Life.

Early life.

René Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine (now Descartes, Indre-et-Loire), France, on 31 March 1596. His mother, Jeanne Brochard, died soon after giving birth to him, and so he was not expected to survive. Descartes's father, Joachim, was a member of the Parlement of Brittany at Rennes. René lived with his grandmother and with his great-uncle. Although the Descartes family was Roman Catholic, the Poitou region was controlled by the Protestant Huguenots. In 1607, late because of his fragile health, he entered the Jesuit Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand at La Flèche, where he was introduced to mathematics and physics, including Galileo's work. After graduation in 1614, he studied for two years (1615–16) at the University of Poitiers, earning a "Baccalauréat" and "Licence" in canon and civil law in 1616, in accordance with his father's wishes that he should become a lawyer. From there he moved to Paris.  In "Discourse

Visions.

According to Adrien Baillet, on the night of 10–11 November 1619 (St. Martin's Day), while stationed in Neuburg an der Donau, Descartes shut himself in a room with an "oven" (probably a cocklestove) to escape the cold. While within, he had three dreams and believed that a divine spirit revealed to him a new philosophy. However, it is likely that what Descartes considered to be his

France.

In 1620 Descartes left the army. He visited Basilica della Santa Casa in Loreto, then visited various countries before returning to France, and during the next few years spent time in Paris. It was there that he composed his first essay on method: "Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii" (Rules for the Direction of the Mind). He arrived in La Haye in 1623, selling all of his property

Netherlands.

Descartes returned to the Dutch Republic in 1628. In April 1629 he joined the University of Franeker, studying under Adriaan Metius, either living with a Catholic family or renting the Sjaerdemaslot. The next year, under the name "Poitevin", he enrolled at the Leiden University to study mathematics with Jacobus Golius, who confronted him with Pappus's hexagon theorem, and astronomy with Martin Hortensius. In October 1630 he had a falling-out with Beeckman, whom he accused of plagiarizing some of his ideas. In Amsterdam, he had a relationship with a servant girl, Helena Jans van der Strom, with whom

Sweden.

By 1649, Descartes had become one of Europe's most famous philosophers and scientists. That year, Queen Christina of Sweden invited Descartes to her court to organize a new scientific academy and tutor her in his ideas about love. She was interested in and stimulated Descartes to publish the "Passions of the Soul",

Death.

Descartes arranged to give lessons to Queen Christina after her birthday, three times a week at 5 am, in her cold and draughty castle. It soon became clear they did not like each other; she did not care for his mechanical philosophy, nor did he share her interest in Ancient Greek. By 15 January 1650, Descartes had seen Christina only four or five times. On 1 February he contracted pneumonia and died on 11 February. The cause of death was pneumonia according to Chanut, but peripneumonia according to Christina's physician Johann van Wullen who was not allowed to bleed him. (The winter seems to have been mild, except for the second half

Philosophical work.

Initially, Descartes arrives at only a single first principle: I think. Thought cannot be separated from me, therefore, I exist ("Discourse on the Method" and "Principles of Philosophy"). Most notably, this is known as "cogito ergo sum" (English: "I think, therefore I am"). Therefore, Descartes concluded, if he doubted, then something or someone must be doing the doubting; therefore, the very fact that he doubted proved his existence. "The simple meaning of the phrase is that if one is skeptical of existence, that is in and of itself proof that he does exist." These two first principles—I think and I exist—were later confirmed by Descartes's clear and distinct perception (delineated in his ): that I clearly and distinctly perceive these two principles, Descartes reasoned, ensures their indubitability.  Descartes concludes that he can be certain that he exists because he thinks. But in what form? He perceives his body through the use of the senses; however, these have previously been unreliable. So Descartes determines that the only indubitable knowledge is that he is a "thinking thing". Thinking is what he does, and his power must come from his essence. Descartes defines "thought" ("cogitatio") as "what happens in me such that I am immediately conscious of it, insofar as I am conscious of it". Thinking is thus every activity of a person of which the person is immediately conscious. He gave reasons for thinking that waking thoughts are distinguishable from dreams, and that one's mind cannot have been "hijacked" by an evil demon placing an illusory external world before one's senses.  In this manner, Descartes proceeds to construct a system of knowledge, discarding perception as unreliable and, instead, admitting only deduction as a method.

Dualism.

Descartes, influenced by the automatons on display throughout the city of Paris, began to investigate the connection between the mind and body, and how the two interact. His main influences for dualism were theology and physics. The theory on the dualism of mind and body is Descartes's signature doctrine and permeates other theories he advanced. Known as Cartesian dualism (or Mind-Body Dualism), his theory on the separation between the mind and the body went on to influence subsequent Western philosophies. In "Meditations on First Philosophy", Descartes attempted to demonstrate the existence of God and the distinction between the human soul and the body. Humans are a union of mind and body; thus Descartes's dualism embraced the idea that mind and body are distinct but closely joined. While many contemporary readers of Descartes found the distinction between mind and body difficult to grasp, he thought it was entirely

Physiology and psychology.

In "The Passions of the Soul", written between 1645 and 1646, Descartes discussed the common contemporary belief that the human body contained animal spirits. These animal spirits were believed to be light and roaming fluids circulating rapidly around the nervous system between the brain and the muscles, and served as a metaphor for feelings, like being in high or bad spirit. These animal spirits were believed to affect the human soul, or passions of the soul. Descartes distinguished six basic passions: wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness. All of these passions, he argued, represented different combinations of the original spirit, and influenced the soul to will or want certain actions. He argued, for example, that fear is a passion that moves the soul to generate a response in the body. In line with his dualist teachings on the separation between the soul and the body, he hypothesized that some part of the brain served as a connector between the soul and the body and singled out the pineal gland as connector. Descartes argued that signals passed from the ear and the eye to the pineal gland, through animal spirits. Thus different motions in the gland cause various animal spirits.

Moral philosophy.

For Descartes, ethics was a science, the highest and most perfect of them. Like the rest of the sciences, ethics had its roots in metaphysics. In this way, he argues for the existence of God, investigates the place of man in nature, formulates the theory of mind-body dualism, and defends free will. However, as he was a convinced rationalist, Descartes clearly states that reason is sufficient in the search for the goods that we should seek, and virtue consists in the correct reasoning that should guide our actions. Nevertheless, the quality of this reasoning depends on knowledge, because a well-informed mind will be more capable of making good choices, and it also depends on mental condition. For this reason, he said that a complete moral philosophy should include the study of the body. He discussed this subject in the correspondence with Princess

Religion.

In the third and fifth "Meditation", Descartes offers an ontological proof of a benevolent God (through both the ontological argument and trademark argument). Because God is benevolent, Descartes can have some faith in the account of reality his senses provide him, for God has provided him with a working mind and sensory system and does not desire to deceive him. From this supposition, however, Descartes finally establishes the possibility of acquiring knowledge about the world based on deduction "and" perception. Regarding epistemology, therefore, Descartes can be said to have contributed such ideas as

Natural science.

Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. For him the philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge, as he related in a letter to a French translator:  In his "Discourse on the Method", he attempts to arrive at a fundamental set of principles that one can know

On animals.

Descartes denied that animals had reason or intelligence. He argued that animals did not lack sensations or perceptions, but these could be explained mechanistically. Whereas humans had a soul, or mind, and were able to feel pain and anxiety, animals by virtue of not having a soul could not feel pain or anxiety. If animals showed signs of distress then this was to protect the body from damage,

Historical impact.

Emancipation from Church doctrine.

Descartes has often been dubbed the father of modern Western philosophy, the thinker whose approach has profoundly changed the course of Western philosophy and set the basis for modernity. The first two of his "Meditations on First Philosophy", those that formulate the famous methodic doubt, represent the portion of Descartes's writings that most influenced modern thinking. It has been argued that Descartes himself did not realize the extent of this revolutionary move. In shifting the debate from "what is true" to "of what can I be certain?," Descartes arguably shifted the authoritative guarantor of truth from God to humanity (even though Descartes himself claimed he received his visions from God)—while the traditional concept of "truth" implies an external authority, "certainty" instead relies on the judgment of the individual.  In an anthropocentric revolution, the human

Mathematical legacy.

One of Descartes's most enduring legacies was his development of Cartesian or analytic geometry, which uses algebra to describe geometry. Descartes "invented the convention of representing unknowns in equations by "x", "y", and "z", and knowns by "a", "b", and "c"". He also "pioneered the standard notation" that uses superscripts to show the powers or exponents; for example, the 2 used in x to indicate x squared. He was first to assign a fundamental place for algebra in our system of knowledge, using it as a method to automate or mechanize reasoning, particularly about abstract, unknown quantities. European mathematicians had previously viewed geometry as a more fundamental form of mathematics, serving as the foundation of algebra. Algebraic rules were given geometric proofs by mathematicians such as Pacioli, Cardan, Tartaglia and Ferrari. Equations of degree higher than the third were regarded as unreal, because a three-dimensional form, such as a cube, occupied the largest dimension of reality. Descartes professed that the abstract quantity "a" could represent length as well as an area. This was in opposition to the teachings of mathematicians, such as Vieta, who argued that it could represent only area. Although

Influence on Newton's mathematics.

Current popular opinion holds that Descartes had the most influence of anyone on the young Newton, and this is arguably one of his most important contributions. Decartes's influence extended not directly from his

Contemporary reception.

In commercial terms, "Discourse" appeared during Descartes's lifetime in a single edition of 500 copies, 200 of which were set aside for the author. Sharing a similar fate was the only French edition of "Meditations", which had not managed to sell out by the time of Descartes's death. A concomitant

Writings.

