text:
Economic security

Economic security or financial security is the condition of having stable income or other resources to support a standard of living now and in the foreseeable future. It includes:
 * probable continued solvency
 * predictability of the future cash flow of a person or other economic entity, such as a country
 * employment security or job security

Without such security, people may experience its opposite: economic insecurity and resulting economic anxiety.

Financial security more often refers to individual and family money management and savings. Economic security tends to include the broader effect of a society's production levels and monetary support for non-working citizens.

Components of individual economic security
In the United States, children's economic security is indicated by the income level and employment security of their families or organizations. Economic security of people over 50 years old is based on Social Security benefits, pensions and savings, earnings and employment, and health insurance coverage.

Arizona
In 1972, the state legislature of Arizona formed a Department of Economic Security with a mission to promote "the safety, well-being, and self sufficiency of children, adults, and families". This department combines state government activities previously managed by the Employment Security Commission, the State Department of Public Welfare, the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, the State Office of Economic Opportunity, the Apprenticeship Council, and the State Office of Manpower Planning. The State Department of Mental Retardation (renamed the Division of Developmental Disabilities, House Bill 2213) joined the Department in 1974. The purpose in creating the Department was to provide an integration of direct services to people in such a way as to reduce duplication of administrative efforts, services and expenditures. Family Connections became a part of the Department in January 2007.

Minnesota
The Minnesota Department of Economic Security was formed in 1977 from the departments of Employment Services and Vocational Rehabilitation, the Governor's Manpower Office, and the Economic Opportunity Office, which administered anti-poverty programs. In 1985, State Services for the Blind was included in this department. In 2003, the Minnesota Department of Economic Security and Minnesota Department of Trade and Economic Development were merged to form The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

National economic security
In the context of domestic politics and international relations, national economic security is the ability of a country to follow its choice of policies to develop the national economy in the manner desired. Historically, conquest of nations have made conquerors rich through plunder, access to new resources and enlarged trade through controlling of the economies of conquered nations. Today's complex system of international trade is characterized by multi-national agreements and mutual inter-dependence. Availability of natural resources and capacity for production and distribution are essential under this system, leading many experts to consider economic security to be as important a part of national security as military policy.

Economic security has been proposed as a key determinant of international relations, particularly in the geopolitics of petroleum in American foreign policy after 1973 oil crisis and September 11, 2001.

In Canada, threats to the country's overall economic security are considered economic espionage, which is "illegal, clandestine or coercive activity by a foreign government in order to gain unauthorized access to economic intelligence, such as proprietary information or technology, for economic advantage."

In January 2021, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued Strategic Action Plan to Counter the Threat Posed by China.

In October 2021 in Japan, prime minister Fumio Kishida created the first-ever ministerial post for economic security. And in April 2022, Japan's National Diet passed an economic security bill aimed at guarding technology and reinforcing critical supply chains, while also imposing tighter oversight of Japanese firms working in sensitive sectors or critical infrastructure. Measures in the legislation, which is primarily aimed at warding off risks from China, will be implemented over two years once it is enacted, according to the bill.

In March 2023, Japan and Germany agreed to strengthen cooperation on economic security in the aftermath of tensions over global supply chains and the economic impact of the war in Ukraine. In the first high-ministerial government consultations held between the two countries, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reached out to Tokyo to seek to reduce Germany's dependence on China for imports of raw materials.

On April 4, 2023, a G7 Trade Ministers' Meeting via video conference was held to discuss on enhancing economic security, and a G7 Trade Ministers' Statement was issued on the day. Also in April 2023, Japan's Public Security Intelligence Agency (PSIA) launched a division dedicated to economic security. The agency also plans to set up such dedicated units in its regional bureaus nationwide to step up efforts to prevent cutting-edge technology and data from being leaked out of the country. On 20 May 2023 on occasion of the G7 Hiroshima summit, economic security was discussed for the first time as the G7 agenda, and "G7 Leaders' Statement on Economic Resilience and Economic Security" was issued based on the discussion.

On 20 June 2023, the European Commission and the High Representative proposed a Joint Communication on a European Economic Security Strategy which will be discussed by EU leaders at their meeting.

Other
It is widely believed that there is a tradeoff between economic security and economic opportunity.

title: Economic security


text:
Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution

Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE), also known as 2.75G, Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS), IMT Single Carrier (IMT-SC), and Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution, is a 2G digital mobile phone technology for data transmission. It is a subset of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) on the GSM network and improves upon it offering speeds close to 3G technology, hence the name 2.75G.

EDGE was deployed on GSM networks beginning in 2003 – initially by Cingular (now AT&T) in the United States. Through the introduction of sophisticated methods of coding and transmitting data, EDGE delivers higher bit-rates per radio channel, resulting in a threefold increase in capacity and performance compared with an ordinary GSM/GPRS connection - originally a max speed of 384 kbit/s. EDGE can be used for any packet switched application, such as an Internet connection.

EDGE is standardized also by 3GPP as part of the GSM family. A variant, so called Compact-EDGE, was developed for use in a portion of Digital AMPS network spectrum. EDGE is part of ITU's 3G definition. Evolved EDGE continues in release 7 of the 3GPP standard providing reduced latency and more than doubled performance e.g. to complement High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA). Peak bit-rates of up to 1 Mbit/s and typical bit-rates of 400 kbit/s can be expected.

Technology
EDGE/EGPRS is implemented as a bolt-on enhancement for 2.5G GSM/GPRS networks, making it easier for existing GSM carriers to upgrade to it. EDGE is a superset to GPRS and can function on any network with GPRS deployed on it, provided the carrier implements the necessary upgrade. EDGE requires no hardware or software changes to be made in GSM core networks. EDGE-compatible transceiver units must be installed and the base station subsystem needs to be upgraded to support EDGE. If the operator already has this in place, which is often the case today, the network can be upgraded to EDGE by activating an optional software feature. Today EDGE is supported by all major chip vendors for both GSM and WCDMA/HSPA.

Transmission techniques
In addition to Gaussian minimum-shift keying (GMSK), EDGE uses higher-order PSK/8 phase-shift keying (8PSK) for the upper five of its nine modulation and coding schemes. EDGE produces a 3-bit word for every change in carrier phase. This effectively triples the gross data rate offered by GSM. EDGE, like GPRS, uses a rate adaptation algorithm that adapts the modulation and coding scheme (MCS) according to the quality of the radio channel, and thus the bit rate and robustness of data transmission. It introduces a new technology not found in GPRS, incremental redundancy, which, instead of retransmitting disturbed packets, sends more redundancy information to be combined in the receiver. This increases the probability of correct decoding.

EDGE can carry a bandwidth up to 236 kbit/s (with end-to-end latency of less than 150 ms) for 4 timeslots (theoretical maximum is 473.6 kbit/s for 8 timeslots) in packet mode. This means it can handle four times as much traffic as standard GPRS. EDGE meets the International Telecommunication Union's requirement for a 3G network, and has been accepted by the ITU as part of the IMT-2000 family of 3G standards. It also enhances the circuit data mode called HSCSD, increasing the data rate of this service.

EDGE modulation and coding scheme (MCS)
The channel encoding process in GPRS as well as EGPRS/EDGE consists of two steps: first, a cyclic code is used to add parity bits, which are also referred to as the Block Check Sequence, followed by coding with a possibly punctured convolutional code. In GPRS, the Coding Schemes CS-1 to CS-4 specify the number of parity bits generated by the cyclic code and the puncturing rate of the convolutional code. In GPRS Coding Schemes CS-1 through CS-3, the convolutional code is of rate 1/2, i.e. each input bit is converted into two coded bits. In Coding Schemes CS-2 and CS-3, the output of the convolutional code is punctured to achieve the desired code rate. In GPRS Coding Scheme CS-4, no convolutional coding is applied.

In EGPRS/EDGE, the modulation and coding schemes MCS-1 to MCS-9 take the place of the coding schemes of GPRS, and additionally specify which modulation scheme is used, GMSK or 8PSK. MCS-1 through MCS-4 use GMSK and have performance similar (but not equal) to GPRS, while MCS-5 through MCS-9 use 8PSK. In all EGPRS modulation and coding schemes, a convolutional code of rate 1/3 is used, and puncturing is used to achieve the desired code rate. In contrast to GPRS, the Radio Link Control (RLC) and medium access control (MAC) headers and the payload data are coded separately in EGPRS. The headers are coded more robustly than the data.

Evolved EDGE
Evolved EDGE, also called EDGE Evolution and 2.875G, is a bolt-on extension to the GSM mobile telephony standard, which improves on EDGE in a number of ways. Latencies are reduced by lowering the Transmission Time Interval by half (from 20 ms to 10 ms). Bit rates are increased up to 1 Mbit/s peak bandwidth and latencies down to 80 ms using dual carrier, higher symbol rate and higher-order modulation (32QAM and 16QAM instead of 8PSK), and turbo codes to improve error correction. This results in real world downlink speeds of up to 600 kbit/s. Further the signal quality is improved using dual antennas improving average bit-rates and spectrum efficiency.

