text:
Talk:Adamic language

Dee's Adamic langauge
I just added some info about Dee's Adamic language. Right now it's pretty bare - just cut-and-paste (with some clean-up) from the articles they point back to. It still needs some dates and references. Kheph777 (talk) 11:12, 30 April 2010 (UTC)

Glossary reposting
The glossary and other items not pertinent to the article have been repeatedly reposted here, despite warnings that they do not belong. If it is reposted, it will once again be removed, and I will semi-protect the page to avoid this continuous disruption. This will have the effect of restricting comments here to registered users, and is less desirable than the alternative: that anonymous users practice appropriate restraint. - Nunh-huh 16:32, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

 * Since the material in question has been repeatedly reposted by unregistered users despite warnings, I have semi-protected the page. This page is for discussion of the article, and not for discussion of the topic in general. - Nunh-huh 19:51, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

It referred to asking people for their comments before looking at making additions to the pages about Adamic and also other subjects. Please forgive me. I really can't even begin to understand your argument. Please explain why you have removed discussion of a matter which would appear to clear up several mysteries, on several pages, in a way which seems pretty much self apparent once it is pointed out. Why did you remove comments? And why did you remove what appears to amount to a citation from Wikipedea itself stating that new insights appear in encyclopedeas, including Wikipedea. It seems to be saying that is a positive. I saved that quote and I’ve put it below.

Online collaboratives are run by users, some are experts, some are not… ''Expect surprising insights. A major encyclopedia, like Britannica, can have articles written by highly intelligent experts who might describe astounding insights in their articles. However, even the street-level Wikipedia sometimes contains articles by intelligent experts or eyewitnesses, who avoided the committee censorship, and wrote profound insights within a Wikipedia article. Also, profound information might still exist in prior Wikipedia revisions: check the Talk discussion of an article to see if expert opinions were removed but still exist in prior revisions that can be viewed''.

Can I make a practical suggestion. As you feel so strongly about ensuring that no discussion can take place upon the subject of additions to the page about Adamic, could you please explain your feelings? Maybe we can overcome your personal issues on the matter and we can then move on to further rational discussion of things which otherwise seem to make little rational sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by It's Snowball (talk • contribs)

 * I'll make a suggestion as well: don't misstate the facts. I am encouraging discussion here aimed at improvement of the article. I have no "personal issues". If anyone re-adds the glossary - which is bizarre screed, not rational discourse - here, it will be removed and that person will be blocked.  Keep your discussion here limited to improving the article. WIkipedia is not going to be the web host for your personal idiosyncratic views. see WP:NOR. - Nunh-huh 23:04, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

You wrote: “I'll make a suggestion as well: don't misstate the facts… I have no “personal issues”. If anyone re-adds the glossary - which is bizarre screed, not rational discourse - here, it will be removed and that person will be blocked.” You also wrote:  “I am encouraging discussion here aimed at improvement of the article.”  Please forgive me. Anyone who has just read the notes above will see that they clearly state that people were asked to consider self apparent information on the subject of Adamic, with a view to see what, if anything, should be added to the page about the subject of the Adamic language, and quite possibly a number of other articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by It's Snowball (talk • contribs)

You have now gone from saying that information may only be placed on the discussion page about Adamic, provided for the purpose of discussion of possible additions or changes to the article about Adamic, provided it is about possible changes to the article on Adamic (which the information you are attempting to ban clearly is,) to saying that the information may not even be placed in the archive of past discussion and comment, and that if anyone places it here - or anywhere else, such as the discussion page archive - you will ban them completely from commenting in any way on Wikipedea where other people can consider the relevance of the comment to the subject. —Preceding unsigned comment added by It's Snowball (talk • contribs)

Forgive me, but how on earth can you possibly hope to react in such a strong way that you will not just ban all consideration of something on a discussion page, but ban anyone who attempts to place it there for consideration, or leave past discussion in the discussion page archive, while attempting to maintain that you do not have any personal feelings about the subject matter? —Preceding unsigned comment added by It's Snowball (talk • contribs)

Forgive me, but the use of the word “bizarre” was a bit of a give away. For you to feel that something is bizarre, you must clearly have pretty strong feelings about it. That is a feeling. You are plainly acting on your feelings towards something, and given your insistence upon citations from other sources, it would appear that you object strongly to anything that has not previously been presented. —Preceding unsigned comment added by It's Snowball (talk • contribs)

Can I suggest a simple test to see whether you are banning people from considering the subject matter. On my Talk Page you stated that the information may only be placed on a Talk Page. Does that mean that people are allowed to propose something for consideration in an article on their Talk Page and refer people to it on the discussion page, without it being removed and/or without them being banned from any comment on Wikipedea again? Or will you allow people to be notified of information to be discussed, prior to proposals being made to make additions or changes to the article about Adamic? —Preceding unsigned comment added by It's Snowball (talk • contribs)

Your behaviour has raised a number of points, not all of which have been raised yet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by It's Snowball (talk • contribs)

Snowball, you want to review WP:TALK for the purpose of Wikipedia talkpages. If you don't stick to discussing encyclopedic sources, your contributions may be blanked. You also want to read Wikipedia for an overview of what Wikipedia is. See WP:NOT for what Wikipedia is not. The policy that applies to your stuff is WP:NOR (read it). Bizarre or not, your material is of no interest to Wikipedia unless and until you have published it academically, or at least with a major publisher, eliciting reviews in notable media. Before you do that, there is nothing to discuss here. If you want to have this kind of discussion, kindly hold it at an internet forum of your choice, but not here. dab (𒁳) 10:57, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. I am now reading the Wikipedea policies. I have raised valid points above. I look forward to the responses upon those points. Also to hearing whether people will be allowed to consider whether additions or changes should be made to the article about Adamic on people's Talk Pages, or if the ban upon consideration of information, no matter how self evident, also extends to disallowing people from letting people know that discussion of the article about Adamic is taking place there instead.

Can I also ask if the ban is so total that it extends to other Wikipedea projects. —Preceding unsigned comment added by It's Snowball (talk • contribs)

 * Again, you need to actually read WP:NOR. Speculations and pet theories of Wikipedia editors are not ever going to be part of the encyclopedia. We are interested only in information that can be verified in a reliable source. - Nunh-huh 23:58, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

 * Hoping that I correctly attributed to "It's Snowball" the unsigned comments that appear to have been made by them. I'm trying to figure out who is saying what.jonathon (talk) 01:26, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Re: Asking for Comments: The consensus is that the glossary is, at best, irrelevant. WP:NOR, WP:RS, and WP:V apply; jonathon (talk) 01:26, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Re:self apparent information on the subject of Adamic: It was neither self-apparent, nor supported by any research in linguistics, grammatology, and related disciplines;
 * Re: Ban all discussion: The point of the talk page is to improve the article. This means discussion of sources, as to whether or not those sources meet WP:RS and WP:V criteria. If the proposed additions are original research, it is not to be placed on Wikipedia, because that violates both WP:RS and WP:V;
 * Re: I have raised valid points above: It has been explained why your proposals fail Wp:RS, WP:V, WP:NOR;
 * If that synopsis did not cover your points, list them clearly, with one line per point. jonathon (talk) 01:26, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * if you think that points that have been blanked were "self-evident", it should be extremely easy for you to provide a large number of sources making them. If nobody has ever made your point before, perhaps it isn't as self-evident as you believe. Again, the internet is wide, and there are many places other than Wikipedia where you can discuss your idea. It is unclear why you chose Wikipedia in particular for posting this: Wikipedia is a very specific project with a very specific aim. You should only be here if you are interested in what Wikipedia is doing. You don't go posting cookie recipes to websites specialized on dog breeding, do you. --dab (𒁳) 08:33, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Forgive me. Whenever I ask you a question, you seem to hide behind a page on Wikipedea. So with that in mind, would you mind beginning with the point about the direct quote from Wikipedea. —Preceding unsigned comment added by It's Snowball (talk • contribs) 16:24, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Wikipedia has a number of policies and guidelines on how to write an article. The quote you cited comes into play after the three major policy guidelines have been met.jonathon (talk) 18:17, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

