Levantine Arabic is a mutually intelligible group of vernacular Arabic
varieties spoken in the Levant, in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine,
Israel, and Turkey. With more than 44 million speakers, Levantine is,
alongside Egyptian, one of the two prestige varieties of spoken Arabic
most widely understood in the Arab world. It is the closest vernacular
Arabic variety to the official Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), with half
of all words being common. Nevertheless, Levantine and MSA are not
mutually intelligible. Levantine speakers often call their language
al-ʿāmmiyya ('slang' or 'colloquial Arabic') and until recently it was
rarely written. However, with the emergence of social media, the amount
of written Levantine has significantly increased online where Levantine
is written using Arabic, Latin, or Hebrew characters. Levantine
pronunciation varies greatly along social, ethnic, and geographical
lines. Its grammar and lexicon are overwhelmingly Arabic, with a
significant Aramaic influence.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levantine_Arabic>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1862:
American Civil War: Confederate troops under Joseph E. Johnston
and G. W. Smith engaged Union forces under George B. McClellan at the
Battle of Seven Pines outside Richmond, Virginia.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Seven_Pines>
1902:
The Second Boer War came to an end with the signing of the
Treaty of Vereeniging in Pretoria, South Africa.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Vereeniging>
1941:
The United Kingdom completed its re-occupation of Iraq,
returning 'Abd al-Ilah to power as regent for Faisal II.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Iraqi_War>
2005:
A Vanity Fair article revealed that the secret informant known
as "Deep Throat", who had provided information about the Watergate
scandal, was former FBI associate director Mark Felt (pictured).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Felt>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
ether:
1. (uncountable, literary or poetic) The substance formerly supposed to
fill the upper regions of the atmosphere above the clouds, in particular
as a medium breathed by deities.
2. (by extension) The medium breathed by human beings; the air.
3. (by extension) The sky, the heavens; the void, nothingness.
4. (uncountable, physics, historical) Often as aether and more fully as
luminiferous aether: a substance once thought to fill all unoccupied
space that allowed electromagnetic waves to pass through it and interact
with matter, without exerting any resistance to matter or energy; its
existence was disproved by the 1887 Michelson–Morley experiment and the
theory of relativity propounded by Albert Einstein (1879–1955).
5. (uncountable, colloquial) The atmosphere or space as a medium for
broadcasting radio and television signals; also, a notional space
through which Internet and other digital communications take place;
cyberspace.
6. (uncountable, colloquial) A particular quality created by or
surrounding an object, person, or place; an atmosphere, an aura.
7. (uncountable, organic chemistry) Diethyl ether (C4H10O), an organic
compound with a sweet odour used in the past as an anaesthetic.
8. (countable, organic chemistry) Any of a class of organic compounds
containing an oxygen atom bonded to two hydrocarbon groups.
9. (transitive, slang) To viciously humiliate or insult.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ether>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Every human being is a child of God and has more good in him than
evil — but circumstances and associates can step up the bad and reduce
the good. I've got great faith in the essential fairness and decency —
you may say goodness — of the human being.
--Norman Vincent Peale
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Norman_Vincent_Peale>