In January 2010, a previously unknown letter from Descartes, dated 27 May 1641, was found by the Dutch philosopher Erik-Jan Bos when browsing through Google. Bos found the letter mentioned in a summary of autographs kept by Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania. The college was unaware that the letter had never been published. This was the third letter by Descartes found in the last 25 years.

René Descartes ( or ; ; Renatus Cartesius; "Cartesian", ; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist. A native of the Kingdom of France, he spent about 20 years (1629–1649) of his life in the Dutch Republic after serving for a while in the Dutch States Army of Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange and the Stadtholder of the United Provinces. One of the most notable intellectual figures of the Dutch Golden Age, Descartes is also widely regarded as one of the founders of modern philosophy.

René Descartes [] (latinisiert "Renatus Cartesius"; * 31. März 1596 in La Haye en Touraine; † 11. Februar 1650 in Stockholm) war ein französischer Philosoph, Mathematiker und Naturwissenschaftler.


Origin.

Malay historical linguists agree on the likelihood of the Malay homeland being in western Borneo stretching to the Bruneian coast. A form known as Proto-Malay was spoken in Borneo at least by 1000 BCE and was, it has been argued, the ancestral language of all subsequent Malayan languages. Its ancestor, Proto-Malayo-Polynesian, a descendant of the Proto-Austronesian language, began to break up by at least 2000 BCE, possibly as a result of the southward expansion of Austronesian peoples into Maritime Southeast Asia from the island of Taiwan.

History.

The history of the Malay language can be divided into five periods: Old Malay, the Transitional Period, the Malacca Period (Classical Malay), Late Modern Malay and modern Malay. It is not clear that Old Malay was actually the ancestor of Classical Malay, but this is thought to be quite possible.  Old Malay was influenced by the Sanskrit literary language of Classical India and a scriptural language of Hinduism and Buddhism. Sanskrit loanwords can be found in Old Malay vocabulary. The earliest known stone inscription in the Old Malay language was found in Sumatra, written in the Pallava variety of the Grantha alphabet and is dated May 1, 683. Known as the Kedukan Bukit inscription, it was discovered by the Dutchman M. Batenburg on November 29, 1920 at Kedukan Bukit, South Sumatra, on the banks of the Tatang, a tributary of the Musi River. It is a small stone of.  The earliest surviving manuscript in Malay is the Tanjung Tanah Law in post-Pallava letters. This 14th-century pre-Islamic legal text produced in the Adityawarman era (1345–1377) of Dharmasraya, a Hindu-Buddhist kingdom that arose after the end of Srivijayan rule in Sumatra. The laws were for the Minangkabau people, who today still live in the highlands of Sumatra.  The Malay language came into widespread use as the lingua franca of the Malacca Sultanate (1402–1511). During this period, the Malay language developed rapidly under the influence of Islamic literature. The development changed the nature of the language with massive infusion of Arabic, Tamil and Sanskrit vocabularies, called "Classical Malay". Under the Sultanate of Malacca the language evolved into a form recognisable to speakers of modern Malay. When the court moved to establish the Johor Sultanate, it continued using the classical language; it has become so associated with Dutch Riau and British Johor that it is often assumed that the Malay of Riau is close to the classical language. However, there is no closer connection between Malaccan Malay as used on Riau and the Riau vernacular.  Among the oldest surviving letters written in Malay are the letters from Sultan Abu Hayat of Ternate, Maluku Islands in present-day Indonesia, dated around 1521–1522. The text is addressed to the king of Portugal, following contact with Portuguese explorer Francisco Serrão. The letters show sign of non-native usage; the Ternateans used (and still use) the unrelated Ternate language, a West Papuan language, as their first language. Malay was used solely as a lingua franca for inter-ethnic communications.

Classification.

Malay is a member of the Austronesian family of languages, which includes languages from Southeast Asia and the Pacific Ocean, with a smaller number in continental Asia. Malagasy, a geographic outlier spoken in Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, is also a member of this language family. Although these languages are not necessarily mutually intelligible to any extent, their similarities are rather striking. Many roots have come virtually unchanged from their common ancestor, Proto-Austronesian language. There are many cognates found in the languages' words for kinship, health, body parts and common animals. Numbers, especially, show remarkable similarities.  Within Austronesian, Malay is part of a cluster of numerous closely related forms of speech known as the Malayic languages, which were spread across Malaya and the Indonesian archipelago by Malay traders from Sumatra. There is disagreement as to which varieties of speech popularly called "Malay" should be considered dialects of this language, and which should be classified as distinct Malay languages. The vernacular of Brunei—Brunei Malay—for example, is not readily intelligible with the standard language, and the same is true with some lects on the Malay Peninsula such as Kedah Malay. However, both Brunei and Kedah are quite close.  The closest relatives of the Malay languages are those left behind on Sumatra, such as the Minangkabau language, with 5.5 million speakers on the west coast.

Writing system.

Malay is now written using the Latin script, known as "Rumi" in Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore or "Latin" in Indonesia, although an Arabic script called "Arab Melayu" or "Jawi" also exists. Latin script is official in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Malay uses Hindu-Arabic numerals.  "Rumi" and "Jawi" are co-official in Brunei only. Names of institutions and organisations have to use Jawi and Rumi (Latin) scripts. Jawi is used fully in schools, especially the Religious School, "Sekolah Agama", which is compulsory during the afternoon for Muslim students aged from around 6–7 up to 12–14.  Efforts are currently being undertaken to preserve Jawi in rural areas of Malaysia, and students taking Malay language examinations in Malaysia have the option of answering questions using Jawi.  The Latin script, however, is the most commonly used in Brunei and Malaysia, both for official and informal purposes.  Historically, Malay has been written using various scripts. Before the introduction of Arabic script in the Malay region, Malay was written using the Pallava, Kawi and Rencong scripts; these are still in use today, such as the Cham alphabet used by the Chams of Vietnam and Cambodia. Old Malay was written using Pallava and Kawi script, as evident from several inscription stones in the Malay region. Starting from the era of kingdom of Pasai and throughout the golden age of the Malacca Sultanate, "Jawi" gradually replaced these scripts as the most commonly used script in the Malay region. Starting from the 17th century, under Dutch and British influence, Jawi was gradually replaced by the Rumi script.

Extent of use.

Malay is spoken in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, East Timor, Singapore, parts of Thailand and southern Philippines. Indonesia regulates its own normative variety of Malay, while Malaysia and Singapore use the same standard. Brunei, in addition to Standard Malay, uses a distinct vernacular dialect called Brunei Malay. In East Timor, Indonesian is recognised by the constitution as one of two working languages (the other being English), alongside the official languages of Tetum and Portuguese. The extent to which Malay is used in these countries varies depending on historical and cultural circumstances. Malay is the national language in Malaysia by Article 152 of the Constitution of Malaysia, and became the sole official language in Peninsular Malaysia in 1968 and in East Malaysia gradually from 1974. English continues, however, to be widely used in professional and commercial fields and in the superior courts. Other minority languages are also commonly used by the country's large ethnic minorities. The situation in Brunei is similar to that of Malaysia. In the Philippines, Malay is spoken by a minority of the Muslim population residing in Mindanao (specifically the Zamboanga Peninsula) and the Sulu Archipelago. However, they mostly speak it in a form of creole resembling Sabah Malay. Historically, it was the primary trading language of the archipelago prior to Spanish occupation. Indonesian is spoken by the overseas Indonesian community in Davao City, and functional phrases are taught to members of the Philippine Armed Forces and to students.

Phonology.

Malay, like most Austronesian languages, is not a tonal language.

Consonants.

The consonants of Malaysian and also Indonesian are shown below. Non-native consonants that only occur in borrowed words, principally from Arabic and English, are shown in brackets.  Orthographic note: The sounds are represented orthographically by their symbols as above, except:  Loans from Arabic:

Vowels.

Malay originally had four vowels, but in many dialects today, including Standard Malay, it has six. The vowels /e, o/ are much less common than the other four. Orthographic note: both and are written as 'e'. This means that there are some homographs, so "perang" can be either /pəraŋ/ ("war") or /peraŋ/ ("blond") (but in Indonesia "perang" with /e/ sound is also written as "pirang").  Some analyses regard as diphthongs. However, and can only occur in open syllables, such as "cukai" ("tax") and "pulau" ("island"). Words with a phonetic diphthong in a closed syllable, such as "baik" ("good") and "laut" ("sea"), are actually two syllables. An alternative analysis therefore treats the phonetic diphthongs, and as a sequence of a monophthong plus an approximant:, and respectively.  There is a rule of vowel harmony: the non-open vowels in bisyllabic words must agree in height, so "hidung" ("nose") is allowed but *"hedung" is not.

Grammar.

Malay is an agglutinative language, and new words are formed by three methods: attaching affixes onto a root word (affixation), formation of a compound word (composition), or repetition of words or portions of words (reduplication). Nouns and verbs may be basic roots, but frequently they are derived from other words by means of prefixes, suffixes and circumfixes.  Malay does not make use of grammatical gender, and there are only a few words that use natural gender; the same word is used for “"he”" and “"she”" which is "dia" or for “"his”" and “"her”" which is "dia punya." There is no grammatical plural in Malay either; thus "orang" may mean either "person" or "people". Verbs are not inflected for person or number, and they are not marked for tense; tense is instead denoted by time adverbs (such as "yesterday") or by other tense indicators, such as "sudah" "already" and "belum" "not yet". On the other hand, there is a complex system of verb affixes to render nuances of meaning and to denote voice or intentional and accidental moods.  Malay does not have a grammatical subject in the sense that English does. In intransitive clauses, the noun comes before the verb. When there is both an agent and an object, these are separated by the verb (OVA or AVO), with the difference encoded in the voice of the verb. OVA, commonly but inaccurately called "passive", is the basic and most common word order.