You appear to have taken a very large step backwards. For some time now, I have been pointing out that I have not attempted to re-write the article. I am hoping that it will not be necessary to point this out again after this. We are only talking about being able to consider the relevance of the information to the page about Adamic on the talk page provided for that purpose. People cannot consider the relevance for themselves if the observations are removed and banned, along with anyone who dares refer to them anywhere on Wikipedea. Once again, could I ask that the quote from Wikipedea be addressed. Namely, that of allowing insight in Wikipedea. If the rules say it is wrong, then Wikipedea does not have a clear view upon it. The quote about finding insights on Wikipedea is on a front page on Wikipedea. —Preceding unsigned comment added by It's Snowball (talk • contribs) 19:20, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It's been considered; it's not cited to a reliable source, and so has no place in the encyclopedia. Since it has no place in the article, it has no place on the talk page. This is Wikipedia policy; if you think otherwise, you misunderstand WIkipedia policy. - Nunh-huh 07:43, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but that is plainly nonsense. The talk pages are here to discuss points so to judge their relevance. Not for anyone to insist that if anyone dare attempt to discuss the relevance of any point raised, they will all be banned from Wikipedea. Moreover, you have failed entirely to address the matter of Wikipedea's statement that insights are a positive to be expected on Wikipedea. —Preceding unsigned comment added by It's Snowball (talk • contribs) 19:12, 3 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Your opinion has been noted. If you repost this material here, I will block you. - Nunh-huh 01:14, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for making your position clear. Without wishing to sound disrespectful, the information about Adamic and it's written form Enochian, is being rewritten and will, quite properly, be posted here so that we can all comment on its relevance to the article. I take it from that that if anyone attempts to provide insights about reading the written form without the use of any dictionaries either here or anywhere else, such as the discussion page about Enochian, the information, those responsible for putting it there and any anyone attempting to discuss the relevance will also be banned.

For the sake of clarity, the written form is so self evident that as soon as the deliberate distractions, such as making gold and other glossaries - which really don't make any sense - are removed, Enochian can be read instantly. Like the verbal form of Adamic, it can say a multitude of things at the same time in different languages so that it is possible to begin reading Enochian with the alphabet alone.

This has been given to well over a thousand people now, and with just one exception, everyone was able to perceive it. Consequently, it will not be possible to say that it is just my idea. I take it that you will not allow people to see this for themselves either. Even though the original government code cracker, 007, John Dee, said that it contains a hidden message for mankind from God. (I'm not religious. I'm just open minded.)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by It's Snowball (talk • contribs) 17:19, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

 * There are a number of issues is ascribing Enochian as the written form of Adamic. The simplest issue to deal with is that the writing direction is opposite that of the earliest known writing systems. Other issues include relationship, or rather lack thereof, between the glyphs used in Enochian, and those of ancient writing system; the fact that it is an alphabet, and not abugida, or abjad, which most early writing systems were --- the exceptions were ideographic. John Dee's reference about a hidden message was to the content of the material he received. Specifically, he thought that the material could be decrypted using two different methods, to provide two different messages.jonathon (talk) 21:43, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the comments Jonathon. I’ve clearly tried to see whether the information that has become available is credible, and as such, whether it is relevant to the page about Adamic. That’s the kind of consideration that the matter needs and it’s really useful. Genuinely, thank you. Although my primary aim here is to see whether it is relevant to the article, and if so, what would be an appropriate addition either to the article or the discussion page, this kind of comment on the talk page is also useful in seeing if it is possible to shoot the new information down completely.

Some of what you have said now is very relevant and I’m strongly inclined to agree with some. The idea of an alphabet seemed at odds with what I have seen, for more than one reason. Firstly, the notion that this is the first form of communication seems to suggest that it is way too early for something like an alphabet. Also, I can’t see more than one of the characters in the Enochian tablets in what we are told by some sources is the alphabet. It appears that people can naturally read things in it in a number of languages, so an individual alphabet seems wrong. The notion of a alphabet seems also seems at odds with the new information, because since there appear to be no individual words in this form off communication, the idea of individual letters wouldn’t seem right. Rather, we are looking at similarities with all sorts of different kinds of symbols and sounds.

It would have been fantastic if we could dismiss it on the grounds that the direction is opposite to that of the earliest known writing systems. Unfortunately, characters can also be perceived as individual symbols, so that, for example, one person immediately identified one of the characters as a symbol for God in his culture. It was also perceived to be a womb and a heart. It seems that numbers can also be perceived, so that when the numerical number 7 is read in conjunction with the characters around it, it formed part of a word in a specific message. (An apparent greeting for the reader of the alphabet from Heaven.) Since people are able to perceive similarities with characters from different alphabets, as well as symbols, and because people are able to perceive words and phrases in different languages, I had to point out to people that they will be able to read it in the way that they are used to reading, whether that be from right to left, or top to bottom in one of the tablets, which I have yet to try.

Also on that point, it’s been pointed out that there are ancient tablets with an unknown origin in Chinese or Japanese, and that no matter where you begin reading, which changes you make in direction, and no matter how long you carry on reading, they continue to read coherently, poetically, and to educate the reader about spiritual matters. I know the Qu’ran is poetic and I’m under the impression the Torah is too, if they are read in the original language that they were delivered in. So if it is true about these oriental tablets, and I hope to find out, it seems reasonable to suspect they came from the same source. Since Enochian is sometimes written in boxes and is also very poetic, it seems that it would be a mistake to assume that anything that is written in it should be read in a particular way.

You said that John Dee thought that the material could be decrypted using two different methods, to provide two different messages. As it can say different things in the same language at the same time, and also say other things in other language at just the same time, what I have seen of it is not at odds with Dee’s theory, but goes considerably beyond even that. The interpretations, which appear to have been given to Kelley in a book at Glastonbury, and which seem to make no sense to most people, seem to have been a deliberate attempt to distract people from something that is far more obvious, once these distractions and any preconceived notions have been removed. It can be interpreted in many ways, and can be read in many ways. (My immediate impression was that as this is supposed to be the first language and way of writing in it, it would not bear much resemblance to any rules that we have in this day and age.)

