title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: During a press conference on 23 April 2019, State Defence Minister Ruwan Wijewardene confirmed that a second splinter group was being investigated, but declined to provide details. On 27 April 2019, President Sirisena designated Jammiyathul Millathu Ibrahim (the splinter group) and National Thowheeth Jama'ath as terrorist organisations. This enables the freezing and seizure of assets belonging to these groups.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Wijewardene announced that most of the suicide bombers were "well-educated and come from middle or upper-middle-class", and that they were "financially quite independent". He stated one of the bombers studied in the United Kingdom before going to Australia to complete a postgraduate degree.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Hashim was featured in a video released by Amaq purporting to show eight of the suicide bombers. One of the bombers, Abdul Latheef, had tried to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State. It was reported that he was one of the subjects of a terrorism investigation by the Australian Joint Counter Terrorism Team in 2014 after intelligence emerged linking him to an IS operative Neil Prakash. "The Times" reported that security agencies believe that Hashim might have travelled to Syria where he was trained and developed links with British ISIL members like Jihadi John and Junaid Hussain.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: After the Sainthamaruthu shootout, Amaq claimed those killed in the raid were men of ISIL and published a photo of Rilwan who had carried out a suicide bombing. The other man in the image has been identified as Zahran. The Islamic State also released a video purportedly showing their leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi praising the attackers and claiming the attacks were revenge for the loss of Baghouz in Syria.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: In their initial probe, the investigators said that the attack was planned locally without any direct involvement of the Islamic State. Zahran once made his cohorts listen to a recording of a purported ISIS official making him the head of the Sri Lankan branch. The investigators believed he lied greatly to others about the extent of his contacts with the group. General Mahesh Senanayake said the attackers utilised the ideology of the Islamic State so it could get the blame.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Ravi Seneviratne, the DIG who leads the Criminal Investigation Department, testified in July that they had no evidence of the group having direct involvement. Seneviratne added that the NTJ was inspired by its ideology, but its members had convinced the group through Indonesian intermediaries to take responsibility two days after the attacks.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: The trial of the 25 men accused of masterminding the bombings began in November 2021. The men face over 23,000 charges, including conspiracy to murder, aiding and abetting the attacks, and collecting arms and ammunition.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: The Inspector General of Police, Pujith Jayasundara, came under heavy criticism following the bombings, with the United People's Freedom Alliance urging that he resign for failing to prevent the bombings. Later, former presidential candidate Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka claimed it was unfair to blame the IGP and that it was a conflict between the functioning of military intelligence and criminal investigators, and called for better intelligence mechanisms and security clearances to be streamlined.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: In a speech delivered in parliament, former president and then-opposition leader Mahinda Rajapaksa slammed the government for weakening the intelligence services over the years. He stated that in January 2015, he handed over a secure and peaceful country with a strong national security apparatus. He claimed the present government is squarely responsible for the 2019 Easter bombings, stating that on an important occasion such as Easter, representatives of the government usually attend Mass; on this occasion, no representatives were present in or near churches. He blamed the government for diluting the powers of the national security apparatus and claimed this terrorist attack would never have occurred under his administration. Additionally, the government was preparing to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act; he questioned what kind of position the government would have been in to respond to the incident had they been successful in having the Act repealed.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: On 24 April 2019, President Sirisena promised major changes to the leadership of the security forces within the next 24 hours and pledged a "complete restructure" of the police and national security forces in the coming weeks. These changes come amidst allegations that a rift between the President and Prime Minister contributed to the failure to effectively respond to threats that undermine national security. The incident also caused a major setback for the government and for other political parties just before the 2019 Sri Lankan presidential election.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Cabinet Spokesman Rajitha Senaratne initially attempted to implicate Gotabaya Rajapaksa for the bombings, claiming that Abdul Razilk was a suicide bomber and the secretary of the NTJ that received funding from intelligence agencies during the Rajapaksa government. Razik however is the general secretary of the Ceylon Thowheed Jama’ath (CTJ), one of the splinter groups from Sri Lanka Thawheed Jama’ath (SLTJ) of which he was the former general secretary and is neither a member of the NTJ nor a suicide bomber. Razik challenged Rajitha to provide evidence for the allegations.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe later apologised for failing to stop the attacks, issuing a statement on Twitter saying "We take collective responsibility and apologise to our fellow citizens for our failure to protect victims of these tragic events. We pledge to rebuild our churches, revive our economy, and take all measures to prevent terrorism, with the support of the international community."


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: President Maithripala Sirisena attempted to connect International drug syndicates to the bombings to justify his campaign to implement the death penalty to drug dealers, but Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe disputed the president's claims.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: In November 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who campaigned on stronger security measures to prevent a re-occurrence of the Easter bombings, was elected president.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: On 23 April, President Sirisena announced plans to change the heads of the defence forces. On 25 April, Hemasiri Fernando, Secretary of the Ministry of Defence tendered his resignation to the President after it was announced that President Sirisena had requested the Defence Secretary and the Inspector General of Police resign. Retired General Shantha Kottegoda was appointed to succeed Fernando as Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, while retired IGP N. K. Illangakoon was appointed adviser to the Ministry of Defence.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Although President Sirisena announced on 25 April that the Inspector General of Police, Pujith Jayasundara would be resigning, Jayasundara made no public comment. On 29 April, the IGP was sent on compulsory leave after no response was received to President Sirisena's request for his resignation. The President lacks jurisdiction to dismiss the IGP, as he was appointed by a decision by the Constitutional Council and can only be removed by a motion passed in Parliament pursuant to the Public Officers (Procedure) Act, which requires the precise circumstances of the charges and/or allegations against him to be detailed and presented. The Police Commission still maintains jurisdiction to overturn the decision to send the IGP on compulsory leave. The same day, Senior Deputy Inspector General of Police C. D. Wickramaratne was appointed as the Acting Inspector General of Police and General Shantha Kottegoda was appointed Defence Secretary. On 13 May, the Constitutional Council endorsed the appointment of C. D. Wickramaratne as Acting IGP. This is considered final and conclusive for all purposes, as neither the National Police Commission or the Supreme Court have jurisdictional oversight to reverse this decision.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Following calls for the resignation of Minister of Industry and Commerce, Rishad Bathiudeen and Provençal Governors Azath Salley and M. L. A. M. Hizbullah; including a fast carried-out by Member of Parliament, Venerable Athuraliye Rathana Thero, Governor of Western Province Azath Salley and Governor of Eastern Province M. L. A. M. Hizbullah tendered their resignations to President Sirisena, who had appointed both in January 2019, on June 3.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Sisira Mendis, Chief of National Intelligence (CNI) resigned citing health reasons, on 8 June 2019, days after giving testimony that the Parliamentary Select Committee to inquire into the Easter bombings which had outraged President Sirisena. He was succeeded by Major General Jeewaka Ruwan Kulatunga as CNI.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Tourism in Sri Lanka is the country's third largest foreign exchange earner and employs around 135,000 to 150,000 in the hotel industry. The industry had expected 3 million tourist arrivals and revenue of $5 billion in 2019. Due to the attack on tourists, The Hotels Association of Sri Lanka estimated a loss of $1.5 billion in tourism earnings for the year.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: The government's plan to grant visa-on-arrival to visitors from 39 countries has been suspended due to the current security situation.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: In early June, in a leaked confidential assessment of the economic damage by the Easter Sunday attacks, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka claimed that the loss of government revenue from indirect tax such as VAT was approximately Rupees 26 billion for the year. It cited a major impact on the country's trade deficit of the balance of payments, which would be affected badly due to the negative impact on tourism. It stated further that many foreign direct investments have been postponed.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Despite the downfall in number of foreign tourist arrivals following the Easter Sunday attacks, "Lonely Planet" continued to hail the island as a "top destination for 2019". The Sri Lankan hotel sector was engaged in rebuilding process and strived to recover afterwards.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Government Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka called for the Batticaloa Campus and Islamic study centres in Beruwala, Maharagama, Trincomalee and Addalachchenai to be brought under the control and supervision of the University Grants Commission and the Education Ministry.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: On 27 April 2019, Sri Lanka Cricket called off an under-19 tour of the country by the Pakistan cricket team, scheduled to take place in May, saying "we didn't want to take any chances".


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Islamic channel Peace TV, which is run by preacher and televangelist Zakir Naik, was officially banned in the country by the main satellite cable operators Dialog TV, PEO TV and Lanka Broadband Network following the attacks even before the governmental intervention. Two hundred Muslim clerics were expelled from the country.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Following the attack, calls have been made to introduce legislation to prevent the possible future occurrence of such attacks. The government called for the swift enactment of the proposed "Counter Terrorism Act," replacing the existing "Prevention of Terrorism Act".


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: The Ministry for Muslim Religious and Cultural Affairs has proposed the "Madrasa Education Regulatory Act" to establish a Board under the Ministry for ""regulation, registration, supervision, control and development of education within Madrasas in Sri Lanka""


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Minister of Home Affairs Vajira Abeywardena stated that legislation introduced between 2010 and 2015 has "given effect to aspects of Sharia law or Islamic law" with non-governmental organisations registering under these. He stated that these parliamentary acts will be reviewed.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: The government has stated that the Ministry of Home Affairs will issue a circular calling for the removal of all signage displayed in the Arabic language. This follows a statement by the Prime Minister which stated that all street name boards in the island should only be in Sinhalese, Tamil and English.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: The Prime Minister has stated that the "Muslim Marriage and Divorce Act" will be amended to include a minimum age of marriage of 18 years to the traditional Muslim law, which had been criticised for lacking a minimum age of marriage, resulting in underage marriages.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: The 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign 2nd leg clash between Sri Lanka and Macau was unable to take part as the Macanese squad refused to travel to Sri Lanka amidst the concern after the Easter bombings. FIFA subsequently forfeited the match and awarded a 3–0 win to Sri Lanka, thus qualified the team to the second round.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Leaders of the country condemned the attacks: President Maithripala Sirisena said "I have given instructions to take very stern action against the persons who are responsible for this conspiracy"; the Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said "I strongly condemn the cowardly attacks on our people today"; Opposition Leader and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa called the attacks "absolutely barbaric" and said that the nation will stand united as one against "acts of terrorism"; and Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera described the attacks as a "well co-ordinated attempt to create murder, mayhem and anarchy".