Borrowed words.

The Malay language has many words borrowed from Arabic (in particular religious terms), Sanskrit, Tamil, certain Chinese dialects, Persian, Portuguese, Dutch, Sinitic languages (due to historical status of Malay Archipelago as a trading hub) and more recently, English (in particular many scientific and technological terms).

Varieties and related languages.

There is a group closely related languages spoken by Malays and related peoples across Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Southern Thailand, and the far southern parts of the Philippines. They have traditionally been classified as Malay, Para-Malay, and Aboriginal Malay, but this reflects geography and ethnicity rather than a proper linguistic classification. The Malayan languages are mutually intelligible to varying extents, though the distinction between language and dialect is unclear in many cases.  Para-Malay includes the Malayan languages of Sumatra. They are: Minangkabau, Central Malay (Bengkulu), Pekal, Musi (Palembang), Negeri Sembilan (Malaysia), and Duano’.  Aboriginal Malay are the Malayan languages spoken by the Orang Asli (Proto-Malay) in Malaya. They are Jakun, Orang Kanaq, Orang Seletar, and Temuan.  The other Malayan languages, included in neither of these groups, are associated with the expansion of the Malays across the archipelago. They include Malaccan Malay (Malaysian and Indonesian), Kedah Malay, Kedayan/Brunei Malay, Berau Malay, Bangka Malay, Jambi Malay, Kutai Malay, Loncong, Pattani Malay, and Banjarese. Menterap may belong here.  There are also several Malay-based creole languages, such as Betawi, Cocos Malay, Manado Malay and Sabah Malay, which may be more or less distinct from standard (Malaccan) Malay.  Due to the early settlement of a Cape Malay community in Cape Town, who are now known as Coloureds, numerous Classical Malay words were brought into Afrikaans.

Usages.

The extent to which Malay and related Malayan languages are used in the countries where it is spoken varies depending on historical and cultural circumstances. Malay is the national language in Malaysia by Article 152 of the Constitution of Malaysia, and became the sole official language in West Malaysia in 1968, and in East Malaysia gradually from 1974. English continues, however, to be widely used in professional and commercial fields and in the superior courts. Other minority languages are also commonly used by the country's large ethnic minorities. The situation in Brunei is similar to that of Malaysia.  In Singapore, Malay was historically the "lingua franca" among people of different nationalities. Although this has largely given way to English, Malay still retains the status of national language and the national anthem, Majulah Singapura, is entirely in Malay. In addition, parade commands in the military, police and civil defence are given only in Malay.  Most residents of the five southernmost provinces of Thailand—a region that, for the most part, used to be part of an ancient Malay kingdom called Pattani — speak a dialect of Malay called Yawi (not to be confused with Jawi), which is similar to Kelantanese Malay, but the language has no official status or recognition.  Owing to earlier contact with the Philippines, Malay words—such as "dalam hati" (sympathy), "luwalhati" (glory), "tengah hari" (midday), "sedap" (delicious) — have evolved and been integrated into Tagalog and other Philippine languages.  By contrast, Indonesian has successfully become the "lingua franca" for its disparate islands and ethnic groups, in part because the colonial language, Dutch, is no longer commonly spoken. (In East Timor, which was governed as a province of Indonesia from 1976 to 1999, Indonesian is widely spoken and recognized under its Constitution as a 'working language'.)  Besides Indonesian, which developed from the Malaccan dialect, there are many Malay varieties spoken in Indonesia, they are divided into western and eastern groups. Western Malay dialects are predominantly spoken in Sumatra and Borneo, which itself is divided into Bornean and Sumatran Malay, some of the most widely spoken Sumatran Malay dialects are Riau Malay, Langkat, Palembang Malay and Jambi Malay. Minangkabau, Kerinci and Bengkulu are believed to be Sumatran Malay descendants. Meanwhile, the Jakarta dialect (known as Betawi) also belongs to the western Malay group.  The eastern varieties, classified either as dialects or creoles, are spoken in the easternmost part of the Indonesian archipelago and include: Manado Malay, Ambonese Malay, North Moluccan Malay, Papuan Malay. The differences among both groups are quite observable. For example, the word 'kita' means "we, us" in western, but means "I, me" in Manado, whereas "we, us" in Manado is 'torang' and Ambon 'katong' (originally abbreviated from Malay 'kita orang' (means "we people"). Another difference is the lack of possessive pronouns (and suffixes) in eastern dialects. Manado uses the verb 'pe' and Ambon 'pu' (from Malay 'punya', meaning "to have") to mark possession. So "my name" and "our house" are translated in western Malay as 'namaku' and 'rumah kita' but 'kita pe nama' and 'torang pe rumah' in Manado and 'beta pu nama', 'katong pu rumah' in Ambon dialect.  The pronunciation may vary in western dialects, especially the pronunciation of words ending in the vowel 'a'. For example, Malaysia and Singapore pronounce 'kita' (inclusive we, us, our) as /kitə/, Kelantan and Southern Thailand as /kitɔ/, Riau as /kita/, Palembang as /kito/, Betawi and Perak as /kitɛ/.  Batavian and eastern dialects are sometimes regarded as Malay creole, because the speakers are not ethnically Malay.

Examples.

All Malay speakers should be able to understand either of the translations below, which differ mostly in their choice of wording. The words for 'article', "pasal" and "perkara", and for 'declaration', "pernyataan" and "perisytiharan", are specific to the Indonesian and Malaysian standards, respectively, but otherwise all the words are found in both (and even those words may be found with slightly different meanings).

Malay (;, ) is an Austronesian language spoken in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as parts of Thailand. A language of the Malays, it is spoken by 290 million people across the Strait of Malacca, including the coasts of the Malay Peninsula of Malaysia and the eastern coast of Sumatra in Indonesia and has been established as a native language of part of western coastal Sarawak and West Kalimantan in Borneo. It is also used as a trading language in the southern Philippines, including the southern parts of the Zamboanga Peninsula, the Sulu Archipelago and the southern predominantly Muslim-inhabited municipalities of Bataraza and Balabac in Palawan.

Die malaiische Sprache ist die Dachsprache für mehrere regional gesprochene Sprachen, von denen die als Bahasa Malaysia in Malaysia und Bahasa Indonesia in Indonesien bezeichneten Varianten die bedeutendsten sind. Die Sprache gehört mit etwa 200 Millionen Sprechern zu den meistgesprochenen Sprachen der Erde. Die beiden Sprachversionen unterscheiden sich linguistisch nur geringfügig, sodass sie wissenschaftlich als eine einzige Sprache behandelt werden.


History.

Modern Korean descends from Middle Korean, which in turn descends from Old Korean, which descends from the Proto-Koreanic language which is generally suggested to have its linguistic homeland somewhere in Manchuria. Whitman (2012) suggests that the proto-Koreans, already present in northern Korea, expanded into the southern part of the Korean Peninsula at around 300 BC and coexisted with the descendants of the Japonic Mumun cultivators (or assimilated them). Both had influence on each other and a later founder effect diminished the internal variety of both language families. Chinese characters arrived in Korea (see Sino-Xenic pronunciations for further information) together with Buddhism during the Proto-Three Kingdoms era in the 1st century BC. It was adapted for Korean and became known as Hanja, and remained as the main script for writing Korean through over a millennium alongside various phonetic scripts that were later invented such as Idu, Gugyeol and Hyangchal. Mainly privileged elites were educated to read and write in Hanja. However, most of the population was illiterate.  In the 15th century, King Sejong the Great personally developed an alphabetic featural writing system known today as Hangul. He felt that Hanja was inadequate to write Korean and that this was the cause of its very restricted use; Hangul was designed to either aid in reading Hanja or replace Hanja entirely. Introduced in the document ""Hunminjeongeum"", it was called ""eonmun"" (colloquial script) and quickly spread nationwide to increase literacy in Korea. Hangul was widely used by all the Korean classes but often treated as ""amkeul"" (script for female) and disregarded by privileged elites, whereas Hanja was regarded as ""jinseo"" (true text). Consequently, official documents were always written in Hanja during the Joseon era. Since most people couldn't understand Hanja, Korean kings sometimes released public notices entirely written in Hangul as early as the 16th century for all Korean classes, including uneducated peasants and slaves. By the 17th century, Korean elites Yangban and their slaves exchanged Hangul letters; that indicates a high literacy rate of Hangul during the Joseon era. Today, Hanja is largely unused in everyday life due to its inconvenience, but it is still important for historical and linguistic studies. Neither South Korea or North Korea opposes the learning of Hanja, though they are not officially used in North Korea anymore, and their usage in South Korea is mainly reserved for specific circumstances, such as newspapers, scholarly papers, and disambiguation.  Since the Korean War, through 70 years of separation, North–South differences have developed in standard Korean, including variations in pronunciation and vocabulary chosen, but these minor differences can be found in any of the Korean dialects and still largely mutually intelligible.

Names.