The main intention of increasing the existing EDGE throughput is that many operators would like to upgrade their existing infrastructure rather than invest on new network infrastructure. Mobile operators have invested billions in GSM networks, many of which are already capable of supporting EDGE data speeds up to 236.8 kbit/s. With a software upgrade and a new device compliant with Evolved EDGE (like an Evolved EDGE smartphone) for the user, these data rates can be boosted to speeds approaching 1 Mbit/s (i.e. 98.6 kbit/s per timeslot for 32QAM). Many service providers may not invest in a completely new technology like 3G networks.

Considerable research and development happened throughout the world for this new technology. A successful trial by Nokia Siemens and "one of China's leading operators" has been achieved in a live environment. With the introduction for more advanced wireless technologies like UMTS and LTE, which also focus on a network coverage layer on low frequencies and the upcoming phase-out and shutdown of 2G mobile networks, it is very unlikely that Evolved EDGE will ever see any deployment on live networks. Up to now (as of 2016) there are no commercial networks which support the Evolved EDGE standard (3GPP Rel-7).

Reduced Latency
With Evolved EDGE come three major features designed to reduce latency over the air interface.

In EDGE, a single RLC data block (ranging from 23 to 148 bytes of data) is transmitted over four frames, using a single time slot. On average, this requires 20 ms for one way transmission. Under the RTTI scheme, one data block is transmitted over two frames in two timeslots, reducing the latency of the air interface to 10 ms.

In addition, Reduced Latency also implies support of Piggy-backed ACK/NACK (PAN), in which a bitmap of blocks not received is included in normal data blocks. Using the PAN field, the receiver may report missing data blocks immediately, rather than waiting to send a dedicated PAN message.

A final enhancement is RLC-non persistent mode. With EDGE, the RLC interface could operate in either acknowledged mode, or unacknowledged mode. In unacknowledged mode, there is no retransmission of missing data blocks, so a single corrupt block would cause an entire upper-layer IP packet to be lost. With non-persistent mode, an RLC data block may be retransmitted if it is less than a certain age. Once this time expires, it is considered lost, and subsequent data blocks may then be forwarded to upper layers.

Higher modulation schemes
Both uplink and downlink throughput is improved by using 16 or 32 QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation), along with turbo codes and higher symbol rates.

Enhanced CSD
A lesser-known version of the EDGE standard is Enhanced Circuit Switched Data (ECSD), which is circuit switched.

Networks
The Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) states that, as of May 2013, there were 604 GSM/EDGE networks in 213 countries, from a total of 606 mobile network operator commitments in 213 countries.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution


text:
Talk:Enzyme

Semi-protected edit request on 27 August 2021
Since 2018, the EC class of translocases (EC7) has been added by the IUBMB. Can someone please update the 'classification and nomenclature' section of this wiki? TheAlanine (talk) 20:57, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 20:59, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 August 2021
Add "EC 7, translocases: catalyze the movement of ions or molecules across membranes, or their separation within membranes." to the end of the bullet point list under the title 'Classification and nomenclature'. TheAlanine (talk) 23:04, 27 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the update, - done here, by reference to our already-updated articles at Enzyme Commission number and translocase. FYI, I knew what you meant, as would most editors who watch this specific page, but in general if you make any future edit requests it's easier for others to review them if you also include a link to your source, so they can be sure the information is accurate. Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:07, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

Enzymes in food not a topic here ? And in connection to the body-own enzymes
Sorry, from currently discovering enzymes in food, vegetables, fruits, and where else, leads me to this question, please. (1 question also, the heat resistance of enzymes in food.) Thanks the interesst. --Visionhelp (talk) 21:41, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
 * They are unlikely to survive gastric acid during digestion and will be destroyed by cooking. Graham Beards (talk) 21:49, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Destroyed they are from cooking at from between 40 and 45 (degree) C., 104 F. to 113 F. Enzymes are essential as pre-condition to process the nutrients, vitamins and minerals, near much more functions. How the enzymes are processed for the intake into the body, whether it is necessary for the enzymes to survive the digestion, this is just not a question. The successful intake into the body happens, by giving. (There are 3 (to 4) english sources noted in (the german article; the source) https://www.zentrum-der-gesundheit.de/ernaehrung/lebensmittel/inhaltsstoffe/enzyme. Sadnessly 2 webpage translation websites are denied by this site. Here the sources: sorry, no links) Anthony J. Cichike, D.C., Ph.D. The Complete Book of Enzyme Therapy Dr. Edward Howell, Food Enzymes for Health & Longevity Williams, M.D., Ph.D, M. Miehlke, M.D., ENZYMES - The Fountain of Life DicQie Fuller-Looney PH.D. D.Sc. N.D The Healing Power of Enzymes --Visionhelp (talk) 22:29, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Enzymes
Enzymes can be indicated by his last three words "ase" 2A03:2880:FF:14:0:0:FACE:B00C (talk) 18:20, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Enzyme


text:
Eth

Eth (, uppercase: Ð, lowercase: ð; also spelled edh or eð), known as ðæt in Old English, is a letter used in Old English, Middle English, Icelandic, Faroese (in which it is called edd), and Elfdalian.

It was also used in Scandinavia during the Middle Ages, but was subsequently replaced with $⟨Ð⟩$, and later $⟨ð⟩$.

It is often transliterated as $⟨dh⟩$.

The lowercase version has been adopted to represent a voiced dental fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Faroese
In Faroese, $⟨d⟩$ is not assigned to any particular phoneme and appears mostly for etymological reasons, but it indicates most glides. When $⟨d⟩$ appears before $⟨ð⟩$, it is in a few words pronounced. In the Faroese alphabet, $⟨ð⟩$ follows $⟨r⟩$.

Khmer
$⟨ð⟩$ is sometimes used in Khmer romanization to represent ឍ thô.

Icelandic

In Icelandic, $⟨d⟩$, called "eð", represents an alveolar non-sibilant fricative, voiced intervocalically and word-finally, and voiceless  otherwise, which form one phoneme,. Generally, is represented by  thorn $⟨Ð⟩$ at the beginning of words and by $⟨ð⟩$ elsewhere. The $⟨Þ⟩$ in the name of the letter is devoiced in the nominative and accusative cases:. In the Icelandic alphabet, $⟨ð⟩$ follows $⟨ð⟩$.

Norwegian
In Olav Jakobsen Høyem's version of Nynorsk based on Trøndersk, $⟨ð⟩$ was always silent, and was introduced for etymological reasons.

Old English
In Old English, $⟨d⟩$ (called ðæt) was used interchangeably with $⟨ð⟩$ to represent the Old English dental fricative phoneme or its allophone, which exist in modern English phonology as the voiceless and voiced dental fricatives both now spelled $⟨ð⟩$.

Unlike the runic letter $⟨þ⟩$, $⟨th⟩$ is a modified Roman letter. Neither $⟨þ⟩$ nor $⟨ð⟩$ was found in the earliest records of Old English. A study of Mercian royal diplomas found that $⟨ð⟩$ (along with $⟨þ⟩$) began to emerge in the early 8th century, with $⟨ð⟩$ becoming strongly preferred by the 780s. Another source indicates that the letter is "derived from Irish writing".

Under the reign of King Alfred the Great, $⟨đ⟩$ grew greatly in popularity and started to overtake $⟨ð⟩$, and completely overtook it by Middle English. However, $⟨þ⟩$ in turn died out by Early Modern English, mostly due to the rise of the printing press, and was replaced by the digraph th.

Welsh
$⟨ð⟩$ has also been used by some in written Welsh to represent, which is normally represented as dd.

Phonetic transcription

 * (U+00F0) represents a voiced dental fricative in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
 * (U+1D9E) is used in phonetic transcription.
 * ᴆ (U+1D06) is used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.

Computer encoding
Upper and lower case forms of eth have Unicode encodings:

These Unicode codepoints were inherited from ISO/IEC 8859-1 ("ISO Latin-1") encoding.

Modern uses

 * A capital eth is used as the currency symbol for Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency.

title: Eth


text:
Eth, Nord

Eth is a commune in the Nord department in northern France.

It is about 10 km east-southeast of Valenciennes. Residents are called Ethois (feminine plural Ethoises).

title: Eth, Nord


text:
Talk:Eth

Tau gallicum?
I wonder if there is a relationship between the eth (and maybe the Đ too) with the "tau gallicum" ("gaulish T") used when writting old gaulish language; gaulish was first written in greek alphabet and the greek theta used for a somewhat similar gaulish, then roman influence made them switch to latin alphabet, which has less letters, and so they used a sort of barred D (which may have derived from the theta maybe?). I'm not a specialist in phonetics, but it seems to me that the usage the eth has some phonetic similarity; could old Norse have borrowed it from gaulish usage?

