title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Different theories have been advanced as to why Qutb turned away from his secularist tendencies towards Islamic sharia. One common explanation is that the conditions he witnessed in prison from 1954 to 1964, including the torture and murder of the Muslim Brotherhood members, convinced him that only a government bound by Islamic law could prevent such abuses. Another is that Qutb's experiences in America as a darker-skinned person and the insufficiently anti-Western policies of Nasser demonstrated to him the powerful and dangerous allure of ignorance ("jahiliyyah") – a threat unimaginable, in Qutb's estimation, to the secular mind. In the opening of his book "Milestones" he presents the following views:


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: These experiences would prompt Qutb to adopt a radical stance, of excommunicating the Muslim governments as well as their supporters out of the pale of Islam. These revolutionary ideas published through his 1960s prison writings ""In the Shade of the Qur’an"" and its spin-off, ""Milestones"", would lay the ideological foundations of future Jihadist movements. In "Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq" Qutb argues that anything non-Islamic was evil and corrupt, and that following sharia as a complete system extending into all aspects of life, would bring every kind of benefit to humanity, from personal and social peace, to the "treasures" of the universe.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Qutb's experiences as an Egyptian Muslim – his village childhood, professional career, and activism in the Muslim Brotherhood – left an indelible mark on his theoretical and religious works. Even Qutb's early, secular writing shows evidence of his later themes. For example, Qutb's autobiography of his childhood "Tifl min al-Qarya" ("A Child From the Village") makes little mention of Islam or political theory and is typically classified as a secular, literary work. However, it is replete with references to village mysticism, superstition, the Qur'an, and incidences of injustice. Qutb's later work developed along similar themes, dealing with Qur'anic exegesis, social justice, and political Islam.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Qutb's career as a writer also heavily influenced his philosophy. In "al-Taswiir al-Fanni fil-Quran" ("Artistic Representation in the Qur'an"), Qutb developed a literary appreciation of the Qur'an and a complementary methodology for interpreting the text. His hermeneutics were applied in his extensive commentary on the Qur'an, "Fi zilal al-Qur'an" ("In the Shade of the Quran"), which served as the foundation for the declarations of "Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq".


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Late in his life, Qutb synthesized his personal experiences and intellectual development in the famous "Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq," a religious and political manifesto for what he believed was a true Islamic system. It was also in this text that Qutb condemned Muslim governments, such as Abdul Nasser's regime in Egypt, as secular, with their legitimacy based on human (and thus corrupt), rather than divine authority. This work, more than any other, established Qutb as one of the premier Islamists of the 20th century, and perhaps the foremost proponent of Islamist thought in that era. Qutb denounced secularism as an inherently "oppressive system" since it sabotaged freedom of religion by constraining all religious practice to the private realm; whereas an Islamic state would grant full religious freedom to Muslims by implementing Islamic laws publicly while delegating non-Muslim faiths to the private realm.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Qutb, dissatisfied with the condition of contemporary Islam, identified its benighted state as having two principal causes. The first was that many Muslims were forsaking their faith in the Qur'an, failing to enforce Sharia law. This had led to the virulent spread of a secular culture within Muslim societies, which, with the assistance of the innate and centuries-long Western hatred towards Islam, was a second important cause of the straying of many Muslims from the right path. Qutb asserted that the Islamic world had sunk into a state of "Jahiliyyah" (pre-Islamic ignorance). This led Qutb to advocate in his book "Milestones" that the general masses weren't Muslims and that a revolutionary Islamic vanguard should return the ignorant people back to what he considered as pristine Islam:


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: "Indeed, people are not Muslims, as they proclaim to be, as long as they live the life of "Jahiliyyah". If someone wishes to deceive himself or to deceive others by believing that Islam can be brought in line with this "Jahiliyyah", it is up to him. But whether this deception is for others, it cannot change anything of the actual reality. This is not Islam, and they are not Muslims. Today the task of the Call is to return these ignorant people to Islam and make them into Muslims all over again".


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: According to an anonymous work ("The Lives of Hassan elBanna & Syed Qutb" available on Scribd), Qutb was inspired to abandon his secularism world view for Islam by how Allah prevented the ship he was traveling in to America from sinking into the ocean.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: "His journey started when he studied the Qur'an in a literal way, and he slowly began to understand the principles lined in the religion. Then something happened to him in America to remove his doubts. He says; that while he was going to America, he was on the boat (ferry), and he saw the way the boat he was travelling in – was rocking in the huge sea – all under the control of Allah without it sinking or capsizing. At that point he realized the power of Allah. He said Iman (belief) entered into his heart due to this. His second scenario was in San Francisco, when he went on top of a mountain, and he could see the whole of creation in front of him, and he realized the beauty and harmony that existed amongst the creation as a whole. He said that, the sweetness of Iman hit him."


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Qutb's mature political views always centered on Islam – Islam as a complete system of morality, justice and governance, whose sharia laws and principles should be the sole basis of governance and everything else in life – though his interpretation of it varied. Qutb's political philosophy has been described as an attempt to instantiate a complex and multilayer eschatological vision, partly grounded in the counter-hegemonic re-articulation of the traditional ideal of Islamic universalism.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Following the 1952 coup, he espoused a 'just dictatorship' that would 'grant political liberties to the virtuous alone.' Later he wrote that rule by "sharia" law would require essentially no government at all. In an earlier work, Qutb described military jihad as defensive, Islam's campaign to protect itself, while later he believed jihad must be offensive.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: On the issue of Islamic governance, Qutb differed with many modernist and reformist Muslims who claimed that democracy was Islamic because the Quranic institution of "Shura" supported elections and democracy. Qutb pointed out that the Shura chapter of the Qur'an was revealed during the Mekkan period, and therefore, it does not deal with the problem of government. It makes no reference to elections and calls only for the ruler to consult some of the ruled, as a particular case of the general rule of "Shura."


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Qutb also opposed the then popular ideology of Arab nationalism, having become disillusioned with the 1952 Nasser Revolution after having been exposed to the regime's practices of arbitrary arrest, torture, and deadly violence during his imprisonment. In the introduction to his influential 1964 theological and political Manifesto Maʿālim fī aṭ Ṭarīq (""The Milestones""), Sayyid Qutb declared:


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: "Mankind today is on the brink of a precipice, not because of the danger of complete [nuclear] annihilation which is hanging over its head -this being just a symptom and not the real disease- but because humanity is devoid of those vital values which are necessary not only for its healthy development but also for its real progress. Even the Western world realises that Western civilization is unable to present any healthy values for the guidance of mankind... It is the same with the Eastern bloc. Its social theories, foremost among which is Marxism.. is defeated on the plane of thought... It is essential for mankind to have new leadership! At this crucial and bewildering juncture, the turn of Islam and the Muslim community has arrived -the turn of Islam".


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Qutb was a staunch antisemite. Influenced by Islamists like Rashid Rida, Qutb embraced anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and believed in the existence of global Jewish conspiracies. In 1950, he published a book "Our Struggle against the Jews", which forms a central part of today's Islamist antisemitism. Blaming the Jews for advocating secularising reforms in the Ottoman empire and inciting various turmoils that resulted in its dissolution, Qutb wrote:


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: "a Jew was behind the incitement of various kinds of tribal arrogance in the last Caliphate; the (fomenting) of revolutions which began with the removal of the shari‘ah from the legislation and substituting for it ‘The Constitution’ during the period of the Sultan Abdul-Hamid II; and the ‘hero’ Ataturk’s ending of the Caliphate. Then behind the subsequent war declared against the first signs of Islamic revival, from every place on the face of the earth . . . stood the Jews."


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: "Islam teaches that God created the physical world and all its forces for man's own use and benefit. Man is specifically taught and directed to study the world around him, discover its potential and utilize all his environment for his own good and the good of his fellow humans. Any harm that man suffers at the hands of nature is a result only of his ignorance or lack of understanding of it and of the laws governing it. The more man learns about nature, the more peaceful and harmonious his relationship with nature and the environment. Hence, the notion of "conquering nature" can readily be seen as cynical and negative. It is alien to Islamic perceptions and betrays a shameless ignorance of the spirit in which the world has been created and the divine wisdom that underlies it."


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: This exposure to abuse of power crucially contributed to the ideas in Qutb's famous prison-written Islamic manifesto "Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq" (Milestones), where he advocated a political system that is the opposite of dictatorship — the Sharia, "God's rule on earth". Qutb believed that there are only two kinds of societies: Islamic and "Jahili". According to Qutb, all the existing Muslim societies are also "jahili societies" since they relegated "the legislative attribute of God to others". He further wrote:


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: "the Muslim community has long ago vanished from existence and from observation, and the leadership of mankind has long since passed to other ideologies and other nations, other concepts and other systems."


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Qutb emphasized that this struggle would be anything but easy. True Islam would transform every aspect of society, eliminating everything non-Muslim. True Muslims could look forward to lives of "poverty, difficulty, frustration, torment and sacrifice." "Jahili" ersatz-Muslims, Jews and Westerners would all fight and conspire against Islam and the elimination of "jahiliyyah." Qutb's revolutionary claims of the Islamic World being upon ""Jahiliyya"" and absence of "pure Islam" in the modern era set him apart from his Islamist predecessors. For mainstream Islamist ideologues like Hasan al Banna, Mawdudi and Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, both society and state were Islamic despite the influence of ""Jahili" culture" of the West.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Although his work has motivated and mobilized some Muslims, Qutb also has critics. Following the publication of "Milestones" and the aborted plot against the Nasser government, mainstream Muslims took issue with Qutb's contention that "physical power" and jihad had to be used to overthrow governments, attack societies, and the "institutions and traditions" of the Muslim – but according to Qutb "jahili" – world. The ulama of Al-Azhar University school took the unusual step following his death of putting Sayyid Qutb on their index of heresy, declaring him a "deviant" ("munharif").


