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

_______________________________ 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

_____________________________ 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

___________________________ 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