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, said "It's a very very sad day for all of us. I wish therefore to express my deepest sorrow and sympathy [...] I condemn to the utmost of my capacity this act that has caused so much death and suffering to the people." Following the attack, the Archbishop's House in Colombo cancelled all Catholic Easter services planned for the evening of Easter Sunday. The cardinal lauded the fact that in the aftermath of the attacks, relations with Muslims were not strained. "Some of the people who helped us in this situation, who helped these families, were Muslims. They gave us a lot of money. They came and cried with us. And in fact, they and we feel that the people of religion are being pitted one against the other in order to gain political advantage. So, we have to be very clear about identifying who is behind this whole attempt and avoid falling into the trap of inter-religious violence."


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: On 28 April 2019 a public litigation activist, Nagananda Kodituwakku, stated that the negligence leading to the attack is in violation of the Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code and has filed a Fundamental Rights petition directing the Attorney General to institute criminal action against the country's senior political, civil and security officials, including President Maithripala Sirisena and former president and MP Mahinda Rajapakse, for their alleged negligence over the Easter Sunday bombings.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Numerous world leaders expressed condolences and condemnation. President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani referred to the bombings as an act of genocide.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: After the bombings, numerous buildings around the world were illuminated in Sri Lanka's colours, some of which included the Flinders Street railway station in Melbourne, the Opera House in Sydney, the Victoria Bridge in Brisbane, the Finlandia Hall in Helsinki, the Northern Spire Bridge and Penshaw Monument in Sunderland, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Emirates Palace, ADNOC Headquarters, Capital Gate and Marina Mall in Abu Dhabi, the City Hall in Tel Aviv, the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg, and the Sky Tower in Auckland. The Eiffel Tower in Paris went dark as a memorial for the victims of the bombings.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: The New York Stock Exchange paused for a moment of silence before the opening bell on the day after the attacks. Real Madrid C.F. also had a moment of silence before the La Liga match on the night of the attacks. Candlelight vigils were held and flags were also flown at half-mast around the world including in Pakistan, Canada, Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Representatives and leaders of the main world religions responded with prayers and support for the victims.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Pope Francis pledged his closeness and solidarity after the attacks during his "Urbi et Orbi" address in St. Peter's Square. The following day, he urged the international community to help Sri Lanka, and called on them to condemn terrorist acts. In 2022, following a visit by Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith and a delegation of survivors and families of victims to Rome, Pope Francis asked the Sri Lankan government to do its best to find those responsible for the bombings: "Please and for the sake of justice, for the sake of your people, that it be made clear once and for all who was responsible".


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, a 57-member state international body, strongly condemned the terrorist acts, and called for international solidarity in the fight against terrorism.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Myanmar, the President of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conference (FABC) and Cardinal Oswald Gracias of India, the President of Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) also condemned the attacks.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: The World Council of Churches, an ecumenical body representing several major Christian traditions, expressed sentiments of solidarity with the Christians of Sri Lanka.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: Condolences for the those affected and condemnations of the attacks were variously offered by the leaders of Anglican, Latter-day Saint, Methodist, Orthodox, Evangelical, and Reformed churches, as well as Muslim and Jewish congregations.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: All Ceylon Jamiyyathul Ulama, a council of Muslim theologians, sent condolences. Several theologians met with Malcolm Ranjith, the Archbishop of Colombo, following the attacks. The National Shoora Council, composed of eighteen Muslim organisations, also expressed condolences.


title: 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings

text: On 28 May 2019, a mosque belonging to the NTJ was intentionally destroyed by the Muslim civilians in the Kekirawa community, which included the chief of a neighbouring mosque. The structure was purportedly built using foreign funds.


title: G2A

text: G2A.COM Limited (commonly referred to as G2A) is a digital marketplace headquartered in the Netherlands, with offices in Poland and Hong Kong. The site specializes in the resale of gaming products by the use of redemption keys. Other products sold on the site include software, prepaid activation codes, electronics, and merchandise. As of March 2020, G2A's site has over 20 million users.


title: G2A

text: The company was established in 2010 as Go2Arena by Bartosz Skwarczek and Dawid Rożek in Rzeszów, Poland.


title: G2A

text: The G2A Marketplace was launched in 2014. G2A PAY, the site's online payment gateway, was introduced in January 2015. G2A would also partner with BitPay, a U.S.-based payment processing system for Bitcoin.


title: G2A

text: In 2016, G2A announced a partnership with WebMoney Japan. In July, G2A launched G2A Direct, a partnership program for video game developers and publishers. That December, G2A became the title sponsor of the Exhibition & Congress Center in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship of Poland, located next to Rzeszów International Airport, which would be renamed as the G2A Arena.


title: G2A

text: In 2017, G2A announced a partnership with Microsoft to utilize the latter's Azure cloud technology for the G2A marketplace.


title: G2A

text: In 2018, G2A integrated Nexmo's two-factor authentication API. In July, electronics and merchandise were introduced to the site.


title: G2A

text: In 2015, G2A launched its first virtual reality application called G2A Land, a virtual amusement park. G2A Land would later launch on Oculus Rift in 2017, and in 2018, the app would change its name to Funland.


title: G2A

text: In 2016, G2A and MSI created Gotham VR, a virtual reality promotion for "". In December of that year, G2A announced "Blunt Force", a World War II-themed VR shooter game developed in collaboration with Mark Bristol.


title: G2A

text: In February 2018, G2A Dev Studio, which was responsible for VR projects, became an independent video game studio called Monad Rock.


title: G2A

text: From 2014 to 2019, G2A would establish partnerships with esports teams, such as Cloud9, Natus Vincere, Virtus Pro, and Polish esports organization x-Kom AGO.


title: G2A

text: In May 2017, G2A organized a bootcamp for Virtus.pro and Natus Vincere in Rzeszów, Poland. In addition to training sessions, there was also a show match between the teams. A meet and greet with fans also took place in Millenium Hall, one of Rzeszów's largest malls. Piotr "izak" Skowyrski, a native esports commentator, served as the host of the meet and greet event, as well as a commentator of match streams.


title: G2A

text: The EU-based Team Atlantis would join in November 2019, while the Polish Illuminar Gaming and Arcane Wave joined in March 2020.


title: G2A

text: G2A has been subject to numerous controversies. Critics have labeled the website as a "grey marketplace", where users can resell keys bought at a lower price from one region to another at a much higher price.<ref><nowiki>


title: Peninsular Malaysia

text: Peninsular Malaysia (; Jawi: سمننجڠ مليسيا), historically known as Malaya (; Jawi: تانه ملايو), also known as West Malaysia or the Malaysian Peninsula, is the part of Malaysia that occupies the southern half of the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia and the nearby islands. Its area totals , which is nearly 40% of the total area of the country; the other 60% is in East Malaysia. For comparison, it is slightly larger than England (130,395 km). It shares a land border with Thailand to the north and a maritime border with Singapore to the south.


title: Peninsular Malaysia

text: Across the Strait of Malacca to the west lies the island of Sumatra, and across the South China Sea to the east lie the Natuna Islands of Indonesia. At its southern tip, across the Strait of Johor, lies the island country of Singapore. Peninsular Malaysia accounts for the majority (roughly 81.3%) of Malaysia's population and economy; as of 2017, its population was roughly 26 million (82% of the total population).


title: Peninsular Malaysia

text: Peninsular Malaysia consists of 11 out of the 13 states, and two out of the three federal territories of Malaysia, which includes the national capital of Kuala Lumpur. The states are listed as the following:


title: Peninsular Malaysia

text: Originally comprising the states and territories of the Federation of Malaya, the then Federation merged with the self-governing State of Singapore and the British Colonies of North Borneo (now known as Sabah) and Sarawak under the Malaysia Agreement as the States of Malaya, the Borneo States of Sabah and Sarawak, and the State of Singapore of the new Federation called Malaysia. The merger was initially proposed in order to reunify Singapore with its hinterland in the Federation as they were originally associated under British Malaya but later separated with the formation of the Malayan Union. Even when the Malayan Union transformed into the Federation of Malaya, Singapore was still left out. Although politically distinct, Malaya was still seen geographically as comprising the States of the Federation of Malaya in the Peninsula and Singapore. In order to facilitate merger, the Borneo States (which initially included Brunei) were brought in as it was believed that with the inclusion of the various ethnic groups in Borneo, the racial arithmetic would be offset such that the influx of chinese from Singapore would not politically overwhelm Malaya. Ultimately, Singapore opted not to have complete merger with Malaya so as to gain autonomy in labour, education and health unlike the other states in the Federation of Malaya. In exchange, Singapore received underproportioned representation in the House of Representatives of Parliament. Singapore was seen as having a special status (similar to Northern Ireland in the scheme of the United Kingdom) and was thus not grouped with the other states in the Peninsula. Legally, Malaya geographically comprises of the States of Malaya and Singapore. Although Singapore left the Federation 2 years later in 1965, the Interpretation Act 1965 of the Parliament of Singapore still defines Malaya as comprising the States of Malaya and Singapore. Today, the States of Malaya are colloquially referred to as Peninsular Malaysia and West Malaysia.


title: Peninsular Malaysia

text: States of Malaya/Peninsular Malaysia comprises the States of Johor, Kedah, Kelantan, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan, Pahang, Penang, Perak, Perlis, Selangor, and Terengganu, as well as the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya.


title: Peninsular Malaysia

text: Malay Peninsula comprises the southern tip of Myanmar, southern Thailand, the States of Malaya and Singapore.