The Korean names for the language are based on the names for Korea used in both South Korea and North Korea.  The English word "Korean" is derived from Goryeo, which is thought to be the first Korean dynasty known to Western nations. Korean people in the former USSR refer to themselves as "Koryo-saram" and/or "Koryo-in" (literally, "Koryo/Goryeo person(s)"), and call the language "Koryo-mal."  In South Korea, the Korean language is referred to by many names including "hanguk-eo" ("Korean language"), "hanguk-mal" ("Korean speech") and "uri-mal" ("our language"). In ""hanguk-eo"" and ""hanguk-mal"", the first part of the word, ""hanguk"" was taken from the name of the Korean Empire (). The ""Han"" (韓) in "Hanguk" and "Daehan Jeguk" is derived from Samhan, in reference to the Three Kingdoms of Korea (not the ancient confederacies in the southern Korean Peninsula), while ""-eo"" and ""-mal"" mean "language" and "speech", respectively. Korean is also simply referred to as "guk-eo", literally "national language". This name is based on the same Han characters, meaning "nation" + "language" ("國語"), that are also used in Taiwan and Japan to refer to their respective national languages.  In North Korea and China, the language is most often called "Joseon-mal", or more formally, "Joseon-o". This is taken from the North Korean name for Korea (Joseon), a name retained from the Joseon dynasty until the proclamation of the Korean Empire, which in turn was annexed by the Empire of Japan.  In mainland China, following the establishment of diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1992, the term "Cháoxiǎnyǔ" or the short form "Cháoyǔ" has normally been used to refer to the standard language of North Korea and Yanbian, whereas "Hánguóyǔ" or the short form "Hányǔ" is used to refer to the standard language of South Korea.  Some older English sources also use the spelling "Corea" to refer to the nation, and its inflected form for the language, culture and people, "Korea" becoming more popular in the late 1800s according to Google's NGram English corpus of 2015.

Classification.

Korean is considered by most linguists to be a language isolate, though it is commonly included by proponents of the now generally rejected Altaic family.  The hypothesis that Korean could be related to Japanese has had some supporters due to some overlap in vocabulary and similar grammatical features that have been elaborated upon by such researchers as Samuel E. Martin and Roy Andrew Miller. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (1991) found about 25% of potential cognates in the Japanese–Korean 100-word Swadesh list. Some linguists concerned with the issue, including Vovin, have argued that the indicated similarities between Japanese and Korean are not due to any genetic relationship, but rather to a "sprachbund" effect and heavy borrowing, especially from ancient Korean into Western Old Japanese. A good example might be Middle Korean "sàm" and Japanese "asá", meaning "hemp". This word seems to be a cognate, but although it is well attested in Western Old Japanese and Northern Ryukyuan languages, in Eastern Old Japanese it only occurs in compounds, and it is only present in three dialects of the Southern Ryukyuan language group. Also, the doublet "wo" meaning "hemp" is attested in Western Old Japanese and Southern Ryukyuan languages. It is thus plausible to assume a borrowed term. (see Classification of the Japonic languages or Comparison of Japanese and Korean for further details on a possible relationship.)  Another lesser-known theory is the Dravido-Korean languages theory which suggests a relation with Dravidian in India. Some of the common features in the Korean and Dravidian languages are that they share some similar vocabulary, are agglutinative, and follow the SOV order; in both languages, nominals and adjectives follow the same syntax, particles are post-positional, and modifiers always precede modified words. However, typological similarities such as these could have arisen by chance.  The Khitan language has many vocabulary items similar to Korean that are not found in Mongolian or Tungusic languages. This suggests a strong Korean presence or influence on Khitan.

Geographic distribution and international spread.

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

Official status.

Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea. It is also one of the two official languages of the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture.  In North Korea, the regulatory body is the Language Institute of the Academy of Social Sciences (, "Sahoe Gwahagweon Eohag Yeonguso"). In South Korea, the regulatory body for Korean is the Seoul-based National Institute of the Korean Language, which was created by presidential decree on January 23, 1991.

King Sejong Institute.

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

Topik Korea Institute.

The Topik Korea Institute is a lifelong educational center affiliated with a variety of Korean universities in Seoul, South Korea, whose aim is to promote Korean language and culture, support local Korean teaching internationally, and facilitate cultural exchanges.  The institute is sometimes compared to language and culture promotion organizations such as the King Sejong Institute. Unlike that organization, however, Topik Korea Institutes operate within established universities and colleges around the world, providing educational materials.

Dialects.

Korean has numerous small local dialects (called "mal" () [literally "speech"], "saturi" (), or "bang'eon" ( in Korean). The standard language ("pyojun-eo" or "pyojun-mal") of both South Korea and North Korea is based on the dialect of the area around Seoul (which, as Hanyang, was the capital of Joseon-era Korea for 500 years), though the northern standard after the Korean War has been influenced by the dialect of P'yŏngyang. All dialects of Korean are similar to each other and largely mutually intelligible (with the exception of dialect-specific phrases or non-Standard vocabulary unique to dialects), though the dialect of Jeju Island is divergent enough to be sometimes classified as a separate language. One of the more salient differences between dialects is the use of tone: speakers of the Seoul dialect make use of vowel length, whereas speakers of the Gyeongsang dialect maintain the pitch accent of Middle Korean. Some dialects are conservative, maintaining Middle Korean sounds (such as "z, β, ə") which have been lost from the standard language, whereas others are highly innovative.  There is substantial evidence for a history of extensive dialect levelling, or even convergent evolution or intermixture of two or more originally distinct linguistic stocks, within the Korean language and its dialects. Many Korean dialects have basic vocabulary that is etymologically distinct from vocabulary of identical meaning in Standard Korean or other dialects, for example "garlic chives" translated into Gyeongsang dialect () but in Standard Korean, it is (). This suggests that the Korean Peninsula may have at one time been much more linguistically diverse than it is at present. See also the Japanese–Koguryoic languages hypothesis.  Nonetheless, the separation of the two Korean states has resulted in increasing differences among the dialects that have emerged over time. Since the allies of the newly-founded nations split the Korean peninsula in half after 1945, the newly formed Korean nations have since borrowed vocabulary extensively from their respective allies. As the Soviet Union helped industrialize North Korea and establish it as a communist state, the North Koreans therefore borrowed a number of Russian terms. Likewise, since the United States helped South Korea extensively to develop militarily, economically, and politically, South Koreans therefore borrowed extensively from English.  The differences among northern and southern dialects have become so significant that many North Korean defectors reportedly have had great difficulty communicating with South Koreans after having initially settled into South Korea. In response to the diverging vocabularies, an app called Univoca was designed to help North Korean defectors learn South Korean terms by translating them into North Korean ones. More information can be found on the page North-South differences in the Korean language.  Aside from the standard language, there are few clear boundaries between Korean dialects, and they are typically partially grouped according to the regions of Korea.

Phonology.

Consonants.

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

Vowels.

is closer to a near-open central vowel (), though is still used for tradition.

Allophones.

is aspirated and becomes an alveolo-palatal before or for most speakers (but see North–South differences in the Korean language). This occurs with the tense fricative and all the affricates as well. At the end of a syllable, changes to (example: beoseot ()'mushroom').  Traditionally, was disallowed at the beginning of a word. It disappeared before, and otherwise became. However, the inflow of western loanwords changed the trend, and now word-initial (mostly from English loanwords) are pronounced as a free variation of either or. The traditional prohibition of word-initial became a morphological rule called "initial law" () in South Korea, which pertains to Sino-Korean vocabulary. Such words retain their word-initial in North Korea.  All obstruents (plosives, affricates, fricatives) at the end of a word are pronounced with no audible release,.  Plosive stops become nasal stops before nasal stops.  Hangul spelling does not reflect these assimilatory pronunciation rules, but rather maintains the underlying, partly historical morphology. Given this, it is sometimes hard to tell which actual phonemes are present in a certain word.  One difference between the pronunciation standards of North and South Korea is the treatment of initial, and initial. For example,

Morphophonemics.

Grammatical morphemes may change shape depending on the preceding sounds. Examples include "-eun/-neun" () and "-i/-ga" (). Sometimes sounds may be inserted instead. Examples include "-eul/-reul" (), "-euro/-ro" (), "-eseo/-seo" (), "-ideunji/-deunji" () and "-iya/-ya" (). However, "-euro/-ro" is somewhat irregular, since it will behave differently after a rieul consonant.  Some verbs may also change shape morphophonemically.

Grammar.

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

Speech levels and honorifics.

The relationship between a speaker or writer and his or her subject and audience is paramount in Korean grammar. The relationship between speaker/writer and subject referent is reflected in "honorifics", whereas that between speaker/writer and audience is reflected in "speech level".

Honorifics.

When talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer usually uses special nouns or verb endings to indicate the subject's superiority. Generally, someone is superior in status if they are an older relative, a stranger of roughly equal or greater age, or an employer, teacher, customer, or the like. Someone is equal or inferior in status if they are a younger stranger, student, employee, or the like. Nowadays, there are special endings which can be used on declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences; and both honorific or normal sentences.  Honorifics in traditional Korea were strictly hierarchical. The caste and estate systems possessed patterns and usages much more complex and stratified than those used today. The intricate structure of the Korean honorific system flourished in traditional culture and society. Honorifics in contemporary Korea are now used for people who are psychologically distant. Honorifics are also used for people who are superior in status. For example, older people, teachers, and employers.

Speech levels.

There are seven verb paradigms or "speech levels" in Korean, and each level has its own unique set of verb endings which are used to indicate the level of formality of a situation. Unlike honorifics—which are used to show respect towards the referent (the person spoken of) —"speech levels" are used to show respect towards a speaker's or writer's audience (the person spoken to). The names of the seven levels are derived from the non-honorific imperative form of the verb ("hada", "do") in each level, plus the suffix ("che", Hanja: ), which means "style".  The three levels with high politeness (very formally polite, formally polite, casually polite) are generally grouped together as "jondaenmal" (), whereas the two levels with low politeness (formally impolite, casually impolite) are "banmal" () in Korean. The remaining two levels (neutral formality with neutral politeness, high formality with neutral politeness) are neither polite nor impolite.  Nowadays, younger-generation speakers no longer feel obligated to lower their usual regard toward the referent. It is common to see younger people talk to their older relatives with banmal (). This is not out of disrespect, but instead it shows the intimacy and the closeness of the relationship between the two speakers. Transformations in social structures and attitudes in today's rapidly changing society have brought about change in the way people speak.