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Moderate Muslims, on the other hand, questioned his understanding of "sharia," i.e. that it is not only perfect and complete, but completely accessible to people and thus the solution to any of their problems. Also criticized is his dismissal of not only all non-Muslim culture, but many centuries of Muslim learning, culture and beauty following the first four caliphs as un-Islamic and thus worthless.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Conservative criticism went further, condemning Qutb's Islamist/reformist ideas proposed in his earlier works in the 1950s such as "Social Justice in Islam"—like social justice and redistributive economics, banning of slavery, – as "western" and "bid‘ah" or innovative (innovations to Islam being forbidden). They have accused Qutb of amateur scholarship, overuse of "ijtihad", innovation in "Ijma" (which Qutb felt should not be limited to scholars, but should be conducted by all Muslims), declaring unlawful what Allah has made lawful, assorted mistakes in "aqeedah" (belief) and "manhaj" (methodology). Qutb has also come under fire from the moderate factions of the Muslim Brotherhood represented by scholars such as Yusuf al-Qaradwi who staunchly critiqued Qutb's ideas on "Jahiliyya" as "Takfiri" extremism.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: In spite of opposition from its moderate factions, the mainstream of Muslim Brotherhood that adheres to Hassan al-Banna's school of thought continues to extoll Qutb as ""al-Shahid al-Hayy"" (the living martyr). The Muslim Brotherhood also has militant Qutbist factions under its umbrella that continues to popularise Qutb's works like "Milestones" that inspire revolutionary action. Although the establishment Banni factions favour gradualist approach to establish Islamic states through mainstream political participation, they also strongly defend Qutb's legacy to shore up support from their conservative base. This has also been described as an implicit strategy of covert support to the Qutbist project of immediate ""Jihad bi-l-Sayf""(Jihad through the sword) against contemporary regimes; while Muslim Brotherhood focuses on long term Islamization strategy through education, mobilization and execution. Despite internal tensions within the group, Qutbist ideologues continue to exert inordinate influence in various echelons of the Muslim Brotherhood and have become a vehicle for popularising Qutb's Jihadist ideas amongst the masses.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Saudi Arabian Islamic scholar Hamud ibn Uqla Ash-Shu'aybi, the leader of the Shu'aybi school, wrote an influential treatise ""A Word of Truth on Sayyid Qutb"" in defending Sayyid Qutb from his theological opponents. Praising Qutb as a ""Mujaddid"", ibn Uqla accused Qutb's opponents of having double-standards in their criticism. He extolled Qutb as a martyr who upheld "Tawhid" and defended sharia in the face of tyrants. The treatise would become popular amongst contemporary Salafi-Jihadist movements. Defending Qutb, Ibn Uqla wrote:


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: "Sayyid (may God have mercy upon him) was considered in his era as a science amongst the knowledge of the people who’s curriculum was to fight the oppressors and declare them as disbelievers. He was also one of the unique preachers who called on people to worship their Lord and who preached the unification of all laws to none other than Allah. He did not bow down under the enemies of Allah and His Prophet, like Jamal Abdel-Nasser and his likes... no one was happier by his death than those... The targeting of Sayyid Qutb(may God have mercy upon him) wasn’t just due to his personality.. the goal of his stabbing wasn’t his downfall... what still worries his enemies and their followers is his curriculum ("manhaj") which they fear will spread amongst the children of the Muslims."


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Influential Salafi scholar Muhammad Nasir Al-Din al-Albani (d. 1999) would soften his previous critique of Sayyid Qutb, stating:


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: "Yes, Sayyid Qutb must be refuted, but with composure, and dispassionately… But that does not mean that we must show him hostility, or forget that he has certain merits. The important thing is that he is a Muslim and an Islamic writer... who was killed for the sake of "da‘wa", and that those who killed him are the enemies of God."


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Alongside notable Islamists like Abul A'la Mawdudi, Hasan al-Banna, and Ruhollah Khomeini; Sayyid Qutb is considered one of the most influential Muslim thinkers or activists of the modern era, not only for his ideas but also for what many see as his martyr's death. Qutb has been designated as "Shaheed", or martyr. To fellow militant Islamists across the world, Qutb's execution in a Muslim country symbolised the depths of depravity the governments in Muslim world had sunk into. Within Egypt itself, the martyrdom of Sayyid Qutb give birth to a new generation of militant Islamists calling for the implementation "Shari’ah"; such as Abdus Salam Faraj, 'Umar Abdul Rahman, Shukri Mustafa, etc. According to authors Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, "it was Sayyid Qutb who fused together the core elements of modern Islamism: the Kharijites' takfir, ibn Taymiyya's fatwas and policy prescriptions, Rashid Rida's Salafism, Maududi's concept of the contemporary jahiliyya and Hassan al-Banna's political activism."


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Qutb's written works are still widely available and have been translated into many Western languages. His best known work is "Ma'alim fi-l-Tariq" ("Milestones"), but the majority of Qutb's theory can be found in his Qur'anic commentary "Fi zilal al-Qur'an" ("In the Shade of the Quran"). This 30-volume work is noteworthy for its innovative method of interpretation, borrowing heavily from the literary analysis of Amin al-Khuli, while retaining some structural features of classical commentaries (for example, the practice of progressing from the first sura to the last). For Qutb, the Qur'an was seen as the final arbiter in all matters relating to faith, while his main goal in writing the book, "In the Shade of the Qur’an", was to restore the centrality of faith in the consciousness and imagination of Muslims, and to kindle a cognitive revolution that would bring about a political and social process that will lead to the renewal of the Islamic tradition.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: The influence of his work extends to issues such as Westernization, modernization, and political reform and the theory of inevitable ideological conflict between "Islam and the West" (see Clash of civilizations), the notion of a transnational umma, and the comprehensive application of jihad. Qutb's theoretical work on Islamic advocacy, social justice and education, has left a significant mark not only on the Muslim Brotherhood, but also Muslim scholars from all backgrounds : like the founder of the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mustafa al-Siba'i, as well as the Indonesian Sunni scholar Hamka and the Iraqi Shia scholar Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr. Hekmatyar, one of the most influential Afghan Islamists, says that he precisely turned Islamist in 1966, after hearing the death of Qutb on radio. Ali al-Tamimi, considered "arguably the first American born activist Salafi preacher", has Qutb as one of his main intellectual influences. While Qutbist works remain popular amongst the Arab youth and political dissidents; majority of Sunni Islamists currently view Qutb's proposals as outdated, impractical and prone to extremism.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: His influence isn't limited to Sunnis either, as the current Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, translated his work into Persian. Having been translated into Persian from the 50s and 60s onward, and for his definitive influence on the Islamic revolution of Iran, a critical conference entitled "Re-reading and Re-viewing the Views of Sayyid Quṭb", held in Tehran during 15–16 February 2015, has been described as "a vivid example of the living legacy of Sayyid Quṭb in today’s Iran."


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Qutb had influence on Islamic insurgent/terror groups in Egypt and elsewhere. His influence on al-Qaeda was felt through his writing, his followers and especially through his brother, Muhammad Qutb, who moved to Saudi Arabia following his release from prison in Egypt and became a professor of Islamic Studies and edited, published and promoted his brother Sayyid's work.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: One of Muhammad Qutb's students and later an ardent follower was Ayman Zawahiri, who went on to become a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and later a mentor of Osama bin Laden and the second Emir of Al-Qaeda. Zawahiri was first introduced to Qutb by his uncle and maternal family patriarch, Mafouz Azzam, who was very close to Qutb throughout his life. Azzam was Qutb's student, then protégé, then personal lawyer and executor of his estate – one of the last people to see Qutb before his execution. According to Lawrence Wright, who interviewed Azzam, "young Ayman al-Zawahiri heard again and again from his beloved uncle Mahfouz about the purity of Qutb's character and the torment he had endured in prison." Zawahiri paid homage to Qutb in his work "Knights under the Prophet's Banner." Acclaiming Qutb, Al-Zawahiri wrote:


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: "Sayyid Qutb underscored the importance of "Tawheed" (monotheism) in Islam, and that the battle between it and its enemies is at its core an ideological difference over the issue of the oneness of God. It is the issue of who has the power: God and his Shari’ah (Islamic law) or man-made, materialistic laws. Although… Qutb…was oppressed and tortured by Nasser’s regime,…(his) influence on young Muslims was paramount. (Sayyid) Qutb’s message was, and still is, to believe in the oneness of God and the supremacy of the divine path. This message fanned the fire of Islamic revolution against the enemies of Islam at home and abroad. The chapters of his revolution are renewing one day after another".


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Osama bin Laden was also acquainted with Sayyid's brother, Muhammad Qutb. A close college friend of bin Laden's, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, told Wright, that bin Laden regularly attended weekly public lectures by Muhammad Qutb, at King Abdulaziz University, and that he and bin Laden both "read Sayyid Qutb. He was the one who most affected our generation."


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: While imprisoned in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki became influenced by the works of Qutb. He would read 150–200 pages a day of Qutb's works, describing himself during the course of his reading as "so immersed with the author I would feel Sayyid was with me in my cell speaking to me directly." On the other hand, associate professor of history at Creighton University, John Calvert, states that "the al-Qaeda threat" has "monopolized and distorted our understanding" of Qutb's "real contribution to contemporary Islamism."