title: Peninsular Malaysia

text: The majority of people on Peninsular Malaysia are ethnic Malays, predominantly Muslim. Large Chinese and Indian populations exist. The Orang Asli are the indigenous people of Peninsular Malaysia; they number around 140,000 and mostly live in inland parts of the region.


title: Peninsular Malaysia

text: The term East Coast (; Jawi: ڤنتاي تيمور) is particularly used in Malaysia to describe the following states in Peninsular Malaysia facing the South China Sea, a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean:


title: Peninsular Malaysia

text: The term West Coast (; Jawi: ڤنتاي بارت) refers informally to a collection of states in Peninsular Malaysia situated towards the western coast generally facing the Strait of Malacca which is a component of the Indian Ocean, as opposed to the East Coast. Unlike the East Coast, the West Coast is partitioned further into three regions (as seen in #States and territories), including:


title: Peninsular Malaysia

text: Even though Johor has a coastline facing the South China Sea on the Pacific Ocean, it is not generally regarded as an East Coast state, since the main coastline of the state is located on the Straits of Johor of the Indian Ocean.


title: Peninsular Malaysia

text: The distinction between West and East Malaysia (Sabah and Sarawak) goes beyond the sphere of geography. Being separate regions administratively before the formation of the Malaysia, there exists more autonomy than the original States of Malaya, e.g. in having a different judicial court structure and separate immigration regulations. These rights were granted as part of Sarawak's 18-point agreement and Sabah's 20-point agreement with the Federation of Malaya during the formation of expanded federation.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: Raavanan is a 2010 Indian Tamil-language epic action-adventure film co-written, co-produced, and directed by Mani Ratnam.The film stars Vikram, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Prithviraj Sukumaran with a supporting cast led by Karthik, Prabhu Ganeshan and Priyamani. It marked Aishwarya Rai’s return to Tamil after a decade gap, since her last Tamil film, "Kandukondain Kandukondain" (2000). The film follows the crux of the epic Ramayana, with a ruthless cop named Dev Prakash Subramaniam, who is on a quest to find a tribal leader-turned naxalite named Veeraiya as he had kidnapped his wife Raagini, who is suffering from Stockholm syndrome and begins to develop emotions for Veeraiya after learning his purpose.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: "Raavanan" was announced in February 2008, amidst much hype of the celebrated director, Mani Ratnam's return to Tamil films, whilst Vikram's and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's casting creating more anticipation. Shooting began soon after, and took place in various locations with a record number of extras in areas including Chalakudy, Kerala and Ooty, Tamil Nadu amongst other regions throughout India. The film's music was composed by A. R. Rahman, with lyrics written by Vairamuthu, the cinematography was handled by V. Manikandan and Santhosh Sivan, and editing done by A. Sreekar Prasad.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: The film was also made simultaneously in Hindi as "Raavan", with Abhishek Bachchan reprising Vikram's role and Vikram playing the protagonist, while Aishwarya Rai reprises her role from the original. Furthermore, the film was dubbed in Telugu as "Villain". All the three versions were released simultaneously on 18 June 2010 worldwide.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: A naxalite named Veeraiya and his gang are busy distracting the cops, where police vehicles are set ablaze and women seduce cops into a trap whereby Veera's henchmen attacks and brutally kill them. Whilst on a boating trip, Raagini is kidnapped by Veera, where her husband ASP Dev Prakash Subramaniam, is informed of the incident. It is revealed that Veera is a local hero in his village, who runs a parallel government in rural areas near Tirunelveli, with his brothers – Singarasu and Sakkarai. Though considered a naxalite by the local police, Veera is respected by the villagers. He kidnaps Raagini hoping to avenge the death of his sister Vennila, where he brings her to a cliff to kill her. She refuses to die at his hands and jumps off the cliff into the water far below, hoping to kill herself, but to no avail.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: This causes Veera to hold off the murder, being unable to kill someone who has no fear of death. Dev and his team enter the forests with the aid of Gnanaprakasam, a local forest guard. Despite searching deep in the forests, Dev is unable to hunt down Veera. Meanwhile, Raagini (who is actually suffering from Stockholm Syndrome) learns that Dev had led an encounter against Veera during Vennila's wedding, where his shot grazes Veera in the neck. Fighting for his life, Veera is unable to protect his sister and is led out of the fiasco by his gang. The police pressurise Vennila into revealing Veera's hideout. When she refuses, she was subjected to torture and was assaulted by the cops. Veera returned home to find Vennila depressed and traumatised. The next day, Vennila committed suicide by drowning in a nearby well. Unhappy with the ways of leading the war causing distress to his gang, Sakkarai offers a truce to Dev, who initially seems to agree.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: When Sakkarai arrives from his hideout, Dev shoots him to death revealing that he considers the destruction of Veera as more important than saving Raagini. Veera and Singarasu are enraged and attack Dev's camp where they wipe out completely. A final confrontation ensues between Veera and Dev on a rickety bridge where Veera triumphs over Dev, but leaves him as Dev told that he is leaving him alive because of Raagini. Dev manages to extricate himself out and finds Raagini bound and tied up, with Veera leaving her. While returning to their hometown in Tiruchirappalli, Dev accuses Raagini of infidelity and informs her that Veera actually told him. Furious, Raagini leaves Dev to meet Veera through Singarasu, where she manages to meet him and asks him about the accusation. Veera denies the accusation, where the duo quickly realises that Dev lied, hoping Raagini would lead him to his hideout. Dev appears with a police team and confronts Veera. Raagini tries to save Veera, but he pushes her out of the line of fire, and is shot multiple times, where Veera falls to his death with a smile while Ragini is distraught.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: During the making of his 2007 biopic "Guru" starring Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Mani Ratnam had finalised a script for his next directorial venture titled "Lajjo". Based on a short story by Ismat Chughtai, it was a musical period film set in the desert and was to star Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor in the lead. Though the film was slated to go on floors after the release of the former, there were reports of a fall-out between Ratnam and Khan due to creative differences. While cinematographer P. C. Sreeram denied the reports, the film's would-be lyricist Gulzar said there were actually problems with acquiring the copyright of the story, and composer A. R. Rahman even confirmed to having completed 80% of the film score. Yet, the project was put on the back burner for reasons unknown.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: Following the critical and commercial success of "Guru", Ratnam announced his next film in February 2008. A modern-day retelling of the mythological epic "Ramayana", the film again features the real life couple in the lead. The film was initially planned to be made only in Hindi and the idea for the Tamil version came later. In January 2009, while the film was in the making, it was further decided to dub the Tamil version to Telugu making it a tri-lingual. While the film was yet to be titled, it was widely reported in the media that the Tamil version was titled "Ashokavanam" in reference to the place where Sita was held captive by Ravana. Further reports emerged stating that since director Kasthuri Raja has already registered the title for his project, Ratnam has requested him for using the title. Later, Vikram, the lead actor, clarified in an interview that the film was tentatively titled "Ravana" but was wrongly reported as "Ashokavanam". Subsequently, the film was titled "Raavan" in Hindi, "Raavanan" in Tamil and "Villain" in Telugu.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: While the plot is inspired by "Ramayana", the story is narrated from Ravana's perspective making him the protagonist. The film is centered on the 'Ashokavanam' episode where Ravana kidnaps Sita and keeps her in Asokavanam. Later Rama ventures to save his wife and bring her back.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: While Bachchan and Vikram were roped in for the contrasting leads in Hindi, Ratnam asked them to swap roles in Tamil. Though Bachchan agreed initially, he grew sceptical being unfamiliar with the language. Eventually Prithviraj was cast in his place. Rai plays the female lead in both versions of the film. After a brief hiatus, Karthik made a comeback with this film, collaborating with Ratnam for the third time after "Mouna Ragam" and "Agni Natchathiram". Prabhu was cast in a prominent role, joining hands with Ratnam after "Agni Natchathiram" and "Anjali". While Priyamani was cast as Ravana's sister, Munna was signed up to play a role synonymous with Vibhishana. Bipasha Basu was to play the role of Mandodari, which was later scrapped to keep the film short. Likewise, singer Vidya Rao's role as the mother of Aishwarya Rai's character was also cut from the final version. Comedian Vaiyapuri plays a transgender.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: The cinematography was initially handled by V. Manikandan, but it was later taken over by Santosh Sivan, when the former left the project. The editing was done by Ratnam's regular, Sreekar Prasad, since "Alaipayuthey". Rai's costumes were exclusively designed by fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee. Choreography was by Ganesh Acharya, Brinda, Shobana, and Astad Deboo. Peter Hein and Shyam Koushal choreographed the action sequences and Samir Chanda took care of production design.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: The film was predominantly shot outdoors in various hitherto unseen locations in and around India. Shooting took place at Tumkur (Karnataka), Orchha near Jhansi and the forests of Madhya Pradesh, Mahabaleshwar in Maharashtra. It was also reported that Ratnam had planned to shoot at Sri Lanka but decided against it owing to insurgency by the rebel group LTTE. But Ratnam dismissed the reports as rumours.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: Principal photography commenced in October 2008, in the forests near Kochi, Kerala. A few scenes were filmed at Athirappilly Falls, Ratnam's favourite location. Incidentally, he has shot for the songs 'Jiya Jale' in "Dil Se.." and 'Barso Re' in "Guru" at the same location. Forest officials banned the shooting at Malayattoor, an eco-tourism centre, for violating rules and constructing temporary huts, delaying the shoot for 11 days until the issues were resolved on 22 October 2008, while laying down reworked rules. The second leg of the shooting at Ooty that began in December 2008 was also delayed as local cab drivers protested the use of film federation (FEFSI) vehicles which affected their business, forcing a dejected Ratnam to call off the shoot temporarily and move on to Hogenakkal Falls. In February 2009, the crew advanced to Kolkata where the song 'Kalvare' was shot by the banks of Hooghly at Agarpara. Later, as the shooting resumed and progressed at Ooty, Ratnam fell ill in April 2009 and was hospitalised at Apollo Hospitals, causing a further delay of 47 days until filming resumed in June 2009 following his recovery. As the numerous delays affected his other projects, DOP Manikandan walked out in May and was replaced by Santosh Sivan. By July, the crew moved back to Kerala, to reshoot a few scenes at Chalakudy as Ratnam was reportedly unsatisfied after seeing the rushes. This time around, heavy rains played spoilsport leading to another delay in filming. Moreover, when an elephant brought for the shoot ran amok killing the mahout, the Animal Welfare Board served a show cause notice to the production company (Madras Talkies) for not taking permission to use elephants.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: The film began its last schedule in August 2009 at the Malshej Ghats in Maharashtra where the climax sequence was shot, the final encounter taking place on a wooden bridge. Production designer Samir Chanda built three identical bridges to facilitate the scene to be captured from different angles. Though initially planned to be built either in Sri Lanka, Australia or South Africa, the bridge was constructed in Mumbai to reduce costs. While bad weather and heavy rains disrupted shoot for a few days, the forest department filed cases against some crew members for trespassing. The film went into post-production by the end of 2009.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: Numerous action sequences were performed by the actors. The actors suffered from real cuts and bruises so they didn't need make up. For his introduction scene, the protagonist has to jump from a 90-foot high cliff near the Hogenakkal Falls into the river below. This risky dive was performed by a body double, Balram, a Bangalore based former national diving champion. Kalarippayattu, a martial art form originating from Kerala, was also featured in the film. Sunil Kumar, a Kalari gym trainer from Kozhikode, trained the actors. Contemporary dancer Astad Deboo choreographed a stunt scene for the film.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: Vikram got his hair cropped short for his look and it was kept under wraps until the release. Supporting actor Munna tonsured his head and went bald for a scene. Rai was training in Tamil to voice her lines. While Ratnam was impressed with her Tamil and had planned to let her dub, actress Rohini, who had earlier dubbed for Rai in "Iruvar" and "Guru", ended up lending her voice.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: Mani Ratnam's norm composer A. R. Rahman, was roped in to compose the film's soundtrack, collaborating with actor Vikram after a gap of 16 years, since "Pudhiya Mannargal" (1994). The soundtrack album which was released by Sony Music on 28 May 2010, features six songs with lyrics penned by Vairamuthu, except for the song "Veera", which was penned by Mani Ratnam himself. The same soundtrack was used for the Hindi version of the film, titled "Raavan", and the dubbed Telugu version of the film "Villain", with the lyrics for the former was penned by Gulzar and the latter was penned by Veturi, which is his last work before his death in May 2010. While the audio rights of both Tamil and dubbed Telugu version was released by Sony Music, the Hindi version was released by T-Series. While the album has six songs in total, five additional songs, which were featured in the movie was released as a collectors's edition special pack on 10 November 2010.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: A 10 min teaser was released for a promo event. The film look was unveiled at Cannes Film Festival. "Villain" promotion in Andhra.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: The film screened at 67th Venice Film Festival. The film was well received at Venice where the audience gave it a thunderous applause after it was screened. The master filmmaker was honoured with the Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award, an award shared by the likes of legends like Takeshi Kitano, Abbas Kiarostami and Sylvester Stallone. Later, the film has been screened at the 15th Busan International Film Festival. Indian Panorama Film Festival. The film was premiered at the 10th Annual Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council Film Festival in New York City. "Jim Luce" praised mani ratnam's work and mentioned 'Raavanan is a must see international film of 2010. 29th San Francisco Asian American Film Festival.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: Prior to its release, the film was given a "U" (Universal) certificate by the Central Board of Film Certification without cuts. "Raavanan" released in 375 screens worldwide. The overseas distribution rights of "Raavanan" was sold for a record price of $1.5 million to Ayngaran International. "Raavanan" was previewed at the Devi-Sri Devi Cinema Complex in Chennai, where it received a standing ovation by film personalities including Rajinikanth. The film was also previewed at INOX and was attended by celebrities from tinsel town. It was released worldwide on 18 June 2010, in 375 Screens (225 Screens in India and 150 Screens Overseas). 'The Telugu version "Villain" released with 215 screens in Andhra and 25 screens overseas. In the US, it was distributed by Big Cinemas. The satellite rights for the film were acquired by Raj TV for $1.1 million.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: The film received mixed reviews. Malathi Rangarajan of "The Hindu" called "Ravanan" a "masterstroke". A. Srivathsan said that it was "Rai's most genuine performance till date". Deepak Kumaar's review. Hindustan Times review. The CNN-IBN stated that "The film is certainly not the best from Mani Ratnam's Madras Talkies, but it can't be dismissed as shabby. Even if this Raavanan has no shades of grey, overall the film falls under the greyish form of art from Mani Ratnam enterprises, and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan plays the strong woman who does not fear her kidnapper. Her performance is worth a mention but her male co-stars steal the show". IANS praises Mani Ratnam's style, but calls some of the performances "inadequate". Twitch Film review. Madurai Messenger review. Rai's performance was also noted as a highlight of the film according to Rediff, with her performance placing her in a "different league" than other Bollywood actresses. Indiaglitz praised the music, cast, dialogues and cinematography, but stated that the first half was "an utter waste of film reels". The cinematography was called "brilliant" by Behindwoods, although they found a "lack of 'Tamil' feel in the film and its music". Sify rated the film as above average and noted "the film's best-written role, Aishwarya Rai has made a sensational comeback as Ragini, is mesmeric and has come out with an award-winning performance. Prithviraj is the ideal foil for Vikram, and is good. The movie lacks the Mani Ratnam touch in the story and screenplay department, and has a wobbly first half, where the story just does not move. The last 10 minutes are the best part of this 2 hours 7 minutes film". Film critic Sudhish Kamath review. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 67% approval rating, based on 18 reviews with an average score of 6.02/10.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: The Tamil version was regarded as the better version of the film in comparison to the Hindi version "Raavan", with critics particularly applauding the lead performances and the technical work of the film.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: Unlike its Hindi counterpart, which tanked at the box office, the Tamil version tasted success in the South. During its opening weekend on 15 screens in Chennai, it was the number one film and netted , an opening weekend record then. Though the film opened to packed houses, it slumped a little due to mixed reviews but later picked up following a local holiday. The film collected $8 million at the box office in the first month of release including $400,000 from Kerala. It went on to make over 600 million at the worldwide box office and remained one of the top Tamil grossers of the year. Uk opening weekend. UK boxoffice second week. New York boxoffice.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: It was agreed the film would be screened in Bangalore across 21 screens. When both the versions were screened in more centres, the Karnataka Film Chamber of Commerce (KFCC) approached the court. The film chamber banned the exhibition completely. The Competition Commission of India (CCI), in an interim order, stayed the chamber ban and permitted Reliance Big Entertainment Limited (RBEL) to exhibit the film in 36 cinemas. This order was to be in effect till 22 June 2010.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: The film also created a furore in Sri Lanka. Since Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek and Aishwarya boycotted the IIFA awards that was held in Sri Lanka, the film release was protested and theatres were torched. Films of those who attended IIFA in Sri Lanka were banned in Tamil Nadu.