Gender.

In general, Korean lacks grammatical gender. As one of the few exceptions, the third-person singular pronoun has two different forms: 그 "geu" (male) and 그녀 "geunyeo" (female). Before 그녀 were invented in need of translating'she' into Korean, 그 was the only one third-person singular pronoun, and had no grammatical gender.  However, one can still find stronger contrasts between the sexes within Korean speech. Some examples of this can be seen in: (1) softer tone used by women in speech; (2) a married woman introducing herself as someone's mother or wife, not with her own name; (3) the presence of gender differences in titles and occupational terms (for example, a "sajang" is a company president and "yŏsajang" is a female company president.); (4) females sometimes using more tag questions and rising tones in statements, also seen in speech from children.  Between two people of asymmetrical status in a Korean society, people tend to emphasize differences in status for the sake of solidarity. Koreans prefer to use kinship terms, rather than any other terms of reference. In traditional Korean society, women have long been in disadvantaged positions. Korean social structure traditionally was a patriarchically dominated family system that emphasized the maintenance of family lines. This structure has tended to separate the roles of women from those of men.

Vocabulary.

The core of the Korean vocabulary is made up of native Korean words. A significant proportion of the vocabulary, especially words that denote abstract ideas, are Sino-Korean words, either  The exact proportion of Sino-Korean vocabulary is a matter of debate. Sohn (2001) stated 50–60%. Later, the same author (2006, p. 5) gives an even higher estimate of 65%. Jeong Jae-do, one of the compilers of the dictionary "Urimal Keun Sajeon", asserts that the proportion is not so high. He points out that Korean dictionaries compiled during the colonial period include many unused Sino-Korean words. In his estimation, the proportion of Sino-Korean vocabulary in the Korean language might be as low as 30%.  Most of the vocabulary consists of two sets of words; native Korean and Sino-Korean respectively. It is similar to that of English — native English words and Latinate equivalents such as "water-aqua", "fire-flame", "sea-marine", "two-dual", "sun-solar", "star-stellar". Therefore, just like other Korean words, Korean has two sets of numeral systems. However, unlike English and Latin which belong to the same Indo-European languages family and bear a certain resemblance, Korean and Chinese are genetically unrelated and the two sets of Korean words differ completely from each other. All Sino-Korean morphemes are monosyllabic as in Chinese, whereas native Korean morphemes can be polysyllabic. The Sino-Korean words were deliberately imported alongside corresponding Chinese characters for a written language and everything was supposed to be written in Hanja, so the coexistence of Sino-Korean would be more thorough and systematic than that of Latinate words in English. To a much lesser extent, some words have also been borrowed from Mongolian and other languages.  The vast majority of loanwords other than Sino-Korean come from modern times, approximately 90% of which are from English. Many words have also been borrowed from Western languages such as German via Japanese ( ("areubaiteu") "part-time job", ("allereugi") "allergy", ("gibseu" or "gibuseu") "plaster cast used for broken bones"). Some Western words were borrowed indirectly via Japanese during the Japanese occupation of Korea, taking a Japanese sound pattern, for example "dozen" > "dāsu" > "daseu". Most indirect Western borrowings are now written according to current "Hangulization" rules for the respective Western language, as if borrowed directly. There are a few more complicated borrowings such as "German(y)" (see names of Germany), the first part of whose endonym "Deutschland" the Japanese approximated using the kanji "doitsu" that were then accepted into the Korean language by their Sino-Korean pronunciation: "dok" + "il" = "Dogil". In South Korean official use, a number of other Sino-Korean country names have been replaced with phonetically oriented "Hangeulizations" of the countries' endonyms or English names.  Because of such a prevalence of English in modern South Korean culture and society, lexical borrowing is inevitable. English-derived Korean, or 'Konglish' (), is increasingly used. The vocabulary of the South Korean dialect of the Korean language is roughly 5% loanwords (excluding Sino-Korean vocabulary). However, due to North Korea's isolation, such influence is lacking in North Korean speech.  Korean uses words adapted from English in ways that may seem strange to native English speakers. For example, "fighting" () is a term of encouragement like 'come on'/'go (on)' in English. Something that is'service' () is free or 'on the house'. A building referred to as an 'aparteu' () is an 'apartment' (but in fact refers to a residence more akin to a condominium) and a type of pencil that is called a'sharp' () is a mechanical pencil. Like other borrowings, many of these idiosyncrasies, including all the examples listed above, appear to be imported into Korean via Japanese, or influenced by Japanese. Many English words introduced via Japanese pronunciation have been reformed as in 멜론 (melon) which was once called 메론 (meron) as in Japanese.  North Korean vocabulary shows a tendency to prefer native Korean over Sino-Korean or foreign borrowings, especially with recent political objectives aimed at eliminating foreign influences on the Korean language in the North. In the early years, the North Korean government tried to eliminate Sino-Korean words. Consequently, South Korean may have several Sino-Korean or foreign borrowings which are not in North Korean.

Writing system.

Before the creation of the modern Korean alphabet, known as Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea and as Hangul in South Korea, people in Korea (known as Joseon at the time) primarily wrote using Classical Chinese alongside native phonetic writing systems that predate Hangul by hundreds of years, including idu, hyangchal, gugyeol, and gakpil. However, due to the fundamental differences between the Korean and Chinese languages and the large number of characters to be learned, the lower classes, who often didn't have the privilege of education, had much difficulty in learning how to write using Chinese characters. To assuage this problem, King Sejong () created the unique alphabet known as Hangul to promote literacy among the common people.  The Korean alphabet was denounced and looked down upon by the "yangban" aristocracy, who deemed it too easy to learn, but it gained widespread use among the common class, and was widely used to print popular novels which were enjoyed by the common class. With growing Korean nationalism in the 19th century, the Gabo Reformists' push, and the promotion of Hangul in schools, in 1894, Hangul displaced Hanja as Korea's national script. Hanja are still used to a certain extent in South Korea, where they are sometimes combined with Hangul, but this method is slowly declining in use, even though students learn Hanja in school.  Below is a chart of the Korean alphabet's symbols and their canonical IPA values:  The letters of the Korean alphabet are not written linearly like most alphabets, but instead arranged into blocks that represent syllables. So, while the word "bibimbap" is written as eight characters in a row in English, in Korean it is written 비빔밥, as three syllable blocks in a row. The syllable blocks are then written left to right, top to bottom.  Modern Korean is written with spaces between words, a feature not found in Chinese or Japanese (except when Japanese is written exclusively in hiragana, as in children's books). Korean punctuation marks are almost identical to Western ones. Traditionally, Korean was written in columns, from top to bottom, right to left, but it is now usually written in rows, from left to right, top to bottom.

Differences between North Korean and South Korean.

The Korean language used in the North and the South exhibits differences in pronunciation, spelling, grammar and vocabulary.

Pronunciation.

In North Korea, palatalization of is optional, and can be pronounced between vowels.  Words that are written the same way may be pronounced differently, such as the examples below. The pronunciations below are given in Revised Romanization, McCune–Reischauer and Hangul, the last of which represents what the Korean characters would be if one were to write the word as pronounced.  <nowiki>*</nowiki> Similar pronunciation is used in the North whenever the hanja "" is attached to a Sino-Korean word ending in, or. (In the South, this rule only applies when it is attached to any single-character Sino-Korean word.)

Spelling.

Some words are spelled differently by the North and the South, but the pronunciations are the same.

Spelling and pronunciation.

Some words have different spellings and pronunciations in the North and the South. Most of the official languages of North Korea are from the northwest (Pyeongan dialect), and the standard language of South Korea is the standard language (Seoul language close to Gyeonggi- dialect). some of which were given in the "Phonology" section above:  In general, when transcribing place names, North Korea tends to use the pronunciation in the original language more than South Korea, which often uses the pronunciation in English. For example:

Grammar.

Some grammatical constructions are also different:

Vocabulary.

Some vocabulary is different between the North and the South:

Punctuation.

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

Study by non-native learners.

For native English speakers, Korean is generally considered to be one of the most difficult languages to master despite the relative ease of learning Hangul. For instance, the United States' Defense Language Institute places Korean in Category IV, which also includes Japanese, Chinese (e.g. Mandarin, Cantonese & Shanghainese) and Arabic. This means that 63 weeks of instruction (as compared to just 25 weeks for Italian, French, Portuguese and Spanish) are required to bring an English-speaking student to a limited working level of proficiency in which they have "sufficient capability to meet routine social demands and limited job requirements" and "can deal with concrete topics in past, present, and future tense." Similarly, the Foreign Service Institute's School of Language Studies places Korean in Category IV, the highest level of difficulty.  The study of the Korean language in the United States is dominated by Korean American heritage language students; in 2007 they were estimated to form over 80% of all students of the language at non-military universities. However, Sejong Institutes in the United States have noted a sharp rise in the number of people of other ethnic backgrounds studying Korean between 2009 and 2011; they attribute this to rising popularity of South Korean music and television shows. In 2018 it was reported that the rise in K-Pop was responsible for the increase in people learning the language in US universities.  There are two widely used tests of Korean as a foreign language: the Korean Language Proficiency Test (KLPT) and the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK). The Korean Language Proficiency Test, an examination aimed at assessing non-native speakers' competence in Korean, was instituted in 1997; 17,000 people applied for the 2005 sitting of the examination. The TOPIK was first administered in 1997 and was taken by 2,274 people. Since then the total number of people who have taken the TOPIK has surpassed 1 million, with more than 150,000 candidates taking the test in 2012. TOPIK is administered in 45 regions within South Korea and 72 nations outside of South Korea, with a significant portion being administered in Japan and North America, which would suggest the targeted audience for TOPIK is still primarily foreigners of Korean heritage. This is also evident in TOPIK's website, where the examination is introduced as intended for Korean heritage students.