Srtxg 07:05, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Norman dislike?
''In Middle English, ð was no longer used; the Normans did not like characters in English which did not exist in the Latin alphabet. Ð was replaced with th, unfortunately making the voiced consonant indistinguishable from the unvoiced one, as the letter þ was also replaced by this digraph.''

This is simply not true, by my understanding. Firstly, <ð> remained in common use until around the end of the 13th century - it is used, for example, in the Layamon text of Cotton Caligula A. ix (c.1275-1300) - that is, at least 200 years after the Norman Conquest. Secondly, it was replaced with <þ>, not  ; <þ> remained in common use for another two centuries after that. Finally, I am not aware that there ever was a consistent use of <ð> for voiced and <þ> for unvoiced sounds in English, and the supposed Norman dislike of non-Latin letters can be ruled out altogether by the persistence of <þ>, and the introduction of yogh for sounds written  in Old English.

I propose rewriting as follows: "Ð began to fall out of use in the Middle English period, and by the 14th century the /th/ sound was consistently written with þ instead."

 * I was about to express my shock that this valid concern had remained unaddressed for over a year. Then I realised that I posted the unsigned comment above myself, so "fix it yourself" applies.  I have duly done so.  ;)  — Haeleth Talk 23:54, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Moved back to Eth (letter) per policy.
See Naming conventions (use English). "Ð" is not a letter in any form of contemporary English, and both Old English and Middle English are distinct languages from the modern tongue. Robert A West 19:18, 9 August 2005 (UTC) Oh, and if someone feels the need to move it back again, please take it to WP:RM. The default rule on Wikipedia has been elucidated by Jimbo Wales: "My perspective is that if I don't see it on my keyboard, and if I didn't sing it in the alphabet song, it's 'fancy' and therefore should be avoided." We should not do otherwise without consensus. Robert A West 19:32, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Will you shortly be moving Æ to A-E ligature or Ash (letter) and ß to Sharp s? — Felix the Cassowary 05:34, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
 * As I noted elsewhere, æ has been used in English within living memory. On the other hand, ß is not and never has been an English letter, and is so not a valid title for an article in the English Wikipedia; the German Wikipedia is a different matter, of course.  Robert A West 06:43, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Quite honestly, I would have no problem with Ash (letter) and Sharp s (letter). Indeed I would like the Wikipedia entries for letternames to be standardized throughout. It staves off argument. Evertype 08:50, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * I also don't have that much of a problem, as long as if this is the logic it's consistent. I just like ð a lot more than any other fake letter :) A'course, the fact that capital eth looks the same as capital d with stroke is probably an extra argument in favor of keeping it separate. Ah well, I retract the implied hostility in my earlier statement... — Felix the Cassowary 10:12, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

 * I took it as exaſperation, not hoſtility. Hey, perſonally, I am all for re-introducing wer and letting man return to a genderleſs word, but I wouldn't put þat in the Wikipedia eiþer.  :-)  Seriouſly, þis iſsue is being debated, in a sliȝtly different context, in Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (use English).  My view is þat if it is common not to uſe diacritics for þe name in queuſtion (as Handel or Goering) þen þey shouldn't be uſed in þe title, even if it is alſo common to uſe þem.  Similarly, we should have "Birhtnoth", not Byrhtnoð, as the title, becauſe the latter is not modern orðography.  Robert A West 14:29, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Can't change the image
I've tried to edit the image and upload it, but it doesn't seem to be accepted. I am not sure why. The edit I want to make is to display Ðð Ðð rather than ðÐ ðÐ because capitals typically precede smalls in alphabet displays of this kind. Evertype 08:47, August 10, 2005 (UTC)

 * Sometimes it takes hours or a day for the cache to catch up to a new uploaded image. I see "Ðð Ðð" right now, so I think it worked.  —Michael Z. 2006-01-17 20:39 Z

Delta - Eth equivalence
The article says that Eth is the only letter capable of representing modern greek Delta's sound. I think this is not true. The traditional romanization has always used D, and, although the sounds does not exactly match, there is no other sound in greek more similar do D. You may also notice that D is spanish is often pronounced like Eth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.135.135.183 (talk) 21:26, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Computer Encoding - Mac OSX
I've discovered that on Mac OS 10.5.7, typing Ð requires that the user must first select "U.S. Extended" as the keyboard layout. This is done by going to System Preferences > International, then scrolling down through the list and turning on "U.S. Extended" (or some other keyboard layout from the list that includes Ð; I'll continue with "U.S. Extended" since that works for me). "Show input menu in menu bar" also needs to be turned on. This causes the input menu to appear (it should appear with a country flag, the US flag in my case). From the menu, "U.S. Extended" needs to be selected.

Once that's done, Option-d will give ð and Option-Shift-d will give Ð. If the keyboard layout is on "U.S." instead (that is, not Extended), then Option-d gives ∂ and Option-Shift-d gives Î, which are probably not intended when trying to type Eth.

I don't know how to concisely describe this in the Computer Encoding section of the article, or if it's worthwhile to try.

--James-Chin (talk) 07:17, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

In Mac OS X 10.11.1, "U.S. Extended" has been renamed to "ABC Extended"

--Dowobeha (talk) 19:37, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Citation
Just a quick note, FIX THAT INLINE CITATION. That is no good. Thanks folks. I would do it myself, but I don't know how :(. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.230.214.241 (talk) 23:33, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Pronunciation of name of the letter
The lede gives the name of the letter as being pronounced with ð, which on the face of it is pretty logical, but... in the article body, it's stated that the Icelandic name has a θ instead, and is silent on its name in Faroese. So, is the claim that the voiced is the OE name? Or the usual IPA one? 84.203.43.181 (talk) 16:54, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Very first one is how English speakers (today) pronounce the word "eth". — Lfdder (talk) 17:14, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Which speakers? In what context?  It's not exactly an everyday "word".  Do medievalists and linguists both use "eð"?  In any event, the article could stand clarification on this point.  84.203.43.181 (talk) 18:05, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Does anyone else other than medievalists and linguists ever talk about eth? :-) Regardless, that's the only pronunciation to be found in dictionaries. — Lfdder (talk) 18:25, 1 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Point taken, and several dictionaries do indeed confirm this. It could stand some clarification and contextualisation all the same, especially as regards its OE usage and (presumed) name.  Waiting for inspiration as how best to do so to strike.  84.203.43.181 (talk) 02:18, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Used in Vietnamese?
Other articles mention that "D with stroke" is a different letter from Eth and that Vietnamese uses the former, not the latter. The article for "D with Stroke" says "Unicode has a distinct code point for the visually very similar capital eth, Ð, U+00D0, which can lead to confusion."

Can anyone clarify with appropriate references that the letter in Vietnamese is Eth and not D with Stroke? 173.164.74.129 (talk) 23:59, 30 July 2019 (UTC)

 * I've removed Vietnamese from this article, it was a recent addition. They are considered different letters. – Thjarkur (talk) 14:35, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I’ve just done the same with Khmer in the initial section, which definitely doesn’t use ð natively (since it’s written in a non-Latin script), and additionally doesn’t appear to commonly use ð or even đ (like Vietnamese does) in transliteration (going by Romanization of Khmer). I’ve left the reference to ð being “sometimes” used in romanisation to represent ឍ thô. Kokoshneta (talk) 13:12, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

"Computer Input"?
Could someone please explain in the text what the whole section headed "computer input" means? At the moment it assumes an expert level of knowledge. Needs to be explicit. Cassandra — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.74.252.10 (talk) 18:00, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I believe I have made the section ever so slightly more accessible. – Thjarkur (talk) 23:01, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

"Eþþa" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Eþþa. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. signed,Rosguill talk 22:27, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Was "ðæt" really its name?
This article claims ð was called "ðæt" by Anglo-Saxons, but I just found this:

"However, just as the Cotton Titus manuscript lists as letters what we would call abbreviations, it seems equally likely that the Stowe 57 writer was doing the same and that ð was intended as an abbreviation for the word ðæt rather than the name of the letter." - The "Abecedarium" from British Museum Cotton MS. Titus D 18, V. McCarren & R. Mory, Modern Philology Vol. 87, No. 3, February 1990, pages 266-271 Hurlebatte (talk) 07:19, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Still in use in Norway
It is said to be used in Sunnmøre and Nordfjord. I am from Sunnmøre and i use it, but i dont know about any others really. Older people used it more frequently before. 158.36.235.204 (talk) 20:28, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Eth


text:
Euphrates

The Euphrates (see below) is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia (lit. 'the land between the rivers'). Originating in Turkey, the Euphrates flows through Syria and Iraq to join the Tigris in the Shatt al-Arab in Iraq, which empties into the Persian Gulf.

