusaders and came to control the trade with the Orient. These colonies also allowed them to trade with the Eastern world. Though the fall of the Crusader states and attempts at banning of trade relations with Muslim states by the Popes temporarily disrupted the trade with the Orient, it however continued.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Europe started to revive, however, as more organized and centralized states began to form in the later Middle Ages after the Renaissance of the 12th century.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Ottoman power based in Anatolia continued to grow, and in 1453 extinguished the Byzantine Empire with the Conquest of Constantinople. Ottomans gained control of much of the sea in the 16th century and maintained naval bases in southern France (1543–1544), Algeria and Tunisia. Barbarossa, the famous Ottoman captain is a symbol of this domination with the victory of the Battle of Preveza (1538). The Battle of Djerba (1560) marked the apex of Ottoman naval domination in the Mediterranean. As the naval prowess of the European powers increased, they confronted Ottoman expansion in the region when the Battle of Lepanto (1571) checked the power of the Ottoman Navy. This was the last naval battle to be fought primarily between galleys.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The Barbary pirates of Northwest Africa preyed on Christian shipping and coastlines in the Western Mediterranean Sea. According to Robert Davis, from the 16th to 19th centuries, pirates captured 1 million to 1.25 million Europeans as slaves.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The development of oceanic shipping began to affect the entire Mediterranean. Once, most of the trade between Western Europe and the East was passing through the region, but after the 1490s the development of a sea route to the Indian Ocean allowed the importation of Asian spices and other goods through the Atlantic ports of western Europe.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The sea remained strategically important. British mastery of Gibraltar ensured their influence in Africa and Southwest Asia. Especially after the naval battles of Abukir (1799, Battle of the Nile) and Trafalgar (1805), the British had for a long time strengthened their dominance in the Mediterranean. Wars included Naval warfare in the Mediterranean during World War I and Mediterranean theatre of World War II.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: With the opening of the lockless Suez Canal in 1869, the flow of trade between Europe and Asia changed fundamentally. The fastest route now led through the Mediterranean towards East Africa and Asia. This led to a preference for the Mediterranean countries and their ports like Trieste with the direct connections to Central and Eastern Europe experienced a rapid economic rise. In the 20th century, the 1st and 2nd World War as well as the Suez Crisis and the Cold War led to a shift of trade routes to the European northern ports, which changed again towards the southern ports through European integration, the activation of the Silk Road and free world trade.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: In 2013, the Maltese president described the Mediterranean Sea as a "cemetery" due to the large number of migrants who drowned there after their boats capsized. European Parliament president Martin Schulz said in 2014 that Europe's migration policy "turned the Mediterranean into a graveyard", referring to the number of drowned refugees in the region as a direct result of the policies. An Azerbaijani official described the sea as "a burial ground ... where people die".


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Following the 2013 Lampedusa migrant shipwreck, the Italian government decided to strengthen the national system for the patrolling of the Mediterranean Sea by authorising "Operation Mare Nostrum", a military and humanitarian mission in order to rescue the migrants and arrest the traffickers of immigrants. In 2015, more than one million migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea into Europe.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Italy was particularly affected by the European migrant crisis. Since 2013, over 700,000 migrants have landed in Italy, mainly sub-Saharan Africans.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The long artificial Suez Canal in the southeast connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea without ship lock, because the water level is essentially the same.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The westernmost point of the Mediterranean is located at the transition from the Alborán Sea to the Strait of Gibraltar, the easternmost point is on the coast of the Gulf of Iskenderun in southeastern Turkey. The northernmost point of the Mediterranean is on the coast of the Gulf of Trieste near Monfalcone in northern Italy while the southernmost point is on the coast of the Gulf of Sidra near the Libyan town of El Agheila.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The Alpine arc, which also has a great meteorological impact on the Mediterranean area, touches the Mediterranean in the west in the area around Nice.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The typical Mediterranean climate has hot, dry summers and mild, rainy winters. Crops of the region include olives, grapes, oranges, tangerines, carobs and cork.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Note 1: The International Hydrographic Organization defines the area as generic Mediterranean Sea, in the Western Basin. It does not recognize the label Sea of Sardinia.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Mediterranean Sea as follows: Stretching from the Strait of Gibraltar in the west to the entrances to the Dardanelles and the Suez Canal in the east, the Mediterranean Sea is bounded by the coasts of Europe, Africa, and Asia and is divided into two deep basins:


