title: Weather

text: Weather occurs primarily due to air pressure, temperature and moisture differences between one place to another. These differences can occur due to the sun angle at any particular spot, which varies by latitude from the tropics. In other words, the farther from the tropics one lies, the lower the sun angle is, which causes those locations to be cooler due to the spread of the sunlight over a greater surface. The strong temperature contrast between polar and tropical air gives rise to the large scale atmospheric circulation cells and the jet stream. Weather systems in the mid-latitudes, such as extratropical cyclones, are caused by instabilities of the jet stream flow (see baroclinity). Weather systems in the tropics, such as monsoons or organized thunderstorm systems, are caused by different processes.


title: Weather

text: Because the Earth's axis is tilted relative to its orbital plane, sunlight is incident at different angles at different times of the year. In June the Northern Hemisphere is tilted towards the sun, so at any given Northern Hemisphere latitude sunlight falls more directly on that spot than in December (see Effect of sun angle on climate). This effect causes seasons. Over thousands to hundreds of thousands of years, changes in Earth's orbital parameters affect the amount and distribution of solar energy received by the Earth and influence long-term climate. (See Milankovitch cycles).


title: Weather

text: The uneven solar heating (the formation of zones of temperature and moisture gradients, or frontogenesis) can also be due to the weather itself in the form of cloudiness and precipitation. Higher altitudes are typically cooler than lower altitudes, which the result of higher surface temperature and radiational heating, which produces the adiabatic lapse rate. In some situations, the temperature actually increases with height. This phenomenon is known as an inversion and can cause mountaintops to be warmer than the valleys below. Inversions can lead to the formation of fog and often act as a cap that suppresses thunderstorm development. On local scales, temperature differences can occur because different surfaces (such as oceans, forests, ice sheets, or man-made objects) have differing physical characteristics such as reflectivity, roughness, or moisture content.


title: Weather

text: Surface temperature differences in turn cause pressure differences. A hot surface warms the air above it causing it to expand and lower the density and the resulting surface air pressure. The resulting horizontal pressure gradient moves the air from higher to lower pressure regions, creating a wind, and the Earth's rotation then causes deflection of this airflow due to the Coriolis effect. The simple systems thus formed can then display emergent behaviour to produce more complex systems and thus other weather phenomena. Large scale examples include the Hadley cell while a smaller scale example would be coastal breezes.


title: Weather

text: The atmosphere is a chaotic system. As a result, small changes to one part of the system can accumulate and magnify to cause large effects on the system as a whole. This atmospheric instability makes weather forecasting less predictable than tides or eclipses. Although it is difficult to accurately predict weather more than a few days in advance, weather forecasters are continually working to extend this limit through meteorological research and refining current methodologies in weather prediction. However, it is theoretically impossible to make useful day-to-day predictions more than about two weeks ahead, imposing an upper limit to potential for improved prediction skill.


title: Weather

text: Weather is one of the fundamental processes that shape the Earth. The process of weathering breaks down the rocks and soils into smaller fragments and then into their constituent substances. During rains precipitation, the water droplets absorb and dissolve carbon dioxide from the surrounding air. This causes the rainwater to be slightly acidic, which aids the erosive properties of water. The released sediment and chemicals are then free to take part in chemical reactions that can affect the surface further (such as acid rain), and sodium and chloride ions (salt) deposited in the seas/oceans. The sediment may reform in time and by geological forces into other rocks and soils. In this way, weather plays a major role in erosion of the surface.


title: Weather

text: Weather, seen from an anthropological perspective, is something all humans in the world constantly experience through their senses, at least while being outside. There are socially and scientifically constructed understandings of what weather is, what makes it change, the effect it has on humans in different situations, etc. Therefore, weather is something people often communicate about. The National Weather Service has an annual report for fatalities, injury, and total damage costs which include crop and property. They gather this data via National Weather Service offices located throughout the 50 states in the United States as well as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. As of 2019, tornadoes have had the greatest impact on humans with 42 fatalities while costing crop and property damage over 3 billion dollars.


title: Weather

text: The weather has played a large and sometimes direct part in human history. Aside from climatic changes that have caused the gradual drift of populations (for example the desertification of the Middle East, and the formation of land bridges during glacial periods), extreme weather events have caused smaller scale population movements and intruded directly in historical events. One such event is the saving of Japan from invasion by the Mongol fleet of Kublai Khan by the Kamikaze winds in 1281. French claims to Florida came to an end in 1565 when a hurricane destroyed the French fleet, allowing Spain to conquer Fort Caroline. More recently, Hurricane Katrina redistributed over one million people from the central Gulf coast elsewhere across the United States, becoming the largest diaspora in the history of the United States.


title: Weather

text: The Little Ice Age caused crop failures and famines in Europe. During the period known as the Grindelwald Fluctuation (1560-1630), volcanic forcing events seem to have led to more extreme weather events. These included droughts, storms and unseasonal blizzards, as well as causing the Swiss Grindelwald Glacier to expand. The 1690s saw the worst famine in France since the Middle Ages. Finland suffered a severe famine in 1696–1697, during which about one-third of the Finnish population died.


title: Weather

text: Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the atmosphere for a future time and a given location. Human beings have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia, and formally since at least the nineteenth century. Weather forecasts are made by collecting quantitative data about the current state of the atmosphere and using scientific understanding of atmospheric processes to project how the atmosphere will evolve.


title: Weather

text: Once an all-human endeavor based mainly upon changes in barometric pressure, current weather conditions, and sky condition, forecast models are now used to determine future conditions. On the other hand, human input is still required to pick the best possible forecast model to base the forecast upon, which involve many disciplines such as pattern recognition skills, teleconnections, knowledge of model performance, and knowledge of model biases.


title: Weather

text: The chaotic nature of the atmosphere, the massive computational power required to solve the equations that describe the atmosphere, the error involved in measuring the initial conditions, and an incomplete understanding of atmospheric processes mean that forecasts become less accurate as of the difference in current time and the time for which the forecast is being made (the "range" of the forecast) increases. The use of ensembles and model consensus helps to narrow the error and pick the most likely outcome.


title: Weather

text: There are a variety of end users to weather forecasts. Weather warnings are important forecasts because they are used to protect life and property. Forecasts based on temperature and precipitation are important to agriculture, and therefore to commodity traders within stock markets. Temperature forecasts are used by utility companies to estimate demand over coming days.


title: Weather

text: In some areas, people use weather forecasts to determine what to wear on a given day. Since outdoor activities are severely curtailed by heavy rain, snow and the wind chill, forecasts can be used to plan activities around these events and to plan ahead to survive through them.


title: Weather

text: Tropical weather forecasting is different from that at higher latitudes. The sun shines more directly on the tropics than on higher latitudes (at least in the average over a year), which makes the tropics warm (Stevens 2011). And, the vertical direction (up, as one stands on the Earth's surface) is perpendicular to the Earth's axis of rotation at the equator, while the axis of rotation and the vertical are the same at the pole; this causes the Earth's rotation to influence the atmospheric circulation more strongly at high latitudes than low. Because of these two factors, clouds and rainstorms in the tropics can occur more spontaneously compared to those at higher latitudes, where they are more tightly controlled by larger-scale forces in the atmosphere. Because of these differences, clouds and rain are more difficult to forecast in the tropics than at higher latitudes. On the other hand, the temperature is easily forecast in the tropics, because it doesn't change much.


title: Weather

text: The aspiration to control the weather is evident throughout human history: from ancient rituals intended to bring rain for crops to the U.S. Military Operation Popeye, an attempt to disrupt supply lines by lengthening the North Vietnamese monsoon. The most successful attempts at influencing weather involve cloud seeding; they include the fog- and low stratus dispersion techniques employed by major airports, techniques used to increase winter precipitation over mountains, and techniques to suppress hail. A recent example of weather control was China's preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. China shot 1,104 rain dispersal rockets from 21 sites in the city of Beijing in an effort to keep rain away from the opening ceremony of the games on 8 August 2008. Guo Hu, head of the Beijing Municipal Meteorological Bureau (BMB), confirmed the success of the operation with 100 millimeters falling in Baoding City of Hebei Province, to the southwest and Beijing's Fangshan District recording a rainfall of 25 millimeters.


title: Weather

text: Whereas there is inconclusive evidence for these techniques' efficacy, there is extensive evidence that human activity such as agriculture and industry results in inadvertent weather modification:


title: Weather

text: The effects of inadvertent weather modification may pose serious threats to many aspects of civilization, including ecosystems, natural resources, food and fiber production, economic development, and human health.


title: Weather

text: Microscale meteorology is the study of short-lived atmospheric phenomena smaller than mesoscale, about 1 km or less. These two branches of meteorology are sometimes grouped together as "mesoscale and microscale meteorology" (MMM) and together study all phenomena smaller than synoptic scale; that is they study features generally too small to be depicted on a weather map. These include small and generally fleeting cloud "puffs" and other small cloud features.


title: Weather

text: On Earth, temperatures usually range ±40 °C (100 °F to −40 °F) annually. The range of climates and latitudes across the planet can offer extremes of temperature outside this range. The coldest air temperature ever recorded on Earth is , at Vostok Station, Antarctica on 21 July 1983. The hottest air temperature ever recorded was at 'Aziziya, Libya, on 13 September 1922, but that reading is queried. The highest recorded average annual temperature was at Dallol, Ethiopia. The coldest recorded average annual temperature was at Vostok Station, Antarctica.


title: Weather

text: The coldest average annual temperature in a permanently inhabited location is at Eureka, Nunavut, in Canada, where the annual average temperature is .


title: Weather

text: The windiest place ever recorded is in Antarctica, Commonwealth Bay (George V Coast). Here the gales reach . Furthermore, the greatest snowfall in a period of twelve months occurred in Mount Rainier, Washington, USA. It was recorded as of snow.


title: Weather

text: Studying how the weather works on other planets has been seen as helpful in understanding how it works on Earth. Weather on other planets follows many of the same physical principles as weather on Earth, but occurs on different scales and in atmospheres having different chemical composition. The "Cassini–Huygens" mission to Titan discovered clouds formed from methane or ethane which deposit rain composed of liquid methane and other organic compounds. Earth's atmosphere includes six latitudinal circulation zones, three in each hemisphere. In contrast, Jupiter's banded appearance shows many such zones, Titan has a single jet stream near the 50th parallel north latitude, and Venus has a single jet near the equator.