The Korean language ( / "hanguk-eo"; / "chosŏn-mal") is an East Asian language spoken by about 77 million people. It is a member of the Koreanic language family and is the official and national language of both Koreas: North Korea and South Korea, with different standardized official forms used in each country. It is a recognised minority language in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Changbai Korean Autonomous County of Jilin province, China. It is also spoken in parts of Sakhalin, Russia, and Central Asia.

Die koreanische Sprache (Koreanisch) wird von mehr als 78 Millionen Menschen als Muttersprache gesprochen, von denen die meisten Nord- oder Südkoreaner sind. Sie gehört damit (trotz ihrer regionalen Beschränkung) unter die 25 meistgesprochenen Sprachen der Welt.


Biography.

Early life.

Blücher was born on 16 December 1742 in Rostock, a Baltic port in northern Germany, then in the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. His father was a retired army captain, and his family belonged to the nobility and had been landowners in northern Germany since at least the 13th century.  He began his military career at the age of 16, when he joined the Swedish Army as a hussar. At the time, Sweden was at war with Prussia in the Seven Years' War. Blücher took part in the Pomeranian campaign of 1760, where Prussian hussars captured him in a skirmish. The colonel of the Prussian regiment, Wilhelm Sebastian von Belling (a distant relative), was impressed with the young hussar and had him join his own regiment.  Blücher took part in the later battles of the Seven Years' War, and as a hussar officer, gained much experience in light cavalry work. In peace, however, his ardent spirit led him into excesses of all kinds, such as the mock execution of a priest suspected of supporting Polish uprisings in 1772. As a result, he was passed over for promotion to major. Blücher submitted a rude letter of resignation in 1773, which Frederick the Great replied to with "Captain Blücher can take himself to the devil" (1773).  Blücher settled down to farming. Within 15 years, he had acquired financial independence and had become a Freemason. During Frederick the Great's lifetime, Blücher could not return to the army. However, the monarch died in 1786, and the following year, Blücher was reinstated as a major in his old regiment, the Red Hussars. He took part in the expedition to the Netherlands in 1787, and the next year was promoted to lieutenant colonel. In 1789, he received Prussia's highest military order, the "Pour le Mérite", and in 1794, he became colonel of the Red Hussars. In 1793 and 1794, Blücher distinguished himself in cavalry actions against the French, and for his victory at Kirrweiler on 28 May 1794, he was promoted to major general. In 1801, he was made a lieutenant general.

Napoleonic Wars.

Blücher was one of the leaders of the war party in Prussia in 1805, and he served as a cavalry general in the disastrous campaign of 1806. At the double Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, Blücher fought at Auerstedt, repeatedly leading the charges of the Prussian cavalry, but without success. During the retreat of the broken armies, he commanded the rearguard composed of Frederick Louis, Prince of Hohenlohe's corps. With the capitulation of the main body after the Battle of Prenzlau on 28 October, he found his march toward the north-east blocked. He led the remnant of his corps away to the north-west. Reinforcing his numbers with a division previously commanded by Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Blücher and his new chief of staff, Gerhard von Scharnhorst, reorganised his forces into two small corps totaling 21,000 men and 44 cannons. Nevertheless, he was defeated by two French corps at the Battle of Lübeck on 6 November. The next day, trapped against the Danish frontier by 40,000 French troops, he was compelled to surrender with less than 10,000 soldiers at Ratekau. Blücher insisted that clauses be written in the capitulation document that he had had to surrender due to lack of provisions and ammunition, and that his soldiers should be honoured by a French formation along the street. He was allowed to keep his sabre and to move freely, bound only by his word of honour, and was soon exchanged for future Marshal Claude Victor-Perrin, Duc de Belluno, and was actively employed in Pomerania, at Berlin, and at Königsberg until the conclusion of the war.  After the war, Blücher was looked upon as the natural leader of the Patriot Party, with which he was in close touch during the period of Napoleonic domination, but his hopes of an alliance with Austria in the war of 1809 were disappointed. In this year, he was made general of cavalry. In 1812, he expressed himself so openly on the alliance of Russia with France that he was recalled from his military governorship of Pomerania and virtually banished from the court.  Following the start of the War of Liberation in the spring of 1813, Blücher was again placed in high command, and he was present at Lützen and Bautzen. During the summer truce, he worked on the organisation of the Prussian forces; when the war was resumed, he became commander-in-chief of the Army of Silesia, with August von Gneisenau and Karl von Müffling as his principal staff officers and 40,000 Prussians and 50,000 Russians under his command during the autumn campaign. The most conspicuous military quality displayed by Blücher was his unrelenting energy.  The irresolution and divergence of interests usual in Sixth Coalition armies found in him a restless opponent. Knowing that if he could not induce others to co-operate, he was prepared to attempt the task at hand by himself, which often caused other generals to follow his lead. He defeated Marshal MacDonald at the Katzbach, and by his victory over Marshal Marmont at Möckern led the way to the decisive defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig. Blücher's own army stormed Leipzig on the evening of the last day of the battle. This was the fourth battle between Napoleon and Blücher, and the first that Blücher had won.  On the day of Möckern (16 October 1813), Blücher was made a field marshal, and after the victory, he pursued the French with his accustomed energy. In the winter of 1813–1814, Blücher, with his chief staff officers, was mainly instrumental in inducing the Coalition sovereigns to carry the war into France itself.  The Battle of Brienne and the Battle of La Rothière were the chief incidents of the first stage of the celebrated 1814 campaign in north-east France, and they were quickly followed by victories of Napoleon over Blücher at Champaubert, Vauchamps, and Montmirail. The courage of the Prussian leader was undiminished, though, and his victory against the vastly outnumbered French, at Laon (9 and 10 March) practically decided the fate of the campaign. However, his health had been severely affected by the strains of the previous two months, and he now suffered a breakdown, during which he lost his sight and suffered a delusion that a Frenchman had impregnated him with an elephant. Dominic Lieven wrote that the breakdown, "revealed the fragility of the coalition armies' command structure and just how much the Army of Silesia had depended on Blücher's drive, courage, and charisma... The result was that for more than a week after the battle of Laon, the Army of Silesia... played no useful role in the war".  After this, Blücher infused some of his energy into the operations of the Prince Schwarzenberg's Army of Bohemia, and at last this army and the Army of Silesia marched in one body directly towards Paris. The victory of Montmartre, the entry of the allies into the French capital, and the overthrow of the First Empire were the direct consequences.  Blücher was in favour of punishing the city of Paris severely for the sufferings of Prussia at the hands of the French armies, but the allied commanders intervened. According to the Duke of Wellington, one of Blücher's plans involved blowing up the Jena Bridge near the Champ de Mars: In gratitude for his victories in 1814, King Frederick William III of Prussia created Blücher "Prince (Fürst) of Wahlstatt" (in Silesia on the Katzbach battlefield). The king also awarded him estates near Krieblowitz (now Krobielowice, Poland) in Lower Silesia and a grand mansion at 2, Pariser Platz in Berlin (which in 1930 became the Embassy of the United States, Berlin). Soon afterward, Blücher paid a visit to England, where he was received with royal honours and cheered enthusiastically everywhere he went.  When Oxford University granted him an honorary doctorate (doctor of laws), he is supposed to have joked that if he was made a doctor, they should at least make Gneisenau an apothecary; "...for if I wrote the prescription, he made the pills."

Hundred Days and later life.

After the war, Blücher retired to Silesia. However, the return of Napoleon from Elba and his entry into Paris at the start of the Hundred Days, called him back to service. He was put in command of the Army of the Lower Rhine, with Gneisenau serving again as his chief of staff. At the outset of the Waterloo Campaign of 1815, the Prussians sustained a serious defeat at Ligny (16 June), in the course of which the old field marshal lay trapped under his dead horse for several hours and was repeatedly ridden over by cavalry, his life saved only by the devotion of his "aide-de-camp" Count Nostitz, who threw a greatcoat over his commander to obscure Blücher's rank and identity from the passing French. As Blücher was unable to resume command for some hours, Gneisenau took command, drew off the defeated army, and rallied it. In spite of Gneisenau's distrust of Wellington, he obeyed Blücher's last orders to direct the army's retreat towards Wavre, rather than Liege, to keep alive the possibility of joining the Prussian and Wellington's Anglo-allied armies together.  After bathing his wounds in a liniment of rhubarb and garlic, and fortified by a liberal internal dose of schnapps, Blücher rejoined his army. Gneisenau feared that the British had reneged on their earlier agreements and favored a withdrawal, but Blücher convinced him to send two corps to join Wellington at Waterloo. He then led his army on a tortuous march along muddy paths, arriving on the field of Waterloo in the late afternoon. In spite of his age, the pain of his wounds, and the effort it must have taken for him to remain on horseback, Bernard Cornwell states that several soldiers attested to Blücher's high spirits and his determination to defeat Napoleon:  With the battle hanging in the balance, Blücher's army intervened with decisive and crushing effect, his vanguard drawing off Napoleon's badly needed reserves, and his main body being instrumental in crushing French resistance. This victory led the way to a decisive victory through the relentless pursuit of the French by the Prussians. The two Coalition armies entered Paris on 7 July.  Prince Blücher remained in the French capital for a few months, but his age and infirmities compelled him to retire to his Silesian residence at Krieblowitz. At the invitation of the British government, he made another state visit to England, to be formally thanked for his army and his role in the Waterloo Campaign. When his carriage stopped on Blackheath Hill, overlooking London, he is said to have exclaimed, "What a city to sack!" He died at Krieblowitz on 12 September 1819, aged 76. After his death, an imposing mausoleum was built for his remains.  When Krieblowitz was conquered by the Red Army in 1945, Soviet soldiers broke into the Blücher mausoleum and scattered the remains. Soviet troops reportedly used his skull as a football. After 1989, some of his profaned remains were taken by a Polish priest and interred in the catacomb of the church in Sośnica (German: Schosnitz), 3 km from the now Polish Krobielowice.