title: Raavanan (2010 film)

text: "Raavanan" was one among the films shortlisted for India's submission to the Academy Awards. V. Manikandan was nominated for Best Cinematography award in the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA). The film was praised by Indian politician Muthuvel Karunanidhi. The film was added to the Austrian Film Museum. Peter Heins was nominated at the World Stunt Awards.


title: Tamil script

text: The Tamil script ( , ) is an abugida script that is used by Tamils and Tamil speakers in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and elsewhere to write the Tamil language. Certain minority languages such as Saurashtra, Badaga, Irula and Paniya are also written in the Tamil script.


title: Tamil script

text: The Tamil script has 12 vowels (, , "soul-letters"), 18 consonants (, , "body-letters") and one special character, the (, ). is called "அக்கு", "akku" and is classified in Tamil orthography as being neither a consonant nor a vowel. However, it is listed at the end of the vowel set. The script is syllabic, not alphabetic. The complete script, therefore, consists of the 31 letters in their independent form and an additional 216 combinatory letters, for a total of 247 (12+18+216+1) combinations (, , "soul-body-letters") of a consonant and a vowel, a mute consonant or a vowel alone. The combinatory letters are formed by adding a vowel marker to the consonant. Some vowels require the basic shape of the consonant to be altered in a way that is specific to that vowel. Others are written by adding a vowel-specific suffix to the consonant, yet others a prefix and still other vowels require adding both a prefix and a suffix to the consonant. In every case, the vowel marker is different from the standalone character for the vowel.


title: Tamil script

text: The Tamil script, like the other Brahmic scripts, is thought to have evolved from the original Brahmi script. The earliest inscriptions which are accepted examples of Tamil writing date to the Ashokan period. The script used by such inscriptions is commonly known as the Tamil-Brahmi or "Tamili script" and differs in many ways from standard Ashokan Brahmi. For example, early Tamil-Brahmi, unlike Ashokan Brahmi, had a system to distinguish between pure consonants ("m", in this example) and consonants with an inherent vowel ("ma", in this example). In addition, according to Iravatham Mahadevan, early Tamil Brahmi used slightly different vowel markers, had extra characters to represent letters not found in Sanskrit and omitted letters for sounds not present in Tamil such as voiced consonants and aspirates. Inscriptions from the 2nd century use a later form of Tamil-Brahmi, which is substantially similar to the writing system described in the "Tolkāppiyam", an ancient Tamil grammar. Most notably, they used the "puḷḷi" to suppress the inherent vowel. The Tamil letters thereafter evolved towards a more rounded form and by the 5th or 6th century, they had reached a form called the "early vaṭṭeḻuttu".