title: Weather

text: One of the most famous landmarks in the Solar System, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, is an anticyclonic storm known to have existed for at least 300 years. On other gas giants, the lack of a surface allows the wind to reach enormous speeds: gusts of up to 600 metres per second (about ) have been measured on the planet Neptune. This has created a puzzle for planetary scientists. The weather is ultimately created by solar energy and the amount of energy received by Neptune is only about of that received by Earth, yet the intensity of weather phenomena on Neptune is far greater than on Earth. The strongest planetary winds discovered so far are on the extrasolar planet HD 189733 b, which is thought to have easterly winds moving at more than .


title: Weather

text: Weather is not limited to planetary bodies. Like all stars, the Sun's corona is constantly being lost to space, creating what is essentially a very thin atmosphere throughout the Solar System. The movement of mass ejected from the Sun is known as the solar wind. Inconsistencies in this wind and larger events on the surface of the star, such as coronal mass ejections, form a system that has features analogous to conventional weather systems (such as pressure and wind) and is generally known as space weather. Coronal mass ejections have been tracked as far out in the Solar System as Saturn. The activity of this system can affect planetary atmospheres and occasionally surfaces. The interaction of the solar wind with the terrestrial atmosphere can produce spectacular aurorae, and can play havoc with electrically sensitive systems such as electricity grids and radio signals.


title: Pangolin

text: Pangolins, sometimes known as scaly anteaters, are mammals of the order Pholidota (, from Ancient Greek ϕολιδωτός – "clad in scales"). The one extant family, the Manidae, has three genera: "Manis", "Phataginus", and "Smutsia". "Manis" comprises the four species found in Asia, while "Phataginus" and "Smutsia" include two species each, all found in sub-Saharan Africa. These species range in size from . A number of extinct pangolin species are also known.


title: Pangolin

text: Pangolins have large, protective keratin scales, similar in material to fingernails and toenails, covering their skin; they are the only known mammals with this feature. They live in hollow trees or burrows, depending on the species. Pangolins are nocturnal, and their diet consists of mainly ants and termites, which they capture using their long tongues. They tend to be solitary animals, meeting only to mate and produce a litter of one to three offspring, which they raise for about two years.


title: Pangolin

text: Pangolins are threatened by poaching (for their meat and scales, which are used in traditional medicine) and heavy deforestation of their natural habitats, and they are the most trafficked mammals in the world. , there are eight species of pangolin whose conservation status is listed in the threatened tier. Three ("Manis culionensis", "M. pentadactyla" and "M. javanica") are critically endangered, three ("Phataginus tricuspis", "Manis crassicaudata" and "Smutsia gigantea") are endangered and two ("Phataginus tetradactyla" and "Smutsia temminckii") are vulnerable on the Red List of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.


title: Pangolin

text: The name "pangolin" comes from the Malay word "pengguling", meaning "one who rolls up". However, the modern name in Standard Malay is "tenggiling"; whereas in Indonesian it is "trenggiling"; and in the Philippine languages, it is "goling", "tanggiling", or "balintong" (with the same meaning).


title: Pangolin

text: The physical appearance of a pangolin is marked by large, hardened, overlapping, plate-like scales, which are soft on newborn pangolins, but harden as the animal matures. They are made of keratin, the same material from which human fingernails and tetrapod claws are made, and are structurally and compositionally very different from the scales of reptiles. The pangolin's scaled body is comparable in appearance to a pine cone. It can curl up into a ball when threatened, with its overlapping scales acting as armor, while it protects its face by tucking it under its tail. The scales are sharp, providing extra defense from predators.


title: Pangolin

text: Pangolins can emit a noxious-smelling chemical from glands near the anus, similar to the spray of a skunk. They have short legs, with sharp claws which they use for burrowing into ant and termite mounds and for climbing.


title: Pangolin

text: The tongues of pangolins are extremely long, and like those of the giant anteater and the tube-lipped nectar bat, the root of the tongue is not attached to the hyoid bone, but is in the thorax between the sternum and the trachea. Large pangolins can extend their tongues as much as , with a diameter of only about .


title: Pangolin

text: Most pangolins are nocturnal animals which use their well-developed sense of smell to find insects. The long-tailed pangolin is also active by day, while other species of pangolins spend most of the daytime sleeping, curled up into a ball ("volvation").


title: Pangolin

text: Arboreal pangolins live in hollow trees, whereas the ground-dwelling species dig tunnels to a depth of .


title: Pangolin

text: Some pangolins walk with their front claws bent under the foot pad, although they use the entire foot pad on their rear limbs. Furthermore, some exhibit a bipedal stance for some behaviour, and may walk a few steps bipedally. Pangolins are also good swimmers.


title: Pangolin

text: Pangolins are insectivorous. Most of their diet consists of various species of ants and termites, and may be supplemented by other insects, especially larvae. They are somewhat particular and tend to consume only one or two species of insects, even when many species are available to them. A pangolin can consume of insects per day. Pangolins are an important regulator of termite populations in their natural habitats.


title: Pangolin

text: Pangolins have very poor vision. They also lack teeth. They rely heavily on smell and hearing, and they have other physical characteristics to help them eat ants and termites. Their skeletal structure is sturdy and they have strong front legs that are used for tearing into termite mounds. They use their powerful front claws to dig into trees, soil, and vegetation to find prey, then proceed to use their long tongues to probe inside the insect tunnels and to retrieve their prey.


title: Pangolin

text: The structure of their tongue and stomach is key to aiding pangolins in obtaining and digesting insects. Their saliva is sticky, causing ants and termites to stick to their long tongues when they are hunting through insect tunnels. Without teeth, pangolins also lack the ability to chew; but while foraging, they ingest small stones (gastroliths), which accumulate in their stomachs to help to grind up ants. This part of their stomach is called the gizzard, and it is also covered in keratinous spines. These spines further aid in the grinding up and digestion of the pangolin's prey.


title: Pangolin

text: Some species, such as the tree pangolin, use their strong, prehensile tails to hang from tree branches and strip away bark from the trunk, exposing insect nests inside.


title: Pangolin

text: Pangolins are solitary and meet only to mate, with mating typically taking place at night after the male and female pangolin meet near a watering hole. Males are larger than females, weighing up to 40% more. While the mating season is not defined, they typically mate once each year, usually during the summer or autumn. Rather than the males seeking out the females, males mark their location with urine or feces and the females find them. If competition over a female occurs, the males use their tails as clubs to fight for the opportunity to mate with her.


title: Pangolin

text: Gestation periods differ by species, ranging from roughly 70 to 140 days. African pangolin females usually give birth to a single offspring at a time, but the Asiatic species may give birth to from one to three. Weight at birth is , and the average length is . At the time of birth, the scales are soft and white. After several days, they harden and darken to resemble those of an adult pangolin. During the vulnerable stage, the mother stays with her offspring in the burrow, nursing it, and wraps her body around it if she senses danger. The young cling to the mother's tail as she moves about, although, in burrowing species, they remain in the burrow for the first 2–4 weeks of life. At one month, they first leave the burrow riding on the mother's back. Weaning takes place around 3 months of age, when the young begin to eat insects in addition to nursing. At 2 years of age, the offspring are sexually mature and are abandoned by the mother.


title: Pangolin

text: The order Pholidota was considered to be the sister taxon to Xenarthra (neotropical anteaters, sloths, and armadillos), but recent genetic evidence indicates their closest living relatives are the carnivorans, with which they form a clade termed either Ferae or Ostentoria. Fossil groups like the creodonts and palaeanodonts are even closer relatives to pangolins (the latter group being classified with pangolins in the clade Pholidotamorpha). The split between carnivorans and pangolins is estimated to have occurred 79–87 Ma (million years) ago.


title: Pangolin

text: The first dichotomy in the phylogeny of extant Manidae separates Asian pangolins ("Manis") from African pangolins ("Smutsia" and "Phataginus"). Within the former, "Manis pentadactyla" is the sister group to a clade comprising "M. crassicaudata" and "M. javanica". Within the latter, a split separates the large terrestrial African pangolins of the genus "Smutsia" from the small arboreal African pangolins of the genus "Phataginus".


title: Pangolin

text: Asian and African pangolins are thought to have diverged about 38–47 Ma ago. Moreover, the basal position of "Manis" within Pholidota suggests the group originated in Eurasia, consistent with their laurasiatherian phylogeny.


title: Pangolin

text: Pangolins are in high demand for traditional Chinese and Vietnamese medicine in southern China and Vietnam because their scales are believed to have medicinal properties. Their meat is also considered a delicacy. 100,000 are estimated to be trafficked a year to China and Vietnam, amounting to over one million over the past decade. This makes them the most trafficked animal in the world. This, coupled with deforestation, has led to a large decrease in the numbers of pangolins. Some species, such as "Manis pentadactyla" have become commercially extinct in certain ranges as a result of overhunting. In November 2010, pangolins were added to the Zoological Society of London's list of evolutionarily distinct and endangered mammals. All eight species of pangolin are assessed as threatened by the IUCN, while three are classified as critically endangered. All pangolin species are currently listed under Appendix I of CITES which prohibits international trade, except when the product is intended for non-commercial purposes and a permit has been granted.


title: Pangolin

text: China had been the main destination country for pangolins until 2018, when it was reportedly surpassed by Vietnam. In 2019, Vietnam was reported to have seized the largest volumes of pangolin scales, surpassing Nigeria that year.


title: Pangolin

text: Pangolins are also hunted and eaten in Ghana and are one of the more popular types of bushmeat, while local healers use the pangolin as a source of traditional medicine.


title: Pangolin

text: Though pangolins are protected by an international ban on their trade, populations have suffered from illegal trafficking due to beliefs in East Asia that their ground-up scales can stimulate lactation or cure cancer or asthma. In the past decade, numerous seizures of illegally trafficked pangolin and pangolin meat have taken place in Asia. In one such incident in April 2013, of pangolin meat were seized from a Chinese vessel that ran aground in the Philippines. In another case in August 2016, an Indonesian man was arrested after police raided his home and found over 650 pangolins in freezers on his property. The same threat is reported in Nigeria, where the animal is on the verge of extinction due to overexploitation. The overexploitation comes from hunting pangolins for game meat and the reduction of their forest habitats due to deforestation caused by timber harvesting. The pangolin are hunted as game meat for both medicinal purposes and food consumption.