The Euphrates is the fifteenth-longest river in Asia and the longest in Western Asia, at about 2780 km, with a drainage area of 440000 km2 that covers six countries.

Etymology
The term Euphrates derives from the Greek Euphrátēs (Εὐφρᾱ́της), adapted from, itself from 𒌑𒅁𒊏𒌅𒅖. The Elamite name is ultimately derived from cuneiform 𒌓𒄒𒉣; read as Buranun in Sumerian and Purattu in Akkadian; many cuneiform signs have a Sumerian pronunciation and an Akkadian pronunciation, taken from a Sumerian word and an Akkadian word that mean the same. The Akkadian Purattu has been perpetuated in Semitic languages (cf. الفرات al-Furāt; Pǝrāṯ, פְּרָת Pǝrāṯ) and in other nearby languages of the time (cf. Hurrian Puranti, Sabarian Uruttu). The Elamite, Akkadian, and possibly Sumerian forms are suggested to be from an unrecorded substrate language. Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov suggest the proto-Sumerian *burudu "copper" (Sumerian urudu) as an origin, with an explanation that Euphrates was the river by which copper ore was transported in rafts, since Mesopotamia was the center of copper metallurgy during the period.

The Euphrates is called Yeprat in Armenian (Եփրատ), Perat in modern Hebrew (פרת), Fırat in Turkish and Firat in Kurdish. The Mandaic name is (ࡐࡓࡀࡔ), and is often mentioned as  (pronounced ) in Mandaean scriptures such as the Ginza Rabba. In Mandaean scriptures, the Euphrates is considered to be the earthly manifestation of the heavenly yardna or flowing river (similar to the Yazidi concept of Lalish being the earthly manifestation of its heavenly counterpart, or the ‘Sacred House’ Kaaba in Mecca being the earthly manifestation of the heavenly Al-Bayt Al-Mamur).

The earliest references to the Euphrates come from cuneiform texts found in Shuruppak and pre-Sargonic Nippur in southern Iraq and date to the mid-3rd millennium BCE. In these texts, written in Sumerian, the Euphrates is called Buranuna (logographic: UD.KIB.NUN). The name could also be written KIB.NUN.(NA) or dKIB.NUN, with the prefix "d" indicating that the river was a divinity. In Sumerian, the name of the city of Sippar in modern-day Iraq was also written UD.KIB.NUN, indicating a historically strong relationship between the city and the river.

Course
The Euphrates is the longest river of Western Asia. It emerges from the confluence of the Kara Su or Western Euphrates (450 km) and the Murat Su or Eastern Euphrates (650 km) 10 km upstream from the town of Keban in southeastern Turkey. Daoudy and Frenken put the length of the Euphrates from the source of the Murat River to the confluence with the Tigris at 3000 km, of which 1230 km is in Turkey, 710 km in Syria and 1060 km in Iraq. The same figures are given by Isaev and Mikhailova. The length of the Shatt al-Arab, which connects the Euphrates and the Tigris with the Persian Gulf, is given by various sources as 145 –.

Both the Kara Su and the Murat Su rise northwest from Lake Van at elevations of 3290 m and 3520 m amsl, respectively. At the location of the Keban Dam, the two rivers, now combined into the Euphrates, have dropped to an elevation of 693 m amsl. From Keban to the Syrian–Turkish border, the river drops another 368 m over a distance of less than 600 km. Once the Euphrates enters the Upper Mesopotamian plains, its grade drops significantly; within Syria the river falls 163 m while over the last stretch between Hīt and the Shatt al-Arab the river drops only 55 m.

Discharge
The Euphrates receives most of its water in the form of rainfall and melting snow, resulting in peak volumes during the months April through May. Discharge in these two months accounts for 36 percent of the total annual discharge of the Euphrates, or even 60–70 percent according to one source, while low runoff occurs in summer and autumn. The average natural annual flow of the Euphrates has been determined from early- and mid-twentieth century records as 20.9 km3 at Keban, 36.6 km3 at Hīt and 21.5 km3 at Hindiya. However, these averages mask the high inter-annual variability in discharge; at Birecik, just north of the Syro–Turkish border, annual discharges have been measured that ranged from a low volume of 15.3 km3 in 1961 to a high of 42.7 km3 in 1963.

The discharge regime of the Euphrates has changed dramatically since the construction of the first dams in the 1970s. Data on Euphrates discharge collected after 1990 show the impact of the construction of the numerous dams in the Euphrates and of the increased withdrawal of water for irrigation. Average discharge at Hīt after 1990 has dropped to 356 m3 per second (11.2 km3 per year). The seasonal variability has equally changed. The pre-1990 peak volume recorded at Hīt was 7510 m3 per second, while after 1990 it is only 2514 m3 per second. The minimum volume at Hīt remained relatively unchanged, rising from 55 m3 per second before 1990 to 58 m3 per second afterward.

Tributaries
In Syria, three rivers add their water to the Euphrates; the Sajur, the Balikh and the Khabur. These rivers rise in the foothills of the Taurus Mountains along the Syro–Turkish border and add comparatively little water to the Euphrates. The Sajur is the smallest of these tributaries; emerging from two streams near Gaziantep and draining the plain around Manbij before emptying into the reservoir of the Tishrin Dam. The Balikh receives most of its water from a karstic spring near 'Ayn al-'Arus and flows due south until it reaches the Euphrates at the city of Raqqa. In terms of length, drainage basin and discharge, the Khabur is the largest of these three. Its main karstic springs are located around Ra's al-'Ayn, from where the Khabur flows southeast past Al-Hasakah, where the river turns south and drains into the Euphrates near Busayrah. Once the Euphrates enters Iraq, there are no more natural tributaries to the Euphrates, although canals connecting the Euphrates basin with the Tigris basin exist.

Drainage basin

The drainage basins of the Kara Su and the Murat River cover an area of 22000 km2 and 40000 km2, respectively. Estimates of the area of the Euphrates drainage basin vary widely; from a low 233000 km2 to a high 766000 km2. Recent estimates put the basin area at 388000 km2, 444000 km2 and 579314 km2. The greater part of the Euphrates basin is located in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. According to both Daoudy and Frenken, Turkey's share is 28 percent, Syria's is 17 percent and that of Iraq is 40 percent. Isaev and Mikhailova estimate the percentages of the drainage basin lying within Turkey, Syria and Iraq at 33, 20 and 47 percent respectively. Some sources estimate that approximately 15 percent of the drainage basin is located within Saudi Arabia, while a small part falls inside the borders of Kuwait. Finally, some sources also include Jordan in the drainage basin of the Euphrates; a small part of the eastern desert (220 km2) drains toward the east rather than to the west.

Climate change
In 2021, the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources reported that the Euphrates river could dry out by 2040 due to climate change and droughts.

Natural history
The Euphrates flows through a number of distinct vegetation zones. Although millennia-long human occupation in most parts of the Euphrates basin has significantly degraded the landscape, patches of original vegetation remain. The steady drop in annual rainfall from the sources of the Euphrates toward the Persian Gulf is a strong determinant for the vegetation that can be supported. In its upper reaches the Euphrates flows through the mountains of Southeast Turkey and their southern foothills which support a xeric woodland. Plant species in the moister parts of this zone include various oaks, pistachio trees, and Rosaceae (rose/plum family). The drier parts of the xeric woodland zone supports less dense oak forest and Rosaceae. Here can also be found the wild variants of many cereals, including einkorn wheat, emmer, oat and rye.

South of this zone lies a zone of mixed woodland-steppe vegetation. Between Raqqa and the Syro–Iraqi border the Euphrates flows through a steppe landscape. This steppe is characterised by white wormwood (Artemisia herba-alba) and Amaranthaceae. Throughout history, this zone has been heavily overgrazed due to the practicing of sheep and goat pastoralism by its inhabitants. Southeast of the border between Syria and Iraq starts true desert. This zone supports either no vegetation at all or small pockets of Chenopodiaceae or Poa sinaica. Although today nothing of it survives due to human interference, research suggests that the Euphrates Valley would have supported a riverine forest. Species characteristic of this type of forest include the Oriental plane, the Euphrates poplar, the tamarisk, the ash and various wetland plants.

Among the fish species in the Tigris–Euphrates basin, the family of the Cyprinidae are the most common, with 34 species out of 52 in total. Among the Cyprinids, the mangar has good recreational fishing qualities, leading the British to nickname it the "Tigris salmon." The Euphrates softshell turtle is an endangered soft-shelled turtle that is limited to the Tigris–Euphrates river system.

The Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs from the 1st millennium BCE depict lion and bull hunts in fertile landscapes. Sixteenth to nineteenth century European travellers in the Syrian Euphrates basin reported on an abundance of animals living in the area, many of which have become rare or even extinct. Species like gazelle, onager and the now-extinct Arabian ostrich lived in the steppe bordering the Euphrates valley, while the valley itself was home to the wild boar. Carnivorous species include the wolf, the golden jackal, the red fox, the leopard and the lion. The Syrian brown bear can be found in the mountains of Southeast Turkey. The presence of Eurasian beaver has been attested in the bone assemblage of the prehistoric site of Tell Abu Hureyra in Syria, but the beaver has never been sighted in historical times.

River

The Hindiya Barrage on the Iraqi Euphrates, based on plans by British civil engineer William Willcocks and finished in 1913, was the first modern water diversion structure built in the Tigris–Euphrates river system. The Hindiya Barrage was followed in the 1950s by the Ramadi Barrage and the nearby Abu Dibbis Regulator, which serve to regulate the flow regime of the Euphrates and to discharge excess flood water into the depression that is now Lake Habbaniyah. Iraq's largest dam on the Euphrates is the Haditha Dam; a 9 km earth-fill dam creating Lake Qadisiyah. Syria and Turkey built their first dams in the Euphrates in the 1970s. The Tabqa Dam in Syria was completed in 1973 while Turkey finished the Keban Dam, a prelude to the immense Southeastern Anatolia Project, in 1974. Since then, Syria has built two more dams in the Euphrates, the Baath Dam and the Tishrin Dam, and plans to build a fourth dam – the Halabiye Dam – between Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. The Tabqa Dam is Syria's largest dam and its reservoir (Lake Assad) is an important source of irrigation and drinking water. It was planned that 640000 ha should be irrigated from Lake Assad, but in 2000 only 100000 – had been realized. Syria also built three smaller dams on the Khabur and its tributaries.

With the implementation of the Southeastern Anatolia Project (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, or GAP) in the 1970s, Turkey launched an ambitious plan to harness the waters of the Tigris and the Euphrates for irrigation and hydroelectricity production and provide an economic stimulus to its southeastern provinces. GAP affects a total area of 75000 km2 and approximately 7 million people; representing about 10 percent of Turkey's total surface area and population, respectively. When completed, GAP will consist of 22 dams – including the Keban Dam – and 19 power plants and provide irrigation water to 1700000 ha of agricultural land, which is about 20 percent of the irrigable land in Turkey. C. 910000 ha of this irrigated land is located in the Euphrates basin. By far the largest dam in GAP is the Atatürk Dam, located c. 55 km northwest of Şanlıurfa. This 184 and 1820 m dam was completed in 1992; thereby creating a reservoir that is the third-largest lake in Turkey. With a maximum capacity of 48.7 km3, the Atatürk Dam reservoir is large enough to hold the entire annual discharge of the Euphrates. Completion of GAP was scheduled for 2010 but has been delayed because the World Bank has withheld funding due to the lack of an official agreement on water sharing between Turkey and the downstream states on the Euphrates and the Tigris.

Apart from barrages and dams, Iraq has also created an intricate network of canals connecting the Euphrates with Lake Habbaniyah, Lake Tharthar, and Abu Dibbis reservoir; all of which can be used to store excess floodwater. Via the Shatt al-Hayy, the Euphrates is connected with the Tigris. The largest canal in this network is the Main Outfall Drain or so-called "Third River;" constructed between 1953 and 1992. This 565 km canal is intended to drain the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris south of Baghdad to prevent soil salinization from irrigation. It also allows large freight barges to navigate up to Baghdad.

Environmental and social effects
The construction of the dams and irrigation schemes on the Euphrates has had a significant impact on the environment and society of each riparian country. The dams constructed as part of GAP – in both the Euphrates and the Tigris basins – have affected 382 villages and almost 200,000 people have been resettled elsewhere. The largest number of people was displaced by the building of the Atatürk Dam, which alone affected 55,300 people. A survey among those who were displaced showed that the majority were unhappy with their new situation and that the compensation they had received was considered insufficient. The flooding of Lake Assad led to the forced displacement of c. 4,000 families, who were resettled in other parts of northern Syria as part of a now abandoned plan to create an "Arab belt" along the borders with Turkey and Iraq.

Apart from the changes in the discharge regime of the river, the numerous dams and irrigation projects have also had other effects on the environment. The creation of reservoirs with large surfaces in countries with high average temperatures has led to increased evaporation; thereby reducing the total amount of water that is available for human use. Annual evaporation from reservoirs has been estimated at 2 km3 in Turkey, 1 km3 in Syria and 5 km3 in Iraq. Water quality in the Iraqi Euphrates is low because irrigation water tapped in Turkey and Syria flows back into the river, together with dissolved fertilizer chemicals used on the fields. The salinity of Euphrates water in Iraq has increased as a result of upstream dam construction, leading to lower suitability as drinking water. The many dams and irrigation schemes, and the associated large-scale water abstraction, have also had a detrimental effect on the ecologically already fragile Mesopotamian Marshes and on freshwater fish habitats in Iraq.

The inundation of large parts of the Euphrates valley, especially in Turkey and Syria, has led to the flooding of many archaeological sites and other places of cultural significance. Although concerted efforts have been made to record or save as much of the endangered cultural heritage as possible, many sites are probably lost forever. The combined GAP projects on the Turkish Euphrates have led to major international efforts to document the archaeological and cultural heritage of the endangered parts of the valley. Especially the flooding of Zeugma with its unique Roman mosaics by the reservoir of the Birecik Dam has generated much controversy in both the Turkish and international press. The construction of the Tabqa Dam in Syria led to a large international campaign coordinated by UNESCO to document the heritage that would disappear under the waters of Lake Assad. Archaeologists from numerous countries excavated sites ranging in date from the Natufian to the Abbasid period, and two minarets were dismantled and rebuilt outside the flood zone. Important sites that have been flooded or affected by the rising waters of Lake Assad include Mureybet, Emar and Abu Hureyra. A similar international effort was made when the Tishrin Dam was constructed, which led, among others, to the flooding of the important Pre-Pottery Neolithic B site of Jerf el Ahmar. An archaeological survey and rescue excavations were also carried out in the area flooded by Lake Qadisiya in Iraq. Parts of the flooded area have recently become accessible again due to the drying up of the lake, resulting not only in new possibilities for archaeologists to do more research, but also providing opportunities for looting, which has been rampant elsewhere in Iraq in the wake of the 2003 invasion.

Islam
In Islam, hadiths say Muhammad said "The Last Hour would not come before the Euphrates uncovers a mountain of gold, for which people would fight. Ninety-nine out of each one hundred would die but every man amongst them would say that perhaps he would be the one who would be saved" and that "he who finds it [the gold] should not take anything out of that." This is said to be one of the future minor signs of the coming of Judgement Day:

Christianity
In the Christian Bible, the Euphrates River is mentioned in Revelation 16:12, in the final book of the New Testament. Author, John of Patmos writes about the Euphrates river drying up as part of a series of events that foretell the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

The river Phrath mentioned in Genesis 2:14 is also identified as the Euphrates.

Palaeolithic to Chalcolithic periods
The early occupation of the Euphrates basin was limited to its upper reaches; that is, the area that is popularly known as the Fertile Crescent. Acheulean stone artifacts have been found in the Sajur basin and in the El Kowm oasis in the central Syrian steppe; the latter together with remains of Homo erectus that were dated to 450,000 years old. In the Taurus Mountains and the upper part of the Syrian Euphrates valley, early permanent villages such as Abu Hureyra – at first occupied by hunter-gatherers but later by some of the earliest farmers, Jerf el Ahmar, Mureybet and Nevalı Çori became established from the eleventh millennium BCE onward. In the absence of irrigation, these early farming communities were limited to areas where rainfed agriculture was possible, that is, the upper parts of the Syrian Euphrates as well as Turkey. Late Neolithic villages, characterized by the introduction of pottery in the early 7th millennium BCE, are known throughout this area. Occupation of lower Mesopotamia started in the 6th millennium and is generally associated with the introduction of irrigation, as rainfall in this area is insufficient for dry agriculture. Evidence for irrigation has been found at several sites dating to this period, including Tell es-Sawwan. During the 5th millennium BCE, or late Ubaid period, northeastern Syria was dotted by small villages, although some of them grew to a size of over 10 ha. In Iraq, sites like Eridu and Ur were already occupied during the Ubaid period. Clay boat models found at Tell Mashnaqa along the Khabur indicate that riverine transport was already practiced during this period. The Uruk period, roughly coinciding with the 4th millennium BCE, saw the emergence of truly urban settlements across Mesopotamia. Cities like Tell Brak and Uruk grew to over 100 ha in size and displayed monumental architecture. The spread of southern Mesopotamian pottery, architecture and sealings far into Turkey and Iran has generally been interpreted as the material reflection of a widespread trade system aimed at providing the Mesopotamian cities with raw materials. Habuba Kabira on the Syrian Euphrates is a prominent example of a settlement that is interpreted as an Uruk colony.