My sincere thanks for the comments, and I look forward to your next observations. You clearly know a great deal about languages. As I understand it, you are also fluent in Hebrew and know a lot about religious tracts. I’d be interested to see how you and the others feel about removing the other comments and editing this down to the relevant points being considered, forgoing the information I originally posted on this discussion page for the time being and including a basic description of the notion being discussed. Would you also consider looking at some of the ways that the Enochian “alphabet” has already been interpreted? That would give you a better idea of the source of the information, and would also allow me to glean good comments for consideration. —Preceding unsigned comment added by It's Snowball (talk • contribs) 15:58, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Just FYI, when Dee recorded Enochian script in his journals, it was written from right to left. Writing it left to right was a simplification made by the Golden Dawn, which has nothing to do with how the original transmission was written. Skyerise (talk) 19:46, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

Dante/Eve
There was one point not adressed in the article and i'm not sure if it was adressed by dante himself. it says how Dante argued that Eve spoke first. it is interesting but not entirely accurate which is why the article should be reveiwed and certain changes made. we read in Gen. 2:19-23 that Adam not only named all the animals before Eve was even created, it also says how Adam named her "woman" because she came from "man". —Preceding unsigned comment added by HAMDMAN (talk • contribs) 18:52, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That was my first thought, but irrelevant to the article--the focus of the comment is that Dante said something about Adamic, not whether Dante's arguments were sound. But yes, according to the Bible, Dante as presented here was wrong.  I think the problem may be in the translation of "mulierum invenitur ante omnes fuisse locutam," since I'm assuming that's saying "the woman is said to have come before all" (out of context)--but not saying anything about her necessarily speaking first.  Maybe Dante's/Eco's Latin is the problem. Googling the phrase brings nothing up but mirrors of this article, so I'm betting it isn't even Dante.  I think, because of the Mormon/NonMormon games, this article is increasingly unsound academically.  On a side note, what's up with the Tamra Jean Braithwaite "source"? --Mrcolj (talk) 13:58, 24 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Caught it. The real phrase begins with "mulierEm.note"  Fixing in the article.  Okay, so Eco's Latin is good; Dante's Latin is irrelevant; Dante indeed says that Eve spoke first, and therefore it's Dante's version of or knowledge of the Bible that's the core problem.--Mrcolj (talk) 14:09, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Weasel Words
Common posters on this page may do well to read the Wikipedia's article on Weasel Words. This article is full of unsourced "many people believe ______" type statements, especially the LDS section.--Mrcolj (talk) 16:52, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Edit request on 3 January 2012
The following line from this entry is incorrect:

"In the Pearl of Great Price, a section of Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible, it refers to "a Book of Remembrance", written in language of Adam. "

The Pearl of Great Price is not a section of Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible, but rather, contains sections of Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible. The part of the Pearl of Great Price titled, in brief, "Abraham" came from a traslation of papyri.

The Wikipedia article "Pearl of Great Price" is acurate.

140.196.24.2 (talk) 22:05, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

 * Thank you; fixed as per the Pearl of Great Price article's information. Allens (talk) 01:36, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Hebrew not breaking correctly within (L2R) text. Not sure how to report this ...
In the text is: Some think that the "Pay Lay Ale" sentence is derived from the Hebrew phrase "pe le-El", פה לאל 'mouth to God'.

If the zoom is set so that the two Hebrew words must break, then פה is shown first at line's end with לאל beginning the next. This would be correct behavior if the entire sentence was right-to-left (פה at the end of the line, לאל starting the next). But embedded into an English (L2R) sentence reads incorrectly. (לאל פה)

Is this something that can be corrected. Or is it a generic problem inherent in hypertext? Or ...? I don't know much °about these things. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.9.54.4 (talk) 08:48, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 21 February 2012
The Latter-day Saint Endowment prayer circle once included use of the words "Pay Lay Ale",[16] which some adherents believed were Adamic words meaning "Oh God, hear the words of my mouth".

This is not quite accurate. The TEXT of the CEREMONY ITSELF explained that "pay lay ale" meant "Oh God, hear the words of my mouth" prior to the 1990 changes. I heard it myself dozens of times.

173.165.26.38 (talk) 16:59, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Not done: Please express your request in a 'please change X to Y' level of detail and provide a reliable source for factual changes. Thanks, Celestra (talk) 03:29, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 13 Sept 2012
There should be an mention and link to this site:

http://josephsmithpapers.org/paperDetails/sample-of-pure-language-circa-march-1832

A Q&A from Joseph Smith and samples of Adamic language are available on that page.

 * Not done. Your link does not seem to be validly formatted and comes up empty.  Please check it again. Thanks, Til Eulenspiegel (talk) 20:22, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

 * Please look at the link a second time. It works fine for me, and the link is to The Joseph Smith Papers material that is notable for Mormonism. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 22:30, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

 * It works now but didn't in September. Anyway I added a mention of it. Til Eulenspiegel /talk/ 23:04, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

it doesn't work now; 404 page not found. If another reference isn't found the line should be deleted. Richardson mcphillips (talk) 02:24, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Edit request 19 January 2016
Request that the following reference:
 * John S. Robertson, "Adamic Language", in Encyclopedia of Mormonism (New York: Macmillan) 1:18–19.

...be replaced with this:

Thanks. -- 155.95.90.245 (talk) 22:34, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done --allthefoxes (Talk) 23:16, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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I have just modified 3 one external links on Adamic language. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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Mormon section: what language does God speak?
Was Adam's language on earth the same as in the pre-existence? --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 02:27, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 May 2017
Please remove the following paragraph, as it is sacred to the Latter Day Saints. Leaving it in would be akin to building a pipeline through sacred Native American territory.

The Latter Day Saint endowment prayer circle once included use of the words "Pay Lay Ale". These untranslated words are no longer used in temple ordinances and have been replaced by an English version, "O God, hear the words of my mouth". Some believe that the "Pay Lay Ale" sentence is derived from the Hebrew phrase "pe le-El" (פה לאל), "mouth to God". 66.219.227.242 (talk) 15:51, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. Wikipedia is not censored. Izno (talk) 18:29, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

While the first request was somewhat a request for censorship, it would be respectful to honor it. Barring respect for sacred aspects of religions by Wikipedia admins, however, a fair argument for the removal of the aforementioned section is that the sources are anti-Mormon, and it is poor scholarship to use and to trust sources that are intentionally negative and destructive (fanatically positive works are also poor sources)--such sources (in any case, whether religious or otherwise) are generally filled with opinions and false or shakily-sourced information so they are not reliable. Wikipedia has a responsibility to use reliable and accurate sources, and parts of articles that cite variations of op-eds or inflated statements should be deleted as they are no more accurate than their sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Midawest (talk • contribs) 18:46, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
 * ❌ per WP:NOTCENSORED. Being critical of something doesn't automatically disqualify a source, especially over mundane claims of fact.  If there are other sources that dispute this, then you can certainly bring that up here.  –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 02:56, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Your response is appreciated but the argument used does not hold water. By that argument, one can write a book critical of Catholicism with a statement that Pope John Paul I was transgender, and that would count as a valid source. The burden of proof is on the sources cited, and as they do not provide evidence to support their claims, the parts of the article that rely on them should be removed. Contrary to the reason provided, this is not a matter of censorship anymore but a matter of true information sources from verifiable claims. If admins insist on not removing the section it must be made clear that the information is speculative (e.g. by preceding the lines with, "According to critics..."). Midawest (talk) 19:04, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

 * Oh, come on. There's nothing speculative about a phrase that was used by hundreds of thousands of people during their endowments. Sure, there is the old Church line, "Anybody talking about the Endowment Ceremony is not following church policy that forbids them from doing so, and since they're not following Church policy they're not good members, and since they're not good members they're not reliable."