title: Pangolin

text: The nucleic acid sequence of a specific receptor-binding domain of the spike protein belonging to coronaviruses taken from pangolins was found to be a 99% match with SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus which causes COVID-19 and is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers in Guangzhou, China, hypothesized that SARS-CoV-2 had originated in bats, and prior to infecting humans, was circulating among pangolins. The illicit Chinese trade of pangolins for use in traditional Chinese medicine was suggested as a vector for human transmission. However, whole-genome comparison found that the pangolin and human share only up to 92% of their RNA. Ecologists worried that the early speculation about pangolins being the source may have led to mass slaughters, endangering them further, which was similar to what happened to Asian palm civets during the SARS outbreak.


title: Pangolin

text: It was later proved that the testing which suggested that pangolins were a potential host for the virus was flawed, when genetic analysis showed that the spike protein and its binding to receptors in pangolins had minimal effect from the virus, and therefore were not likely mechanisms for COVID-19 infections in humans.


title: Pangolin

text: In 2020, two novel RNA viruses distantly related to pestiviruses and coltiviruses have been detected in the genomes of dead "Manis javanica" and "Manis pentadactyla". To refer to both sampling site and hosts, they were named Dongyang pangolin virus (DYPV) and Lishui pangolin virus (LSPV). The DYPV pestivirus was also identified in "Amblyomma javanense" nymph ticks from a diseased pangolin.


title: Pangolin

text: Pangolin scales and flesh are used as ingredients for various traditional Chinese medicine preparations. While no scientific evidence exists for the efficacy of those practices, and they have no logical mechanism of action, their popularity still drives the black market for animal body parts, despite concerns about toxicity, transmission of diseases from animals to humans, and species extermination. The ongoing demand for parts as ingredients continues to fuel pangolin poaching, hunting and trading.


title: Pangolin

text: In the 21st century, the main uses of pangolin scales are quackery practices based on unproven claims the scales dissolve blood clots, promote blood circulation, or help lactating women secrete milk. The supposed health effects of pangolin meat and scales claimed by folk medicine practitioners and quacks are based on their consumption of ants, long tongues, and protective scales. The Chinese name "chuan shan jia" () "penetrating-the-mountain scales") emphasizes the idea of penetration or passing through even massive obstructions such as mountains, plus the distinctive scales which embody penetration and protection.


title: Pangolin

text: The official pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China included Chinese pangolin scales as an ingredient in TCM formulations. Pangolins were removed from the pharmacopoeia starting from the first half of 2020. Although pangolin scales have been removed from the list of raw ingredients, the scales are still listed as a key ingredient in various medicines.


title: Pangolin

text: The first record of pangolin scales occurs in "Ben Cao Jinji Zhu" ("Variorum of Shennong's Classic of Materia Medica", 500 CE), which recommends pangolin scales for protection against ant bites; burning the scales as a cure for people crying hysterically during the night. During the Tang dynasty, a recipe for expelling evil spirits with a formulation of scales, herbs, and minerals appeared in 682, and in 752 CE the idea that pangolin scales could also stimulate milk secretion in lactating women, one of the main uses today, was recommended in the "Wai Tai Mi Yao" ("Arcane Essentials from the Imperial Library"). In the Song dynasty, the notion of penetrating and clearing blockages was emphasized in the "Taiping sheng hui fan" ("Formulas from Benevolent Sages Compiled During the Era of Peace and Tranquility"), compiled by Wang Huaiyin in 992.


title: Pangolin

text: As a result of increasing threats to pangolins, mainly in the form of illegal, international trade in pangolin skin, scales, and meat, these species have received increasing conservation attention in recent years. , the IUCN considered all eight species of pangolin on its Red List of Threatened Species as threatened. The IUCN SSC Pangolin Specialist Group launched a global action plan to conserve pangolins, dubbed "Scaling up Pangolin Conservation", in July 2014. This action plan aims to improve all aspects of pangolin conservation with an added emphasis on combating poaching and trafficking of the animal while educating communities on its importance. Another suggested approach to fighting pangolin (and general wildlife) trafficking consists in "following the money" rather than "the animal", which aims to disrupt smugglers' profits by interrupting money flows. Financial intelligence gathering could thus become a key tool in protecting these animals, although this opportunity is often overlooked. In 2018, a Chinese NGO launched the Counting Pangolins movement, calling for joint efforts to save the mammals from trafficking. Wildlife conservation group TRAFFIC has identified 159 smuggling routes used by pangolin traffickers and aims to shut these down.


title: Pangolin

text: Many attempts have been made to breed pangolins in captivity, but due to their reliance on wide-ranging habitats and very particular diets, these attempts are often unsuccessful. Pangolins have significantly decreased immune responses due to a genetic dysfunction, making them extremely fragile. They are susceptible to diseases such as pneumonia and the development of ulcers in captivity, complications that can lead to an early death. In addition, pangolins rescued from illegal trade often have a higher chance of being infected with parasites such as intestinal worms, further lessening their chance for rehabilitation and reintroduction to the wild.


title: Pangolin

text: The idea of farming pangolins to reduce the number being illegally trafficked is being explored with little success. The third Saturday in February is promoted as World Pangolin Day by the conservation NPO Annamiticus. World Pangolin Day has been noted for its effectiveness in generating awareness about pangolins.


title: Pangolin

text: In 2017, Jackie Chan made a public service announcement called "WildAid: Jackie Chan & Pangolins (Kung Fu Pangolin)".


title: Pangolin

text: In December 2020, a study found that it is "not too late" to establish conservation efforts for Philippine pangolins ("Manis culionensis"), a species that is only found on the island province of Palawan.


title: Pangolin

text: Taiwan is one of the few conservation grounds for pangolins in the world after the country enacted the 1989 Wildlife Conservation Act. The introduction of Wildlife Rehabilitation Centers in places like Luanshan (Yanping Township) in Taitung and Xiulin townships in Hualien became important communities for protecting pangolins and their habitats and has greatly improved the survival of pangolins. These centers work with local aboriginal tribes and forest police in the National Police Agency to prevent poaching, trafficking, and smuggling of pangolins, especially to black markets in China. These centers have also helped to reveal the causes of death and injury among Taiwan's pangolin population. Today, Taiwan has the highest population density of pangolins in the world.


title: Fate/stay night

text: Fate/stay night is a Japanese visual novel developed by Type-Moon and originally released as an adult game for Windows on January 30, 2004. A version of "Fate/stay night" rated for ages 15 and up titled "Fate/stay night Réalta Nua" (Irish for "new stars"), which features the Japanese voice actors from the anime series, was released in 2007 for the PlayStation 2 and later for download on Windows as a trilogy covering the three main storylines: "Fate", "Unlimited Blade Works" and "Heaven's Feel". "Réalta Nua" was also ported to the PlayStation Vita, iOS and Android. The plot focuses on a young mage named Shirou Emiya who becomes a warrior in a battle between "Servants" known as the Holy Grail War. Shirou bonds with a heroine through each route and confronts different adversaries participating in the war.


title: Fate/stay night

text: A manga series adaptation by Datto Nishiwaki has serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's "Shōnen Ace" magazine between the February 2006 and December 2012 issues. A 24-episode anime series created by Studio Deen aired in Japan between January and June 2006. Both mostly follow the "Fate" route but add events from other storylines. A film adaptation, "", also by Studio Deen, was released in Japanese theaters on January 23, 2010. A second anime television series, "", was produced by Ufotable and aired between October 2014 and June 2015, following the game's second route as opposed to the first. A second manga adaptation by Taskohna began in 2015 in Kadokawa Shoten's "Young Ace", focusing solely on the third route. adapted "Heaven's Feel" route of the visual novel, with the first film, titled "", released in 2017, the second film, titled "", released in 2019, and the final film, titled "", released in 2020. A third manga adaptation by Daisuke Moriyama began in 2021 in ASCII Media Works's "Dengeki Daioh", focusing solely on the second route.


title: Fate/stay night

text: "Fate/stay night" spawned the Fate media franchise, consisting of a number of adaptations and spin-offs in various different media. On October 28, 2005, Type-Moon released a sequel to "Fate/stay night", titled "Fate/hollow ataraxia". Its plot is set half a year after the events of "Fate/stay night". A light novel series titled "Fate/Zero", set as a prequel to "Fate/stay night", was published from 2006 to 2007, with an anime adaptation by Ufotable airing between October 2011 and June 2012. A spin-off magical girl manga series, "Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya", began serialization in 2007 and has received multiple anime television series. Three fighting games have been released: "Fate/unlimited codes" for arcades and PlayStation 2, "Fate/tiger colosseum" and its sequel "Fate/tiger colosseum Upper" for PSP. A PSP RPG titled "Fate/Extra" was released on July 22, 2010, and a sequel and companion game, "Fate/Extra CCC", was released on March 28, 2013. An online RPG titled "Fate/Grand Order" was released on Android on July 29, 2015, followed by an August 12 release on iOS; an anime film adaptation by Lay-duce was released on December 31, 2016, with sequel adaptations by Production I.G., CloverWorks and Signal.MD. , "Fate/Grand Order" grossed worldwide, making it the eighth highest-grossing mobile game of all time.


title: Fate/stay night

text: "Fate/stay night"s gameplay requires little interaction from the player as most of the game's duration is spent reading the text that appears, representing either dialogue between the characters, narration, or the inner thoughts of the protagonist. Often, players will come to a "decision point" where they are given a chance to choose from options displayed on the screen, typically two to three at a time. The time between these decision points is variable. During these times, gameplay pauses until a choice is made that furthers the plot in a specific direction. There are three main plot lines that the player will have the chance to experience, one for each of the heroines in the story. To view all three plot lines, the player must replay the game multiple times and choose different choices during the decision points to progress the plot in an alternate direction. Finishing one route will unlock the next one. When interacting with the heroines in each route, an "affection meter" is created, which is raised by giving them an answer that pleases them. A "True Ending" can be unlocked depending on the player's affection.