title: Tamil script

text: The modern Tamil script does not, however, descend from that script. In the 4th century, the Pallava dynasty created a new script for Tamil and the Grantha alphabet evolved from it, adding the Vaṭṭeḻuttu alphabet for sounds not found to write Sanskrit. Parallel to Pallava script a new script (Chola-Pallava script, which evolved to modern Tamil script) again emerged in Chola territory resembling the same glyph development like Pallava script, but it did not evolve from that. By the 8th century, the new scripts supplanted Vaṭṭeḻuttu in the Chola resp. Pallava kingdoms which lay in the north portion of the Tamil-speaking region. However, Vaṭṭeḻuttu continued to be used in the southern portion of the Tamil-speaking region, in the Chera and Pandyan kingdoms until the 11th century, when the Pandyan kingdom was conquered by the Cholas.


title: Tamil script

text: With the fall of Pallava kingdom, the Chola dynasty pushed the Chola-Pallava script as the de facto script. Over the next few centuries, the Chola-Pallava script evolved into the modern Tamil script. The Grantha and its parent script influenced the Tamil script notably. The use of palm leaves as the primary medium for writing led to changes in the script. The scribe had to be careful not to pierce the leaves with the stylus while writing because a leaf with a hole was more likely to tear and decay faster. As a result, the use of the "puḷḷi" to distinguish pure consonants became rare, with pure consonants usually being written as if the inherent vowel were present. Similarly, the vowel marker for the "kuṟṟiyal ukaram", a half-rounded "u" which occurs at the end of some words and in the medial position in certain compound words, also fell out of use and was replaced by the marker for the simple "u." The "puḷḷi" did not fully reappear until the introduction of printing, but the marker "kuṟṟiyal ukaram" never came back into use although the sound itself still exists and plays an important role in Tamil prosody.


title: Tamil script

text: The forms of some of the letters were simplified in the 19th century to make the script easier to typeset. In the 20th century, the script was simplified even further in a series of reforms, which regularised the vowel markers used with consonants by eliminating special markers and most irregular forms.


title: Tamil script

text: The Tamil script differs from other Brahmi-derived scripts in a number of ways. Unlike every other Brahmic script, it does not regularly represent voiced or aspirated stop consonants as these are not phonemes of the Tamil language even though voiced and fricative allophones of stops do appear in spoken Tamil. Thus the character "k", for example, represents but can also be pronounced [] or [] based on the rules of Tamil grammar. A separate set of characters appears for these sounds when the Tamil script is used to write Sanskrit or other languages.


title: Tamil script

text: Also unlike other Brahmi scripts, the Tamil script rarely uses typographic ligatures to represent conjunct consonants, which are far less frequent in Tamil than in other Indian languages. Where they occur, conjunct consonants are written by writing the character for the first consonant, adding the "puḷḷi" to suppress its inherent vowel, and then writing the character for the second consonant. There are a few exceptions, namely "kṣa" and "śrī".


title: Tamil script

text: ISO 15919 is an international standard for the transliteration of Tamil and other Indic scripts into Latin characters. It uses diacritics to map the much larger set of Brahmic consonants and vowels to the Latin script.


title: Tamil script

text: Consonants are called the "body" ("mei") letters. The consonants are classified into three categories: "vallinam" (hard consonants), "mellinam" (soft consonants, including all nasals), and "itayinam" (medium consonants).


title: Tamil script

text: There are some lexical rules for the formation of words. The "Tolkāppiyam" describes such rules. Some examples: a word cannot end in certain consonants, and cannot begin with some consonants including r-, l- and ḻ-; there are six nasal consonants in Tamil: a velar nasal ங், a palatal nasal ஞ், a retroflex nasal ண், a dental nasal ந், a bilabial nasal ம், and an alveolar nasal ன்.


title: Tamil script

text: The order of the alphabet (strictly abugida) in Tamil closely matches that of the nearby languages both in location and linguistics, reflecting the common origin of their scripts from Brahmi.


title: Tamil script

text: The Tamil speech has incorporated many phonemes which were not part of the Tolkāppiyam classification. The letters used to write these sounds, known as Grantha, are used as part of Tamil. These are taught from elementary school and incorporated in Tamil All Character Encoding (TACE16).


title: Tamil script

text: In recent times combinations of consonants with (, , equivalent to nuqta) are generally used to represent phonemes of foreign languages, especially to write Islamic and Christian texts. For example: asif = , azārutīn̠ = , Genghis Khan = .


title: Tamil script

text: A nuqta-like diacritic is used while writing the Badaga language and double dot nuqta for the Irula language to transcribe its sounds.


title: Tamil script

text: There has also been effort to differentiate voiced and voiceless consonants through subscripted numbers – two, three, and four which stand for the unvoiced aspirated, voiced, voiced aspirated respectively. This was used to transcribe Sanskrit words in Sanskrit–Tamil books, as shown in the table below.


title: Tamil script

text: Vowels are also called the 'life' ("uyir") or 'soul' letters. Together with the consonants ("mei", which are called 'body' letters), they form compound, syllabic (abugida) letters that are called 'living' or 'embodied' letters ("uyir mei", i.e. letters that have both 'body' and 'soul').


title: Tamil script

text: The special letter , represented by three dots and called "" or "akh". It traditionally served a purely grammatical function, but in modern times it has come to be used as a diacritic to represent foreign sounds. For example, is used for the English sound "f", not found in Tamil.


title: Tamil script

text: Another archaic Tamil letter , represented by a small hollow circle and called "", is the "Anusvara". It was traditionally used as a homorganic nasal when in front of a consonant, and either as a bilabial nasal () or alveolar nasal () at the end of a word, depending on the context.


title: Tamil script

text: The long ("nedil") vowels are about twice as long as the short ("kuṟil") vowels. The diphthongs are usually pronounced about one and a half times as long as the short vowels, though some grammatical texts place them with the long ("nedil") vowels.


title: Tamil script

text: As can be seen in the compound form, the vowel sign can be added to the right, left or both sides of the consonants. It can also form a ligature. These rules are evolving and older use has more ligatures than modern use. What you actually see on this page depends on your font selection; for example, Code2000 will show more ligatures than Latha.


title: Tamil script

text: There are proponents of script reform who want to eliminate all ligatures and let all vowel signs appear on the right side.


title: Tamil script

text: Unicode encodes the character in logical order (always the consonant first), whereas legacy 8-bit encodings (such as TSCII) prefer the written order. This makes it necessary to reorder when converting from one encoding to another; it is not sufficient simply to map one set of code points to the other.


title: Tamil script

text: The following table lists vowel ("uyir" or life) letters across the top and consonant ("mei" or body) letters along the side, the combination of which gives all Tamil compound (uyirmei) letters.


title: Tamil script

text: Apart from the usual numerals (from 0 to 9), Tamil also has numerals for 10, 100 and 1000. Symbols for fraction and other number-based concepts can also be found.


title: Tamil script

text: Tamil script was added to the Unicode Standard in October 1991 with the release of version 1.0.0. The Unicode block for Tamil is U+0B80–U+BFF. Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points. Most of the non-assigned code points are designated reserved because they are in the same relative position as characters assigned in other South Asian script blocks that correspond to phonemes that don't exist in the Tamil script.


title: Tamil script

text: Efforts to unify the Grantha script with Tamil have been made; however the proposals triggered discontent by some. Eventually, considering the sensitivity involved, it was determined that the two scripts should be encoded independently, except for the numerals.


title: Tamil script

text: Proposals to encode characters used for fractional values in traditional accounting practices were submitted. Although discouraged by the ICTA of Sri Lanka, the proposal was recognized by the Government of Tamil Nadu and were added to the Unicode Standard in March 2019 with the release of version 12.0. The Unicode block for Tamil Supplement is U+11FC0–U+11FFF:


title: Tamil script

text: Like other South Asian scripts in Unicode, the Tamil encoding was originally derived from the ISCII standard. Both ISCII and Unicode encode Tamil as an abugida. In an abugida, each basic character represents a consonant and default vowel. Consonants with a different vowel or bare consonants are represented by adding a modifier character to a base character. Each code point representing a similar phoneme is encoded in the same relative position in each South Asian script block in Unicode, including Tamil. Because Unicode represents Tamil as an abugida all the pure consonants (consonants with no associated vowel) and syllables in Tamil can be represented by combining multiple Unicode code points, as can be seen in the Unicode Tamil Syllabary below. In Unicode 5.1, named sequences were added for all Tamil consonants and syllables.


title: Tamil script

text: Unicode 5.1 also has a named sequence for the Tamil ligature SRI ("śrī"), ஶ்ரீ, written using ஶ ("śa"). The name of this sequence is TAMIL SYLLABLE SHRII and is composed of the Unicode sequence U+0BB6 U+0BCD U+0BB0 U+0BC0. The ligature can also be written using ஸ ("sa") to create an identical ligature ஸ்ரீ composed of the Unicode sequence U+0BB8 U+0BCD U+0BB0 U+0BC0; but this is discouraged by the Unicode standard.


title: Amber Liu (singer)

text: Amber Josephine Liu (born September 18, 1992), also known mononymously as Amber, is an American singer, rapper, and songwriter. She debuted as a member of the South Korean girl group f(x) in September 2009. In 2015, she became the first f(x) member to make a solo debut with the release of her first extended play "Beautiful" and has since released solo singles in Korean, English, and Mandarin.


title: Amber Liu (singer)

text: In July 2018, she joined Steel Wool Entertainment following her original label SM Entertainment’s joint partnership with Steel Wool to manage her American activities. In September 2019, she left SM and exclusively signed with Steel Wool prior to the release of her 2020 extended play "X." In May 2021, she also signed with Ryce Entertainment for her activities in China following a successful stint as a mentor in survival show "Produce Camp 2021".