 * But Wikipedia doesn't stack the deck in favor of Church censorship that way. Alephb (talk) 01:05, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

 * The issue is no longer one of censorship. Claiming "hundreds of thousands of people" did something without providing a source is the same poor scholarship that this article has. This is not an edit request that has to do with censorship anymore, but one of scholarship. It is poor scholarship to treat as fact statements from disaffected members of any group. One would not take Leah Remini's word on Scientology as fact unless they were aiming for poor scholarship (as 20/20 did last year). Put away personal feelings about a topic when discussing scholarship--the first request by the anonymous user at IP 66.219.227.242 was personal rather than scholarly, and your response was the same. If the admins fail to follow proper scholarship protocol then that is the fault of them and Wikipedia, but things need not be personal.Midawest (talk) 17:51, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

 * Indeed, neither of the sources cited appear to have hundreds of thousands of authors. While I agree that "not following Church policy = not reliable" is hardly a watertight argument, neither is "It used to say this and loads of (unnamed) people say so!"  FWIW my own (limited) experience is that sources antagonistic towards the church do not always show the most accurate understanding of its ordinances, even when those ordinances are open to the public.
 * Anyway, regardless of my POV, I think there is a simple solution here. I suggest the first sentence be changed to begin  'According to some authors, the Latter Day Saint endowment prayer circle once included ...'
 * On a related note, the end of that paragraph mentions the theory that "Pay Lay Ale" was taken from Hebrew. The second reference (by the Tanners) explains this theory and goes on to suggest that church leaders may have agreed with it, but says nothing about any claimed Adamic origin. Can anyone with access to the other book (by Naifeh & Smith) confirm that the words are/were claimed to be from the Adamic language?  If we can't at least find a source claiming that, then the whole paragraph is irrelevant to the article and this discussion is moot. Pastychomper (talk) 13:18, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
 * "According to some authors" might be useful waffling if the assertion were disputed in some cited reliable sources, but as far as I can see, it is not. - Nunh-huh 18:31, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The Naifeh & Smith book is partially available for reading and fully available for search on Google Books. The page referenced in the article (page 69) does mention the wording under discussion, but there is no claim in the book that the wording is Adamic (nor any reference to the Adamic language at any other point in the book). Pastychomper's point is a good one, and as neither source shows this being considered Adamic (and indeed one shows it instead as being considered Hebrew), I would advise the discussed paragraph is removed from the article as it is now irrelevant to the discussion of the Adamic language. Midawest (talk) 23:56, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Well spotted, I thought I tried Google books but clearly managed to miss that. Pastychomper (talk) 08:39, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the template. There appears to be some discussion below with users who could make the suggested alteration, if it had consensus. I trust they will do so if/when they agree to make some change. Izno (talk) 19:56, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

'''It appears that the current state of this is neutral and in favor of removing the paragraph as the resources used reference Hebrew rather than Adamic. I'll be calling for an edit based on this apparent consensus in the next few days if there are no opinions otherwise.''' Midawest (talk) 21:54, 19 December 2018 (UTC)
 * There's no consensus for the change you suggest. (And your use of the word "neutral" is confusing.) Two users are not a convincing "consensus". - Nunh-huh 10:52, 20 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Perhaps you might suggest better wording or share what is confusing? If not, your comment on the wording isn't of any value to your main point and is just empty and unwarranted criticism.
 * A lack of anything raised to the contrary indicates no dissensus which arguably isn't the same thing, but this talk page sees almost no action so expecting additional users to just happen to throw their two cents in is unreasonable. Most responses in this section have been emotionally charged and show no interest in adding to the discussion; the proper responses all indicate interest in changing or else demonstrate no reason not to change. Two users may not be a convincing consensus normally, but when the number of people present and interested in a discussion is no more than those two, and no one else raises an issue with the proposition, it can be reasonably claimed there is consensus.
 * An analogy to this situation now is that of a marriage of two loners: should they be forbidden their marriage just because no other showed up to vouch for them? The answer is obviously and uncontestedly that the wedding should still be performed by one who has the power, for to not do so is to show disregard for proper usage of that power (and thus would reflect very poorly on the justice of the peace that refused to perform the wedding).
 * Valid and scholarly reason has been presented for the removal of the paragraph, and refusal by editors to abide by that (or else to present valid counter-reasons) is just stalling at this point. If any editors want to continue to give vague or emotional reasons for not editing then that is their choice, but there is as much a consensus here as there realistically will be, so the edit ought to be performed, unless Wikipedia has become a place where we no longer care about proper scholarship and accuracy (in which case we ought to remove protection from all pages just to be sure inaccuracy is as unrestrained as possible). Midawest (talk) 04:47, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

 * In the name of love, will someone just censor this page already? Do we really want the two loners to never experience the joy of holy matrimony? Alephb (talk) 05:27, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * As stated above, censorship is not the issue here, even if that was the reason for the first request. Wikipedia has two separate pages devoted to the endowment ceremony so I think it's fair to say it doesn't censor in this area.  The issue is that this page is about the Adamic language.  I see Nunh-huh has added a cited statement that the words in question were claimed to be Adamic, which seems to answer my question above and (finally) represents some progress on the issue - thanks for that.  Given the bits about Hebrew (and assuming the sources are accurate) I suspect there's a discussion to be had around whether it was meant to be Adamic or to represent Adamic, but with the kind of sources we're relying on I doubt it would be a fruitful discussion.  Pastychomper (talk) 11:05, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Christianity
Why is this article in the Christianity WikiProject, if the concept derives from the Midrash? Dimadick (talk) 21:17, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Projects are wierd; sometimes they seem to want to leave their footprints everywhere. But if the article were better (by, like, mentioning Paradise Lost and Milton) it would be less of a mystery, I think. There's a nice article at which notes in passing and might serve as reference for the current efforts of the LDS Church to downplay the importance of the purported recovery of the Adamic language by Joseph Smith. - Nunh-huh 23:07, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, on a literal reading of Genesis you don't really need Midrash to come upon the idea that there must have been a first language -- Adam naming the animals, Eve naming her children, the Tower of Babel story. And so it wasn't a distinctly Jewish idea, even if the lead makes it look that way. Most Christians, at one point, believed there was an Adamic language. Alephb (talk) 23:30, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Did they believe that Adam was a real person, instead of a mythological character? Dimadick (talk) 08:52, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
 * The demythologization of a "historical Adam" is a fairly recent phenomenon, beginning with new styles of hermaneutics after the Rennaissance, and not becoming predominent until much later. Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) wrote an essay in 1941 titled "The New Testament and Mythology; The Problem of Demythologizing the New Testament Preaching" which helped to popularize the notion. The pertinent Christian writers (Dante, Milton, Bunyan) all seem to have thought Adam existed and was actually ancestor of all humans. - Nunh-huh 17:17, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

"the first speech act"
It says, "the first speech act is due to Eve, addressing the serpent, and not to Adam". What about when Adam said at Genesis 2:23 "And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." He was probably talking to God or a nearby Angel. Even if he was talking to himself, God could still hear him, just like when he named all the animals. It seems that the original language was in part made by Adam, since he created the animal names and the word "woman". 2600:1700:8830:8DF0:E8D1:613C:731F:26C7 (talk) 11:39, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Unexplained deletion
Future Perfect at Sunrise and Gabriel سليمى, you never gave any reasons for deleting Dante's name for God. I think it belongs in the article and I don't understand why you would think otherwise. Neither of you even looked at your handiwork; you both left the sentence ending with "as." You should pay better attention to your edits. Johanna-Hypatia (talk) 17:43, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, I'm sorry, my initial removal was actually just an accidental misclick, which I corrected an hour later when I noticed it. You then accidentally re-did the deletion while meaning to undo it, which I then corrected again . Sorry for the confusion.