title: Fate/stay night

text: There are multiple ways in which the player can lose the game, including Shirou's death or a decision that causes the heroine to be murdered. Should this happen, the player is taken to an area called the where Taiga Fujimura and Illyasviel von Einzbern give the player hints about what they should do to survive in the next attempt to complete the game.


title: Fate/stay night

text: The story revolves around Shirou Emiya, a hardworking and honest teenager who unwillingly enters a to-the-death tournament called the Fifth Holy Grail War, where combatants fight with magic and Heroes from throughout history for a chance to have their wishes granted by the eponymous Holy Grail. Orphaned and the sole survivor of a massive fire in Fuyuki City as a child, Shirou was taken in by a retired mage named Kiritsugu Emiya, who would die years later. His perceived responsibility to those who died and his salvation through his father formed a strong desire for justice and peace in him. Thus, he earnestly trains his body and minuscule ability with magic to someday greatly help others, even if people often abuse his generosity at his stage.


title: Fate/stay night

text: One evening, after seeing two devastatingly powerful beings trading blows at his school with swords and spears, he is attacked, as witnesses to the Holy Grail War are generally supposed to be eliminated. Chased to his home by the spear-wielding warrior Lancer and barely able to avoid his attacks, Shirou is about to be killed when he is saved by Saber. Saber, the personification of a renowned figure in history (Arturia Pendragon in her case), was created to aid participants in the War. In her supposedly accidental summoning and the appearance of the marks on Shirou's hand, his entry as a Master into the Holy Grail War is formalized.


title: Fate/stay night

text: The first of the three heroines, Saber is a mighty warrior who keeps her identity secret, hence her substitute name after her role as a member of the Saber class. She also serves as the route's servant protagonist. She was the victor of the Fourth Holy Grail War with another Master and claimed to be the strongest out of all Servants in the Saber Class. However, Shirou is against Saber's constant aim for conflicts with other servants and instead seeks to ally with Rin. Shirou drops his pacifism when he discovers that his former friend, Shinji Matou, is a Master with the Servant Rider, aiming to sacrifice all students from their school to increase Rider's powers.


title: Fate/stay night

text: Following Shinji and Rider's defeat, Shirou learns that Saber cannot fight at full strength without exchanging Mana (magical energy) with her Master. During a confrontation with Master Illya and her Servant Berserker, Shirou passes Saber his Mana and later assists her in defeating the enemy by projecting one of Arturia's swords in combat. As Shirou seeks to keep Saber in their world, he learns from the priest Kirei Kotomine that the Holy Grail is cursed. It is revealed that Shirou's late guardian, Kiritsugu, once used Saber to destroy the Grail. However, it instead caused the fire where Shirou lost his family.


title: Fate/stay night

text: Shirou rejects the idea of accepting his wish for the Holy Grail as he decides to accept his past and not forget Saber. Moved by Shirou, Saber also rejects the Holy Grail, believing she should not change Britain's history. As Kotomine aims to use Illya's body to recreate the Holy Grail, Shirou and Saber confront him and his Servant, Gilgamesh. Following Shirou's and Saber's victories, Shirou orders Saber to destroy the Grail. This causes Saber to go back to her last moments before her death. In the "Réalta Nua" version of the game, a new ending can be unlocked where Shirou becomes a heroic spirit in order to meet Saber in the afterlife of heroes, Avalon.


title: Fate/stay night

text: The second of the three heroines is Rin Tohsaka, a model student and idol of Shirou's school who is secretly a mage and Master of Archer in the Holy Grail War. Her Servant Archer serves as the Servant protagonist of the route. She descends from a long, distinguished line of mages. Though she lacks a formal magic education, she is strong and gifted in her own right. Classmates dub Rin "The Ice Queen" for her cold, unreachable persona at school; however, this is simply a front to hide her actual status as a mage. Her presence in the story is established after Lancer mortally wounds Shirou at school. Upon seeing him, she revives him due to his connection with Sakura Matou, with whom Rin is closely acquainted. The two become allies in the war, unaware of Archer's true identity as an adult Shirou from one of the series' numerous alternate universes.


title: Fate/stay night

text: Shirou loses control of Saber during the story but aims to fight with his magical strength to stop the war. Archer betrays Rin and reveals his despondency and bitterness over his past choices to Shirou. He subsequently challenges Shirou to a fight, hoping to destroy his story of being a hero. However, Shirou accepts his future regardless of his regrets and misery, sticking to Kiritsugu's ideals. Gilgamesh tries to kill Archer and Shirou, with the former seemingly sacrificing himself to protect the latter. Later, Rin passes Shirou her Mana to fight Gilgamesh to replicate Archer's powers. As Gilgamesh almost drags Shirou into their deaths, Archer uses his last strength to save the latter. In the True Ending, Shirou and Rin move to London to study magic, as well as start a romantic relationship.


title: Fate/stay night

text: The third and final heroine is Sakura, a first-year high school student and longtime friend of Shirou's, who often visits his home to help him with his daily chores. A quiet, soft-spoken girl, Sakura can be surprisingly stubborn and holds a deep, unparalleled affection for Shirou. She is revealed to be Rin's long-lost sister, raised by the Matou family, and has since suffered their abuse while training as a mage. Sakura is also discovered as the true Master of Rider, whom she reasserts control of from Shinji, making Rider the Servant protagonist of the route. In the route, Saber and Berserker are consumed by the shadows of Angra Manyu. In the ensuing battle with True Assassin and the corrupted servants, a mortally wounded Archer transplants his left arm to save a dying Shirou.


title: Fate/stay night

text: Zouken, Sakura's grandfather, places a shard of the lesser grail from the 4th Holy Grail War in her body, infecting Sakura with Angra Manyu. She becomes Dark Sakura, killing Shinji in his attempt to rape her. Despite the threat Sakura poses to humanity, Shirou, having fallen in love with her, abandons his ideal in favor of saving Sakura, despite Rin's initial objections. Upon learning that Illya is another sacrifice to create the Grail, Shirou teams up with Kotomine and uses Archer's powers to save Illya from Berserker. Rin is injured after finding herself unable to kill Sakura, while Rider and Shirou successfully eliminate Saber Alter. Shirou talks to Sakura and helps her regain her humanity, freeing her from her contract with Angra Mainyu. He then faces Kotomine in a final battle to later destroy the Grail. In True Ending, after Kotomine dies in combat, Illya sacrifices herself to destroy the Grail and extracts Shirou's soul using forbidden magic (her weaker version of the Third Magic). Rider later returns to the cave to grab and bring Shirou's soul home, and Rin places it within a puppet body. Shirou, Sakura, and Rider live peacefully in Japan, while Rin moves to London to study magic.


title: Fate/stay night

text: Kinoko Nasu first began writing "Fate/stay night" in college and had not intended it to be a game. Initially, Nasu only wrote what would become the game's "Fate" storyline. However, the game went on to have three storylines, the "Fate" storyline being one of them. In his early drafts, "Fate"s heroine Saber was a man, and the protagonist was a girl with glasses. This early draft was embodied in the short original video animation (OVA) "Fate/Prototype", which was released with the final volume of the "Carnival Phantasm" OVA series. Nasu set aside the project and went on to found Type-Moon with artist Takashi Takeuchi. After the success of their first visual novel "Tsukihime" in 2000, Type-Moon transitioned from a dōjin soft organization to a commercial organization. Nasu and Takeuchi decided to turn the old Fate story into a visual novel as Type-Moon's first commercial product. In the beginning, Nasu was worried that because the main character was a girl, the story might not work as a bishōjo game. Artist Takeuchi suggested switching the protagonist's and Saber's genders to fit the game market.


title: Fate/stay night

text: The novel "Makai Tensho" influenced Nasu to write a fantasy story in which famous heroic personalities from all over the world would take part. The original idea was limited to the prototype of the "Fate" arc, where the main characters were the female master and her Servant Saber (the embodiment of King Arthur as a man). According to Nasu, this version contained elements of 1980s romance and ideas of transformations to world order, while the final version focuses on changes within people and has other purposes for using the Holy Grail. About a third of the scenario of the future "Fate" arc (up to the battle with Sasaki Kojiro) was completed at that time, but for several personal reasons, Nasu could not write further for more than ten years.


title: Fate/stay night

text: The first two-story arcs completed were "Fate" and "Unlimited Blade Works"; the latter was partially presented to the public in a preview booklet at Comiket in December 2001. Unlimited Blade Works was based on the idea of a character's confrontation with himself and his own ideals, something unrealized during the development of Tsukihime for the arc of Yumizuka Satsuki. In 2002, it was found that the content that was already written was nearly equal in length to "Tsukihime", leading to proposals to divide the game into two parts. However, due to the high cost of releasing two products at once, the arcs of Illya and Sakura were partially combined, resulting in "Heaven's Feel". Nasu original thought of extending the "Fate" route involving an alternative Fifth Holy Grail War where Shirou fought alongside Saber without a romantic relationship developing between them. Following their separation, Shirou would bond with Rin in a similar way to the true ending of "Unlimited Blade Works". The main theme in "Fate/stay night" is "conquering oneself". There are three storylines in the visual novel; each has a different theme. The first one, "Fate", is the "oneself as an ideal." The second one, "Unlimited Blade Works", is "struggling with oneself as an ideal." The third one, "Heaven's Feel", is "the friction with real and ideal".


title: Fate/stay night

text: According to Nasu, the main theme of the resulting "Heaven's Feel" arc was chosen to apply the protagonist's ideas in practice. This is in contrast it with "Fate" and "Unlimited Blade Works", which paid most attention to the demonstration of Shirou's ideals. Nasu wanted to portray him as a typical teenager while artist Takashi Takeuchi did not want him to have too much individuality to make players project themselves onto him. In 2002, Takeuchi suggested Gen Urobuchi, a well-known author of Nitroplus visual novels, to connect to the preliminary scenario of the game, but Urobuchi ultimately refused. Afterward, Nasu decided that "Fate/stay night" would be the most significant work in his life, created by him from beginning to end.


title: Fate/stay night

text: After translating the text into code, editing background images and sprites, and debugging audio-visual effects, on October 21, 2003, the game's demo version was released on a CD with the magazine Tech Gian from Enterbrain, and on November 1 was posted on Type-Moon's site. "Fate/stay night" was released in Japan on January 30, 2004, for Windows PCs.