Ancient history
During the Jemdet Nasr (3600–3100 BCE) and Early Dynastic periods (3100–2350 BCE), southern Mesopotamia experienced a growth in the number and size of settlements, suggesting strong population growth. These settlements, including Sumero-Akkadian sites like Sippar, Uruk, Adab and Kish, were organized in competing city-states. Many of these cities were located along canals of the Euphrates and the Tigris that have since dried up, but that can still be identified from remote sensing imagery. A similar development took place in Upper Mesopotamia, Subartu and Assyria, although only from the mid 3rd millennium and on a smaller scale than in Lower Mesopotamia. Sites like Ebla, Mari and Tell Leilan grew to prominence for the first time during this period.

Large parts of the Euphrates basin were for the first time united under a single ruler during the Akkadian Empire (2335–2154 BC) and Ur III empires, which controlled – either directly or indirectly through vassals – large parts of modern-day Iraq and northeastern Syria. Following their collapse, the Old Assyrian Empire (1975–1750 BCE) and Mari asserted their power over northeast Syria and northern Mesopotamia, while southern Mesopotamia was controlled by city-states like Isin, Kish and Larsa before their territories were absorbed by the newly emerged state of Babylonia under Hammurabi in the early to mid 18th century BCE.

In the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE, the Euphrates basin was divided between Kassite Babylon in the south and Mitanni, Assyria and the Hittite Empire in the north, with the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC) eventually eclipsing the Hittites, Mitanni and Kassite Babylonians. Following the end of the Middle Assyrian Empire in the late 11th century BCE, struggles broke out between Babylonia and Assyria over the control of the Iraqi Euphrates basin. The Neo-Assyrian Empire (935–605 BC) eventually emerged victorious out of this conflict and also succeeded in gaining control of the northern Euphrates basin in the first half of the 1st millennium BCE.

In the centuries to come, control of the wider Euphrates basin shifted from the Neo-Assyrian Empire (which collapsed between 612 and 599 BC) to the short lived Median Empire (612–546 BC) and equally brief Neo-Babylonian Empire (612–539 BC) in the last years of the 7th century BC, and eventually to the Achaemenid Empire (539–333 BC). The Achaemenid Empire was in turn overrun by Alexander the Great, who defeated the last king Darius III and died in Babylon in 323 BCE.

Subsequent to this, the region came under the control of the Seleucid Empire (312–150 BC), Parthian Empire (150–226 AD) (during which several Neo-Assyrian states such as Adiabene came to rule certain regions of the Euphrates), and was fought over by the Roman Empire, its succeeding Byzantine Empire and the Sassanid Empire (226–638 AD), until the Islamic conquest of the mid 7th century AD. The Battle of Karbala took place near the banks of this river in 680 AD.

In the north, the river served as a border between Greater Armenia (331 BC–428 AD) and Lesser Armenia (the latter became a Roman province in the 1st century BC).

Modern era
After World War I, the borders in Southwest Asia were redrawn in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), when the Ottoman Empire was partitioned. Clause 109 of the treaty stipulated that the three riparian states of the Euphrates (at that time Turkey, France for its Syrian mandate and the United Kingdom for its mandate of Iraq) had to reach a mutual agreement on the use of its water and on the construction of any hydraulic installation. An agreement between Turkey and Iraq signed in 1946 required Turkey to report to Iraq on any hydraulic changes it made on the Tigris–Euphrates river system, and allowed Iraq to construct dams on Turkish territory to manage the flow of the Euphrates.

The river featured on the coat of arms of Iraq from 1932 to 1959.

Turkey and Syria completed their first dams on the Euphrates – the Keban Dam and the Tabqa Dam, respectively – within one year of each other and filling of the reservoirs commenced in 1975. At the same time, the area was hit by severe drought and river flow toward Iraq was reduced from 15.3 km3 in 1973 to 9.4 km3 in 1975. This led to an international crisis during which Iraq threatened to bomb the Tabqa Dam. An agreement was eventually reached between Syria and Iraq after intervention by Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union. A similar crisis, although not escalating to the point of military threats, occurred in 1981 when the Keban Dam reservoir had to be refilled after it had been almost emptied to temporarily increase Turkey's hydroelectricity production. In 1984, Turkey unilaterally declared that it would ensure a flow of at least 500 m3 per second, or 16 km3 per year, into Syria, and in 1987 a bilateral treaty to that effect was signed between the two countries. Another bilateral agreement from 1989 between Syria and Iraq settles the amount of water flowing into Iraq at 60 percent of the amount that Syria receives from Turkey. In 2008, Turkey, Syria and Iraq instigated the Joint Trilateral Committee (JTC) on the management of the water in the Tigris–Euphrates basin and on 3 September 2009 a further agreement was signed to this effect. On 15 April 2014, Turkey began to reduce the flow of the Euphrates into Syria and Iraq. The flow was cut off completely on 16 May 2014 resulting in the Euphrates terminating at the Turkish–Syrian border. This was in violation of an agreement reached in 1987 in which Turkey committed to releasing a minimum of 500 m3 of water per second at the Turkish–Syrian border.

During the Syrian civil war and the Iraqi Civil War, much of the Euphrates was controlled by the Islamic State from 2014 until 2017, when the terrorist group began losing land and was eventually defeated territorially in Syria at the Battle of Baghouz and in Iraq in the Western Iraq offensive respectively.

Economy
Throughout history, the Euphrates has been of vital importance to those living along its course. With the construction of large hydropower stations, irrigation schemes, and pipelines capable of transporting water over large distances, many more people now depend on the river for basic amenities such as electricity and drinking water than in the past. Syria's Lake Assad is the most important source of drinking water for the city of Aleppo, 75 km to the west of the river valley. The lake also supports a modest state-operated fishing industry. Through a newly restored power line, the Haditha Dam in Iraq provides electricity to Baghdad.

title: Euphrates


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Estonian language

Estonian (eesti keel ) is a Finnic language of the Uralic family. Estonian is the official language of Estonia. It is written in the Latin script and is the first language of the majority of the country's population; it is also an official language of the European Union. Estonian is spoken natively by about 1.1 million people: 922,000 people in Estonia and 160,000 elsewhere.

Classification
The Estonian language belongs to the Finnic branch of the Uralic language family. Other Finnic languages include Finnish and some minority languages spoken around the Baltic Sea and in northwestern Russia. Estonian is typically subclassified as a Southern Finnic language, and it is the second-most-spoken language among all the Finnic languages. Alongside Finnish, Hungarian, and Maltese, Estonian is one of the four official languages of the European Union that are not Indo-European languages.

In terms of linguistic morphology, Estonian is a predominantly agglutinative language. The loss of word-final sounds is extensive, and this has made its inflectional morphology markedly more fusional, especially with respect to noun and adjective inflection. The transitional form from an agglutinating to a fusional language is a common feature of Estonian typologically over the course of history with the development of a rich morphological system.

Word order is considerably more flexible than in English, but the basic order is subject–verb–object.

History
The speakers of the two major historical dialect groups of the language, North and South Estonian, are thought by some linguists to have arrived in Estonia in at least two different migration waves over two millennia ago, both groups having spoken considerably different vernaculars. Modern standard Estonian evolved in the 18th and 19th century on the basis of the dialects of northern Estonia.

During the Medieval and Early Modern periods, Estonian accepted many loanwords from Germanic languages, mainly from Middle Low German (Middle Saxon) and, after the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, from the Standard German language.

The oldest written records of the Finnic languages of Estonia date from the 13th century. Originates Livoniae in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia contains Estonian place names, words and fragments of sentences.

Estonian literature
The earliest extant samples of connected (north) Estonian are the so-called Kullamaa prayers dating from 1524 and 1528. In 1525 the first book published in the Estonian language was printed. The book was a Lutheran manuscript, which never reached the reader and was destroyed immediately after publication.

The first extant Estonian book is a bilingual German-Estonian translation of the Lutheran catechism by S.Wanradt and J.Koell dating to 1535, during the Protestant Reformation period. An Estonian grammar book to be used by priests was printed in German in 1637. The New Testament was translated into southern Estonian in 1686 (northern Estonian, 1715). The two languages were united based on northern Estonian by Anton thor Helle.

Writings in Estonian became more significant in the 19th century during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840).

The birth of native Estonian literature was during the period 1810–1820, when the patriotic and philosophical poems by Kristjan Jaak Peterson were published. Peterson, who was the first student to acknowledge his Estonian origin at the then German-language University of Dorpat, is commonly regarded as a herald of Estonian national literature and considered the founder of modern Estonian poetry. His birthday, March 14, is celebrated in Estonia as Mother Tongue Day. A fragment from Peterson's poem "Kuu" expresses the claim reestablishing the birthright of the Estonian language:

 * Kas siis selle maa keel
 * Laulutuules ei või
 * Taevani tõustes üles
 * Igavikku omale otsida?