 * That said, and just as an aside, while I do of course agree the name "I" needs to be in the text for the sentence to make sense, I'd question whether it should be linked to that phonetics article "close front unrounded vowel" as it is now. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:31, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

 * Thanks for untangling that. You question whether linguistic information belongs in an article on language? I saw your edit summary where you said this is an article on religion, not linguistics. Well, it's about both at the same time, so I say include the precise Italian pronunciation so that it's clear what Dante meant. Since the article is in English, the vowel information helps prevent confusion with the singular first-person pronoun, which it otherwise resembles. Johanna-Hypatia (talk) 20:14, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Adamic language


text:
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny) is a political-satirical opera composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht. It was first performed on 9 March 1930 at the Neues Theater in Leipzig.

Some interpreters have viewed the play as a critique of American society. Others have perceived it as a critique of the chaotic and immoral Weimar Republic, particularly Berlin of the 1920s with its rampant prostitution, unstable government, political corruption, and economic crises.

Composition history
Weill was asked by the 1927 Baden-Baden music festival committee to write a one-act chamber opera for the festival. He ended up writing Mahagonny-Songspiel, sometimes known as Das kleine Mahagonny, a concert work commissioned for voices and a small orchestra. The work was written in May 1927, and performed in June. It consisted of eleven numbers, including "Alabama Song" and "Benares Song".

Weill then continued to rework the material into a full opera while Brecht worked on the libretto. The opera had its premiere in Leipzig on 9 March 1930 and played in Berlin in December of the following year. The opera was banned by the Nazis in 1933 and did not have a significant production until the 1960s.

Weill's score uses a number of styles, including ragtime, jazz and formal counterpoint. The "Alabama Song" has been interpreted by a range of artists, notably Ute Lemper, The Doors and David Bowie.

Language
The lyrics for the "Alabama Song" and another song, the "Benares Song", are in English (albeit specifically idiosyncratic English) and are performed in that language even when the opera is performed in its original (German) language.

A few lines of the briefly interpolated song, "Asleep in the Deep" (1897), lyrics by Arthur J. Lamb, music by H. W. Petrie, referred to in the opera by its opening words, "Stürmisch die Nacht " or "Stormy the Deep", are sung in the German version of the song, composed on verses of Martell, under the title "Des Seemanns Los" (The Sailor's Fate), when the opera is sung in the original German.

Although the name of the city itself sounds like the English word mahogany and its German-language equivalent, Mahagoni, the character Leokadja Begbick states that it means "City of Nets" while Brecht stated that it was a made-up word.

Performance history
The opera has played in opera houses around the world. Never achieving the popularity of Weill and Brecht's The Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny is still considered a work of stature with a haunting score. Herbert Lindenberger in his book Opera in History, for example, views Mahagonny alongside Schoenberg's Moses und Aron as indicative of the two poles of modernist opera.

Following the Leipzig premiere, the opera was presented in Berlin in December 1931 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm conducted by Alexander von Zemlinsky with Lotte Lenya as Jenny, Trude Hesterberg as Begbick, and Harald Paulsen as Jimmy. Another production was presented in January 1934 in Copenhagen at the Det ny Teater. Other productions within Europe waited until the end of the Second World War, some notable ones being in January 1963 in London at Sadler's Wells Opera conducted by Colin Davis and in Berlin in September 1977 by the Komische Oper.

It was not presented in the United States until 1970, when a short-lived April production at the Phyllis Anderson Theatre off Broadway starred Barbara Harris as Jenny, Frank Porretta as Jimmy, and Estelle Parsons as Begbick. It was then presented in Boston in 1973 under the direction of Sarah Caldwell.

The first university production in the US was in 1973 at UC Berkeley, directed by Jean-Bernard Bucky and Michael Senturia.

A full version was presented at the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1974, with Gilbert Price as Jimmy and Stephanie Cotsirilos as Jenny. Kurt Kasznar played Moses. The libretto was performed in an original translation by Michael Feingold; the production was directed by Alvin Epstein. In October 1978, Yale presented a "chamber version" adapted and directed by Keith Hack, with John Glover as Jimmy and June Gable as Begbick. Mark Linn-Baker played Fatty; Michael Gross was Trinity Moses. In November 1979, Mahagonny debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in a John Dexter production conducted by James Levine. The cast included Teresa Stratas as Jenny, Astrid Varnay as Begbick, Richard Cassilly as Jimmy, Cornell MacNeil as Moses, Ragnar Ulfung as Fatty and Paul Plishka as Joe. The production was televised in 1979 and was released on DVD in 2010. This production was streamed through the Met Opera on Demand platform on 12 December 2020 and 3-4 July 2021.

The Los Angeles Opera presented the opera in September 1989 under conductor Kent Nagano and with a Jonathan Miller production. Other notable productions in Europe from the 1980s included the March 1986 presentation by the Scottish Opera in Glasgow; a June 1990 production in Florence by the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. In October 1995 and 1997, the Paris Opera staged by Graham Vick, under the baton of Jeffrey Tate starring Marie McLaughlin as Jenny, Felicity Palmer (1995) and Kathryn Harries (1997) as Begbick, and Kim Begley (1995)/Peter Straka (1997) as Jimmy.

The July 1998 Salzburg Festival production featured Catherine Malfitano as Jenny, Gwyneth Jones as Begbick, and Jerry Hadley as Jimmy. The Vienna State Opera added it to its repertoire in January 2012 in a production by Jérôme Deschamps conducted by Ingo Metzmacher starring Christopher Ventris as Jimmy and Angelika Kirchschlager as Jenny, notably casting young mezzo-soprano Elisabeth Kulman as Begbick, breaking the tradition of having a veteran soprano (like Varnay or Jones) or musical theater singer (like Patti LuPone) perform the role.

Productions within the US have included those in November 1998 by the Lyric Opera of Chicago directed by David Alden. Catherine Malfitano repeated her role as Jenny, while Felicity Palmer sang Begbick, and Kim Begley sang the role of Jimmy. The Los Angeles Opera's February 2007 production directed by John Doyle and conducted by James Conlon included Audra McDonald as Jenny, Patti LuPone as Begbick, and Anthony Dean Griffey as Jimmy. This production was recorded on DVD, and subsequently won the 2009 Grammy Awards for "Best Classical Album" and "Best Opera Recording."

In 2014 it was performed using an alternate libretto as a "wrestling opera" at the Oakland Metro by the performers of Hoodslam.

A major new production had its world premiere in July 2019 at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen with stage direction by Ivo van Hove. It is a co-production of Dutch National Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, and Les Theatres De La Ville De Luxembourg.