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The drainage basin of the Mediterranean Sea is particularly heterogeneous and extends much further than the Mediterranean region. Its size has been estimated between and , depending on whether non-active parts (deserts) are included or not. The longest river ending in the Mediterranean Sea is the Nile, which takes its sources in equatorial Africa. The basin of the Nile constitutes about two-thirds of the Mediterranean drainage basin and encompasses areas as high as the Ruwenzori Mountains. Among other important rivers in Africa, are the Moulouya and the Chelif, both on the north side of the Atlas Mountains. In Asia, are the Ceyhan and Seyhan, both on the south side of the Taurus Mountains. In Europe, the largest basins are those of the Rhône, Ebro, Po, and Maritsa. The basin of the Rhône is the largest and extends up as far north as the Jura Mountains, encompassing areas even on the north side of the Alps. The basins of the Ebro, Po, and Maritsa, are respectively south of the Pyrenees, Alps, and Balkan Mountains, which are the major ranges bordering Southern Europe.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Total annual precipitation is significantly higher on the European part of the Mediterranean basin, especially near the Alps (the 'water tower of Europe') and other high mountain ranges. As a consequence, the river discharges of the Rhône and Po are similar to that of the Nile, despite the latter having a much larger basin. These are the only three rivers with an average discharge of over . Among large natural fresh bodies of water are Lake Victoria (Nile basin), Lake Geneva (Rhône), and the Italian Lakes (Po). While the Mediterranean watershed is bordered by other river basins in Europe, it is essentially bordered by endorheic basins or deserts elsewhere.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The following countries are in the Mediterranean drainage basin while "not" having a coastline on the Mediterranean Sea:


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Major cities (municipalities), with populations larger than 200,000 people, bordering the Mediterranean Sea include:


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) divides the Mediterranean into a number of smaller waterbodies, each with their own designation (from west to east):