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Qutb was an important source of influence to Ruhollah Khomeini and other Iranian Shia intellectuals leading up to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. In 1984, the Islamic Republic of Iran under Khomeini honoured Qutb's "martyrdom" by issuing an iconic postage stamp showing him behind bars. Qutb's works were translated by Iranian Islamists into Persian and enjoyed remarkable popularity both before and after the revolution. Prominent figures such as current Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his brother Muhammad Ali Khamenei, Aḥmad Aram, Hadi Khosroshahi, etc. translated Qutb's works into Persian.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Although interest in Qutb's works had peaked during the years immediately following the Iranian revolution, Iranian Islamists have become gradually opposed to Qutb and his militant ideas over the course of time. One source of criticism has been from the mainstream Shi'ite clergy who considered Qutb's ideas as being Sunni influenced and charged him with heresy due to sectarian reasons. Clerics such as Abū Faḍl Raẓavī Ardakānī, Sayyid Ibrāhīm Mīlānī, Morteza Mutahhiri, etc. wrote several treatises opposing the ideas of Qutb, his anti-clerical rhetoric and condemned those who spread his works in Iran.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: An Iranian Islamic youth organisation named Kanoon Youth Thought Center conducted a conference on Qutb's thought in Tehran in 2015, attended by major religious leaders and intellectuals of the Iranian revolution. Most of the participants expressed negative views on Qutb; considering him as a proponent of extremist ideas. Dr. Ali Akbar Alikhani, associate professor at Tehran University, argued that the Qutbist "binary worldview" that divided entire societies into "Jahili" (ignorant) and "Tawhidi" (monotheistic), his pessimistic view of justice, etc. generated vicious hatred against non-Muslims; culminating in the brutalities of terrorist groups such as the Islamic State. Shi'ite scholar Ahmad Rahdar criticised Qutb's call to uncompromising militant action as serving the intellectual basis for Jihadist groups like Al-Qaeda, IS, etc. Historian Musa Najafi downplayed the role of Qutb's ideas in Iranian revolution and argued that revolutionary symbolism was inherent in Shi'ite scholarly tradition; which was channeled by Khomeini and his followers. Najafi characterised Qutb as a reactionary and sectarian scholar whose superficial and brisk solutions were always oriented towards mass "Takfir"(excommunication) of Muslims and religious extremism. Although some non-clerical intellectuals continued attempts to defend him, Sayyid Qutb is viewed negatively amongst contemporary Khomeinist scholars in Iran.


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: Chapter 2 of "The 9/11 Commission Report" (2004), "The Foundation of the New Terrorism," cites Qutb for influencing Osama Bin Laden's worldview in these terms:


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: "[Qutb] dismissed Western achievements as entirely material, arguing that 'nothing will satisfy its own conscience and justify its existence.'[n. 12]


title: Sayyid Qutb

text: "Three basic themes emerge from Qutb's writings. First, he claimed that the world was beset with barbarism, licentiousness, and unbelief (a condition he called jahiliyya, the religious term for the period of ignorance prior to the revelations given to the Prophet Mohammed). Qutb argued that humans can choose only between Islam and jahiliyya. Second, he warned that more people, including Muslims, were attracted to jahiliyya and its material comforts than to his view of Islam; jahiliyya could therefore triumph over Islam. Third, no middle ground exists in what Qutb conceived as a struggle between God and Satan. All Muslim – as he defined them – therefore must take up arms in this fight. Any Muslim who rejects his ideas is just one more nonbeliever worthy of destruction."


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: "Get Lucky" is a song written and performed by French electronic music duo Daft Punk featuring American musicians Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers. Daft Punk released the song as the lead single from their fourth and final studio album, "Random Access Memories", on 19 April 2013. Before its release as a single, "Get Lucky" was featured in television advertisements broadcast during "Saturday Night Live", after which Rodgers and Williams announced their involvement in the track. "Get Lucky" is a house-inspired disco, funk, and pop track with lyrics that, according to Williams, are about the good fortune of connecting with someone, as well as sexual chemistry. "Get Lucky" has since received acclaim from critics, with a number of them praising Williams's vocals and Rodgers's guitar licks.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: The song reached number one in several countries, including Daft Punk's native France, where the Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique (SNEP) certified it diamond. "Get Lucky" peaked at number two on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 for five consecutive weeks, giving Daft Punk their first top-10 hit in the United States. In the UK, the single topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks and was the second best-selling single of 2013 with 1,308,007 copies sold. The song won multiple awards, including Record of the Year and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards. Daft Punk performed it on many television programmes and awards shows, including the 56th Annual Grammy Awards, during which Stevie Wonder joined Rodgers, Williams and Daft Punk onstage to perform the song.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: Daft Punk first met American guitarist Nile Rodgers at a listening party in New York City for the duo's 1997 debut album "Homework", and became friends thereafter. However, Rodgers noted that a series of near misses and scheduling conflicts had delayed their chance of collaborating. The duo eventually invited him to the "Random Access Memories" sessions at Electric Lady Studios in New York City.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: American singer Pharrell Williams was interested in working with Daft Punk; he had first heard about the project from Daft Punk at one of Madonna's parties, and offered his services for a collaboration. He had joked that, "If you just want me to play tambourine, I'll do it." The duo and Williams later met in Paris, where he shared some of his own material; Williams explained that he had been inspired by Rodgers without knowing that Daft Punk had coincidentally been recording with him. As a member of The Neptunes production team, Williams had previously provided a remix of "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" that appeared on the 2003 album "Daft Club". Daft Punk also served as co-writers and producers for the 2010 single "Hypnotize U" by N.E.R.D., Williams's band.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: "Get Lucky" was completed in approximately 18 months. Prior to Rodgers's involvement, the song existed in a rough form that centered on a Wurlitzer electronic piano. After listening to Daft Punk's demo of what would become "Get Lucky", Rodgers asked that all of the elements except the drum track be muted so that he could create a suitable guitar part; he recalled that he experimented until the duo were visibly pleased. Once Rodgers finished, Daft Punk had Nathan East re-record the bass part to fit Rodgers's performance. Rodgers further elaborated: "Everybody else wound up re-playing to me." Mixer and engineer Mick Guzauski recalled that the rhythm guitar fit easily into the production: "I experimented with balancing and other positioning, and working other stuff around it. He didn’t have to be processed – Nile just sounded great the way he is." The song as it appears on the album also features a synthesizer by Daft Punk, keyboards by Chris Caswell and additional guitar performed by Paul Jackson, Jr.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: Williams noted that the duo adopted a perfectionist approach when recording the vocals for "Get Lucky", as he was asked to perform several takes and multiple instances of specific phrases. He also said that when he returned to the United States after recording his vocals, he had "forgotten everything" regarding the composition of "Get Lucky". He attributed it to jet lag, but jokingly wondered if Daft Punk had tampered with his memory. The duo responded, saying that Williams's lyrics and performance had arisen spontaneously, and was likely the reason he had trouble recalling the song.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: Music critics described "Get Lucky" as a house-inspired disco, funk, and pop track. The song is composed in the key of F minor, in the B dorian mode and follows the chord progression of Bm–D–Fm–E. The song runs at common time with a tempo of 116 BPM.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: In an article for "Slate", Owen Pallett states that the song can be heard in two different keys: "Most of the time it sounds as if it's in the minor mode of [F♯] Aeolian [...] essentially a form of [F♯] minor", which appears as the third chord of the progression on the line "We're up all night for good fun". The first chord of the progression is not F♯ minor, but B minor; the song "slides back to it each time" on the line "I'm up all night to get some". Pallett continues, "when the chord cycle comes back to the beginning [...] the ear is tricked for a moment into thinking that the song is in a different key, a musical Tilt-a-Whirl". According to Pallett, in the song's bridge, Daft Punk "overlay the hook from the pre-chorus with the hook from the chorus, getting them both going simultaneously".


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: British journalist Caitlin Moran speculates that the song's attractiveness is due to its combination of minor chords and regular disco-type "up" beats throughout the song, with the former creating an unresolved feeling. Jason Lipshutz of "Billboard" mentioned it "rides Nile Rodgers' chic axe work, an effectively simple hook and clipped robo-breakdown to create a warm, winning throwback". The staff of "Rolling Stone" said the song has a "bright guitar shimmer, robot come-ons, falsetto soul and a beat that keeps you up having good fun until you see the sun". Jake Cohen for "Consequence" wrote that the song has "choppy, half-spoken lyrics, leading into sustained vocal notes on the bridge 'We've come too far', ascending 'to the stars'. And then there's the easy-to-sing celebration of hedonistic good times of the chorus, and the vocodor-laden outro where the voices become another delicious layer in the instrumental gumbo." Williams remarked that the music evoked the sense of being on an exotic island during a "peachy color[ed]" sunrise.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: Tim Jonze for "The Guardian" said the lyrics are an "ode to joyless sex, hard-won after a war of attrition". He also noted the lyrics "She's up all night 'til the sun/I'm up all night to get some/She's up all night for good fun/ I'm up all night to get lucky" are about "sexual politics". Pharrell mentioned that the title "Get Lucky" does not only refer to sexual acts, but also the good fortune of meeting with and immediately connecting to someone. Williams's vocal and Daft Punk's vocoder performance span three octaves together: D to D. Friend and occasional collaborator Chilly Gonzales mentioned that Daft Punk had previously used the chord progression in "Around the World" and that the verse, bridge and chorus of "Get Lucky" are largely defined by the melodic phrasing of the vocal.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: "Get Lucky" was first publicly revealed via two 15-second television advertisements on "Saturday Night Live". Rodgers announced his contribution to the song shortly afterward, and noted that various fan remixes of the clips appeared online since they aired. The third trailer, which was shown at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, officially announced Williams's involvement in the song and features Daft Punk, Rodgers, and Williams performing together. The promotional web series "The Collaborators" featured excerpts of "Get Lucky", culminating in the Williams-focused episode in which the song was first referred to by name. The song was leaked and broadcast on various radio stations days before it was released as a single. One day before the song's release, the single's cover artwork was revealed on Amazon, featuring a band playing in front of a setting sun.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: Daft Punk released the song as the lead single from their fourth and final studio album, "Random Access Memories", on 19 April 2013. A trailer for the official "Get Lucky" remix was released via the Columbia Records YouTube channel on 25 June 2013. Rodgers later stated that video footage for "Lose Yourself to Dance" had been shot simultaneously with footage for "Get Lucky". The Daft Punk remix was later released on Spotify and, as of 27 June 2013, was streamed 64 million times. Rodgers stated in an interview with "The Guardian" that a different video for the song was shot in March 2013, which is distinct from the Coachella trailer. A 12" vinyl single was released on 16 July 2013, featuring a ten-minute remix by Daft Punk, the album version and the radio edit.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: Michael Cragg from "The Guardian" said the song "eschews the crunching electronics of their last album and the vocoder-lead future-disco of "Discovery"", and it was the "best thing Pharrell Williams has been involved with for a long time". "Pitchfork" listed "Get Lucky" as a Best New Track, stating that the song's "real elegance lies in the hands of Nile Rodgers"; one of its contributors, Mark Richardson, opined the song was a "deserved hit". Lewis Corner from Digital Spy gave the single five stars and said although Daft Punk's "creative methods may be unorthodox, the final result is a legal rush we can all enjoy". Thomas Smith of "NME" said the song is "impossibly good" and called it an "old-school jam session that's been spun into a super-sleek slice of pop magic". Chris Mincher of "The A.V. Club" stated the song "has run up the charts with little more than a simple, breezy funk groove".