Act 1
Scene 1: A desolate no-man's land

A truck breaks down. Three fugitives from justice get out and find themselves in the city of Mahagonny: Fatty the Bookkeeper, Trinity Moses, and Leocadia Begbick. Because the federal agents pursuing them will not search this far north, and they are in a good location to attract ships coming south from the Alaskan gold fields, Begbick decides that they can profit by staying where they are and founding a pleasure city, where men can have fun, because there is nothing else in the world to rely on.

Scene 2

The news of Mahagonny spreads quickly, and sharks from all over flock to the bait, including the whore Jenny Smith, who is seen, with six other girls, singing the "Alabama Song", in which she waves goodbye to her home and sets out in pursuit of whiskey, dollars and pretty boys.

Scene 3

In the big cities, where men lead boring, purposeless lives, Fatty and Moses spread the gospel of Mahagonny, city of gold, among the disillusioned.

Scene 4

Four Alaskan Lumberjacks who have shared hard times together in the timberlands and made their fortunes set off together for Mahagonny. Jimmy Mahoney and his three friends – Jacob Schmidt, Bank Account Billy, and Alaska Wolf Joe – sing of the pleasures awaiting them in "Off to Mahagonny", and look forward to the peace and pleasure they will find there.

Scene 5

The four friends arrive in Mahagonny, only to find other disappointed travelers already leaving. Begbick, well-informed about their personal tastes, marks down her prices, but for the penurious Billy, they still seem too high. Jimmy impatiently calls for the girls of Mahagonny to show themselves, so he can make a choice. Begbick suggests Jenny as the right girl for Jack, who finds her rates too high. She pleads with Jack to reconsider ("Havana Song"), which arouses Jim's interest, and he chooses her. Jenny and the girls sing a tribute to "the Jimmys from Alaska."

Scene 6

Jimmy and Jenny get to know one another as she asks him to define the terms of their contact: Does he wish her to wear her hair up or down, to wear fancy underwear or none at all? "What is your wish?" asks Jim, but Jenny evades answering.

Scene 7

Begbick, Fatty, and Moses meet to discuss the pleasure city's financial crisis: People are leaving in droves, and the price of whiskey is sinking rapidly. Begbick suggests going back to civilization, but Fatty reminds her that the federal agents have been inquiring for her in nearby Pensacola. Money would solve everything, declares Begbick, and she decides to soak the four new arrivals for all they've got.

Scene 8

Jimmy, restless, attempts to leave Mahagonny because he misses the wife he left in Alaska.

Scene 9

In front of the Rich Man's Hotel, Jimmy and the others sit lazily as a pianist plays Tekla Bądarzewska's "A Maiden's Prayer". With growing anger, Jimmy sings of how his hard work and suffering in Alaska have led only to this. Drawing a knife, he shouts for Begbick, while his friends try to disarm him and the other men call to have him thrown out. Calm again, he tells Begbick that Mahagonny can never make people happy: it has too much peace and quiet.

Scene 10

As if in answer to Jimmy's complaint, the city is threatened by a hurricane. Everyone sings in horror of the destruction awaiting them.

Scene 11

Tensely, people watch for the hurricane's arrival. The men sing a hymn-like admonition not to be afraid. Jim meditatively compares Nature's savagery to the far greater destructiveness of Man. Why do we build, he asks, if not for the pleasure of destroying? Since Man can outdo any hurricane, fear makes no sense. For the sake of human satisfaction, nothing should be forbidden: If you want another man's money, his house or his wife, knock him down and take it; do what you please. As Begbick and the men ponder Jimmy's philosophy, Fatty and Moses rush in with news: The hurricane has unexpectedly struck Pensacola, destroying Begbick's enemies, the federal agents. Begbick and her cohorts take it as a sign that Jimmy is right; they join him, Jenny, and his three friends in singing a new, defiant song: If someone walks over someone else, then it's me, and if someone gets walked on, then it's you. In the background, the men continue to chant their hymn as the hurricane draws nearer.

Act 2
Scene 12

Magically, the hurricane bypasses Mahagonny, and the people sing in awe of their miraculous rescue. This confirms Begbick's belief in the philosophy of "Do what you want," and she proceeds to put it into effect.

Scene 13 at the renovated "Do It" tavern.

The men sing of the four pleasures of life: Eating, Lovemaking, Fighting, and Drinking. First comes eating: To kitschy cafe music, Jimmy's friend Jacob gorges until he keels over and dies. The men sing a chorale over his body, saluting "a man without fear".

Scene 14: Loving.

While Begbick collects money and issues tips on behavior, Moses placates the impatient men queuing to make love to Jenny and the other whores. The men sing the "Mandalay Song", warning that love does not last forever, and urging those ahead of them to make it snappy.

Scene 15: Fighting.

The men flock to see a boxing match between Trinity Moses and Jim's friend Alaska Wolf Joe. While most of the men, including the ever-cautious Billy, bet on the burly Moses, Jim, out of friendship, bets heavily on Joe. The match is manifestly unfair; Moses not only wins but kills Joe in knocking him out.

Scene 16: Drinking.

In an effort to shake off the gloom of Joe's death, Jimmy invites everyone to have a drink on him. The men sing "Life in Mahagonny", describing how one could live in the city for only five dollars a day, but those who wanted to have fun always needed more. Jim, increasingly drunk, dreams of sailing back to Alaska. He takes down a curtain rod for a mast and climbs on the pool table, pretending it is a ship; Jenny and Billy play along. Jimmy is abruptly sobered up when Begbick demands payment for the whiskey as well as for the damage to her property. Totally broke, he turns in a panic to Jenny, who explains her refusal to help him out in the song "Make your own bed" – an adaptation of the ideas he proclaimed at the end of act 1. Jim is led off in chains as the chorus, singing another stanza of "Life in Mahagonny", returns to its pastimes. Trinity Moses assures the crowd that Jimmy will pay for his crimes with his life.

Scene 17

At night, Jim alone and chained to a lamppost sings a plea for the sun not to rise on the day of his impending trial.

Act 3
Scene 18: In the courtroom

Moses, like a carnival barker, sells tickets to the trials. He serves as prosecutor, Fatty as defense attorney, Begbick as judge. First comes the case of Toby Higgins, accused of premeditated murder for the purpose of testing an old revolver. Fatty invites the injured party to rise, but no one does so, since the dead do not speak. Toby bribes all three, and as a result, Begbick dismisses the case. Next Jimmy's case is called. Chained, he is led in by Billy, from whom he tries to borrow money; Billy of course refuses, despite Jim's plea to remember their time together in Alaska. In virtually the same speech he used to attack Higgins, Moses excoriates him for not paying his bills, for seducing Jenny (who presents herself as a plaintiff) to commit a "carnal act" with him for money, and for inciting the crowd with "an illegal joyous song" on the night of the typhoon. Billy, with the chorus's support, counters that, in committing the latter act, Jimmy discovered the laws by which Mahagonny lives. Moses argues that Jim hastened his friend Joe's death in a prizefight by betting on him, and Billy counters by asking who actually killed Joe. Moses does not reply. But there is no answer for the main count against him. Jim gets short sentences for his lesser crimes, but for having no money, he is sentenced to death. Begbick, Fatty, and Moses, rising to identify themselves as the injured parties, proclaim "in the whole human race / there is no greater criminal / than a man without money". As Jim is led off to await execution, everyone sings the "Benares Song", in which they long for that exotic city "where the sun is shining." But Benares has been destroyed by an earthquake. "Where shall we go?" they ask.