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Many of these smaller seas feature in local myth and folklore and derive their names from such associations.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The Mediterranean Sea encompasses about 10,000 islands and islets, of which about 250 are permanently inhabited. In the table below are listed the ten largest by size.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Much of the Mediterranean coast enjoys a hot-summer Mediterranean climate. However, most of its southeastern coast has a hot desert climate, and much of Spain's eastern (Mediterranean) coast has a cold semi-arid climate, while most of Italy's northern (Adriatic) coast has a humid subtropical climate. Although they are rare, tropical cyclones occasionally form in the Mediterranean Sea, typically in September–November.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Being nearly landlocked affects conditions in the Mediterranean Sea: for instance, tides are very limited as a result of the narrow connection with the Atlantic Ocean. The Mediterranean is characterised and immediately recognised by its deep blue colour.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Evaporation greatly exceeds precipitation and river runoff in the Mediterranean, a fact that is central to the water circulation within the basin. Evaporation is especially high in its eastern half, causing the water level to decrease and salinity to increase eastward. The average salinity in the basin is 38 PSU at 5 m depth.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The net water influx from the Atlantic Ocean is ca. 70,000 m³/s or . Without this Atlantic water, the sea level of the Mediterranean Sea would fall at a rate of about 1 m per year.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Water circulation in the Mediterranean can be attributed to the surface waters entering from the Atlantic through the Strait of Gibraltar (and also low salinity water entering the Mediterranean from the Black Sea through the Bosphorus). The cool and relatively low-salinity Atlantic water circulates eastwards along the North African coasts. A part of the surface water does not pass the Strait of Sicily, but deviates towards Corsica before exiting the Mediterranean. The surface waters entering the eastern Mediterranean basin circulate along the Libyan and Israeli coasts. Upon reaching the Levantine Sea, the surface waters having warmed and increased its salinity from its initial Atlantic state, is now denser and sinks to form the Levantine Intermediate Waters (LIW). Most of the water found anywhere between 50 and 600 m deep in the Mediterranean originates from the LIW. LIW are formed along the coasts of Turkey and circulate westwards along the Greek and South Italian coasts. LIW are the only waters passing the Sicily Strait westwards. After the Strait of Sicily, the LIW waters circulate along the Italian, French and Spanish coasts before exiting the Mediterranean through the depths of the Strait of Gibraltar. Deep water in the Mediterranean originates from three main areas: the Adriatic Sea, from which most of the deep water in the eastern Mediterranean originates, the Aegean Sea, and the Gulf of Lion. Deep water formation in the Mediterranean is triggered by strong winter convection fueled by intense cold winds like the Bora. When new deep water is formed, the older waters mix with the overlaying intermediate waters and eventually exit the Mediterranean. The residence time of water in the Mediterranean is approximately 100 years, making the Mediterranean especially sensitive to climate change.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Being a semi-enclosed basin, the Mediterranean experiences transitory events that can affect the water circulation on short time scales. In the mid-1990s, the Aegean Sea became the main area for deep water formation in the eastern Mediterranean after particularly cold winter conditions. This transitory switch in the origin of deep waters in the eastern Mediterranean was termed Eastern Mediterranean Transient (EMT) and had major consequences on water circulation of the Mediterranean.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Another example of a transient event affecting the Mediterranean circulation is the periodic inversion of the North Ionian Gyre, which is an anticyclonic ocean gyre observed in the northern part of the Ionian Sea, off the Greek coast. The transition from anticyclonic to cyclonic rotation of this gyre changes the origin of the waters fueling it; when the circulation is anticyclonic (most common), the waters of the gyre originate from the Adriatic Sea. When the circulation is cyclonic, the waters originate from the Levantine Sea. These waters have different physical and chemical characteristics, and the periodic inversion of the North Ionian Gyre (called Bimodal Oscillating System or BiOS) changes the Mediterranean circulation and biogeochemistry around the Adriatic and Levantine regions.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Because of the short residence time of waters, the Mediterranean Sea is considered a hot-spot for climate change effects. Deep water temperatures have increased by between 1959 and 1989. According to climate projections, the Mediterranean Sea could become warmer. The decrease in precipitation over the region could lead to more evaporation ultimately increasing the Mediterranean Sea salinity. Because of the changes in temperature and salinity, the Mediterranean Sea may become more stratified by the end of the 21st century, with notable consequences on water circulation and biogeochemistry. The stratification and warming have already led to the eastern Mediterranean to become a net source of CO to the atmosphere notably during summer. This strong summer degassing, combined with the prolonged and pronounced stratification results in the formation of aragonite crystals abiotically in the water column. The cumulative warming at the surface of the Mediterranean has a significant impact on the ecological system. Extreme warming has led to biodiversity loss and presents an existential threat to some habitats while making conditions more hospitable to invasive tropical species.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: In spite of its great biodiversity, concentrations of chlorophyll and nutrients in the Mediterranean Sea are very low, making it one of the most oligotrophic ocean regions in the world. The Mediterranean Sea is commonly referred to as an LNLC (Low-Nutrient, Low-Chlorophyll) area. The Mediterranean Sea fits the definition of a desert in which its nutrient contents are low, making it difficult for plants and animals to develop.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: There are steep gradients in nutrient concentrations, chlorophyll concentrations and primary productivity in the Mediterranean. Nutrient concentrations in the western part of the basin are about double the concentrations in the eastern basin. The Alboran Sea, close to the Strait of Gibraltar, has a daily primary productivity of about 0.25 g C (grams of carbon) m day whereas the eastern basin has an average daily productivity of 0.16 g C m day. For this reason, the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea is termed "ultraoligotrophic". The productive areas of the Mediterranean Sea are few and small. High (i.e. more than 0.5 grams of Chlorophyll "a" per cubic meter) productivity occurs in coastal areas, close to the river mouths which are the primary suppliers of dissolved nutrients. The Gulf of Lion has a relatively high productivity because it is an area of high vertical mixing, bringing nutrients to the surface waters that can be used by phytoplankton to produce Chlorophyll "a".