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: Steve Lampiris for "The Line of Best Fit" said "Get Lucky" is the "breeziest thing Daft Punk have ever made. The itchy slink of Nile Rodgers' guitar suggests a wonderful sunset that never ends". For AllMusic, Heather Phares praised the song as "so suave that it couldn't help but be an instant classic, albeit a somewhat nostalgic one". "Slate" Geeta Dayal described the track as a "breezy, infectious disco hit [that] seemed to be a good omen". Benji Taylor of "Renowned for Sound" mentioned the song is "driven by Nile Rodgers' irresistible funk fuelled guitar licks, and feature[s] vocals by Williams that would not have sounded out of place on "Off the Wall" or "Thriller"". Tatiana Cirisano of "Billboard" stated it has a "dreamy, retro-meets-futurism magic and a perfectly ambiguous message". Miles Raymer for the "Chicago Reader" opined it is a "quintessential summer jam, bouncy but not oppressively eager to get you to dance, with a Pharrell vocal hook that's basically impossible to get out of your head once it's in there and a guitar riff from the legendary Nile Rodgers that's nearly as hard to shake".


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: Abby Johnston for "The Austin Chronicle" thought the track "refuses to tire, propelled forward by a sparkling Seventies guitar riff and Williams' falsetto". Aaron Payne of "musicOMH" called the track a "real dancefloor filler" and said it has the "groove that Daft Punk are searching for elsewhere on the record, but that's because of Nile Rodgers' guitar; the man is a human groove. Pharrell supplies stylish, modern hooks to go over Rodgers' guitar, and Daft Punk's production and beats add the remaining crucial elements." Eric Henderson of "Slant Magazine" said the song is a "model of reservation next to the likes of 'Aerodynamic' or even 'Technologic'". Dan Weiss of "Paste" criticized the song, saying that it "is no miracle; it's not brought off by Pharrell's uncomplicated voice or Nile Rodgers' studied grooves". Robin Murray for "Clash" opined the song was "such a safe bet – and it feels it" and that "from the crisp, pared down Nile Rodgers guitar to the bubbling synths, it feels ready-made, arriving with a nagging sense that you've heard it some place before".


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: "Get Lucky" was nominated for Best Song of the Summer at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards. and Best Song at the 2013 MTV Europe Music Awards. The song was nominated for Top Streaming Song (Audio) and Top Dance/Electronic Song at the 2014 "Billboard" Music Awards. It was also nominated for Choice Music Single: Group and Choice Summer Song at the 2013 Teen Choice Awards. It was ranked by "Rolling Stone" and "The Guardian" as the best track of 2013.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: On 26 January 2014, "Get Lucky" reached number three in Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2013. "The Village Voice"s Pazz & Jop annual critics' poll ranked "Get Lucky" at number one to find the best music of 2013. It won Best Foreign Song at both the 2013 Sweden Gaffa Awards and Denmark Gaffa Awards. The song received awards for both Best Pop Duo/Group Performance and Record of the Year at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards. The song won Song of the Year at the 2014 BMI London Awards. In 2021, it was listed at No. 465 on Rolling Stone's "Top 500 Best Songs of All Time".


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: In France, "Get Lucky" debuted at number one on the French Singles Chart on 27 April 2013, and became Daft Punk's first chart-topping single in their home country since "One More Time" in 2000. The song sold 38,887 copies in three days, making "Get Lucky" the best-selling digital single in a one-week period. It stayed on the chart for a total of 62 weeks. The Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique (SNEP) certified it diamond. In the United Kingdom, "Get Lucky" debuted at number three on the UK Singles Chart on 21 April 2013, sold more than 50,000 copies 48 hours after its release and became Daft Punk's first top-10 hit in the United Kingdom since "One More Time" in 2000. The song then peaked at number one the following week, sold over 155,000 copies, and became Daft Punk's first and only number one single in the UK. The song remained in the top position during the following week and sold over 163,000. "Get Lucky" remained at the top of the chart for another three consecutive weeks, selling over 100,000 copies weekly. By late May 2013, over 600,000 copies of the song were sold in four weeks, and sales had exceeded those of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis's "Thrift Shop", which made "Get Lucky" the country's best-selling single of the year thus far. According to the Official Charts Company, the single became Britain's second best-selling single of 2013 with sales of 1,308,007 copies.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: In the United States, the song debuted at number 19 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 on 24 April 2013, selling 113,000 downloads, which gave Daft Punk their first top 40 hit on the chart. On 22 May 2013, the song rose from number 15 to number 10, and became Daft Punk's first top-10 hit in the US. A few weeks later, "Get Lucky" peaked at number two for five consecutive weeks, and was runner-up to Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines", which also features Williams. At the time, Williams was the first artist in four years to have songs peak at both number one and two simultaneously on the Hot 100. Chris Molanphy of "Slate" claimed that the single did not reach number one because "Blurred Lines" had digital sales, radio, online streaming and video. The song debuted at number five on the "Billboard" Dance/Electronic Songs chart for the week ending 4 May 2013. By the week of 1 June, the song rose to number one, "Get Lucky" also reached the number one position on the Hot Dance Club Songs chart, the first Daft Punk song to do so since "Face to Face" in 2004. , the song has sold over 3,475,000 copies in the US.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: The song broke records with the highest number of plays of any song in a single day on Spotify. "Get Lucky" peaked at number one on singles charts of Australia, Austria, both the Belgium Flanders and Wallonia charts, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Norway, Scotland, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.


title: Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)

text: Upon its official release, Williams performed "Get Lucky" live for the first time at an HTC One launch party in Brooklyn. Daft Punk were scheduled to appear on 6 August episode of "The Colbert Report" to promote "Random Access Memories", but were unable to do so because of contractual obligations regarding their scheduled appearance at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards. According to Stephen Colbert, Daft Punk were unaware of any exclusivity agreement and were stopped by MTV executives the morning before taping. Colbert nevertheless performed a pre-recorded elaborate dance number to "Get Lucky" featuring appearances from Hugh Laurie, Jeff Bridges, Jimmy Fallon, The Rockettes, Bryan Cranston, Jon Stewart, Matt Damon, Charlie Rose and Henry Kissinger. On 26 January 2014, American singer Stevie Wonder joined Rodgers, Williams and Daft Punk onstage to perform the song during the 56th Annual Grammy Awards. In June 2017, Williams performed the song with American-British singer Marcus Mumford at Ariana Grande's One Love Manchester benefit concert.


title: Masako Nozawa

text: Nozawa is the voice of Son Goku, Son Gohan, & Son Goten in the popular anime franchise "Dragon Ball". She has also voiced Tetsurō Hoshino ("Galaxy Express 999") and Kitarō ("GeGeGe no Kitarō", first and second series and "Hakaba Kitarō" and ""). In addition, she has also voiced two separate characters named "Hiroshi"; a character in "Dokonjō Gaeru", and the characters known in the U.S. as "Pidge" and "Haggar" in "Hyakujūō Golion". She also voiced Doraemon in the 1973 anime, replacing Kōsei Tomita, who voiced the character in the first 26 episodes. In the 1979 anime, she was replaced by Nobuyo Ōyama, however, Nozawa voiced Doraemon again in a 1988 special entitled "Early English with Doraemon".


title: Masako Nozawa

text: Throughout her career as a voice actress, she has performed many male roles (most notably as all the male members of Son Goku's family in every piece of Japanese "Dragon Ball" media, with the exception of Raditz), leading Japanese fans to give her the nickname "The Eternal Boy". These days, however, she prefers the roles of elderly woman characters, although she continues to perform other roles (including young boys) occasionally. On April 1, 2006, she resigned from 81 Produce to establish office Nozawa. In 2012, Nozawa closed her Talent Agency. A number of voice actors who were affiliated with her agency went on to affiliate with Media Force. In 2017, it was revealed she had achieved two Guinness World Records; both of which were related to voicing the character Son Goku in "Dragon Ball" video games for 23 years and 218 days.


title: Masako Nozawa

text: Although Nozawa was disappointed that she couldn't reprise her role of Kitarō for the 1985 anime adaptation due to a rule that voice actors can't play more than one of main characters within the same television station at the same time, she noted that this eventually resulted in her casting of Son Goku for "Dragon Ball" series.