title: Amber Liu (singer)

text: Liu was born on September 18, 1992, in Los Angeles, California. Her parents are from Taiwan and her father has Teochew ancestry. She has one older sister named Jackie. She attended El Camino Real High School in Los Angeles. Liu was cast from SM Entertainment's Los Angeles global audition in 2008, where she and one male were selected to be trainees for SM Entertainment. After a year and a half of training, she debuted as a member of the South Korean girl group f(x) in September 2009. During an episode of the group's reality show, "", Liu revealed that her parents initially had mixed feelings regarding her music career. She stated: "My dad was very cautious, at first ...but then my mom was always supportive from the beginning. I really thank her and she also convinced my dad".


title: Amber Liu (singer)

text: She has composed and written lyrics for some of the group's songs such as "Goodbye Summer" which was a single in their second studio album, "Pink Tape", and "Summer Lover" from their third studio album, "Red Light". Aside from featured songs, she also worked with fellow group mates Luna and Krystal for the soundtrack of KBS drama "God of Study", in a song called "Spread its Wings".


title: Amber Liu (singer)

text: She frequently collaborated with other SM Entertainment artists. Labelmate Yuri of Girls' Generation performed a cover of Ciara's song "1, 2 Step" at their first concert, Into the New World, held on December 19 and 20, 2009 in Seoul and featured her as a rapper and dancer. The song was then included in their first live album. In June 2010, she was featured in the lead single of Taiwanese singer Danson Tang's third Mandarin-language studio album, "The First Second". She performed the Korean and English rap vocals and was also featured in the song's music video.


title: Amber Liu (singer)

text: Liu has also started a career on television. From October 2011 to April 2012, she was part of the reality show "Invincible Youth". She had to leave the show to prepare for f(x)’s debut in Japan. In 2013, she was featured in the Korean version of the title track of Henry's's debut album, called "1-4-3 (I Love You)". She has hosted MBC's music show "Show Champion" with T-ara's Eunjung for a year, both of them stepped down as hosts on December 18, 2013. On June 6, 2014, she became a host of the KBS show, "A Song for You" with Kangin of Super Junior and Yook Sungjae of BTOB. She was also a host of "We Got Married Global Edition". In the same year, she appeared in a 9-episode travel reality series, "One Fine Day", with singer Ailee, who is a close friend of hers. The show, which aired on MBC Music, followed a vacation trip they took and was filmed on Jeju Island. On December 31, Liu was confirmed as a cast member for the second female soldier special of MBC's "Real Men".


title: Amber Liu (singer)

text: Liu officially debuted as a solo artist, releasing her debut EP, "Beautiful", on February 13, 2015. The title track, "Shake That Brass", featured Girls' Generation's Taeyeon. A few days prior to the release of the album, a lyric video for the B-side track, "Beautiful", was released. The music video contained childhood photos of the singer, as well as photos since her debut as a member of f(x). Its lyrics tells the story of the difficulties she faced as she chased after her dreams of being an entertainer and how she liked herself the way she is. "Beautiful" debuted at number two on "Billboard"'s World Albums chart and number 19 on Heatseekers Albums. According to Jeff Benjamin of "Billboard K-Town", this ranking shows Amber has a large international fanbase.


title: Amber Liu (singer)

text: As a part of the SM Station project, Liu's solo single, "Borders", was released in March 2016. She participated in composing, lyrics writing and arrangement of the song. Written entirely in English, the hip hop track relates her childhood experiences and gives a message not to give up on oneself against life difficulties.


title: Amber Liu (singer)

text: Liu released the digital single, “On My Own" on May 18, 2016. On May 25, she released another digital single titled "Need to Feel Needed". On September 9, 2016, SM Entertainment published the official music video for "Breathe Again". This was Liu's first entirely English song and her first collaboration with Japanese DJ, Ksuke. On April 15, 2018, Liu released her first English-language solo mixtape, "Rogue Rouge", with six songs, free on SoundCloud. She also released a music video for one track, "Closed Doors", on YouTube, with plans to release a total of six videos.


title: Amber Liu (singer)

text: In July 2018, she signed with Steel Wool Entertainment and was also registered by her real name. The agency represents and promotes her in the United States through singing, acting, as well as directing videos. Liu is also signed with United Talent Agency to represent her worldwide activities. In September 2018, Liu released a single album "White Noise + Lost At Sea", which includes two songs "White Noise" and "Lost At Sea".


title: Amber Liu (singer)

text: On September 1, 2019, Liu announced her departure from SM Entertainment. Five days later, she confirmed that she would continue forward with her Steel Wool Entertainment contract, and would release an album that she previously prepared with the label. On September 12, Liu announced that she was releasing her second EP, "X", with six tracks. It was later confirmed that she would drop one track each month until the album's release on January 10, 2020.


title: Amber Liu (singer)

text: On January 28, 2021, Liu was confirmed to be a mentor on the fourth season of the Chinese version of Produce 101, titled "Produce Camp 2021", which ran from February until April 2021 and formed the boy group INTO1. On April 5, 2021, Liu announced her third extended play, "y?". Soon after on April 8, 2021, Liu released two versions of her song "Neon": a Mandarin version that featured Chinese hip-hop artist Blow Fever, and an English version featuring Peniel from BtoB with two accompanying music videos that she co-directed. On April 29, 2021, Liu released two more singles from her album "y?": the Mandarin version of "blue" featuring MaSiWei from Higher Brothers, and an English song called "Vegas"; along with music videos for each. On May 27, Liu and Steel Wool signed a partnership with Ryce Entertainment for her solo activities in China.


title: Amber Liu (singer)

text: On September 21, 2021, Liu announced her fourth extended play "Z!", with the first single "Paradise" being released on September 24, and the second single "Bad Decisions" being released on October 29. It was released on February 25, 2022.


title: Vikram Bhatt

text: Vikram Bhatt (born 27 January 1969) is an Indian director, producer, screenwriter and actor. He is best known for directing the "Raaz" film series, an Indian horror series produced by Mahesh Bhatt and Mukesh Bhatt and for directing "Ghulam" (1999) starring Aamir Khan and Rani Mukherji, which was also produced by Mukesh Bhatt. For both of these he was nominated for the Filmfare Award for Best Director.


title: Vikram Bhatt

text: Formerly, he was the creative head of ASA Productions and Enterprises until 2014, when he resigned from the company.


title: Vikram Bhatt

text: Bhatt is the grandson of Vijay Bhatt from (Gujarat, Palitana), one of the pioneers of the Indian film industry, and the son of cinematographer Pravin Bhatt.


title: Vikram Bhatt

text: At the age of 14, in 1982, Bhatt started his career with director Mukul Anand in Anand's first film, "Kanoon Kya Karega". Bhatt also assisted Mukul Anand as the chief assistant on the sets of "Agneepath". This film turned out to be a cult classic, though not very successful at the box office.


title: Vikram Bhatt

text: Subsequently, Bhatt worked with director Shekhar Kapur for two and a half years and later with director Mahesh Bhatt for two years approximately. He has been an assistant director on the sets of several successful films including "Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke" and "Junoon".


title: Vikram Bhatt

text: His career as a director began with the film "Jaanam", which was produced by Mukesh Bhatt. His first four films did not fare well at the box office; his first successful directorial venture was "Fareb". Following this, he had a string of successful films such as "Ghulam", "Kasoor", "Raaz" and "Awara Paagal Deewana". After "Awara Paagal Deewana ", He gave flops like "Aap Mujhe Achche Lagne Lage", "Deewane Huye Paagal" and Ankahee.


title: Vikram Bhatt

text: In 2008, Bhatt came back with the horror genre and he delivered three films that were successful at the box office; these include "1920". "Shaapit" and "Haunted – 3D". In 2010, Bhatt introduced stereoscopic 3D for the first time in India with his film Haunted – 3D; the film was released in May 2011 and it then set the record of the highest grossing Hindi horror film of all time, making Rs. 270 million at the box office.


title: Vikram Bhatt

text: In 2012, Bhatt's Raaz 3D recorded domestic box office collection of 729 million after the 3rd weekend and the overseas collection was at 46 million. Riding high with the success, Bhatt is writing another horror-thriller for Bipasha in the central role, with a more shocking image than Raaz 3. Following the success of Raaz 3, Vikram Bhatt's written Hindi horror movie which has been directed by debutant Bhushan Patel topped the first weekend collection chart at the box office and the approximate collection was Rs 124.3 million nett. The movie further collected approx Rs 37.5 million nett in the second Weekend, taking the total to Rs 228.6 million nett. The film has been declared a 'Hit'. Soon after, Bhatt signed a deal with Bhushan Kumar's T-Series to produce 5 films of sci-fi, thriller and horror genre. Two of the films will be directed by Bhatt himself.


title: Vikram Bhatt

text: In early 2013, Bhatt announced his upcoming projects, Creature 3D, India's First 3D Monster Movie with Bipasha Basu in the lead role and 1920 London, third in the 1920 series. Vikram Bhatt will mark his foray into Marathi cinema with 'Ek Doosrey Ke Liye', which will be directed by Ashwini Kumar Patil.


title: Vikram Bhatt

text: Starting from 16 February 2014, he would be seen hosting the TV Show "Ishq Kills" based on Real Life Romances on Star Plus.


title: Vikram Bhatt

text: Bhatt's movies, 's social media promotion campaign was studied by Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. The management institute assessed Internet activities and campaigns; the team finally establish the connection between box office collections and promotions on social media. This case study is published by Harvard Business Publishing and is being used by students in the US, Canada, Norway, Slovenia and Sri Lanka.


title: Vikram Bhatt

text: Bhatt was married to his childhood sweetheart, Aditi Bhatt (div. 1998), and they have a daughter, Krishna Bhatt. Bhatt shares a great bond with his daughter and she has been assisting him on his sets.


title: Vikram Bhatt

text: Bhatt reportedly dated Ameesha Patel for five years and had also reportedly dated Sushmita Sen sometime in the mid 1990s, after she became Miss Universe 1994. He married art connoisseur Shwetambari Soni in 2020.


title: Vikram Bhatt

text: [https://www.thepersonality.info/2020/07/vikram-bhatt-biographyageincome.html vikram,bhatt-biography[हिंदी<nowiki>]</nowiki>]


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: Elisabeth DelPadre Hasselbeck (; born May 28, 1977) is an American retired television personality and talk show host. Hasselbeck first rose to prominence in 2001 as a contestant on the of the American version of "Survivor", where she finished in fourth place. She married NFL quarterback Tim Hasselbeck the following year.