title: Fate/stay night

text: A CERO C-rated version of "Fate/stay night", titled "Fate/stay night Réalta Nua", for the PlayStation 2 was scheduled to be released in late 2006. However, it was postponed until April 19, 2007. This version provided voice acting but the sex scenes were removed due to censorship and the target audience. The updated re-release also provided the true ending to the Fate route. "Fate", "Unlimited Blade Works", and "Heaven's Feel" are the three branching storylines found within the game. They were released separately through digital download on Windows (but as the "Réalta Nua" version) in the beginning of 2012. A PlayStation Vita port of "Réalta Nua" was released in Japan on November 29, 2012, with three new opening animations by anime studio Ufotable and the option to change the aspect ratio to 4:3, 16:9 or in-between.


title: Fate/stay night

text: There have been only small changes to Shirou's physical design since its inception. With red hair and stubborn eyes, Takeuchi aimed for a typical design of a straightforward "shōnen" manga genre character. However, he felt that it was too standard, so he added more circles in his eyes. Takeuchi has trouble bringing out Shirou's expressions because of his unique eyebrows; as a result, Shirou remains the most difficult "Fate/stay night" character for him to draw. Their goal of creating "a protagonist without a face" to comply with the nature of "bishōjo" games in the initial release of "Fate/stay night" is another reason Takeuchi had trouble drawing Shirou, who only appeared in a handful of scenes. In the re-released "Réalta Nua" version of the visual novel aimed at teenagers rather than just adults, the importance of showing non-adult content was increased. So Takeuchi had to draw Shirou more often.


title: Fate/stay night

text: On October 28, 2005, Type-Moon released a sequel to "Fate/stay night", titled "Fate/hollow ataraxia". Its plot is set half a year after the events of "Fate/stay night" and features new characters such as Avenger, Bazett Fraga McRemitz, and Caren Ortensia, alongside returning characters such as Shirō Emiya, Saber and Rin Tōsaka.


title: Fate/stay night

text: The "Fate/stay night" manga adaptation, illustrated by Datto Nishiwaki, was serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's manga magazine "Shōnen Ace" between the February 2006 and December 2012 issues. Extras were also published in "Ace Assault" and "Type-Moon Ace". The manga combines the "Fate" and "Unlimited Blade Works" scenarios of the visual novel and some elements from the "Heaven's Feel" scenario while ultimately following the "Fate" scenario. Twenty "tankōbon" volumes were released in Japan between May 26, 2006, and November 26, 2012. The manga was licensed for an English-language release in North America by Tokyopop in 2007. In April 2011, Tokyopop announced that they were shutting down their North American manga publishing division, and volume 11 became the last volume to be released by Tokyopop. In 2014, Viz Media's Viz Select imprint released the first ten volumes of "Fate/stay night" manga digitally. A second "Fate/stay night" manga based entirely on the "Heaven's Feel" route and illustrated by Taskohna began serialization in the June 2015 issue of "Young Ace" on May 2, 2015. A third manga adaptation based entirely on the "Unlimited Blade Works" route and illustrated by Daisuke Moriyama began serialization in the February 2022 issue of ASCII Media Works' "Dengeki Daioh" magazine on December 25, 2021.


title: Fate/stay night

text: "Himuro no Tenchi Fate/School Life" is a comedy 4-koma manga revolving around the everyday life at school of the minor characters of "Fate/stay night" and "Fate/Hollow Ataraxia", specifically the character Kane Himuro, a classmate of "Fate/stay night" protagonist Shirō Emiya. It is serialized in "Manga 4-koma Kings Palette" from November 25, 2006, and fourteen compiled volumes have been published by Ichijinsha.


title: Fate/stay night

text: A spin-off manga series "Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya" written and illustrated by Hiroyama Hiroshi was first serialized in "Comp Ace" in 2008 and later released into two bound volumes. The series features Illya as a main character where she lives an alternate life as a schoolgirl. However, she is chosen by the Magical Stick Ruby and is involved in a quarrel between Rin and Luvia. A sequel series titled "Fate/Kaleid liner Prisma Illya 2wei!" was serialized from 2009 to 2012 and released in five bound volumes. A third manga series titled "Fate/Kaleid liner Prisma Illya 3rei!!" began serialization in 2012.


title: Fate/stay night

text: In December 2019, "Fate/type Redline" began publishing in the "Type-Moon Comic Ace" web magazine. It's set in an alternative setting where a boy was sent back in time to a Holy Grail War set in Japan during World War II.


title: Fate/stay night

text: The original "Fate/stay night" anime series aired between January 7 and June 17, 2006, containing 24 episodes; the storyline follows mainly the "Fate" scenario but shows parts of other scenarios. When the anime adaptation was in the planning stages at Studio Deen, they were planning an original story with Shielder, a heroine later used in "Fate/Grand Order", as an important character, instead of adapting the events of the source material. It was produced by the Fate Project, and included Geneon Entertainment, TBS, CREi, Type Moon, and Frontier Works. Kenji Kawai composed the original music for the series.


title: Fate/stay night

text: The series later received its international television premieres on the anime television network Animax in 2007, its English-language television premiere occurring on Animax's English networks in Southeast Asia in June, as well as its other networks in South Korea, Hong Kong and other regions. Geneon USA also licensed the series for distribution across North America. The English dub was produced at Bang Zoom! Entertainment. On July 3, 2008, Geneon Entertainment and Funimation Entertainment announced an agreement to distribute select titles in North America. While Geneon Entertainment retained the license, Funimation Entertainment assumed exclusive rights to the manufacturing, marketing, sales, and distribution of select titles. "Fate/stay night" was one of several titles involved in the deal. Sentai Filmworks has since licensed the TV series and re-released the series on DVD and for the first time on Blu-ray Disc in January 2013. "Fate/stay night" started airing in North America on the Anime Network On Demand channel on February 7, 2013.


title: Fate/stay night

text: The television series was re-released in Japan on January 22, 2010, in two 60-minute special edition DVD/Blu-ray volumes to commemorate the release of the film "". "Fate/stay night TV reproduction I" and "II" each recap 12 episodes from the anime and feature re-edited and re-compiled footage along with new opening and ending animation footage, with new ending songs by Jyukai and Sachi Tainaka. The opening song "disillusion -2010-" is a re-recording of the "disillusion" theme song from the television series.


title: Fate/stay night

text: Following an anime adaptation of the "Fate/Zero" novel series, which aired between October 2011 and June 2012, Ufotable produced a based on the "Unlimited Blade Works" route from the visual novel. The anime is directed by Takahiro Miura and the original Japanese voice cast from the Studio Deen "Fate/stay night" anime and the "Fate/Zero" anime reprise their roles in the new anime. The first half of the anime ran from October 4 to December 27, 2014, and the second half ran from April 4 to June 27, 2015. An advanced screening online premiered on September 28, 2014, in several countries across the world, including Japan, the United States, France, Germany, and South Korea. Aniplex of America has acquired streaming and home video rights to the 2014 series for North America, and has also announced an English dub of the first half of the series, which was released on DVD and limited Blu-ray on August 25, 2015. A ten-minute original video animation (OVA) episode was featured on the Blu-ray release of the second half of the series, which was released on October 7, 2015; the episode was based on an alternate ending from the visual novel, titled ""sunny day"".


title: Fate/stay night

text: Ufotable also released based on the "Heaven's Feel" route, the first of which is titled "" and was released in Japan on October 14, 2017, and in the United States in November and December 2017. The film was released again in the United States on June 5, 2018, and June 7, 2018, with an English dub. The second film, titled "" was released in Japan on January 12, 2019. The third film, titled "" was released in Japan on August 15, 2020.


title: Fate/stay night

text: On November 22, 2006, Type-Moon announced a new installment in the "Fate/stay night" franchise, titled "Fate/Zero", which is a prequel to "Fate/stay night", stressing the events of the Fourth Holy Grail War and how its consequences affected the Fifth Holy Grail War. In contrast to "Fate/stay night", "Fate/Zero" is a series of light novels instead of a visual novel, and is told in a third-person narrative that follows the actions of multiple characters. The series is a collaboration between Type-Moon and a fellow developer, Nitroplus, and was written by Gen Urobuchi.<ref name="Fate/Zero Official"></ref> The first volume was released on December 29, 2006. The second volume was released on March 31, 2007. The third volume was released on July 27, 2007. The fourth and final volume was released on December 29, 2007, along with the "Fate/Zero Original Image Soundtrack "Return to Zero"". A manga adaptation began serializing in February 2011, followed by an anime adaptation by Ufotable, marking their debut with the franchise.


title: Fate/stay night

text: A light novel titled "Fate/Apocrypha" was also released. It revolves around a parallel universe in which the events of "Fate/stay night" and "Fate/Zero" never occurred due to the removal of the Holy Grail after the Third War, resulting in a different Holy Grail War. The first volume was released on December 29, 2012. The second volume was released on August 16, 2013. The third volume was released on December 29, 2013. The fourth volume was released on May 30, 2014. The fifth and final volume was released on December 30, 2014. An anime adaptation by A-1 Pictures was announced for July 2017.


title: Fate/stay night

text: Characters from the "Fate/stay night" series appear alongside other Type-Moon characters in the gag manga series "Carnival Phantasm", released by Ichijinsha between July 2004 and 2005. An original video animation series produced by Lerche was released between August 12, 2011, and July 7, 2012. A spin-off manga series written by Hiroshi Hiroyama, titled "Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya", began serialization in Kadokawa Shoten's "Comp Ace" magazine from September 2007. Set in an alternate universe to the visual novels, the series follows the character Illyasviel von Einzbern as she becomes a magical girl. Several anime series and a film have been produced by Silver Link. Another spin-off, the slice of life and food-centric "Today's Menu for the Emiya Family" by TAa, has been serialized on Kadokawa Shoten's "Young Ace Up" website since January 26, 2016, and has been collected in seven "tankōbon" volumes as of October 8, 2021. Set in an alternate universe where the Fifth Holy Grail War resolved with most of the characters surviving and later becoming friends and neighbors, it revolves around Shiro and other characters preparing various dishes for their friends and family. A thirteen-episode original net animation adaptation by Ufotable aired monthly from January 25, 2018, to January 1, 2019, and a video game was also released for the Nintendo Switch.