title: Masako Nozawa

text: She has been noted for the "Longest video game voice acting career" and "Voice actor who voiced the same character in a video game for the longest period", holding two Guinness World Records.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic-Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify. If valid, Niger-Congo would be the world's largest in terms of member languages, the third-largest in terms of speakers, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area. It is generally considered to be the world's largest language family in terms of the number of distinct languages, just ahead of Austronesian, although this is complicated by the ambiguity about what constitutes a distinct language; the number of named Niger–Congo languages listed by "Ethnologue" is 1,540.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: If valid, it would be the third-largest language family in the world by number of native speakers, comprising around 700 million people as of 2015. Within Niger-Congo, the Bantu languages alone account for 350 million people (2015), or half the total Niger-Congo speaking population. The most widely spoken Niger–Congo languages by number of native speakers are Yoruba, Igbo, Fula, Shona, Sesotho, Zulu, Akan, and Mooré. The most widely spoken by the total number of speakers is Swahili, which is used as a lingua franca in parts of eastern and southeastern Africa.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: While the ultimate genetic unity of the core of Niger-Congo (called Atlantic-Congo) is widely accepted, the internal cladistic structure is not well established. Other primary branches may include Dogon, Mande, Ijo, Katla and Rashad. The connection of the Mande languages especially has never been demonstrated, and without them, the validity of Niger-Congo family as a whole (as opposed to Atlantic-Congo or a similar subfamily) has not been established.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: One of the most distinctive characteristics common to Atlantic-Congo languages is the use of a noun-class system, which is essentially a gender system with multiple genders.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The language family most likely originated in or near the area where these languages were spoken prior to Bantu expansion (i.e. West Africa or Central Africa). Its expansion may have been associated with the expansion of Sahel agriculture in the African Neolithic period, following the desiccation of the Sahara in c. 3500 BCE.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: According to Roger Blench (2004), all specialists in Niger–Congo languages believe the languages to have a common origin, rather than merely constituting a typological classification, for reasons including their shared noun-class system, shared verbal extensions and shared basic lexicon. Similar classifications to Niger-Congo have been made ever since Diedrich Westermann in 1922. Joseph Greenberg continued that tradition, making it the starting point for modern linguistic classification in Africa, with some of his most notable publications going to press starting in the 1960s. However, there has been active debate for many decades over the appropriate subclassifications of the languages in this language family, which is a key tool used in localising a language's place of origin. No definitive "Proto-Niger-Congo" lexicon or grammar has been developed for the language family as a whole.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: An important unresolved issue in determining the time and place where the Niger–Congo languages originated and their range prior to recorded history is this language family's relationship to the Kordofanian languages, now spoken in the Nuba mountains of Sudan, which is not contiguous with the remainder of the Niger-Congo-language-speaking region and is at the northeasternmost extent of the current Niger-Congo linguistic region. The current prevailing linguistic view is that Kordofanian languages are part of the Niger-Congo language family and that these may be the first of the many languages still spoken in that region to have been spoken in the region. The evidence is insufficient to determine if this outlier group of Niger-Congo language speakers represents a prehistoric range of a Niger-Congo linguistic region that has since contracted as other languages have intruded, or if instead, this represents a group of Niger-Congo language speakers who migrated to the area at some point in prehistory where they were an isolated linguistic community from the beginning.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: There is more agreement regarding the place of origin of Benue-Congo, the largest subfamily of the group. Within Benue-Congo, the place of origin of the Bantu languages as well as time at which it started to expand is known with great specificity. Blench (2004), relying particularly on prior work by Kay Williamson and P. De Wolf, argued that Benue-Congo probably originated at the confluence of the Benue and Niger Rivers in central Nigeria. These estimates of the place of origin of the Benue-Congo language family do not fix a date for the start of that expansion, other than that it must have been sufficiently prior to the Bantu expansion to allow for the diversification of the languages within this language family that includes Bantu.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The classification of the relatively divergent family of the Ubangian languages, centred in the Central African Republic, as part of the Niger-Congo language family is disputed. Ubangian was grouped with Niger-Congo by Greenberg (1963), and later authorities concurred, but it was questioned by Dimmendaal (2008).


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The Bantu expansion, beginning around 1000 BC, swept across much of Central and Southern Africa, leading to the assimilation and extinction of many of the indigenous Pygmy and Bushmen (Khoisan) populations there.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The following is an overview of the language groups usually included in Niger-Congo. The genetic relationship of some branches is not universally accepted, and the cladistic connection between those who are accepted as related may also be unclear.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The core phylum of the Niger-Congo group are the Atlantic-Congo languages. The non-Atlantic-Congo languages within Niger-Congo are grouped as Dogon, Mande, Ijo (sometimes with Defaka as Ijoid), Katla and Rashad.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Atlantic-Congo combines the Atlantic languages, which do not form one branch, and Volta-Congo. It comprises more than 80% of the Niger-Congo speaking population, or close to 600 million people (2015).


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The proposed Savannas group combines Adamawa, Ubangian and Gur. Outside of the Savannas group, Volta-Congo comprises Kru, Kwa (or "West Kwa"), Volta-Niger (also "East Kwa" or "West Benue-Congo") and Benue-Congo (or "East Benue-Congo"). Volta-Niger includes the two largest languages of Nigeria, Yoruba and Igbo. Benue-Congo includes the Southern Bantoid group, which is dominated by the Bantu languages, which account for 350 million people (2015), or half the total Niger-Congo speaking population.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The strict genetic unity of any of these subgroups may themselves be under dispute. For example, Roger Blench (2012) argued that Adamawa, Ubangian, Kwa, Bantoid, and Bantu are not coherent groups.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Although the Kordofanian branch is generally included in the Niger–Congo languages, some researchers do not agree with its inclusion. "Glottolog" 3.4 (2019) does not accept that the Kordofanian branches (Lafofa, Talodi and Heiban) or the difficult-to-classify Laal language have been demonstrated to be Atlantic-Congo languages. It otherwise accepts the family but not its inclusion within a broader Niger-Congo. Glottolog also considers Ijoid, Mande, and Dogon to be independent language phyla that have not been demonstrated to be related to each other.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The Atlantic-Congo group is characterised by the noun class systems of its languages. Atlantic-Congo largely corresponds to Mukarovsky's "Western Nigritic" phylum.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The polyphyletic Atlantic group accounts for about 35 million speakers as of 2016, mostly accounted for by Fula and Wolof speakers. Atlantic is not considered to constitute a valid group.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The putative Niger–Congo languages outside of the Atlantic-Congo family are centred in the upper Senegal and Niger river basins, south and west of Timbuktu (Mande, Dogon), the Niger Delta (Ijoid), and far to the east in south-central Sudan, around the Nuba Mountains (the Kordofanian families). They account for a total population of about 100 million (2015), mostly Mandé and Ijaw.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The various Kordofanian languages are spoken in south-central Sudan, around the Nuba Mountains. "Kordofanian" is a geographic grouping, not a genetic one, named for the Kordofan region. These are minor languages, spoken by a total of about 100,000 people according to 1980s estimates. Katla and Rashad languages show isoglosses with Benue-Congo that the other families lack.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Niger-Congo as it is known today was only gradually recognized as a linguistic unit. In early classifications of the languages of Africa, one of the principal criteria used to distinguish different groupings was the languages' use of prefixes to classify nouns, or the lack thereof. A major advance came with the work of Sigismund Wilhelm Koelle, who in his 1854 "Polyglotta Africana" attempted a careful classification, the groupings of which in quite a number of cases correspond to modern groupings. An early sketch of the extent of Niger-Congo as one language family can be found in Koelle's observation, echoed in Bleek (1856), that the Atlantic languages used prefixes just like many Southern African languages. Subsequent work of Bleek, and some decades later the comparative work of Meinhof, solidly established Bantu as a linguistic unit.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: In many cases, wider classifications employed a blend of typological and racial criteria. Thus, Friedrich Müller, in his ambitious classification (1876–88), separated the 'Negro' and Bantu languages. Likewise, the Africanist Karl Richard Lepsius considered Bantu to be of African origin, and many 'Mixed Negro languages' as products of an encounter between Bantu and intruding Asiatic languages.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: In this period a relation between Bantu and languages with Bantu-like (but less complete) noun class systems began to emerge. Some authors saw the latter as languages which had not yet completely evolved to full Bantu status, whereas others regarded them as languages which had partly lost original features still found in Bantu. The Bantuist Meinhof made a major distinction between Bantu and a 'Semi-Bantu' group which according to him was originally of the unrelated Sudanic stock.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Westermann, a pupil of Meinhof, set out to establish the internal classification of the then Sudanic languages. In a 1911 work he established a basic division between 'East' and 'West'. A historical reconstruction of West Sudanic was published in 1927, and in his 1935 'Charakter und Einteilung der Sudansprachen' he conclusively established the relationship between Bantu and West Sudanic.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Joseph Greenberg took Westermann's work as a starting-point for his own classification. In a series of articles published between 1949 and 1954, he argued that Westermann's 'West Sudanic' and Bantu formed a single genetic family, which he named Niger-Congo; that Bantu constituted a subgroup of the Benue-Congo branch; that Adamawa-Eastern, previously not considered to be related, was another member of this family; and that Fula belonged to the West Atlantic languages. Just before these articles were collected in final book form ("The Languages of Africa") in 1963, he amended his classification by adding Kordofanian as a branch co-ordinate with Niger-Congo as a whole; consequently, he renamed the family "Congo-Kordofanian", later "Niger-Kordofanian". Greenberg's work on African languages, though initially greeted with scepticism, became the prevailing view among scholars.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Bennet and Sterk (1977) presented an internal reclassification based on lexicostatistics that laid the foundation for the regrouping in Bendor-Samuel (1989). Kordofanian was presented as one of several primary branches rather than being coordinate to the family as a whole, prompting re-introduction of the term "Niger-Congo", which is in current use among linguists. Many classifications continue to place Kordofanian as the most distant branch, but mainly due to negative evidence (fewer lexical correspondences), rather than positive evidence that the other languages form a valid genealogical group. Likewise, Mande is often assumed to be the second-most distant branch based on its lack of the noun-class system prototypical of the Niger-Congo family. Other branches lacking any trace of the noun-class system are Dogon and Ijaw, whereas the Talodi branch of Kordofanian does have cognate noun classes, suggesting that Kordofanian is also not a unitary group.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Pozdniakov (2012) stated: "The hypothesis of kinship between Niger-Congo languages didn't appear as a result of discovery of numerous related forms, for example, in Mande and Adamawa. It appeared as a result of comparison between the Bantu languages, for which the classical comparative method was possible to be applied and which were reliably reconstructed, with other African languages. Niger-Congo does not exist without Bantu. We need to say clearly that if we establish a genetic relationship between a form in Bantu and in Atlantic languages, or between Bantu and Mande, we have all grounds to trace this form back to Niger-Congo. If we establish such a relationship between Mel and Kru or between Mande and Dogon, we don't have enough reason to claim it Niger-Congo. In other words, all Niger-Congo languages are equal, but Bantu languages are “more equal” than the others."