Scene 19: At the gallows

Jim says a tender goodbye to Jenny, who, dressed in white, declares herself his widow. He surrenders her to Billy, his last remaining companion from Alaska. When he tries to delay the execution by reminding the people of Mahagonny that God exists, they play out for him, under Moses' direction, the story of "God in Mahagonny", in which the Almighty condemns the town and is overthrown by its citizens, who declare that they can not be sent to Hell because they are already in Hell. Jim, chastened, asks only for a glass of water, but is refused even this as Moses gives the signal for the trap to be sprung.

Scene 20

A caption advises that, after Jim's death, increasing hostility among the city's various factions has caused the destruction of Mahagonny. To a potpourri of themes from earlier in the opera, groups of protesters are seen on the march, in conflict with one another, while the city burns in the background. Jenny and the whores carry Jim's clothing and accessories like sacred relics; Billy and several men carry his coffin. In a new theme, they and the others declare, "Nothing you can do will help a dead man". Begbick, Fatty, and Moses appear with placards of their own, joining the entire company in its march and declaring "Nothing will help him or us or you now," as the opera ends in chaos.

Act 1

 * Scene 1: Gesucht werden Leokadja Begbick ("The Desired Progress of Leocadia Begbick")
 * Scene 1: Sie soll sein wie ein Netz ("It Should Be Made Like a Net")
 * Scene 2: Rasch wuchs ("Growing Up Quickly" ) / Moon of Alabama ("Oh, Show Us The Way...")
 * Scene 3: Die Nachricht ("The News")
 * Scene 4: In den nächsten Tagen ("In the Next Few Days")
 * Scene 5: Damals kam unter Anderen ("Among the Crowd There Came")
 * Scene 5: Heraus, ihr Schönen von Mahagonny ("Come Out, You Beauties of Mahagonny")
 * Scene 5: Ach, bedenken Sie ("Oh Worries")
 * Scene 6: Ich habe gelernt ("I Have Learned")
 * Scene 7: Alle großen Unternehmungen ("All Great Things")
 * Scene 7: Auch ich bin einmal ("Also I Was Once")
 * Scene 8: Alle wahrhaft Suchenden ("All Seekers of the Truth")
 * Scene 8: Aber etwas fehlt ("But Something is Missing")
 * Scene 9: Das ist die ewige Kunst ("That is the Eternal Art")
 * Scene 9: Sieben Jahre ("Seven Years!")
 * Scene 10: Ein Taifun! ("A Typhoon!")
 * Scene 11: In dieser Nacht des Entsetzens ("In This Night of Terror")
 * Scene 11: Nein, jetzt sage ich ("No, I Say Do It Now")
 * Scene 11: So tuet nur, was euch beliebt ("So, Just Do What You Like")

Act 2

 * Scene 12: Hurrikan bewegt ("The Eventful Hurricane")
 * Scene 12: O wunderbare Lösung! ("O Wonderful Result!")
 * Scene 13: Von nun an war der Leitspruch ("From Then On The Motto Was...")
 * Scene 13: Jetzt hab ich gegessen zwei Kälber ("Now I Have Eaten Two Calves")
 * Scene 14: Zweitens kommt die Liebe dran! ("Secondly Comes Being in Love")
 * Scene 14: Sieh jene Kraniche ("Look at Those Cranes") / The Duet of the Cranes
 * Scene 14: Erstens, vergesst nicht, kommt das Fressen ("Firstly, Don't Forget, Comes the Eating")
 * Scene 15: Wir, meine Herren ("We, My Dear Sirs...")
 * Scene 15: Dreimal hoch, Dreieinigkeitsmoses! ("Three Cheers for Trinity Moses!")
 * Scene 16: Freunde, kommt, ich lade euch ein ("Friends, Come, I Summon You")
 * Scene 16: Meine Herren, meine Mutter prägte ("My Dear Sirs, My Mother Impressed [Upon Me]")
 * Scene 17: Wenn der Himmel hell wird ("When the Sky is Bright")

Act 3

 * Scene 18: Haben all Zuschauer Billete? ("Do All The Gawkers Have Tickets?")
 * Scene 18: Zweitens der Fall des Jimmy Mahoney ("Secondly, the Case of Jimmy Mahoney")
 * Scene 19: In dieser Zeit gab es in Mahagonny ("In This Time It Was In Mahagonny")
 * Scene 20: Hinrichtung und Tod des Jimmy Mahoney ("The Execution and Death of Jimmy Mahoney")
 * Scene 20: Erstens, vergesst nicht, kommt das Fressen ("Firstly, Don't Forget, Comes the Eating")
 * Scene 21: Wollt ihr mich denn wirklich hinrichten? ("Do You Really Want Me to Be Executed After All?")
 * Scene 21: In diesen Tagen fanden in Mahagonny ("To This Day Found In Mahagonny")

In other media
The opera influenced Harry Everett Smith in his 1970-1980 film Mahagonny, which features Allen Ginsberg and Patti Smith.

The 2005 movie Manderlay, directed by Lars von Trier, contains several references to the plot of Mahagonny. The most notable of these is the threat of a hurricane approaching the city during the first act. Von Trier's earlier movie Dogville, to which Manderlay is a sequel, was in large part based on a song from Brecht's Threepenny Opera ("Pirate Jenny"). In the brothel scene in act 2 of Mahagonny, the choir sings a "Song von Mandelay". The play Happy End (1929) by Elisabeth Hauptmann, Brecht and Weill, also contains a song called "Der Song von Mandelay", which uses the same refrain as in the brothel scene of Mahagonny. Brecht's use of the name Mandelay/Mandalay was inspired by Rudyard Kipling's poem "Mandalay".

Recordings

 * 1956: Lotte Lenya, Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg (Sony 1990; originally recorded 1956)
 * 1979: DVD, James Levine; John Dexter, stage director; Teresa Stratas, Astrid Varnay, Richard Cassilly; Metropolitan Opera
 * 1985: Anja Silja, Jan Latham-Koenig (Capriccio 1988; recorded in 1985)
 * 1997: DVD 1997, Salzburg Festival
 * 2007: DVD Los Angeles Opera, starring Audra McDonald, Patti LuPone, and Anthony Dean Griffey. This recording won two 2009 Grammy Awards for Best Opera Recording and Best Classical Album. It was screened on TV as part of PBS' Great Performances
 * 2010: Teatro Real (Madrid), starring Measha Brueggergosman, Jane Henschel, Michael König and Willard White, conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado and staged by La Fura dels Baus. (DVD and Blu-ray Bel Air Classiques 2011; filmed in 2010)

Cover versions of songs
"Alabama Song" has been covered by many artists, notably Ute Lemper, The Doors and David Bowie.

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

title: Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny


text:
Avery Hopwood

James Avery Hopwood (May 28, 1882 – July 1, 1928) was an American playwright of the Jazz Age. He had four plays running simultaneously on Broadway in 1920, namely "The Gold Diggers," "The Bat" and "Spanish Love" and "Ladies' Night (In a Turkish Bath)".

Early life
Hopwood was born to James and Jule Pendergast Hopwood on May 28, 1882, in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from Cleveland's West High School in 1900. In 1901, he began attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. However, his family experienced financial difficulties, so for his second year he transferred to Adelbert College. He returned to the University of Michigan in the fall of 1903, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1905.