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: From 2003 to 2013, Hasselbeck appeared as a co-host on the ABC daytime talk show "The View", where she became known for her conservative views on sociopolitical issues. With her co-hosts Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Sherri Shepherd, and Barbara Walters, she was awarded the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host during the 36th Daytime Emmy Awards in 2009. Thereafter, Hasselbeck was a co-host on "Fox & Friends" from 2013 to 2015, and has since retired from television.


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: Elisabeth was born on May 28, 1977, in Cranston, Rhode Island. She is the daughter of architect Kenneth Filarski and school teacher and lawyer Elizabeth DelPadre. Her brother, Kenneth, Jr., is a practicing attorney. Their father is of Polish descent and their mother is of Italian ancestry.


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: Hasselbeck was raised Catholic and attended St. Mary School in Cranston, followed by St. Mary Academy – Bay View in East Providence, where she graduated in 1995. She then attended Boston College, where she captained the women's softball team for two seasons, winning consecutive Big East championships. With a concentration on large scale paintings and industrial design, Hasselbeck graduated with a BFA in 1999. Hasselbeck started working for Puma in 1998, while attending Boston College. After graduation, she worked for Puma shoes as a member of its design team before her television career.


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: In 2001, Hasselbeck (then Elisabeth Filarski) was cast in "", and was originally a member of the Kucha tribe. She avoided being voted out at the first Tribal Council which her tribe attended. She then went on a winning streak but lost once again in episode five, where they voted out Kimmi. In episode six, Hasselbeck's tribemate Michael Skupin fell into the campfire and had to be medically evacuated, therefore sending the Kucha and Ogakor tribes into the merge with five members each. When the merge came, she lasted almost nine hours in the first individual immunity challenge in which contestants had to stand on a perch in the water for as long as possible. When the first vote came, her tribemate Jeff was voted out due to previous votes cast against him. This led to another Kucha member Alicia being voted out and sent to the jury. Filarski was next on the block when the biggest threat in her original tribe, Nick, won immunity, but she swayed the votes of Ogakor members Tina Wesson and Colby Donaldson her way, and had Jerri Manthey voted out. At the final five, her closest ally throughout the entire game, Rodger Bingham, was voted out. She then became the sole remaining Kucha member and was voted out, coming in fourth overall. She was one of four votes for Tina to win. She was one of two people who were asked to return for "" and declined, the other being Colleen Haskell of "."


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: Hasselbeck was a judge at the Miss Teen USA 2001 pageant. From 2002 to 2003, she hosted the Style Network's "The Look for Less" where she helped find stylish clothes for bargain prices.


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: Although Hasselbeck previously saw herself as a "behind the scenes" kind of person and not interested in a career in television, or playing pundit, her agent was eager to showcase her competitive client and she auditioned for "The View" in 2003. Hasselbeck was one of a number of women who guest-hosted to replace outgoing "The View" co-host Lisa Ling, who left the show at the end of 2002. She became a permanent co-host on November 24, 2003.


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: On August 2, 2006, Hasselbeck got into a heated debate in which she strongly opposed the Food and Drug Administration's plan to sell the "morning-after pill" as an over-the-counter drug. Hasselbeck stated, "I believe that life begins at the moment of conception." She said the over-the-counter distribution of the pill should be banned even in cases of rape and incest, because "life still has value." Hasselbeck argued that advocates of the drug use the "rape or incest" exception as a "bait-and-switch" distraction from the goal of making it universally accessible. She argued that if the "rape or incest" exception were all advocates cared about, they would not support its over-the-counter status. On air, moderator Barbara Walters advised Hasselbeck to calm down after she became emotional about the topic. When the live show went to a commercial break, Hasselbeck ripped up her cue cards and stormed off the set. In an expletive-laden off-air conversation picked up on a live mic, Hasselbeck explained to co-host Joy Behar that she did not appreciate being reprimanded on live TV by Walters for being passionate about the topic. She threatened to quit, but producer Bill Geddie convinced her to come back to the set. As the show came back from the break, Walters and Elisabeth appeared together on a couch, awkwardly making up for the situation. Hasselbeck hugged Walters, sat on her lap, and ended up backing off from her threat to quit.


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: On May 23, 2007, Hasselbeck was involved in a heated on-air argument with co-host Rosie O'Donnell concerning the war in Iraq, which she supported and O'Donnell opposed. When O'Donnell asked, "655,000 Iraqi civilians dead. Who are the terrorists?" O'Donnell was criticized by conservative commentators (including Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly) for her question and she (O'Donnell) complained about Hasselbeck's unwillingness to defend O'Donnell's statements in the controversy that followed. Hasselbeck responded "defend your own insinuations," adding that she should not have to defend anyone else's words for them, especially when that person has a forum in which to present a defense.


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: In August 2009, Hasselbeck, along with her co-hosts Goldberg, Joy Behar, Sherri Shepherd, and Barbara Walters, won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Talk Show Host. It follows over a decade of nominations for "The View" with no win. None of the co-hosts of the show was in Los Angeles to collect the award. For the first time, the show had not been nominated for both Outstanding Talk Show and Outstanding Talk Show Host.


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: On March 8, 2013, there were widespread media reports that Hasselbeck was going to be fired from the show, effective at the end of the season, allegedly because of market research polling that showed viewers thought her views were too conservative. However, on the March 11, 2013, episode of the show, Walters said that the rumors were "particularly false" and that there are "no plans for Elisabeth to leave this show".


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: On July 9, 2013, ABC confirmed that Hasselbeck would be leaving "The View" to join "Fox & Friends". Her last day on "The View" was July 10, 2013.


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: Since departing Hasselbeck returned on May 15, 2014 along with other former co-hosts to celebrate Barbara Walters retirement. She returned to the show as a guest on March 26, 2019 where she confirmed for the first time that she had been fired in 2013 On March 11, 2020 Hasselbeck served as a guest co-host. She also returned in August 2022 as a guest-co-host, as part of the show's 25th anniversary season, in which former hosts made return appearances.


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: On September 16, 2013, Hasselbeck joined the Fox News morning show, "Fox & Friends" as a co-host, replacing Gretchen Carlson. By that November, the show's ratings had grown by 9 percent, and increased 10 percent in viewership among people ages 25–54. In November 2015, Hasselbeck announced that she would retire and leave "Fox & Friends" at the end of the year in order to spend more time with her family, saying she wanted to "give them the best of me, not the rest of me". Her final day in Fox News was on December 22, 2015.


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: On July 6, 2002, Hasselbeck married her college boyfriend, professional football quarterback Tim Hasselbeck. They have a daughter, Grace Elisabeth (born in 2005), and two sons, Taylor Thomas (born in 2007), and Isaiah Timothy (born in 2009).


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: Hasselbeck is a Christian, and in August 2014, she condemned the persecution of Christians in Iraq, as well as the removal of Bibles from hotel rooms in the United States. Despite her parents being liberals, Hasselbeck is a Republican. She was a speaker at the Republican National Conventions in both 2004 and 2008. On October 26, 2008, Hasselbeck appeared at Republican rallies in Florida, introducing vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: Hasselbeck is a supporter of breast cancer awareness initiatives in the form of an Internet-only PSA on breast cancer diagnosis.