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: "Glottolog" (2013) accepts the core with noun-class systems, the Atlantic-Congo languages, apart from the recent inclusion of some of the Kordofanian groups, but not Niger-Congo as a whole. They list the following as separate families: Atlantic-Congo, Mande, Dogon, Ijoid, Lafofa, Katla-Tima, Heiban, Talodi, and Rashad.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Babaev (2013) stated: "The truth here is that almost no attempts in fact have been made to verify Greenberg's Niger-Congo hypothesis. This might seem strange but the path laid by Joseph Greenberg to Proto-Niger-Congo was not followed by much research. Most scholars have focused on individual families or groups, and classifications as well as reconstructions were made on lower levels. Compared with the volume of literature on Atlantic or Mande languages, the list of papers considering the aspects of Niger-Congo reconstruction per se is quite scarce."


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: "Oxford Handbooks Online" (2016) has indicated that the continuing reassessment of Niger-Congo's "internal structure is due largely to the preliminary nature of Greenberg's classification, explicitly based as it was on a methodology that doesn't produce proofs for genetic affiliations between languages but rather aims at identifying "likely candidates."...The ongoing descriptive and documentary work on individual languages and their varieties, greatly expanding our knowledge on formerly little-known linguistic regions, is helping to identify clusters and units that allow for the application of the historical-comparative method. Only the reconstruction of lower-level units, instead of "big picture" contributions based on mass comparison, can help to verify (or disprove) our present concept of Niger-Congo as a genetic grouping consisting of Benue-Congo plus Volta-Niger, Kwa, Adamawa plus Gur, Kru, the so-called Kordofanian languages, and probably the language groups traditionally classified as Atlantic."


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The coherence of Niger-Congo as a language phylum is supported by Grollemund, et al. (2016), using computational phylogenetic methods. The East/West Volta-Congo division, West/East Benue-Congo division, and North/South Bantoid division are not supported, whereas a Bantoid group consisting of Ekoid, Bendi, Dakoid, Jukunoid, Tivoid, Mambiloid, Beboid, Mamfe, Tikar, Grassfields, and Bantu is supported.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Dimmendaal, Crevels, and Muysken (2020) stated: "Greenberg's hypothesis of Niger-Congo phylum has sometimes been taken as an established fact rather than a hypothesis awaiting further proof, but there have also been attempts to look at his argumentation in more detail. Much of the discussion concerning Niger-Congo after Greenberg's seminal contribution in fact centered around the inclusion or exclusion of specific languages or language groups."


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Good (2020) stated: "First proposed by Greenberg (1949), Niger-Congo (NC) has for decades been treated as one of the four major phyla of African languages. The term, as presently used, however, is not without its difficulties. On the one hand, it is employed as a referential label for a group of over 1,500 languages, putting it among the largest commonly cited language groups in the world. On the other hand, the term is also intended to embody a hypothesis of genealogical relationship between the referential NC languages that has not been proven."


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The lexicon of Proto-Niger–Congo (or Proto-Atlantic–Congo) has not been comprehensively reconstructed, although Konstantin Pozdniakov reconstructed the numeral system of Proto-Niger-Congo in 2018. The most extensive reconstructions of lower-order Niger–Congo branches include several reconstructions of Proto-Bantu, which has consequently had a disproportionate influence on conceptions of what Proto-Niger-Congo may have been like. The only stage higher than Proto-Bantu that has been reconstructed is a pilot project by Stewart, who since the 1970s has reconstructed the common ancestor of the Potou-Tano and Bantu languages, without so far considering the hundreds of other languages which presumably descend from that same ancestor.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Over the years, several linguists have suggested a link between Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan, probably starting with Westermann's comparative work on the "Sudanic" family in which 'Eastern Sudanic' (now classified as Nilo-Saharan) and 'Western Sudanic' (now classified as Niger-Congo) were united. Gregersen (1972) proposed that Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan be united into a larger phylum, which he termed "Kongo-Saharan". His evidence was mainly based on the uncertainty in the classification of Songhay, morphological resemblances, and lexical similarities. A more recent proponent was Roger Blench (1995), who puts forward phonological, morphological and lexical evidence for uniting Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan in a "Niger-Saharan" phylum, with special affinity between Niger-Congo and Central Sudanic. However, fifteen years later his views had changed, with Blench (2011) proposing instead that the noun-classifier system of Central Sudanic, commonly reflected in a tripartite general-singulative-plurative number system, triggered the development or elaboration of the noun-class system of the Atlantic-Congo languages, with tripartite number marking surviving in the Plateau and Gur languages of Niger-Congo, and the lexical similarities being due to loans.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Niger–Congo languages have a clear preference for open syllables of the type CV (Consonant Vowel). The typical word structure of Proto-Niger-Congo (though it has not been reconstructed) is thought to have been CVCV, a structure still attested in, for example, Bantu, Mande and Ijoid - in many other branches this structure has been reduced through phonological change. Verbs are composed of a root followed by one or more extensional suffixes. Nouns consist of a root originally preceded by a noun class prefix of (C)V- shape which is often eroded by phonological change.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Several branches of Niger-Congo have a regular phonological contrast between two classes of consonants. Pending more clarity as to the precise nature of this contrast, it is commonly characterized as a contrast between fortis and lenis consonants.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Many Niger–Congo languages' vowel harmony is based on the [ATR] (advanced tongue root) feature. In this type of vowel harmony, the position of the root of the tongue in regards to backness is the phonetic basis for the distinction between two harmonizing sets of vowels. In its fullest form, this type involves two classes, each of five vowels:


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The roots are then divided into [+ATR] and [−ATR] categories. This feature is lexically assigned to the roots because there is no determiner within a normal root that causes the [ATR] value.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: There are two types of [ATR] vowel harmony controllers in Niger-Congo. The first controller is the root. When a root contains a [+ATR] or [−ATR] vowel, then that value is applied to the rest of the word, which involves crossing morpheme boundaries. For example, suffixes in Wolof assimilate to the [ATR] value of the root to which they attach. Some examples of these suffixes that alternate depending on the root are:


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Furthermore, the directionality of assimilation in [ATR] root-controlled vowel harmony need not be specified. The root features [+ATR] and [−ATR] spread left and/or right as needed, so that no vowel would lack a specification and be ill-formed.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Unlike in the root-controlled harmony system, where the two [ATR] values behave symmetrically, a large number of Niger–Congo languages exhibit a pattern where the [+ATR] value is more active or dominant than the [−ATR] value. This results in the second vowel harmony controller being the [+ATR] value. If there is even one vowel that is [+ATR] in the whole word, then the rest of the vowels harmonize with that feature. However, if there is no vowel that is [+ATR], the vowels appear in their underlying form. This form of vowel harmony control is best exhibited in West African languages. For example, in Nawuri, the diminutive suffix /-bi/ will cause the underlying [−ATR] vowels in a word to become phonetically [+ATR].


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: There are two types of vowels which affect the harmony process. These are known as neutral or opaque vowels. Neutral vowels do not harmonize to the [ATR] value of the word, and instead maintain their own [ATR] value. The vowels that follow them, however, will receive the [ATR] value of the root. Opaque vowels maintain their own [ATR] value as well, but they affect the harmony process behind them. All of the vowels following an opaque vowel will harmonize with the [ATR] value of the opaque vowel instead of the [ATR] vowel of the root.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The vowel inventory listed above is a ten-vowel language. This is a language in which all of the vowels of the language participate in the harmony system, producing five harmonic pairs. Vowel inventories of this type are still found in some branches of Niger-Congo, for example in the Ghana Togo Mountain languages. However, this is the rarer inventory as oftentimes there are one or more vowels that are not part of a harmonic pair. This has resulted in seven- and nine-vowel systems being the more popular systems. The majority of languages with [ATR] controlled vowel harmony have either seven or nine vowel phonemes, with the most common non-participatory vowel being /a/. It has been asserted that this is because vowel quality differences in the mid-central region where /ə/, the counterpart of /a/, is found, are difficult to perceive. Another possible reason for the non-participatory status of /a/ is that there is articulatory difficulty in advancing the tongue root when the tongue body is low in order to produce a low [+ATR] vowel. Therefore, the vowel inventory for nine-vowel languages is generally:


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Note that in the nine-vowel language, the missing vowel is, in fact, [ə], [a]'s counterpart, as would be expected.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The fact that ten vowels have been reconstructed for proto-Ijoid has led to the hypothesis that the original vowel inventory of Niger-Congo was a full ten-vowel system. On the other hand, Stewart, in recent comparative work, reconstructs a seven-vowel system for his proto-Potou-Akanic-Bantu.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Several scholars have documented a contrast between oral and nasal vowels in Niger-Congo. In his reconstruction of proto-Volta-Congo, Steward (1976) postulates that nasal consonants have originated under the influence of nasal vowels; this hypothesis is supported by the fact that there are several Niger–Congo languages that have been analysed as lacking nasal consonants altogether. Languages like this have nasal vowels accompanied with complementary distribution between oral and nasal consonants before oral and nasal vowels. Subsequent loss of the nasal/oral contrast in vowels may result in nasal consonants becoming part of the phoneme inventory. In all cases reported to date, the bilabial /m/ is the first nasal consonant to be phonologized. Niger-Congo thus invalidates two common assumptions about nasals: that all languages have at least one primary nasal consonant, and that if a language has only one primary nasal consonant it is /n/.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Niger–Congo languages commonly show fewer nasalized than oral vowels. Kasem, a language with a ten-vowel system employing ATR vowel harmony, has seven nasalized vowels. Similarly, Yoruba has seven oral vowels and only five nasal ones. However, the language of Zialo has a nasal equivalent for each of its seven oral vowels.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The large majority of present-day Niger–Congo languages are tonal. A typical Niger-Congo tone system involves two or three contrastive level tones. Four-level systems are less widespread, and five-level systems are rare. Only a few Niger–Congo languages are non-tonal; Swahili is perhaps the best known, but within the Atlantic branch some others are found. Proto-Niger-Congo is thought to have been a tone language with two contrastive levels. Synchronic and comparative-historical studies of tone systems show that such a basic system can easily develop more tonal contrasts under the influence of depressor consonants or through the introduction of a downstep. Languages which have more tonal levels tend to use tone more for lexical and less for grammatical contrasts.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Niger–Congo languages are known for their system of noun classification, traces of which can be found in every branch of the family but Mande, Ijoid, Dogon, and the Katla and Rashad branches of Kordofanian. These noun-classification systems are somewhat analogous to grammatical gender in other languages, but there are often a fairly large number of classes (often 10 or more), and the classes may be male human/female human/animate/inanimate, or even completely gender-unrelated categories such as places, plants, abstracts, and groups of objects. For example, in Bantu, the Swahili language is called "Kiswahili," while the Swahili people are "Waswahili." Likewise, in Ubangian, the Zande language is called "Pazande," while the Zande people are called "Azande."