title: Fate/stay night

text: In 2007, "Fate/tiger colosseum", a 3D fighting game based on "Fate/stay night", was released for the PlayStation Portable by Capcom and cavia, inc. in cooperation with TYPE MOON. The characters are all rendered in a super deformed style. A sequel, "Fate/tiger colosseum Upper", was released on August 28, 2008.


title: Fate/stay night

text: Another fighting game based on the franchise titled "Fate/unlimited codes" debuted at the 2008 Amusement Machine Operators' Union (AOU) show in Japan. It was developed by Capcom in conjunction with Cavia and Eighting. The game was released in the arcades and had an exclusive PlayStation 2 release on December 18, 2008. A pre-order version was also available, which includes a limited edition Saber Lily figure. Capcom also released a PlayStation Portable version titled "Fate/unlimited codes Portable" on June 18, 2009. A digital download of the game was released in North America on September 3, 2009. and in Europe on September 10, 2009


title: Fate/stay night

text: A dungeon RPG adaptation of the series was announced in "Famitsu" and is produced by Image Epoch and Marvelous Entertainment titled "Fate/Extra". Players take on the role of an unnamed male or female character that the player chooses to be one of seven chosen masters and control servants Saber, Archer, or Caster. The game was released for the PlayStation Portable in both regular and the "Type-Moon Box" editions. The limited, Type-Moon Box edition includes a Saber Figma figure from the game itself, a visual book and a limited edition soundtrack. While the original release was set for March 2010, the release date was pushed back to July 22, 2010, for further testing. In July 2011, Aksys Games confirmed it would be publishing "Fate/Extra" in North America. Saber appears as playable character in the Nitroplus fighting game "" based on her appearance in "Fate/Zero". An anime television series adaptation, titled "Fate/Extra Last Encore" and produced by Shaft, was announced for 2017.


title: Fate/stay night

text: An online free-to-play RPG was released based on the franchise at large, titled "Fate/Grand Order". The game is centered around turn-based combat where the player, who takes on an unnamed male or female Master, summons and commands Servants in the battle against enemies. The story narrative is presented in a visual novel format, and each Servant has a scenario that the player explores. Many Servants are featured; some are original, while others return from preceding "Fate" works. It was first released on July 29, 2015, on Android, with a subsequent release on August 12 on iOS.


title: Fate/stay night

text: There is a soundtrack to the game, called "Fate/Stay Night Original Sound Track". There is also an arranged soundtrack of the game music, titled "Avalon - Fate/Stay Night". It is arranged by WAVE and K. JUNO and features two English arranged versions of "This Illusion" titled "Illusion/Vision" and "Illusion/Fate". The anime original soundtrack was arranged and composed by Kenji Kawai. In addition, there are image albums "Wish" and "WHITE AVALON" as well as various remix albums "Fate another score", "Fate/extended play", and "Emiya #0".


title: Fate/stay night

text: There are also numerous fanmade arrangements: "Exodus: Fake/ever since", "Iriya 51", "Broken Phantasm", "fragments", and "17 Division".


title: Fate/stay night

text: Aside from "Fate/stay night", the other games in the series have their soundtracks. There is a "Fate/tiger coliseum OST" and an imaged soundtrack for Fate/Zero titled "Return to Zero".


title: Fate/stay night

text: When released on January 30, 2004, "Fate/stay night" rapidly became one of the most popular visual novels in history, securing the title of "highest selling visual novel" in 2004 of the adult game retailer Getchu.com. Readers of "Dengeki G's Magazine" ranked the game second in a list of "most interesting bishōjo games" in August 2007. The original PC version of the visual novel sold 400,000 copies. On the PlayStation 2, the 2007 release sold 184,558 and the 2009 re-release sold 21,937. On the PlayStation Vita, the game sold 58,157 in 2013, and 86,836 as of 2014. This adds up to total visual novel sales of 751,488 copies. The DVD and Blu-ray releases of the 2006 anime series sold units in Japan.


title: Fate/stay night

text: In early 2007, the popularity of "Fate/stay night" and the anime Japanese voice actors led to the launch of the "Fate/stay tune" internet radio drama, featuring the voice talent of Kana Ueda (Rin) and Ayako Kawasumi (Saber). In 2011, the writers Chris Klug and Josiah Lebowitz in their book "Interactive storytelling for video games" praised "Fate/stay night" as a strong example of branching storylines and interactive storytelling, comparing its depth and complexity to that of a traditional novel. In 2019, the franchise took first place in the Comiket event. The spin-off "Fate/Grand Order" was also a commercial success, surpassing the gross revenue of the video game franchise "Metal Gear" in four years. , "Fate/Grand Order" grossed worldwide, making it the seventh highest-grossing mobile game of all time.


title: Fate/stay night

text: "Fate/stay night" is, according to various estimates, one of the most famous representatives of its genre. It has also been described as the "among the most well-received visual novels ever published".


title: Fate/stay night

text: According to some critics, the visual novel is an example of a good mix of traditions of epic literature and the modern fantasy genre Rice Digital claimed the sexual scenes were given a deep theme, most notably in Heaven's Feel when the heroine, Sakura, is treated differently due to her backstory, which makes her unease. It was also noted that using the heroes of the legends of antiquity can also encourage acquaintance with their sources. Uno Tsunehiro from Kyoto University compared Shirou's traumatic background in regards the city's fire to survivors from the September 11 attacks while also showing different ways the Japanese society used to take care of their lives in such time. As a result, Tsunehiro views Shirou's change in each route as a way to recover from the trauma, grow up and become an independent person. According to Lebowitz and Klug, the authors of the book on the theory of visual novels, the chosen format of the visual novel was optimally used since the concept of several plot arches stretched the exposition of elements important for a common understanding of the plot and supported reader interest. The researchers also identified branchings that contain differently emotionally colored scenes that made it possible to view the situation or characters from several angles. A large number of sudden deaths, coupled with a strong effect of losing control over the situation, according to the authors of the monograph, gave the gameplay an additional emotional coloring and motivated players to continue playing the game, aided by well-developed plot twists. Despite the linearity of the passage of the story arches, the option of completely skipping the already known scenes "warned players of fatigue and again quickly dipped them into the thick of events". Story twists were called by various observers "relevant and exciting". The darker narrative "Heaven's Feel" takes in comparison to "Fate" and "Unlimited Blade Works" resulted in the route being compared to the horror genre.


title: Fate/stay night

text: The visual component of the novel and character design were regarded by critics as successful for 2004. Musical accompaniment and audio effects, according to critics, successfully performed their role in creating the right atmosphere during the narration and skillfully emphasized the textual description of the scenes.


title: Fate/stay night

text: Critics and scholars praised Shirou. "Gamasutra" regarded Shirou as an interesting protagonist due to his childish ideals of becoming a hero and continuing this goal while growing up. The site added that the player's in-game choices make Shirou's character arcs change dramatically and allow Nasu to convey a different aspect of his ideal. The novelist Shūsei Sakagami praised how the user can witness Shirou's "gradual change from a robot to becoming a human" through the three routes, developing distinctive traits in each one. In his analysis of the magical system and details of the personalities of the characters, Makoto Kuroda sees in the idea of Shirou to become a “champion of justice” a direct analogy with the traditional view of the life of bodhisattvas in Mahayana Buddhism, seeking to save other people at the cost of their own efforts and suffering. In Kuroda's view, Buddhist concepts are opposed to the elements of Christian ethics contained in the plot through the opposition of Shirou and Kirei Kotomine in the form of the main character's rejection of the interpretation of Angra Mainyu as a creature who accepted the sins of others in the name of salvation. In the story aspect, the reviewers considered Shirou's behavior and his attitude to his own ideals as the most interesting and well-developed part of the whole novel. The main character in each of the story arches was placed in different conditions, which gave readers the opportunity to understand the conditions of the setting ("Fate"), to conduct a theoretical understanding of the ideals of the character ("Unlimited Blade Works"), to face the problems of their implementation ("Heaven's Feel") and, having combined this, to understand the details of his image.


title: Fate/stay night

text: The images of Rin, Saber, and Sakura received conflicting ratings. Thus, many reviewers recognized that the psychologically deepest arc is "Heaven's Feel," which is largely due to the sharp and versatile disclosure of the image of Sakura Matou, and her romantic line with Shirou is the most "adult" among all the heroines. According to Gen Urobouchi, the author of the "Fate/Zero" prequel, the relationship between the main character and Saber resembled the relationship "between a boy and a boy who became a girl" and more "corresponded to the ancient Greek understanding of love". The very image of Saber was considered by some reviewers to be "full of dignity and not falling into banality", others "acquiring feminine features with close interaction with Shirou". According to some reviewers, Rin Tohsaka "emphasized a different opinion about the ideals of Shirou", and her romantic line looked "most realistic", where Rin and the main character "compensated for the shortcomings and increased the virtues of each other". In the book "Anime and the Visual Novel: Narrative Structure, Design and Play at the Crossroads of Animation and Computer Games", Dani Cavallaro states that the portrayal of Sakura has a high impact on "Heaven's Feel"'s storyline despite her initial limited role.


title: Yiddish

text: Yiddish (, or , "yidish" or "idish", , ; , "Yidish-Taytsh", ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew (notably Mishnaic) and to some extent Aramaic. Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages. Yiddish is primarily written in the Hebrew alphabet.


title: Yiddish

text: Prior to World War II, its worldwide peak was 11 million, with the number of speakers in the United States and Canada then totaling 150,000. Eighty-five percent of the approximately six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II and "aliyah" (immigration to Israel) further decreased the use of Yiddish among survivors after adapting to Hebrew in Israel. However, the number of Yiddish-speakers is increasing in Hasidic communities. In the 1990s, there were around 1.5–2 million speakers of Yiddish, mostly Hasidic and Haredi Jews. A 2021 estimate from Rutgers University was that there were 250,000 American speakers, 250,000 Israeli speakers, and 100,000 in the rest of the world (for a total of 600,000).