title: Elisabeth Hasselbeck

text: Hasselbeck stated she is living with celiac disease. She has written a book on the subject, "The G-Free Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide", which has appeared on several best-seller lists. On June 23, 2009, a lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Massachusetts alleging that her book was plagiarized from a self-published book by Susan Hasset. Hasselbeck released a statement calling the allegations baseless. The lawsuit was dismissed in November 2009 when the plaintiff's lawyer declined to pursue it, saying to the press that he believed some degree of plagiarism occurred, but it was not sufficient to justify monetary damages. In 2011, Hasselbeck introduced NoGii, her line of gluten-free nutritional products for children and adults.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of mainland China. The varieties are typically classified into several groups: Mandarin, Wu, Min, Xiang, Gan, Hakka and Yue, though some varieties remain unclassified. These groups are neither clades nor individual languages defined by mutual intelligibility, but reflect common phonological developments from Middle Chinese.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Chinese varieties differ most in their phonology, and to a lesser extent in vocabulary and syntax. Southern varieties tend to have fewer initial consonants than northern and central varieties, but more often preserve the Middle Chinese final consonants. All have phonemic tones, with northern varieties tending to have fewer distinctions than southern ones. Many have tone sandhi, with the most complex patterns in the coastal area from Zhejiang to eastern Guangdong.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Standard Chinese, a form of Mandarin, takes its phonology from the Beijing dialect, with vocabulary from the Mandarin group and grammar based on literature in the modern written vernacular. It is one of the official languages of China.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Taiwanese Mandarin is one of the official languages of Taiwan. Standard Singaporean Mandarin is one of the four official languages of Singapore. Chinese (specifically, Mandarin Chinese) is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: At the end of the 2nd millennium BC, a form of Chinese was spoken in a compact area around the lower Wei River and middle Yellow River. From there it expanded eastwards across the North China Plain to Shandong and then south into the valley of the Yangtze River and beyond to the hills of south China. As the language spread, it replaced formerly dominant languages in those areas, and regional differences grew. Simultaneously, especially in periods of political unity, there was a tendency to promote a central standard to facilitate communication between people from different regions.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: The first evidence of dialectal variation is found in texts from the Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BC). At that time, the Zhou royal domain, though no longer politically powerful, still defined standard speech. The "Fangyan" (early 1st century AD) is devoted to differences in vocabulary between regions. Commentaries from the Eastern Han period (first two centuries AD) contain much evidence of local differences in pronunciation. The "Qieyun" rhyme book (601 AD) noted wide variation in pronunciation between regions, and set out to define a standard pronunciation for reading the classics. This standard, known as Middle Chinese, is believed to be a diasystem based on the reading traditions of northern and southern capitals.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: The North China Plain provided few barriers to migration, leading to relative linguistic homogeneity over a wide area in northern China. In contrast, the mountains and rivers of southern China have spawned the other six major groups of Chinese languages, with great internal diversity, particularly in Fujian.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Until the mid-20th century, most Chinese people spoke only their local language. As a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties, known as "Guānhuà" (官話/官话, literally 'speech of officials'). Knowledge of this language was thus essential for an official career, but it was never formally defined.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: In the early years of the Republic of China, Literary Chinese was replaced as the written standard by written vernacular Chinese, which was based on northern dialects. In the 1930s a standard national language was adopted, with its pronunciation based on the Beijing dialect, but with vocabulary also drawn from other Mandarin varieties. It is the official spoken language of the People's Republic of China and of the Republic of China (Taiwan), and one of the official languages of Singapore.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Standard Mandarin Chinese now dominates public life in mainland China, and is much more widely studied than any other variety of Chinese. Outside China and Taiwan, the only varieties of Chinese commonly taught in university courses are Standard Mandarin and Cantonese.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Chinese has been likened to the Romance languages of Europe, the modern descendants of Latin. In both cases, the ancestral language was spread by imperial expansion over substrate languages 2000 years ago, by the Qin–Han empire in China and the Roman Empire in Europe. In Western Europe, Medieval Latin remained the standard for scholarly and administrative writing for centuries, and influenced local varieties, as did Literary Chinese in China. In both Europe and China, local forms of speech diverged from the written standard and from each other, producing extensive dialect continua, with widely separated varieties being mutually unintelligible.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: On the other hand, there are major differences. In China, political unity was restored in the late 6th century (by the Sui dynasty) and has persisted (with relatively brief interludes of division) until the present day. Meanwhile, Europe remained fragmented and developed numerous independent states. Vernacular writing, facilitated by the alphabet, supplanted Latin, and these states developed their own standard languages. In China, however, Literary Chinese maintained its monopoly on formal writing until the start of the 20th century. The morphosyllabic writing, read with varying local pronunciations, continued to serve as a source of vocabulary and idioms for the local varieties. The new national standard, Vernacular Chinese, the written counterpart of spoken Standard Chinese, is also used as a literary form by literate speakers of all varieties.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Dialectologist Jerry Norman estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum, in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, although there are also some sharp boundaries.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: However, the rate of change in mutual intelligibility varies immensely depending on region. For example, the varieties of Mandarin spoken in all three northeastern Chinese provinces are mutually intelligible, but in the province of Fujian, where Min varieties predominate, the speech of neighbouring counties or even villages may be mutually unintelligible.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Classifications of Chinese varieties in the late 19th century and early 20th century were based on impressionistic criteria. They often followed river systems, which were historically the main routes of migration and communication in southern China. The first scientific classifications, based primarily on the evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials, were produced by Wang Li in 1936 and Li Fang-Kuei in 1937, with minor modifications by other linguists since. The conventionally accepted set of seven dialect groups first appeared in the second edition of Yuan Jiahua's dialectology handbook (1961):


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: The "Language Atlas of China" (1987) follows a classification of Li Rong, distinguishing three further groups:


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect of northwestern Hainan, Waxiang, spoken in a small strip of land in western Hunan, and Shaozhou Tuhua, spoken in the border regions of Guangdong, Hunan, and Guangxi. This region is an area of great linguistic diversity but has not yet been conclusively described.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Most of the vocabulary of the Bai language of Yunnan appears to be related to Chinese words, though many are clearly loans from the last few centuries. Some scholars have suggested that it represents a very early branching from Chinese, while others argue that it is a more distantly related Sino-Tibetan language overlaid with two millennia of loans.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Jerry Norman classified the traditional seven dialect groups into three larger groups: Northern (Mandarin), Central (Wu, Gan, and Xiang) and Southern (Hakka, Yue, and Min).


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: He argued that the Southern Group is derived from a standard used in the Yangtze valley during the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD), which he called Old Southern Chinese, while the Central group was transitional between the Northern and Southern groups. Some dialect boundaries, such as between Wu and Min, are particularly abrupt, while others, such as between Mandarin and Xiang or between Min and Hakka, are much less clearly defined.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Scholars account for the transitional nature of the central varieties in terms of wave models. Iwata argues that innovations have been transmitted from the north across the Huai River to the Lower Yangtze Mandarin area and from there southeast to the Wu area and westwards along the Yangtze River valley and thence to southwestern areas, leaving the hills of the southeast largely untouched.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: A 2007 study compared fifteen major urban dialects on the objective criteria of lexical similarity and regularity of sound correspondences, and subjective criteria of intelligibility and similarity. Most of these criteria show a top-level split with Northern, New Xiang, and Gan in one group and Min (samples at Fuzhou, Xiamen, Chaozhou), Hakka, and Yue in the other group. The exception was phonological regularity, where the one Gan dialect (Nanchang Gan) was in the Southern group and very close to Meixian Hakka, and the deepest phonological difference was between Wenzhounese (the southernmost Wu dialect) and all other dialects.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: The two Wu dialects (Wenzhou and Suzhou) occupied an intermediate position, closer to the Northern/New Xiang/Gan group in lexical similarity and strongly closer in subjective intelligibility but closer to Min/Hakka/Yue in phonological regularity and subjective similarity, except that Wenzhou was farthest from all other dialects in phonological regularity. The two Wu dialects were close to each other in lexical similarity and subjective similarity but not in mutual intelligibility, where Suzhou was actually closer to Northern/Xiang/Gan than to Wenzhou.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: In the Southern subgroup, Hakka and Yue grouped closely together on the three lexical and subjective measures but not in phonological regularity. The Min dialects showed high divergence, with Min Fuzhou (Eastern Min) grouped only weakly with the Southern Min dialects of Xiamen and Chaozhou on the two objective criteria and was actually slightly closer to Hakka and Yue on the subjective criteria.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Local varieties from different areas of China are often mutually unintelligible, differing at least as much as different Romance languages and perhaps even as much as Indo-European languages as a whole. These varieties form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family (with Bai sometimes being included in this grouping). Because speakers share a standard written form, and have a common cultural heritage with long periods of political unity, the varieties are popularly perceived among native speakers as variants of a single Chinese language, and this is also the official position. Conventional English-language usage in Chinese linguistics is to use "dialect" for the speech of a particular place (regardless of status) while regional groupings like Mandarin and Wu are called "dialect groups". ISO 639-3 follows the "Ethnologue" in assigning language codes to eight of the top-level groups listed above (all but Min and Pinghua) and five subgroups of Min. Other linguists choose to refer to the major groupings as languages. Sinologist David Moser stated that the Chinese authorities refer to them as "dialects" as a way to reinforce China as being a single nation.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: In Chinese, the term "fāngyán" is used for any regional subdivision of Chinese, from the speech of a village to major branches such as Mandarin and Wu. Linguists writing in Chinese often qualify the term to distinguish different levels of classification. All these terms have customarily been translated into English as "dialect", a practice that has been criticized as confusing. The neologisms "regionalect" and "topolect" have been proposed as alternative renderings of "fāngyán".


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: The only varieties usually recognized as languages in their own right are Dungan and Taz. This is mostly due to political reasons as they are spoken in the former Soviet Union and are usually not written in Han characters but in Cyrillic. Dungan is in fact a variety of Mandarin, with high although asymmetric mutual intelligibility with Standard Mandarin. Various mixed languages, particularly those spoken by ethnic minorities, are also referred to as languages such as Tangwang, Wutun, and E. The Taiwanese Ministry of Education uses the terms "Minnan language" and "Taiwan Minnan language".


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: The usual unit of analysis is the syllable, traditionally analysed as consisting of an initial consonant, a final and a tone. In general, southern varieties have fewer initial consonants than northern and central varieties, but more often preserve the Middle Chinese final consonants. Some varieties, such as Cantonese, Hokkien and the Shanghai dialect, include syllabic nasals as independent syllables.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: In the 42 varieties surveyed in the "Great Dictionary of Modern Chinese Dialects", the number of initials (including a zero initial) ranges from 15 in some southern dialects to a high of 35 in the dialect of Chongming Island, Shanghai.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: The initial system of the Fuzhou dialect of northern Fujian is a minimal example. With the exception of , which is often merged with the zero initial, the initials of this dialect are present in all Chinese varieties, although several varieties do not distinguish from . However, most varieties have additional initials, due to a combination of innovations and retention of distinctions from Middle Chinese:


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: Conservative vowel systems, such as those of Gan dialects, have high vowels , and , which also function as medials, mid vowels and , and a low -like vowel. In other dialects, including Mandarin dialects, has merged with , leaving a single mid vowel with a wide range of allophones. Many dialects, particularly in northern and central China, have apical or retroflex vowels, which are syllabic fricatives derived from high vowels following sibilant initials. In many Wu dialects, vowels and final glides have monophthongized, producing a rich inventory of vowels in open syllables. Reduction of medials is common in Yue dialects.


title: Varieties of Chinese

text: The Middle Chinese codas, consisting of glides and , nasals , and , and stops , and , are best preserved in southern dialects, particularly Yue dialects such as Cantonese. In Jin, Lower Yangtze Mandarin and Wu dialects, the stops have merged as a final glottal stop, while in most northern varieties they have disappeared. In Mandarin dialects final has merged with , while some central dialects have a single nasal coda, in some cases realized as a nasalization of the vowel.