In English:
 * Can the language of this land
 * In the wind of incantation
 * Rising up to the heavens
 * Not seek for eternity?
 * Kristjan Jaak Peterson

In the period from 1525 to 1917, 14,503 titles were published in Estonian; by comparison, between 1918 and 1940, 23,868 titles were published.

In modern times A. H. Tammsaare, Jaan Kross, and Andrus Kivirähk are Estonia's best-known and most translated writers.

Official language
Writings in Estonian became significant only in the 19th century with the spread of the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment, during the Estophile Enlightenment Period (1750–1840). Although Baltic Germans at large regarded the future of Estonians as being a fusion with themselves, the Estophile educated class admired the ancient culture of the Estonians and their era of freedom before the conquests by Danes and Germans in the 13th century.

When the Republic of Estonia was established in 1918, Estonian became the official language of the newly independent country. Immediately after World War II, in 1945, over 97% of the then population of Estonia self-identified as native ethnic Estonians and spoke the language.

When Estonia was invaded and reoccupied by the Soviet army in 1944, the status of the Estonian language effectively changed to one of the two official languages (Russian being the other one). Many immigrants from Russia entered Estonia under Soviet encouragement. In the 1970s, the pressure of bilingualism for Estonians was intensified. Although teaching Estonian to non-Estonians in local schools was formally compulsory, in practice, the teaching and learning of the Estonian language by Russian-speakers was often considered unnecessary by the Soviet authorities. In 1991, with the restoration of Estonia's independence, Estonian went back to being the only official language in Estonia. Starting from 2004, when Estonia joined the European Union, the Estonian language is also one of the (now 24) official languages of the EU.

The return of former Soviet immigrants to their countries of origin at the end of the 20th century has brought the proportion of native Estonian-speakers in Estonia now back above 70%. Large parts of the first and second generation immigrants in Estonia have now adopted the Estonian language (over 50% as of the 2022 census).

Dialects
The Estonian dialects are divided into two groups – the northern and southern dialects, historically associated with the cities of Tallinn in the north and Tartu in the south, in addition to a distinct kirderanniku dialect, Northeastern coastal Estonian.

The northern group consists of the keskmurre or central dialect that is also the basis for the standard language, the läänemurre or western dialect, roughly corresponding to Lääne County and Pärnu County, the saarte murre (islands' dialect) of Saaremaa, Hiiumaa, Muhu and Kihnu, and the idamurre or eastern dialect on the northwestern shore of Lake Peipus.

One of the pronunciation features of the Saaremaa dialect is the lack of the 'õ' vowel. A five-metre monument erected in 2020, marking the "border" between the vowels 'õ' and 'ö', humorously makes reference to this fact.

South Estonian consists of the Tartu, Mulgi, Võro and Seto varieties. These are sometimes considered either variants of South Estonian or separate languages altogether. Also, Seto and Võro distinguish themselves from each other less by language and more by their culture and their respective Christian confession.

Alphabet
Estonian employs the Latin script as the basis for its alphabet. The script adds the letters ä, ö, ü, and õ, plus the later additions š and ž. The letters c, q, w, x and y are limited to proper names of foreign origin, and f, z, š, and ž appear in loanwords and foreign names only. Ö and Ü are pronounced similarly to their equivalents in Swedish and German. Unlike in standard German but like Swedish (when followed by 'r') and Finnish, Ä is pronounced [æ], as in English mat. The vowels Ä, Ö and Ü are clearly separate phonemes and inherent in Estonian, although the letter shapes come from German. The letter õ denotes, unrounded , or a close-mid back unrounded vowel. It is almost identical to the Bulgarian ъ and the Vietnamese ơ, and is also used to transcribe the Russian ы. Additionally C, Q, W, X, and Y are used in writing foreign proper names. They do not occur in Estonian words, and are not officially part of the alphabet. Including all the foreign letters, the alphabet consists of the following 32 letters:

Orthography
Although the Estonian orthography is generally guided by phonemic principles, with each grapheme corresponding to one phoneme, there are some historical and morphological deviations from this: for example preservation of the morpheme in declension of the word (writing b, g, d in places where p, k, t is pronounced) and in the use of 'i' and 'j'. Where it is very impractical or impossible to type š and ž, they are replaced by sh and zh in some written texts, although this is considered incorrect. Otherwise, the h in sh represents a voiceless glottal fricative, as in Pasha (pas-ha); this also applies to some foreign names.

Modern Estonian orthography is based on the "Newer orthography" created by Eduard Ahrens in the second half of the 19thcentury based on Finnish orthography. The "Older orthography" it replaced was created in the 17thcentury by Bengt Gottfried Forselius and Johann Hornung based on standard German orthography. Earlier writing in Estonian had, by and large, used an ad hoc orthography based on Latin and Middle Low German orthography. Some influences of the standard German orthography – for example, writing 'W'/'w' instead of 'V'/'v' – persisted well into the 1930s.

Vowels
There are 9 vowels and 36 diphthongs, 28 of which are native to Estonian.[1] All nine vowels can appear as the first component of a diphthong, but only /ɑ e i o u/ occur as the second component. A vowel characteristic of Estonian is the unrounded back vowel /ɤ/, which may be close-mid back, close back, or close-mid central.

Consonants
Word-initial b, d, g occur only in loanwords and some old loanwords are spelled with p, t, k instead of etymological b, d, g: pank 'bank'. Word-medially and word-finally, b, d, g represent short plosives /p, t, k/ (may be pronounced as partially voiced consonants), p, t, k represent half-long plosives /pː, tː, kː/, and pp, tt, kk represent overlong plosives /pːː, tːː, kːː/; for example: kabi /kɑpi/ 'hoof' — kapi /kɑpːi/ 'wardrobe [ gen sg ] — kappi /kɑpːːi/ 'wardrobe [ ptv  sg ]'.

Before and after b, p, d, t, g, k, s, h, f, š, z, ž, the sounds [p], [t], [k] are written as p, t, k, with some exceptions due to morphology or etymology.

Representation of palatalised consonants is inconsistent, and they are not always indicated.

ŋ is an allophone of /n/ before /k/.

While peripheral Estonian dialects are characterized by various degrees of vowel harmony, central dialects have almost completely lost the feature. Since the standard language is based on central dialects, it has no vowel harmony either. In the standard language, the front vowels occur exclusively on the first or stressed syllable, although vowel harmony is still apparent in older texts.

Grammar
Typologically, Estonian represents a transitional form from an agglutinating language to a fusional language. The canonical word order is SVO (subject–verb–object), although often debated among linguists.

In Estonian, nouns and pronouns do not have grammatical gender, but nouns and adjectives decline in fourteen cases: nominative, genitive, partitive, illative, inessive, elative, allative, adessive, ablative, translative, terminative, essive, abessive, and comitative, with the case and number of the adjective always agreeing with that of the noun (except in the terminative, essive, abessive and comitative, where there is agreement only for the number, the adjective being in the genitive form). Thus the illative for kollane maja ("a yellow house") is kollasesse majja ("into a yellow house"), but the terminative is kollase majani ("as far as a yellow house"). With respect to the Proto-Finnic language, elision has occurred; thus, the actual case marker may be absent, but the stem is changed, cf. maja – majja and the Ostrobothnia dialect of Finnish maja – majahan.

The verbal system has no distinct future tense (the present tense serves here) and features special forms to express an action performed by an undetermined subject (the "impersonal").

Vocabulary
Although the Estonian and Germanic languages are of very different origins and the vocabulary is considered quite different from that of the Indo-European family, one can identify many similar words in Estonian and English, for example. This is primarily because the Estonian language has borrowed nearly one-third of its vocabulary from Germanic languages, mainly from Low Saxon (Middle Low German) during the period of German rule, and High German (including standard German). The percentage of Low Saxon and High German loanwords can be estimated at 22–25 percent, with Low Saxon making up about 15 percent. Prior to the wave of new loanwords from English in the 20th and 21st centuries, historically, Swedish and Russian were also sources of borrowings but to a much lesser extent. In borrowings, often 'b' and 'p' are interchangeable, for example 'baggage' becomes 'pagas', 'lob' (to throw) becomes 'loopima'. The initial letter 's' before another consonant is often dropped, for example 'skool' becomes 'kool', 'stool' becomes 'tool'.

Ex nihilo lexical enrichment
Estonian language planners such as Ado Grenzstein (a journalist active in Estonia from the 1870s to the 1890s) tried to use formation ex nihilo (Urschöpfung); i.e. they created new words out of nothing.

The most well-known reformer of the Estonian language, Johannes Aavik (1880–1973), used creations ex nihilo (cf. 'free constructions', Tauli 1977), along with other sources of lexical enrichment such as derivations, compositions and loanwords (often from Finnish; cf. Saareste and Raun 1965: 76). In Aavik's dictionary (1921) lists approximately 4000 words. About 40 of the 200 words created by Johannes Aavik allegedly ex nihilo are in common use today. Examples are * ese 'object', * kolp 'skull', * liibuma 'to cling',  * naasma 'to return, come back', * nõme 'stupid, dull'.