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Primary productivity in the Mediterranean is also marked by an intense seasonal variability. In winter, the strong winds and precipitation over the basin generate vertical mixing, bringing nutrients from the deep waters to the surface, where phytoplankton can convert it into biomass. However, in winter, light may be the limiting factor for primary productivity. Between March and April, spring offers the ideal trade-off between light intensity and nutrient concentrations in surface for a spring bloom to occur. In summer, high atmospheric temperatures lead to the warming of the surface waters. The resulting density difference virtually isolates the surface waters from the rest of the water column and nutrient exchanges are limited. As a consequence, primary productivity is very low between June and October.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Oceanographic expeditions uncovered a characteristic feature of the Mediterranean Sea biogeochemistry: most of the chlorophyll production does not occur on the surface, but in sub-surface waters between 80 and 200 meters deep. Another key characteristic of the Mediterranean is its high nitrogen-to-phosphorus ratio (N:P). Redfield demonstrated that most of the world's oceans have an average N:P ratio around 16. However, the Mediterranean Sea has an average N:P between 24 and 29, which translates a widespread phosphorus limitation.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Because of its low productivity, plankton assemblages in the Mediterranean Sea are dominated by small organisms such as picophytoplankton and bacteria.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The geologic history of the Mediterranean Sea is complex. Underlain by oceanic crust, the sea basin was once thought to be a tectonic remnant of the ancient Tethys Ocean; it is now known to be a structurally younger basin, called the Neotethys, which was first formed by the convergence of the African and Eurasian plates during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic. Because it is a near-landlocked body of water in a normally dry climate, the Mediterranean is subject to intensive evaporation and the precipitation of evaporites. The Messinian salinity crisis started about six million years ago (mya) when the Mediterranean became landlocked, and then essentially dried up. There are salt deposits accumulated on the bottom of the basin of more than a million cubic kilometres—in some places more than three kilometres thick.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: Scientists estimate that the sea was last filled about 5.3 million years ago (mya) in less than two years by the Zanclean flood. Water poured in from the Atlantic Ocean through a newly breached gateway now called the Strait of Gibraltar at an estimated rate of about three orders of magnitude (one thousand times) larger than the current flow of the Amazon River.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The Mediterranean Sea has an average depth of and the deepest recorded point is in the Calypso Deep in the Ionian Sea. The coastline extends for . A shallow submarine ridge (the Strait of Sicily) between the island of Sicily and the coast of Tunisia divides the sea in two main subregions: the Western Mediterranean, with an area of about 850,000 km (330,000 mi); and the Eastern Mediterranean, of about 1.65 million km (640,000 mi). Coastal areas have submarine karst springs or s, which discharge pressurised groundwater into the water from below the surface; the discharge water is usually fresh, and sometimes may be thermal.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: The Mediterranean basin and sea system were established by the ancient African-Arabian continent colliding with the Eurasian continent. As Africa-Arabia drifted northward, it closed over the ancient Tethys Ocean which had earlier separated the two supercontinents Laurasia and Gondwana.


title: Mediterranean Sea

text: At about that time in the middle Jurassic period (roughly 170 million years ago ) a much smaller sea basin, dubbed the Neotethys, was formed shortly before the Tethys Ocean closed at its western (Arabian) end. The broad line of collisions pushed up a very long system of mountains from the Pyrenees in Spain to the Zagros Mountains in Iran in an episode of mountain-building tectonics known as the Alpine orogeny. The Neotethys grew larger during the episodes of collisions (and associated foldings and subductions) that occurred during the Oligocene and Miocene epochs (34 to 5.33 mya); see animation: Africa-Arabia colliding with Eurasia. Accordingly, the Mediterranean basin consists of several stretched tectonic plates in subduction which are the foundation of the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. Various zones of subduction contain the highest oceanic ridges, east of the Ionian Sea and south of the Aegean. The Central Indian Ridge runs east of the Mediterranean Sea south-east across the in-between of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula into the Indian Ocean.