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: In the Bantu languages, where noun classification is particularly elaborate, it typically appears as prefixes, with verbs and adjectives marked according to the class of the noun they refer to. For example, in Swahili, "watu wazuri wataenda" is 'good "(zuri)" people "(tu)" will go "(ta-enda)"'.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The same Atlantic-Congo languages which have noun classes also have a set of verb applicatives and other verbal extensions, such as the reciprocal suffix "-na" (Swahili "penda" 'to love', "pendana" 'to love each other'; also applicative "pendea" 'to love for' and causative "pendeza" 'to please').


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: A subject-verb-object word order is quite widespread among today's Niger–Congo languages, but SOV is found in branches as divergent as Mande, Ijoid and Dogon. As a result, there has been quite some debate as to the basic word order of Niger-Congo.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Whereas Claudi (1993) argues for SVO on the basis of existing SVO > SOV grammaticalization paths, Gensler (1997) points out that the notion of 'basic word order' is problematic as it excludes structures with, for example, auxiliaries. However, the structure SC-OC-VbStem (Subject concord, Object concord, Verb stem) found in the "verbal complex" of the SVO Bantu languages suggests an earlier SOV pattern (where the subject and object were at least represented by pronouns).


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: Noun phrases in most Niger–Congo languages are characteristically "noun-initial", with adjectives, numerals, demonstratives and genitives all coming after the noun. The major exceptions are found in the western areas where verb-final word order predominates and genitives precede nouns, though other modifiers still come afterwards. Degree words almost always follow adjectives, and except in verb-final languages adpositions are prepositional.


title: Niger–Congo languages

text: The verb-final languages of the Mende region have two quite unusual word order characteristics. Although verbs follow their direct objects, oblique adpositional phrases (like "in the house", "with timber") typically come after the verb, creating a SOVX word order. Also noteworthy in these languages is the prevalence of internally headed and correlative relative clauses, in both of which the head occurs "inside" the relative clause rather than the main clause.


title: Ancestry.com

text: Ancestry.com LLC is an American genealogy company based in Lehi, Utah. The largest for-profit genealogy company in the world, it operates a network of genealogical, historical records, and related genetic genealogy websites.


title: Ancestry.com

text: In November 2018, the company said to have provided access to approximately 10 billion historical records, to have 3 million paying subscribers, and to have sold 18 million DNA kits to customers. By 2022, this number had risen to 30 billion records according to the company. On December 4, 2020, The Blackstone Group acquired the company in a deal valued at $4.7 billion.


title: Ancestry.com

text: In 1990, Paul Brent Allen (not to be confused with Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen or the Allen Holdings CEO Paul Allen) and Dan Taggart, two Brigham Young University graduates, founded Infobases and began offering Latter-day Saints (LDS) publications on floppy disks. In 1988, Allen had worked at Folio Corporation, founded by his brother Curt and his brother-in-law Brad Pelo.


title: Ancestry.com

text: Infobases' first products were floppy disks and compact disks sold from the back seat of the founders' car. In 1994, Infobases was named among "Inc." magazine's 500 fastest-growing companies. Their first offering on CD was the LDS Collectors Edition, released in April 1995, selling for $299.95, which was offered in an online version in August 1995. Ancestry officially went online with the launch of Ancestry.com in 1996.


title: Ancestry.com

text: On January 1, 1997, Infobases' parent company, Western Standard Publishing, purchased Ancestry, Inc., publisher of "Ancestry" magazine and genealogy books. Western Standard Publishing's CEO was Joseph A. Cannon, one of the principal owners of Geneva Steel.


title: Ancestry.com

text: In July 1997, Allen and Taggart purchased Western Standard's interest in Ancestry, Inc. At the time, Brad Pelo was president and CEO of Infobases, and president of Western Standard. Less than six months earlier, he had been president of Folio Corporation, whose digital technology Infobases was using. In March 1997, Folio was sold to Open Market for $45 million. The first public evidence of the change in ownership of "Ancestry" magazine came with the July/August 1997 issue, which showed a newly reorganized Ancestry, Inc., as its publisher. That issue's masthead also included the first use of the Ancestry.com web address.


title: Ancestry.com

text: More growth for Infobases occurred in July 1997, when Ancestry, Inc. purchased Bookcraft, Inc., a publisher of books written by leaders and officers of the LDS Church. Infobases had published many of Bookcraft's books as part of its LDS Collector's Library. Pelo also announced that Ancestry's product line would be greatly expanded in both CDs and online. Alan Ashton, a longtime investor in Infobases and founder of WordPerfect, was its chairman of the board.


title: Ancestry.com

text: Allen and Taggart began running Ancestry, Inc. independently from Infobases in July 1997, and began creating one of the largest online subscription-based genealogy database services.


title: Ancestry.com

text: In April 1999, to better focus on its Ancestry.com and MyFamily.com Internet businesses, Infobases sold the Bookcraft brand name and its catalog of print books to its major competitor in the LDS book market, Deseret Book. Included in the sale were the rights to Infobases' LDS Collectors Library on CD. A year earlier, Deseret Book had released a competing product called GospeLink, and the two products were combined as a single product by Deseret Book.


title: Ancestry.com

text: The MyFamily.com website launched in December 1998, with additional free sites beginning in March 1999. The site generated one-million registered users within its first 140 days. The company raised more than US$90 million in venture capital from investors and changed its name on November 17, 1999, from Ancestry.com, Inc. to MyFamily.com, Inc. Its three Internet genealogy sites were then called Ancestry.com, FamilyHistory.com, and MyFamily.com. Sales were about US$62 million for 2002 and US$99 million for 2003.


title: Ancestry.com

text: In March 2004, the company, which had outgrown its call center in Orem, Utah, opened a new call center, which accommodates about 700 agents at a time, in Provo. Heritage Makers was acquired by MyFamily.com in September 2005.


title: Ancestry.com

text: While the company had been offering free access to Ancestry.com at LDS Family History Centers, that service was terminated on March 17, 2007, because the company and the LDS Church were unable to reach a mutually agreeable licensing agreement. In 2010, Ancestry restored access to its site at Family History Centers.


title: Ancestry.com

text: Ancestry.com became a publicly traded company on NASDAQ (symbol: ACOM) on November 5, 2009, with an initial public offering of 7.4 million shares priced at $13.50 per share, underwritten by Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Jefferies & Company, Piper Jaffray, and BMO Capital Markets.


title: Ancestry.com

text: In 2010, Ancestry.com expanded its domestic operations with the opening of an office in San Francisco, California, staffed with brand new engineering, product, and marketing teams geared toward developing some of Ancestry's cutting-edge technology and services. In 2011, Ancestry launched an Android and iOS app.


title: Ancestry.com

text: In December 2011, Ancestry.com moved the Social Security Death Index search behind a paywall and stopped displaying the Social Security information of people who had died within the past 10 years, because of identity theft concerns.


title: Ancestry.com

text: In September 2012, Ancestry.com expanded its international operations with the opening of its European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. The Dublin office includes a new call centre for international customers, as well as product, marketing, and engineering teams.


title: Ancestry.com

text: In October 2012, Ancestry.com agreed to be acquired by a private equity group consisting of Permira Advisers LLP, members of Ancestry.com's management team, including CEO Tim Sullivan and CFO Howard Hochhauser, and Spectrum Equity, for $32 per share or around $1.6 billion. At the same time, Ancestry.com purchased a photo digitization and sharing service called 1000Memories.


title: Ancestry.com

text: On July 16, 2015, Ancestry launched AncestryHealth, and announced the appointment of Cathy A. Petti as its Chief Health Officer. That year, Ancestry partnered with the Google subsidiary, Calico, to focus on longevity research and therapeutics, in an effort to investigate human heredity of lifespan.


title: Ancestry.com

text: In April 2016, GIC Private Limited (a sovereign wealth fund owned by the Government of Singapore) and Silver Lake (a private equity fund manager) bought equity stakes in Ancestry.com. The estimated market value of Ancestry.com in 2017 was more than $3 billion.


title: Ancestry.com

text: Through vintage photographs, a woman was able to document eight generations of her family, dating back to 1805, including an interracial couple. A controversial Ancestry.com advertisement had run on television stations in Utah, showing a slavery-era interracial couple. The advertisement was criticized by a news correspondent for Boston radio station WBUR-FM and MSNBC, and law professor Melissa Murray, on the grounds that it romanticized slavery in the antebellum South. In April 2019, Ancestry withdrew the advertisement with an apology.


title: Ancestry.com

text: In November 2018, Ancestry claimed to have over 10 billion digitised records and over three-million paying customers.


title: Ancestry.com

text: In December 2018, after authorities arrested the Golden State Killer and used GEDmatch to solve the case, Ancestry.com and 23andMe announced a data policy that they would not allow their DNA profiles to be used for crime solving without a valid legal process such as a search warrant, as they believe it violates users' privacy. In the 2021 case of the murder of George Seitz, Ancestry.com was used to help identify the remains of a crime victim.


title: Ancestry.com

text: In February 2021, Ancestry announced Deb Liu, a former Facebook executive, as their CEO effective March 1.