Assessment.

It was to be said later among the Prussian military that Blücher established "a Prussian way of war" that had abiding influence:  More generally, Blücher was a courageous and popular general who "had much to be proud of: energy, controlled aggression and a commitment to defeating the enemy army."

Publications.

His campaign journal covering the years 1793 to 1794 was published in 1796:  A second edition of this diary, together with some of Blücher's letters, was published in 1914:  His collected writings and letters (together with those of Yorck and Gneisenau) appeared in 1932:

Family and Descendants.

Blücher was married twice: in 1773 to Karoline Amalie von Mehling (1756–1791) and, after her death, in 1795 to Amalie von Colomb (1772–1850), sister of General Peter von Colomb. While this second marriage was without issue, by his first marriage Blücher had seven children, of whom two sons and a daughter survived infancy,  The marshal's grandson, Count Gebhard Bernhard von Blücher (1799–1875), was created "Prince Blücher of Wahlstatt" (Serene Highness) in Prussia, a hereditary title in primogeniture, the other members of his branch bearing the title "count" or "countess". In 1832, he bought Raduň Castle in the Opava District and in 1847 the lands at Wahlstatt, Legnickie Pole, all of which remained in the family until the flight and expulsion of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1945, which forced the family into exile in their mansion "Havilland Hall" in Guernsey, acquired by the 4th prince and his English wife, Evelyn, Princess Blücher. Later the family moved to Eurasburg, Bavaria. The present head of the House of "Blücher von Wahlstatt" is Nicolaus, 8th Prince Blücher of Wahlstatt (born 1932), the heir apparent is his son, hereditary count Lukas (born 1956).

Legacy.

Museum.

The Rhineland town of Kaub has a museum dedicated to Blücher, commemorating in particular his crossing the Rhine with the Prussian and Russian armies, on New Year's night 1813-1814, in pursuit of the French.

Statues.

After Blücher's death, statues were erected to his memory at Berlin, Breslau, Rostock, and Kaub (where his troops crossed the Rhine in pursuit of Napoleon's forces in 1813).  Blücher is honoured with a bust in the Walhalla temple near Regensburg.

Locomotive and Ships.

In gratitude for Blücher's service, George Stephenson, the pioneering British locomotive engineer, named a locomotive after him.  The "Blucher" was named after him, after the original ship was captured by the British and the new owners named it for him.  Three ships of the German navy have been named in honour of Blücher. The first to be so named was the corvette, built at Kiel's Norddeutsche Schiffbau AG (later renamed the "Krupp-Germaniawerft") and launched 20 March 1877. Taken out of service after a boiler explosion in 1907, she ended her days as a coal freighter in Vigo, Spain.  On 11 April 1908, the "Panzerkreuzer" SMS "Blücher" was launched from the Imperial Shipyard in Kiel. This ship was sunk on 24 January 1915 in the First World War at the Battle of Dogger Bank.  The Second World War German heavy cruiser "Blücher" was completed in September 1939, and pronounced ready for service on 5 April 1940 after completing a series of sea trials and training exercises. The vessel was sunk four days later near Oslo during the invasion of Norway.

Film Portrayals.

Blücher was played by German actor Otto Gebühr in the 1929 film "Waterloo". In 1932, he was the subject of the biographical film "Marshal Forwards", in which he was played by Paul Wegener. It was part of a group of Prussian films released during the era.  He was portrayed by Soviet actor Sergo Zakariadze, in the 1970 Soviet-Italian film "Waterloo".

Various.

Blücher also has a boarding house named after him at Berkshire based Wellington College. The Blucher, as it is known, is a boys' house renowned for sporting and academic prowess.  A popular German idiom, "ran wie Blücher" ("charge like Blücher"), means that someone is taking very direct and aggressive action, in war or otherwise, refers to Blücher.  Vasily Blyukher's last name was given to his family by a landlord in honor of Gebhard.  Near Twickenham Stadium is the Prince Blucher pub.

Sources.

Attribution

Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, Fürst von Wahlstatt (; 16 December 1742 – 12 September 1819), "Graf" (count), later elevated to "Fürst" (sovereign prince) von Wahlstatt, was a Prussian "Generalfeldmarschall" (field marshal). He earned his greatest recognition after leading his army against Napoleon I at the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig in 1813 and the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, ab 1814 Fürst Blücher von Wahlstatt (* 16. Dezember 1742 in Rostock; † 12. September 1819 in Krieblowitz) war ein preußischer Generalfeldmarschall, der durch den Sieg über Napoleon in der Schlacht bei Waterloo berühmt wurde. Volkstümlich „Marschall Vorwärts“ genannt, gehört er zu den populärsten Helden der Befreiungskriege in Europa.


Origins of the term.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the metaphor of a "crucible" or "smelting pot" was used to describe the fusion of different nationalities, ethnicities and cultures. It was used together with concepts of the United States as an ideal republic and a "city upon a hill" or new promised land. It was a metaphor for the idealized process of immigration and colonization by which different nationalities, cultures and "races" (a term that could encompass nationality, ethnicity and racist views of humanity) were to blend into a new, virtuous community, and it was connected to utopian visions of the emergence of an American "new man". While "melting" was in common use the exact term "melting pot" came into general usage in 1908, after the premiere of the play "The Melting Pot" by Israel Zangwill.  The first use in American literature of the concept of immigrants "melting" into the receiving culture are found in the writings of J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur. In his "Letters from an American Farmer" (1782) Crevecoeur writes, in response to his own question, "What then is the American, this new man?" that the American is one who "leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are "melted" into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world."  In 1845, Ralph Waldo Emerson, alluding to the development of European civilization out of the medieval Dark Ages, wrote in his private journal of America as the Utopian product of a culturally and racially mixed "smelting pot", but only in 1912 were his remarks first published. In his writing, Emerson explicitly welcomed the racial intermixing of whites and non-whites, a highly controversial view during his lifetime.  A magazine article in 1876 used the metaphor explicitly:  In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner also used the metaphor of immigrants melting into one American culture. In his essay "The Significance of

United States.

In terms of immigrants to the United States, the "melting pot" process has been equated with Americanization, that is, cultural assimilation and acculturation. The "melting pot" metaphor implies both a melting of cultures and intermarriage of ethnicities, yet cultural assimilation or acculturation can also occur without intermarriage. Thus African-Americans are fully culturally integrated into American culture and institutions. Yet more than a century after the abolition of slavery, intermarriage between African-Americans and other ethnicities is much less common than between different white ethnicities, or between white and Asian ethnicities. Intermarriage between whites and non-whites, and especially African-Americans, was a taboo in the United States for a long time, and was illegal in many US states (see anti-miscegenation laws) until 1967.

Whiteness and the melting pot in the United States.

The melting pot theory of ethnic relations, which sees American identity as centered upon the acculturation or assimilation and the intermarriage of white immigrant groups, has been analyzed by the emerging academic field of whiteness studies. This discipline examines the "social construction of whiteness" and highlights the changing ways in which whiteness has been normative to American national identity from the 17th to the 20th century.  In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, European immigration to the United States became increasingly diverse and increased substantially in numbers. Beginning in the 1890s, large numbers of Southern and Eastern European immigrant groups such as the Italians, Jews, and Poles arrived. Many returned to Europe but those who remained merged into the cultural melting pot, adopting American lifestyles. By contrast, Chinese arrivals met intense hostility and new laws in the 1880s tried to exclude them, but many arrived illegally. Hostility forced them into "Chinatowns" or ethnic enclaves in the larger cities, where they lived a culture apart and seldom assimilated. The acquisition of Hawaii in 1898,

Multiracial influences on culture.

White Americans long regarded some elements of African-American culture quintessentially "American", while at the same time treating African Americans as second-class citizens. White appropriation, stereotyping and mimicking of black culture played an important role in the construction of an urban popular culture in which European immigrants could express themselves as Americans, through such traditions as blackface, minstrel shows and later in jazz and in early Hollywood cinema, notably in "The Jazz Singer" (1927).  Analyzing the "racial masquerade" that was involved in creation

Ethnicity in films.

This trend towards greater acceptance of ethnic and racial minorities was evident in popular culture in the combat films of World War II, starting with "Bataan" (1943). This film celebrated solidarity and cooperation between Americans of all races and ethnicities through the depiction of a multiracial American unit. At the time blacks and Japanese in the armed forces were still segregated, while Chinese and Indians were in integrated units.  Historian Richard Slotkin sees "Bataan" and the combat genre that

Hawaii.

In Hawaii, as Rohrer (2008) argues, there are two dominant discourses of racial politics, both focused on "haole" (white people or whiteness in Hawaii) in the islands. The first is the discourse of racial harmony representing Hawaii as an idyllic racial paradise with no conflict or inequality. There is also

Olympics.