Many of the coinages that have been considered (often by Aavik himself) as words concocted ex nihilo could well have been influenced by foreign lexical items; for example, words from Russian, German, French, Finnish, English and Swedish. Aavik had a broad classical education and knew Ancient Greek, Latin and French. Consider roim 'crime' versus English crime or taunima 'to condemn, disapprove' versus Finnish tuomita 'to condemn, to judge' (these Aavikisms appear in Aavik's 1921 dictionary). These words might be better regarded as a peculiar manifestation of morpho-phonemic adaptation of a foreign lexical item.

Example text
Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Estonian and English:
 * Kõik inimesed sünnivad vabadena ja võrdsetena oma väärikuselt ja õigustelt. Neile on antud mõistus ja südametunnistus ja nende suhtumist üksteisesse peab kandma vendluse vaim.

 * All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

title: Estonian language


text:
E-Prime

E-Prime (short for English-Prime or English Prime, sometimes É or E′) denotes a restricted form of English in which authors avoid all forms of the verb to be.

E-Prime excludes forms such as be, being, been, present tense forms (am, is, are), past tense forms (was, were) along with their negative contractions (isn't, aren't, wasn't, weren't), and nonstandard contractions such as ain't. E-Prime also excludes contractions such as I'm, we're, you're, he's, she's, it's, they're, there's, here's, where's, when's, why's, how's, who's, what's, and that's.

Some scholars claim that E-Prime can clarify thinking and strengthen writing, while others doubt its utility.

History
D. David Bourland Jr., who had studied under Alfred Korzybski, devised E-Prime as an addition to Korzybski's general semantics in the late 1940s. Bourland published the concept in a 1965 essay entitled "A Linguistic Note: Writing in E-Prime" (originally published in General Semantics Bulletin). The essay quickly generated controversy within the general semantics field, partly because practitioners of general semantics sometimes saw Bourland as attacking the verb to be as such, and not just certain usages.

Bourland collected and published three volumes of essays in support of his innovation. The first (1991), co-edited by Paul Dennithorne Johnston, bore the title: To Be or Not: An E-Prime Anthology. For the second, More E-Prime: To Be or Not II, published in 1994, he added a third editor, Jeremy Klein. Bourland and Johnston then edited a third book, E-Prime III: a third anthology, published in 1997.

Functions of "to be"
In English, the verb 'to be' (also known as the copula) has several distinct functions:

 * identity: noun-phrase copula definite-noun
 * The cat is my only pet.
 * class membership: definite-noun copula noun-phrase
 * Garfield is a cat.
 * class inclusion: noun-phrase copula noun-phrase
 * A cat is an animal.
 * predication: noun-phrase copula adjective
 * The cat is furry.
 * ownership: noun-phrase copula possessive-noun
 * The cat is theirs.
 * auxiliary: noun-phrase copula verb-phrase
 * The cat is sleeping. – with the copula being part of the progressive aspect with the present participle
 * The cat is being bitten by the dog. – with the copula being part of the passive with the past participle of a transitive verb
 * existence: medial-proadverb-of-location copula noun-phrase
 * There is a cat.
 * location: noun-phrase copula location-phrase
 * The cat is nowhere to be found.

Bourland sees specifically the "identity" and "predication" functions as pernicious but advocates the exclusion of all forms for the sake of simplicity. In the case of the "existence" form or the "location" form, terms such as exist, sit or lie could substitute for the copula.

Some ergative verbs may substitute the copula, including taste, feel, smell, sound, grow, hinge, remain, rest, stay, reside, and turn, among others.

Examples
One could rewrite the functions of "to be" as follows:

 * "The cat is my only pet": "I have only a pet cat".
 * "The cat is Garfield": "I call my cat Garfield".
 * "Garfield is a cat": "Garfield belongs to the cat species".
 * "A cat is an animal": "'Cat' denotes an animal".
 * "The cat is furry": "The cat feels furry" / "The cat looks furry" / "The cat has fur".
 * "The cat is sleeping": "The cat sleeps".
 * "The dog is chasing the cat": "The dog chases the cat".
 * "There is a cat": "A cat exists there".
 * "The cat is on the mat": "The cat sits on the mat".
 * "The cat is here": anything context-specific: "I see/hear/smell/sense/suspect (the presence of) the cat here"

Rationale
Bourland and other advocates also suggest that use of E-Prime leads to a less dogmatic style of language that reduces the possibility of misunderstanding or conflict.

Kellogg and Bourland describe misuse of the verb to be as creating a "deity mode of speech", allowing "even the most ignorant to transform their opinions magically into god-like pronouncements on the nature of things".

Psychological effects
While teaching at the University of Florida, Alfred Korzybski counseled his students to "eliminate the infinitive and verb forms of 'to be' from their vocabulary, whereas a second group continued to use 'I am,' 'You are,' 'They are' statements as usual. For example, instead of saying, 'I am depressed,' a student was asked to eliminate that emotionally primed verb and to say something else, such as, 'I feel depressed when ...' or 'I tend to make myself depressed about ...'"

Korzybski observed improvement "of one full letter grade" by "students who did not generalize by using that infinitive".

Albert Ellis advocated the use of E-Prime when discussing psychological distress to encourage framing these experiences as temporary (see also Solution focused brief therapy) and to encourage a sense of agency by specifying the subject of statements. According to Ellis, rational emotive behavior therapy "has favored E-Prime more than any other form of psychotherapy and I think it is still the only form of therapy that has some of its main books written in E-Prime". However, Ellis did not always use E-Prime because he believed it interferes with readability.

Criticisms
Many authors have questioned E-Prime's effectiveness at improving readability and reducing prejudice (Lakoff, 1992; Murphy, 1992; Parkinson, 1992; Kenyon, 1992; French, 1992, 1993; Lohrey, 1993). These authors observed that communication under the copula ban can remain obscure and imply prejudice, while losing important speech patterns, such as identities and identification. Further, prejudices and judgments may become more difficult to notice or refute.

Various arguments against E-Prime (in the context of general semantics) have been conjectured:

 * "Effective writing techniques" are not relevant to general semantics as a discipline, and therefore it should not be promoted as general semantics practice. E-Prime does not distinguish statements that disobey the principles of general semantics from statements that do not. It lacks consistency with the other tenets of general semantics and should not be included into the discipline.
 * The advocates of E-Prime have not proven that it is easier to exclude the verb to be than to eliminate only the "is" of identity and the "is" of predication. It may well be easier to do the latter for many people. To be statements convey not only identity but also asymmetrical relations ("X heights more than Y"); negation ("A differs from B"); location ("Another castle contains the princess"); auxiliary ("He goes to the store") etc., forms that would also have to be excluded.
 * The elimination of a whole class of sentences results in fewer alternatives and is likely to make writing less, rather than more, interesting. One can improve bad writing more by reducing use of the verb 'to be' than by excluding it.
 * The context often ameliorates the possible harmful effects from the use of the "is" of identity and the "is" of predication, so it is not necessary to eliminate all such sentences. For example, "He is a judge" in response to a question about what someone does for a living would not be questionable, although "He works as a judge" would be an equivalent E-Prime sentence.
 * Excluding to be has little effect on eliminating identity. For example, a statement of apparently equal identification, "The silly ban on copula continues," can be made without the copula assuming an identity rather than asserting it, consequently hampering our awareness of it.
 * Identity-in-the-language is not the same as the far more important identity-in-reaction (identification). General semantics cuts the link between the two through the practice of silence on the objective levels, adopting a self-reflexive attitude, e.g., "as I see it" "it seems to me" etc., and by the use of quotation marks—without using E-Prime. One of the best languages for time-binding is mathematics, which relies heavily on the notion of equivalence and equality. For the purposes of time-binding, it may be better to cut the link between identity-in-the-language and identity-in-reaction.

According to an article (written in E-Prime and advocating a role for E-Prime in ESL and EFL programs) published by the Office of English Language Programs of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in the State Department of the United States, "Requiring students to avoid the verb to be on every assignment would deter students from developing other fundamental skills of fluent writing."

Publications

 * Laws of Form by G. Spencer-Brown, 1969 (except for one statement)
 * Quantum Psychology, by Robert Anton Wilson (1990)
 * Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by David Gerrold has a chapter about (and written in) E-Prime
 * The New American Standard Bible in E-Prime, composed by Dr. David F. Maas
 * Scoundrel Days: A Memoir, 2017 Brentley Frazer
 * An Insider’s Guide to Robert Anton Wilson by Eric Wagner
 * A New Guide to Rational Living, by Albert Ellis and Robert A. Harper (1975)

title: E-Prime