title: Yiddish

text: The earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language ("loshn-ashknaz", "language of Ashkenaz") or ("taytsh"), a variant of "tiutsch", the contemporary name for Middle High German. Colloquially, the language is sometimes called ("mame-loshn", lit. "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from ("loshn koydesh", "holy tongue"), meaning Hebrew and Aramaic. The term "Yiddish", short for "Yidish Taitsh" ("Jewish German"), did not become the most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century, the language was more commonly called "Jewish", especially in non-Jewish contexts, but "Yiddish" is again the most common designation today.


title: Yiddish

text: Modern Yiddish has two major forms. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern (Ukrainian–Romanian), Mideastern (Polish–Galician–Eastern Hungarian) and Northeastern (Lithuanian–Belarusian) dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern (Swiss–Alsatian–Southern German), Midwestern (Central German), and Northwestern (Netherlandic–Northern German) dialects. Yiddish is used in a number of Haredi Jewish communities worldwide; it is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among many Haredi Jews, and is used in most Hasidic yeshivas.


title: Yiddish

text: The term "Yiddish" is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with "Ashkenazi Jewish", to designate attributes of Yiddishkeit ("Ashkenazi culture"; for example, Yiddish cooking and "Yiddish music" – klezmer).


title: Yiddish

text: By the high medieval period, their area of settlement, centered on the Rhineland (Mainz) and the Palatinate (notably Worms and Speyer), came to be known as "Ashkenaz", originally a term used of Scythia, and later of various areas of Eastern Europe and Anatolia.


title: Yiddish

text: In the medieval Hebrew of Rashi (d. 1105), "Ashkenaz" becomes a term for Germany, and "Ashkenazi" for the Jews settling in this area.


title: Yiddish

text: Ashkenaz bordered on the area inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardi Jews, who ranged into southern France. Ashkenazi culture later spread into Eastern Europe with large-scale population migrations.


title: Yiddish

text: Nothing is known with certainty about the vernacular of the earliest Jews in Germany, but several theories have been put forward. As noted above, the first language of the Ashkenazim may have been Aramaic, the vernacular of the Jews in Roman-era Judea and ancient and early medieval Mesopotamia.


title: Yiddish

text: The widespread use of Aramaic among the large non-Jewish Syrian trading population of the Roman provinces, including those in Europe, would have reinforced the use of Aramaic among Jews engaged in trade. In Roman times, many of the Jews living in Rome and Southern Italy appear to have been Greek-speakers, and this is reflected in some Ashkenazi personal names (e.g., "Kalonymos" and Yiddish "Todres"). Hebrew, on the other hand, was regarded as a holy language reserved for ritual and spiritual purposes and not for common use.


title: Yiddish

text: The established view is that, as with other Jewish languages, Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. In the case of Yiddish, this scenario sees it as emerging when speakers of Zarphatic (Judeo-French) and other Judeo-Romance languages began to acquire varieties of Middle High German, and from these groups the Ashkenazi community took shape. Exactly what German substrate underlies the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed.


title: Yiddish

text: The Jewish community in the Rhineland would have encountered the Middle High German dialects from which the Rhenish German dialects of the modern period would emerge.


title: Yiddish

text: Jewish communities of the high medieval period would have been speaking their own versions of these German dialects, mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves brought into the region, including many Hebrew and Aramaic words, but there is also Romance, Slavic, Turkic and Iranian influence.


title: Yiddish

text: In Max Weinreich's model, Jewish speakers of Old French or Old Italian who were literate in either liturgical Hebrew or Aramaic, or both, migrated through Southern Europe to settle in the Rhine Valley in an area known as Lotharingia (later known in Yiddish as "Loter") extending over parts of Germany and France. There, they encountered and were influenced by Jewish speakers of High German languages and several other German dialects. Both Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further in the mid-1950s. In Weinreich's view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two distinct versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish. They retained the Semitic vocabulary and constructions needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, sometimes not accepted as a fully autonomous language.


title: Yiddish

text: Later linguistic research has refined the Weinreich model or provided alternative approaches to the language's origins, with points of contention being the characterization of its Germanic base, the source of its Hebrew/Aramaic adstrata, and the means and location of this fusion. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base.


title: Yiddish

text: The two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been parallel developments in the two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East. The lines of development proposed by the different theories do not necessarily rule out the others (at least not entirely); an article in "The Forward" argues that "in the end, a new 'standard theory' of Yiddish's origins will probably be based on the work of Weinreich and his challengers alike."


title: Yiddish

text: Paul Wexler proposed a model in 1991 that took Yiddish, by which he means primarily eastern Yiddish, not to be genetically grounded in a Germanic language at all, but rather as "Judeo-Sorbian" (a proposed West Slavic language) that had been relexified by High German. In more recent work, Wexler has argued that Eastern Yiddish is unrelated genetically to Western Yiddish. Wexler's model has been met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists.


title: Yiddish

text: Das et al. (2016, co-authored by Wexler) use human genetics in support of the hypothesis of "a Slavic origin with strong Iranian and weak Turkic substrata".


title: Yiddish

text: Yiddish orthography developed towards the end of the high medieval period. It is first recorded in 1272, with the oldest surviving literary document in Yiddish, a blessing found in the Worms "machzor" (a Hebrew prayer book).


title: Yiddish

text: This brief rhyme is decoratively embedded in an otherwise purely Hebrew text. Nonetheless, it indicates that the Yiddish of that day was a more or less regular Middle High German written in the Hebrew alphabet into which Hebrew words – מַחֲזוֹר, "makhazor" (prayerbook for the High Holy Days) and , "synagogue" (read in Yiddish as "beis hakneses") – had been included. The niqqud appears as though it might have been added by a second scribe, in which case it may need to be dated separately and may not be indicative of the pronunciation of the rhyme at the time of its initial annotation.


title: Yiddish

text: Over the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, songs and poems in Yiddish, and macaronic pieces in Hebrew and German, began to appear. These were collected in the late 15th century by Menahem ben Naphtali Oldendorf. During the same period, a tradition seems to have emerged of the Jewish community's adapting its own versions of German secular literature. The earliest Yiddish epic poem of this sort is the "Dukus Horant", which survives in the famous Cambridge Codex T.-S.10.K.22. This 14th-century manuscript was discovered in the Cairo Geniza in 1896, and also contains a collection of narrative poems on themes from the Hebrew Bible and the Haggadah.


title: Yiddish

text: The advent of the printing press in the 16th century enabled the large-scale production of works, at a cheaper cost, some of which have survived. One particularly popular work was Elia Levita's "Bovo-Bukh" (), composed around 1507–08 and printed several times, beginning in 1541 (under the title "Bovo d'Antona"). Levita, the earliest named Yiddish author, may also have written "Pariz un Viene" ("Paris and Vienna"). Another Yiddish retelling of a chivalric romance, װידװילט "Vidvilt" (often referred to as "Widuwilt" by Germanizing scholars), presumably also dates from the 15th century, although the manuscripts are from the 16th. It is also known as "Kinig Artus Hof", an adaptation of the Middle High German romance "Wigalois" by Wirnt von Grafenberg. Another significant writer is Avroham ben Schemuel Pikartei, who published a paraphrase on the Book of Job in 1557.


title: Yiddish

text: Women in the Ashkenazi community were traditionally not literate in Hebrew but did read and write Yiddish. A body of literature therefore developed for which women were a primary audience. This included secular works, such as the "Bovo-Bukh", and religious writing specifically for women, such as the "Tseno Ureno" and the "Tkhines". One of the best-known early woman authors was Glückel of Hameln, whose memoirs are still in print.


title: Yiddish

text: The segmentation of the Yiddish readership, between women who read "mame-loshn" but not "loshn-koydesh", and men who read both, was significant enough that distinctive typefaces were used for each. The name commonly given to the semicursive form used exclusively for Yiddish was ("vaybertaytsh", 'women's "taytsh", shown in the heading and fourth column in the "Shemot Devarim"), with square Hebrew letters (shown in the third column) being reserved for text in that language and Aramaic. This distinction was retained in general typographic practice through to the early 19th century, with Yiddish books being set in "vaybertaytsh" (also termed "mesheyt" or "mashket"—the construction is uncertain).


title: Yiddish

text: An additional distinctive semicursive typeface was, and still is, used for rabbinical commentary on religious texts when Hebrew and Yiddish appear on the same page. This is commonly termed Rashi script, from the name of the most renowned early author, whose commentary is usually printed using this script. (Rashi is also the typeface normally used when the Sephardic counterpart to Yiddish, Judaeo-Spanish or "Ladino", is printed in Hebrew script.)


title: Yiddish

text: The Western Yiddish dialect—sometimes pejoratively labeled "Mauscheldeutsch", i. e. "Moses German"—declined in the 18th century, as the Age of Enlightenment and the "Haskalah" led to a view of Yiddish as a corrupt dialect. A "Maskil" (one who takes part in the "Haskalah") would write about and promote acclimatization to the outside world. Jewish children began attending secular schools where the primary language spoken and taught was German, not Yiddish. Owing to both assimilation to German and the revival of Hebrew, Western Yiddish survived only as a language of "intimate family circles or of closely knit trade groups". (Liptzin 1972).


title: Yiddish

text: In eastern Europe, the response to these forces took the opposite direction, with Yiddish becoming the cohesive force in a secular culture (see the Yiddishist movement). Notable Yiddish writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, writing as Mendele Mocher Sforim; Sholem Rabinovitsh, widely known as Sholem Aleichem, whose stories about ("Tevye der milkhiker", "Tevye the Dairyman") inspired the Broadway musical and film "Fiddler on the Roof"; and Isaac Leib Peretz.


title: Yiddish

text: In the early 20th century, especially after the Socialist October Revolution in Russia, Yiddish was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever, Yiddish theatre and Yiddish cinema were booming, and for a time it achieved the status of one of the official languages of the short-lived Galician Soviet Socialist Republic. Educational autonomy for Jews in several countries (notably Poland) after World War I led to an increase in formal Yiddish-language education, more uniform orthography, and to the 1925 founding of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, YIVO. In Vilnius, there was debate over which language should take primacy, Hebrew or Yiddish.