Throughout the history of the modern Olympic Games, the theme of the United States as a melting pot has been employed to explain American athletic success, becoming an important aspect of national self-image. The diversity of American athletes in the Olympic Games in the early 20th century was an important avenue for the country to redefine a national culture amid-a massive influx of immigrants, as well as American Indians (represented by Jim Thorpe in 1912) and blacks (represented by Jesse Owens in 1936). In the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, two black American athletes with gold and bronze medals saluted the U.S. national anthem with a "Black Power" salute that symbolized rejection of assimilation.  The international aspect of the games allowed the United States to define its pluralistic self-image

Melting pot and cultural pluralism.

The concept of multiculturalism was preceded by the concept of cultural pluralism, which was first developed in the 1910s and 1920s, and became widely popular during the 1940s. The concept of cultural pluralism first emerged in the 1910s and 1920s among intellectual circles out of the debates in the United States over how to approach issues of immigration and national identity.  The First World War and the Russian Revolution caused a "Red Scare" in the US, which also fanned feelings of xenophobia. During and immediately after the First World War, the concept of the melting pot was equated by Nativists with complete cultural assimilation towards an Anglo-American norm ("Anglo-conformity") on the part of immigrants, and immigrants who opposed such assimilation were accused of disloyalty to the United States.  The newly popularized concept of the melting pot was frequently equated with "Americanization", meaning cultural assimilation, by many "old stock" Americans. In Henry Ford's Ford English School (established in 1914), the graduation ceremony for immigrant employees involved symbolically stepping off an immigrant ship and passing through "the melting pot", entering at one end in costumes designating their nationality and emerging at the other end in identical suits and waving American flags.  Opposition to the absorption of millions of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe was especially strong among popular writers such as Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, who believed in the "racial" superiority of Americans of Northern European descent as member of the "Nordic race", and therefore demanded immigration restrictions to stop a "degeneration" of America's white racial "stock". They believed that complete cultural assimilation of the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe was not a solution to the problem of immigration because intermarriage with these immigrants would endanger the racial purity of Anglo-America. The controversy over immigration faded away after immigration restrictions were put in place with the enactment of the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924.  In response to the pressure exerted on immigrants to culturally assimilate and

Use in other regions.

Antiquity.

In more ancient times, some marriages between distinctly different tribes and nations were due to royalty trying to form alliances with or to influence other kingdoms or to dissuade marauders or slave traders. Two examples, Hermodike I c.800BC and Hermodike II c.600BC were Greek princesses from the

Mexico.

Mexico has seen a variety of cultural influences over the years, and in its history has adopted a mixed assimilationist/multiculturalist policy. Mexico, beginning with the conquest of the Aztecs, had entered a new global empire based on trade and immigration. In the 16th and 17th centuries, waves of Spanish, and to a lesser extent, African and Filipino culture became embedded into the fabric of Mexican culture. It is important to note, however, that from a Mexican standpoint, the immigrants and their culture were no longer considered foreign, but Mexican in their entirety. The food, art, and even heritage were assimilated into a Mexican identity. Upon the independence of Mexico, Mexico

South America.

Argentina.

As with other areas of new settlement such as Canada, Australia, the United States, Brazil, New Zealand, The United Arab Emirates, and Singapore, Argentina is considered a country of immigrants. When it is considered that Argentina was second only to the United States (27 million of immigrants) in the number of immigrants received, even ahead of such other areas of newer settlement like Australia, Brazil, Canada and New Zealand; and that the country was scarcely populated following its independence, the impact of the immigration to Argentina becomes evident.  Most Argentines are descended from colonial-era settlers and of the 19th- and 20th-century immigrants from Europe. An estimated 8% of the population is Mestizo, and a further 4% of Argentines are of Arab (in Argentina the Arab ethnicity is considered among the White people, just like in the US Census) or Asian heritage. In the last national census, based on self-identification, 600,000 Argentines (2% of the population) declared to be Amerindians Although various genetic tests show that in average, Argentines have 20 to 30% indigenous ancestry, which leads many who are culturally European, to identify as white, even though

Brazil.

Brazil has long been a melting pot for a wide range of cultures. From colonial times Portuguese Brazilians have favoured assimilation and tolerance for other peoples, and intermarriage was more acceptable in Brazil than in most other European colonies. However, Brazilian society has never been completely free of ethnic strife and exploitation, and some groups have chosen to remain separate from mainstream social life. Brazilians of mainly European descent (Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Austrian, Polish, Spanish, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian,

Colombia.

Colombia is a melting pot of races and ethnicities. The population is descended from three racial groups—Native Americans, blacks, and whites—that have mingled throughout the nearly 500 years of the country's history. No official figures were available, since the Colombian government dropped any

Costa Rica.

Costa Rican people is a very syncretic melting pot, because this country has been constituted in percentage since the 16th century by immigrants from all the European countries—mostly Spaniards and Italians with a lot of Germans, British, Swedes, Swiss, French and Croats—also as black people from Africa and Jamaica, Americans, Chinese, Lebanese and Latin Americans who have mestized over time with the large native populations (criollos, castizos, mulattos, blacks and tri-racial) creating the national average modern ethnic composition.  Nowadays a great part of the Costa Rican inhabitants are considered white (84%), with minority groups of mulatto (7%), indigenous (2%), Chinese (2%) and black (1%). Also, over 9% of the total population is foreign-born (specially from Nicaragua, Colombia and the United States).

Indian subcontinent.

The Indian subcontinent has a long history of inter-ethnic marriage dating back to ancient India. Various groups of people have been intermarrying for millennia in the Indian subcontinent, including speakers of Dravidian, Indo-Aryan, Austroasiatic, and Tibeto-Burman languages. On account of such diverse influences, the Indian subcontinent in a nut-shell appears to be a cradle of human civilization. Despite invasions in its recent history it has

Afghanistan.

Afghanistan seems to be in the process of becoming a melting pot, as customs specific to particular ethnic groups are becoming summarily perceived as national traits of Afghanistan. The term "Afghan" was originally used to refer to the Pashtuns in the Middle Ages, and the intention behind the creation of the Afghan state was originally to be a Pashtun state, but later this policy changed, leading to the inclusion of non-Pashtuns in the state as Afghans. Today in Afghanistan, the development of a cultural melting pot is occurring, where different Afghanistan ethnic groups are mixing together to build a new Afghan ethnicity composed of preceding ethnicities in Afghanistan today,

Israel.

In the early years of the state of Israel, the term "melting pot" (כור היתוך), also known as "Ingathering of the Exiles" (קיבוץ גלויות), was not a description of a process, but an official governmental doctrine of assimilating the Jewish immigrants that originally came from varying cultures (see Jewish ethnic divisions). This was performed on several levels, such as educating the younger generation (with the parents not having the final say) and (to mention an anecdotal one) encouraging and sometimes forcing the new citizens to adopt a Hebrew name.  Activists such as the Iraq-born Ella Shohat that an elite which developed in the early 20th century, out of the earlier-arrived Zionist Pioneers of the Second and Third Aliyas (immigration waves)—and who gained a dominant position in the Yishuv (pre-state community) since the 1930s—had formulated a new Hebrew culture, based on the values of Socialist Zionism, and imposed it on all later arrivals, at the cost of suppressing and erasing these later immigrants' original culture.  Proponents of the Melting Pot policy asserted that it applied to

Russia.

Already the Kievan Rus was a multi ethnic state where different ethnicities merged, including Slavs, Finns, Turks and Balts. Later the expansion of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and later of the Russian Empire throughout 15th to 20th centuries created a unique melting pot. Though the majority of Russians had Slavic-speaking ancestry, different ethnicities were assimilated into the Russian melting pot through the period of expansion. Assimilation was a way for ethnic minorities to advance their standing within the Russian society and

Soviet Union.

The Soviet people () was an ideological epithet for the population of the Soviet Union. The Soviet government promoted the doctrine of assimilating all peoples living in USSR into one

Southeast Asia.

The term has been used to describe a number of countries in Southeast Asia. Given the region's location and importance to trade routes between China and the Western world, certain countries in the region have become ethnically diverse. In Vietnam, a relevant phenomenon is "tam giáo đồng nguyên", meaning the co-existence and co-influence of three major religious teaching schools (Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism), which shows a process defined as "cultural addivity".

Philippines.

In the pre-Spanish era the Philippines was the trading nexus of various cultures and eventually became the melting pot of different nations. This primarily consisted of the Chinese, Indian and Arab traders. This is also includes neighboring southeast Asian cultures. The cultures and races mixed with indigenous tribes, mainly of Austronesian descent (i.e. the Indonesians, Malays and Brunei) and the Negritos. The result was a mix of cultures and ideals. This melting pot of culture continued with the arrival of Europeans, mixing their western culture with the nation. The Spanish Empire colonized the Philippines for more than three centuries, and during the early 20th century, was conquered and annexed by the United States and occupied by the Empire of Japan during World War II. In modern times, the Philippines has been the place of many retired Americans, Japanese expatriates and Korean students. And continues to uphold its status as a melting pot state today.

The melting pot is a monocultural metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" with a common culture, or vice versa, for a homogeneous society becoming more heterogeneous through the influx of foreign elements with different cultural backgrounds, possessing the potential to create disharmony within the previous culture. Historically, it is often used to describe the cultural integration of immigrants to the United States.

Ein Schmelztiegel ist ein Tiegel, in dem Substanzen (meist Metalle) gemischt und geschmolzen werden. Die Metapher „Melting Pot“ wurde das erste Mal von Jean de Crèvecoeur in seinem 1782 erschienenen Essay "Letters from an American Farmer" verwendet. Ein gebräuchlicher Ausdruck jedoch wurde er erst durch den Erfolg des Theaterstücks "The Melting Pot" des englischen Schriftstellers Israel Zangwill, das 1908 in Washington, D.C. uraufgeführt wurde.