title: Ancestry.com

text: AncestryDNA is a subsidiary of Ancestry LLC. AncestryDNA offers a direct-to-consumer genealogical DNA test. Consumers provide a sample of their DNA to the company for analysis. AncestryDNA then uses DNA sequences to infer family relationships with other Ancestry DNA users and to provide what it calls an "ethnicity estimate". This "ethnicity estimate" uses 700,000 markers which is only about .02% of all genetic markers that could be tested. Customers should not believe they are seeing all of their ethnic background, but taking multiple tests is useful when combined with using ancestry.com's genealogy web searches to find possible unexpected admixtures. Previously, Ancestry.com also offered paternal Y-chromosome DNA and maternal mitochondrial DNA tests, but those were discontinued in June 2014. The company describes the technical process of testing in a scientific white paper. In July 2020, the company claimed that their database contained 18 million completed DNA kits bought by customers.


title: Ancestry.com

text: Ancestry DNA is commonly used for donor conceived persons to find their biological siblings and in some cases their sperm or egg donor.


title: Ancestry.com

text: For the people who activate the DNA test, Ancestry offers the possibility to participate into "Human Diversity Project", a "scientific research project aimed at helping scientists better understand population history, human migration, and human health".


title: Ancestry.com

text: On September 30, 2013, Ancestry.com announced its acquisition of Find a Grave. Site editor Jim Tipton said of the purchase that Ancestry.com had "been linking and driving traffic to the site for several years. Burial information is a wonderful source for people researching their family history". Ancestry.com launched a mobile app in March 2014.


title: Ancestry.com

text: Fold3® is an online database with military records, including the stories, photos, and personal documents.


title: Ancestry.com

text: In 2012, Ancestry spun off its digitized online newspaper components into a standalone service, Newspapers.com. Before the Newspapers.com launch, Ancestry.com acquired the following newspaper-oriented components, including scanning and digital technologies and posting on their website:


title: Ancestry.com

text: The website's principal competitor is newspaperarchive.com which claims it has online newspapers dating from 1607 worldwide, and its index in June 2018 includes 9,829 newspapers. Both websites have similar models for increasing their databases: striking deals with libraries, publishers and historical organizations to scan the publications for free to include in their database. Some participants see the process of free scanning as an easier, cheaper and quicker way to get their publications online than working through the U.S. government-operated National Digital Newspaper Program.


title: Ancestry.com

text: RootsWeb, acquired by Ancestry in June 2000, is a free genealogy community that uses online forums, mailing lists, and other resources to help people research their family history. Users can upload GEDCOM files of their information for others to search at the WorldConnect portion of the site. Trees uploaded to WorldConnect are searchable at both the RootsWeb and Ancestry websites.


title: Ancestry.com

text: On December 20, 2017, a file containing 300,000 RootsWeb user names, passwords, and email addresses was exposed to the internet. The 300,000 records were from RootsWeb surname list service with 55,000 of those records were also Ancestry.com login credentials.


title: Ancestry.com

text: We Remember is a free online memorial platform, which was launched by Ancestry in November 2017. It allows users to create a space to preserve and share photos and videos about the deceased.


title: Ancestry.com

text: Acquired by Ancestry on May 24, 2021, Forces War Records is the leading British military genealogy-specialist website with a unique product that helps people both discover and contextualize their family's military history.


title: Ball bearing

text: A ball bearing is a type of rolling-element bearing that uses balls to maintain the separation between the bearing races.


title: Ball bearing

text: The purpose of a ball bearing is to reduce rotational friction and support radial and axial loads. It achieves this by using at least two races to contain the balls and transmit the loads through the balls. In most applications, one race is stationary and the other is attached to the rotating assembly (e.g., a hub or shaft). As one of the bearing races rotates it causes the balls to rotate as well. Because the balls are rolling they have a much lower coefficient of friction than if two flat surfaces were sliding against each other.


title: Ball bearing

text: Ball bearings tend to have lower load capacity for their size than other kinds of rolling-element bearings due to the smaller contact area between the balls and races. However, they can tolerate some misalignment of the inner and outer races.


title: Ball bearing

text: Although bearings had been developed since ancient times, the first modern recorded patent on ball bearings was awarded to Philip Vaughan, a Welsh inventor and ironmaster who created the first design for a ball bearing in Carmarthen in 1794. His was the first modern ball-bearing design, with the ball running along a groove in the axle assembly.


title: Ball bearing

text: Jules Suriray, a Parisian bicycle mechanic, designed the first radial style ball bearing in 1869, which was then fitted to the winning bicycle ridden by James Moore in the world's first bicycle road race, Paris-Rouen, in November 1869.


title: Ball bearing

text: There are several common designs of ball bearing, each offering various performance trade-offs. They can be made from many different materials, including: stainless steel, chrome steel, and ceramic (silicon nitride (SiN)). A hybrid ball bearing is a bearing with ceramic balls and races of metal.


title: Ball bearing

text: An "angular contact" ball bearing uses axially asymmetric races. An axial load passes in a straight line through the bearing, whereas a radial load takes an oblique path that acts to separate the races axially. So the angle of contact on the inner race is the same as that on the outer race. Angular contact bearings better support combined loads (loading in both the radial and axial directions) and the contact angle of the bearing should be matched to the relative proportions of each. The larger the contact angle (typically in the range 10 to 45 degrees), the higher the axial load supported, but the lower the radial load. In high speed applications, such as turbines, jet engines, and dentistry equipment, the centrifugal forces generated by the balls changes the contact angle at the inner and outer race. Ceramics such as silicon nitride are now regularly used in such applications due to their low density (40% of steel). These materials significantly reduce centrifugal force and function well in high temperature environments. They also tend to wear in a similar way to bearing steel—rather than cracking or shattering like glass or porcelain.


title: Ball bearing

text: Most bicycles use angular-contact bearings in the headsets because the forces on these bearings are in both the radial and axial direction.


title: Ball bearing

text: An "axial" or "thrust" ball bearing uses side-by-side races. An axial load is transmitted directly through the bearing, while a radial load is poorly supported and tends to separate the races, so that a larger radial load is likely to damage the bearing.


title: Ball bearing

text: In a "deep-groove" radial bearing, the race dimensions are close to the dimensions of the balls that run in it. Deep-groove bearings support higher loads than a shallower groove. Like angular contact bearings, deep-groove bearings support both radial and axial loads, but without a choice of contact angle to allow choice of relative proportion of these load capacities.


title: Ball bearing

text: The above basic types of bearings are typically applied in a method of "preloaded pairs", where two individual bearings are rigidly fastened along a rotating shaft to face each other. This improves the axial runout by taking up ("preloading") the necessary slight clearance between the bearing balls and races. Pairing also provides an advantage of evenly distributing the loads, nearly doubling the total load capacity compared to a single bearing. Angular contact bearings are almost always used in opposing pairs: the asymmetric design of each bearing supports axial loads in only one direction, so an opposed pair is required if the application demands support in both directions. The preloading force must be designed and assembled carefully, because it deducts from the axial force capacity of the bearings, and can damage bearings if applied excessively. The pairing mechanism may simply face the bearings together directly, or separate them with a shim, bushing, or shaft feature.


title: Ball bearing

text: The "Conrad"-style ball bearing is named after its inventor, Robert Conrad, who was awarded British patent 12,206 in 1903 and U.S. patent 822,723 in 1906. These bearings are assembled by placing the inner ring into an eccentric position relative to the outer ring, with the two rings in contact at one point, resulting in a large gap opposite the point of contact. The balls are inserted through the gap and then evenly distributed around the bearing assembly, causing the rings to become concentric. Assembly is completed by fitting a cage to the balls to maintain their positions relative to each other. Without the cage, the balls would eventually drift out of position during operation, causing the bearing to fail. The cage carries no load and serves only to maintain ball position.


title: Ball bearing

text: Conrad bearings have the advantage that they are able to withstand both radial and axial loads, but have the disadvantage of lower load capacity due to the limited number of balls that can be loaded into the bearing assembly. Probably the most familiar industrial ball bearing is the deep-groove Conrad style. The bearing is used in most of the mechanical industries.


title: Ball bearing

text: In a "slot-fill" radial bearing, the inner and outer races are notched on one face so that when the notches are aligned, balls can be slipped in the resulting slot to assemble the bearing.  A slot-fill bearing has the advantage that more balls can be assembled (even allowing a "full complement" design), resulting in a higher radial load capacity than a Conrad bearing of the same dimensions and material type.  However, a slot-fill bearing cannot carry a significant axial load, and the slots cause a discontinuity in the races that can have a small but adverse effect on strength.


title: Ball bearing

text: Relieved race ball bearings are 'relieved' as the name suggests by having either the OD of the inner ring reduced on one side, or the ID of the outer ring increased on one side. This allows a greater number of balls to be assembled into either the inner or outer race, and then press fit over the relief. Sometimes the outer ring will be heated to facilitate assembly. Like the slot-fill construction, relieved race construction allows a greater number of balls than Conrad construction, up to and including full complement, and the extra ball count gives extra load capacity. However, a relieved race bearing can only support significant axial loads in one direction ('away from' the relieved race).


title: Ball bearing

text: Another way of fitting more balls into a radial ball bearing is by radially 'fracturing' (slicing) one of the rings all the way through, loading the balls in, re-assembling the fractured portion, and then using a pair of steel bands to hold the fractured ring sections together in alignment. Again, this allows more balls, including full ball complement, however unlike with either slot fill or relieved race constructions, it can support significant axial loading in either direction.


title: Ball bearing

text: There are two "row" designs: "single-row" bearings and "double-row" bearings. Most ball bearings are a single-row design, which means there is one row of bearing balls. This design works with radial and thrust loads.


title: Ball bearing

text: A "double-row" design has two rows of bearing balls. Advantages of double-row bearings as compared to single-row include that they can bear radial and axial loads in both directions. Double-row angular contact ball bearings have a steep mounting, which also can bear tilting effects. Other advantages of double-row bearings are their rigidity and compactness. Their disadvantage is they need better alignment than single-row bearings.


title: Ball bearing

text: Bearings with a flange on the outer ring simplify axial location. The housing for such bearings can consist of a through-hole of uniform diameter, but the entry face of the housing (which may be either the outer or inner face) must be machined truly normal to the hole axis. However such flanges are very expensive to manufacture.