title: Yiddish

text: Yiddish changed significantly during the 20th century. Michael Wex writes, "As increasing numbers of Yiddish speakers moved from the Slavic-speaking East to Western Europe and the Americas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were so quick to jettison Slavic vocabulary that the most prominent Yiddish writers of the time—the founders of modern Yiddish literature, who were still living in Slavic-speaking countries—revised the printed editions of their oeuvres to eliminate obsolete and 'unnecessary' Slavisms." The vocabulary used in Israel absorbed many Modern Hebrew words, and there was a similar but smaller increase in the English component of Yiddish in the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom. This has resulted in some difficulty in communication between Yiddish speakers from Israel and those from other countries.


title: Yiddish

text: There is significant phonological variation among the various Yiddish dialects. The description that follows is of a modern Standard Yiddish that was devised during the early 20th century and is frequently encountered in pedagogical contexts.


title: Yiddish

text: As in the Slavic languages with which Yiddish was long in contact (Russian, Belarusian, Polish, and Ukrainian), but unlike German, voiceless stops have little to no aspiration; unlike many such languages, voiced stops are not devoiced in final position. Moreover, Yiddish has regressive voicing assimilation, so that, for example, ('says') is pronounced and ('foreword') is pronounced .


title: Yiddish

text: Stressed vowels in the Yiddish dialects may be understood by considering their common origins in the Proto-Yiddish sound system. Yiddish linguistic scholarship uses a system developed by Max Weinreich in 1960 to indicate the descendent diaphonemes of the Proto-Yiddish stressed vowels.


title: Yiddish

text: Each Proto-Yiddish vowel is given a unique two-digit identifier, and its reflexes use it as a subscript, for example Southeastern "o" is the vowel /o/, descended from Proto-Yiddish */a/. The first digit indicates Proto-Yiddish "quality" (1-=*[a], 2-=*[e], 3-=*[i], 4-=*[o], 5-=*[u]), and the second refers to "quantity or diphthongization" (−1=short, −2=long, −3=short but lengthened early in the history of Yiddish, −4=diphthong, −5=special length occurring only in Proto-Yiddish vowel 25).


title: Yiddish

text: Vowels 23, 33, 43 and 53 have the same reflexes as 22, 32, 42 and 52 in all Yiddish dialects, but they developed distinct values in Middle High German; Katz (1987) argues that they should be collapsed with the −2 series, leaving only 13 in the −3 series.


title: Yiddish

text: In vocabulary of Germanic origin, the differences between Standard German and Yiddish pronunciation are mainly in the vowels and diphthongs. All varieties of Yiddish lack the German front rounded vowels and , having merged them with and , respectively.


title: Yiddish

text: Diphthongs have also undergone divergent developments in German and Yiddish. Where Standard German has merged the Middle High German diphthong "ei" and long vowel "î" to , Yiddish has maintained the distinction between them; and likewise, the Standard German corresponds to both the MHG diphthong "öu" and the long vowel "iu", which in Yiddish have merged with their unrounded counterparts "ei" and "î", respectively. Lastly, the Standard German corresponds to both the MHG diphthong "ou" and the long vowel "û", but in Yiddish, they have not merged. Although Standard Yiddish does not distinguish between those two diphthongs and renders both as , the distinction becomes apparent when the two diphthongs undergo Germanic umlaut, such as in forming plurals:


title: Yiddish

text: The vowel length distinctions of German do not exist in the Northeastern (Lithuanian) varieties of Yiddish, which form the phonetic basis for Standard Yiddish. In those varieties, the vowel qualities in most long/short vowel pairs diverged and so the phonemic distinction has remained.


title: Yiddish

text: Yiddish has some coincidental resemblances to Dutch in vowel phonology, which extend even to orthography, such as Dutch "ij" versus Yiddish "tsvey judn", both pronounced /ɛɪ/; and Dutch "ui" (pronounced /œy/) versus Yiddish "vov yud" (/ɔj/). For example, the Yiddish "to be" is זיין, which orthographically matches Dutch "zijn" more than German "sein", or Yiddish הויז, "house", versus Dutch "huis" (plural "huizen"). Along with the pronunciation of Dutch "g" as /ɣ/, Yiddish is said to sound closer to Dutch than to German because of that even though its structure is closer to High German.


title: Yiddish

text: There are consonantal differences between German and Yiddish. Yiddish deaffricates the Middle High German voiceless labiodental affricate to initially (as in "funt", but this pronunciation is also quasi-standard throughout northern and central Germany); /pf/ surfaces as an unshifted medially or finally (as in and ). Additionally, final voiced stops appear in Standard Yiddish but not Northern Standard German.


title: Yiddish

text: The pronunciation of vowels in Yiddish words of Hebrew origin is similar to Ashkenazi Hebrew but not identical. The most prominent difference is "kamatz gadol" in closed syllables being pronounced same as "patah" in Yiddish but the same as any other "kamatz" in Ashkenazi Hebrew. Also, Hebrew features no reduction of unstressed vowels and so the given name Jochebed would be in Ashkenazi Hebrew but in Standard Yiddish.


title: Yiddish

text: Yiddish grammar can vary slightly depending on the dialect. The main article focuses on standard form of Yiddish grammar while also acknowledging some dialectal differences. Yiddish grammar has similarities to the German grammar system, as well as grammatical elements from Hebrew and other Slavic languages.


title: Yiddish

text: Yiddish is written in the Hebrew alphabet, but its orthography differs significantly from that of Hebrew. Whereas, in Hebrew, many vowels are represented only optionally by diacritical marks called niqqud, Yiddish uses letters to represent all vowels. Several Yiddish letters consist of another letter combined with a niqqud mark resembling a Hebrew letter-niqqud pair, but each of those combinations is an inseparable unit representing a vowel alone, not a consonant-vowel sequence. The niqqud marks have no phonetic value on their own.


title: Yiddish

text: In most varieties of Yiddish, however, words borrowed from Hebrew are written in their native forms without application of Yiddish orthographical conventions.


title: Yiddish

text: On the eve of World War II, there were 11 to 13 million Yiddish speakers. The Holocaust, however, led to a dramatic, sudden decline in the use of Yiddish, as the extensive Jewish communities, both secular and religious, that used Yiddish in their day-to-day life were largely destroyed. Around five million of those killed85 percent of the Jews murdered in the Holocaustwere speakers of Yiddish. Although millions of Yiddish speakers survived the war (including nearly all Yiddish speakers in the Americas), further assimilation in countries such as the United States and the Soviet Union, in addition to the strictly monolingual stance of the Zionist movement, led to a decline in the use of Eastern Yiddish. However, the number of speakers within the widely dispersed Haredi (mainly Hasidic) communities is now increasing. Although used in various countries, Yiddish has attained official recognition as a minority language only in Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Netherlands, and Sweden.


title: Yiddish

text: Reports of the number of current Yiddish speakers vary significantly. "Ethnologue" estimates, based on publications through 1991, that there were at that time 1.5 million speakers of Eastern Yiddish, of which 40% lived in Ukraine, 15% in Israel, and 10% in the United States. The Modern Language Association agrees with fewer than 200,000 in the United States. Western Yiddish is reported by "Ethnologue" to have had an ethnic population of 50,000 in 2000, and an undated speaking population of 5,000, mostly in Germany. A 1996 report by the Council of Europe estimates a worldwide Yiddish-speaking population of about two million. Further demographic information about the recent status of what is treated as an Eastern–Western dialect continuum is provided in the YIVO "Language and Cultural Atlas of Ashkenazic Jewry".


title: Yiddish

text: In the Hasidic communities of Israel, boys speak more Yiddish amongst themselves, while girls use Hebrew more often. This is probably due to the fact that girls tend to learn more secular subjects, thus increasing contact with the Hebrew language, and boys are usually taught religious subjects in Yiddish.


title: Yiddish

text: There has been frequent debate about the extent of the linguistic independence of Yiddish from the languages that it absorbed. There has been periodic assertion that Yiddish is a dialect of German, or even "just broken German, more of a linguistic mishmash than a true language". Even when recognized as an autonomous language, it has sometimes been referred to as Judeo-German, along the lines of other Jewish languages like Judeo-Persian, Judeo-Spanish or Judeo-French. A widely cited summary of attitudes in the 1930s was published by Max Weinreich, quoting a remark by an auditor of one of his lectures: ("a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot" — "A language is a dialect with an army and navy").


title: Yiddish

text: The national language of Israel is Hebrew. The debate in Zionist circles over the use of Yiddish in Israel and in the diaspora in preference to Hebrew also reflected the tensions between religious and secular Jewish lifestyles. Many secular Zionists wanted Hebrew as the sole language of Jews, to contribute to a national cohesive identity. Traditionally religious Jews, on the other hand, preferred use of Yiddish, viewing Hebrew as a respected holy language reserved for prayer and religious study. In the early 20th century, Zionist activists in the Mandate of Palestine tried to eradicate the use of Yiddish among Jews in preference to Hebrew, and make its use socially unacceptable.


title: Yiddish

text: This conflict also reflected the opposing views among secular Jews worldwide, one side seeing Hebrew (and Zionism) and the other Yiddish (and Internationalism) as the means of defining Jewish nationalism. In the 1920s and 1930s, , "Battalion for the Defence of the Language", whose motto was " ", that is, "Hebrew [i.e. Jew], speak Hebrew!", used to tear down signs written in "foreign" languages and disturb Yiddish theatre gatherings. However, according to linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, the members of this group in particular, and the Hebrew revival in general, did not succeed in uprooting Yiddish patterns (as well as the patterns of other European languages Jewish immigrants spoke) within what he calls "Israeli", i.e. Modern Hebrew. Zuckermann believes that "Israeli does include numerous Hebrew elements resulting from a conscious revival but also numerous pervasive linguistic features deriving from a subconscious survival of the revivalists’ mother tongues, e.g. Yiddish."


title: Yiddish

text: After the founding of the State of Israel, a massive wave of Jewish immigrants from Arab countries arrived. In short order, these Mizrahi Jews and their descendants would account for nearly half the Jewish population. While all were at least familiar with Hebrew as a liturgical language, essentially none had any contact with or affinity for Yiddish (some, of Sephardic origin, spoke Judeo-Spanish, others various Judeo-Arabic varieties). Thus, Hebrew emerged as the dominant linguistic common denominator between the different population groups.