Career
Hopwood started out as a journalist for the Cleveland Leader as its New York correspondent, but within a year had his first play, Clothes (1906), produced on Broadway, with the aid of playwright Channing Pollock. Hopwood eventually became known as "The Playboy Playwright" and specialized in comedies and farces, some of them with material considered risqué at the time. One play, The Demi-Virgin in 1921, prompted a court case because of its suggestive subject matter, including a risque game of cards, "Stripping Cupid". The case was dismissed.

His many plays included Nobody's Widow (1910), starring Blanche Bates; Fair and Warmer (1915), starring Madge Kennedy (filmed in 1919); The Gold Diggers (1919), starring Ina Claire in New York and Tallulah Bankhead in London; (filmed in 1923 as The Gold Diggers, in 1928 as Gold Diggers of Broadway and also as Gold Diggers of 1933); Ladies' Night, 1920, starring Charlie Ruggles (filmed in 1928); the famous mystery play The Bat (with Mary Roberts Rinehart), 1920 (filmed in 1926 as The Bat, in 1930 as The Bat Whispers, and in 1959 as The Bat); Getting Gertie's Garter (with Wilson Collison), 1921, starring Hazel Dawn (filmed in 1927 and 1945); The Demi-Virgin, 1921, also starring Dawn; The Alarm Clock, 1923, translated from the French; The Best People (with David Gray), 1924 (filmed in 1925 and as Fast and Loose in 1930 with Clara Bow); the song-farce Naughty Cinderella, 1925, starring Irène Bordoni and The Garden of Eden in 1927, with Tallulah Bankhead in London and Miriam Hopkins in New York; (filmed in 1928 as The Garden of Eden).

Personal life
In 1906, Hopwood was introduced to writer and photographer Carl Van Vechten. The two became close friends and were sometimes sexual partners. In the 1920s Hopwood had a tumultuous and abusive romantic relationship with fellow Cleveland-born playwright John Floyd. Although Hopwood announced to the press in 1924 that he was engaged to vaudeville dancer and choreographer Rosa Rolanda, Van Vechten confirmed in later years that it was a publicity stunt. Rolanda would later marry caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias.

On the evening of July 1, 1928, at Juan-les-Pins on the French Riviera, Hopwood suffered a fatal heart attack while swimming. He was buried in Riverside Cemetery, Cleveland. His mother, Jule Hopwood, inherited a large trust from him, but he had not made arrangements for the disposition of other items, including literary rights. While she was working through the legal issues with his estate, Jule Hopwood fell ill and died on March 1, 1929. She was buried next to her son.

Legacy
Hopwood's plays were very successful commercially, but they did not have the lasting literary significance he hoped to achieve.

Hopwood Award
The terms of Hopwood's will left a substantial portion of his estate to his alma mater, the University of Michigan, for the establishment of the Avery Hopwood and Jule Hopwood Creative Writing Awards. The bequest stipulated: "It is especially desired that students competing for prizes shall be allowed the widest possible latitude, and that the new, the unusual, and the radical shall be especially encouraged." Famous Hopwood award winners include Robert Hayden, Marge Piercy, Arthur Miller, Betty Smith, Lawrence Kasdan, John Ciardi, Mary Gaitskill, Edmund White, Nancy Willard, Frank O'Hara, and Steve Hamilton.

The Great Bordello
Throughout his life, Hopwood worked on a novel that he hoped would "expose" the strictures the commercial theater machine imposed on playwrights, but the manuscript was never published. Jack Sharrar recovered the manuscript for this novel in 1982 during his research for Avery Hopwood, His Life and Plays. The novel was published in July 2011 by Mondial Books (New York) as The Great Bordello, a Story of the Theatre, edited and with an Afterword by Sharrar.

Works

 * Clothes (1906) with Channing Pollock
 * This Woman and This Man (1909)
 * Seven Days (1909) with Mary Roberts Rinehart
 * Judy Forgot (1910)
 * Nobody's Widow (1910)
 * Somewhere Else (1913)
 * Fair and Warmer (1915) Remains popular in Germany (Der Mustergatte) and Scandinavia (Gröna hissen )
 * Sadie Love (1915)
 * Our Little Wife (1916)
 * Double Exposure (1918)
 * Tumble In (1919, musical version of Seven Days)
 * The Gold Diggers (1919)
 * The Girl in the Limousine (1919) with Wilson Collison
 * Ladies' Night (1920) with Charlton Andrews
 * Spanish Love (1920, Adaptation of María del Carmen by Josep Feliu i Codina) with Mary Roberts Rinehart
 * The Bat (1920) with Mary Roberts Rinehart
 * Getting Gertie's Garter (1921) with Wilson Collison
 * The Demi-Virgin (1921)
 * Why Men Leave Home (1922)
 * Little Miss Bluebeard (1923, Adaptation of Kisasszony férje by Gábor Drégely)
 * The Alarm Clock (1923, Adaptation of La Sonnette d'alarme by Maurice Hennequin and Romain Coolus)
 * The Best People (1924) with David Gray
 * The Harem (1924) with Ernest Vajda
 * Naughty Cinderella (1925, Adaptation of Pouche by René Peter and Henri Falk)
 * The Garden of Eden (1927, Adaptation of Der Garten Eden by Rudolf Bernauer and Rudolf Österreicher)

Filmography

 * Clothes (1914, based on Clothes)
 * Judy Forgot (1915, based on Judy Forgot)
 * Our Little Wife (1918, based on Our Little Wife)
 * Sadie Love (1919, based on Sadie Love)
 * Fair and Warmer (1919, based on Fair and Warmer)
 * Guilty of Love (1920, based on This Woman and This Man)
 * Clothes (1920, based on Clothes)
 * The Little Clown (1921, based on The Little Clown)
 * The Gold Diggers (1923, based on The Gold Diggers)
 * Why Men Leave Home (1924, based on Why Men Leave Home)
 * The Girl in the Limousine (1924, based on The Girl in the Limousine)
 * Miss Bluebeard (1925, based on Little Miss Bluebeard)
 * The Best People (1925, based on The Best People)
 * The Bat (1926, based on The Bat)
 * Good and Naughty (1926, based on Naughty Cinderella)
 * Nobody's Widow (1927, based on Nobody's Widow)
 * Getting Gertie's Garter (1927, based on Getting Gertie's Garter)
 * The Garden of Eden (1928, based on The Garden of Eden)
 * Ladies' Night in a Turkish Bath (1928, based on Ladies' Night)
 * Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929, based on The Gold Diggers)
 * Her Wedding Night (1930, based on Little Miss Bluebeard)
 * Let's Get Married (France, 1931, based on Little Miss Bluebeard)
 * Su noche de bodas (Spain, 1931, based on Little Miss Bluebeard)
 * Ich heirate meinen Mann (Germany, 1931, based on Little Miss Bluebeard)
 * A Minha Noite de Núpcias (Portugal, 1931, based on Little Miss Bluebeard)
 * Fast and Loose (1930, based on The Best People)
 * The Bat Whispers (1930, based on The Bat)
 * This Is the Night (1932, based on Naughty Cinderella)
 * Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933, based on The Gold Diggers)
 * Night of the Garter (UK, 1933, based on Getting Gertie's Garter)
 * The Model Husband (Germany, 1937, based on Fair and Warmer)
 * Unsere kleine Frau (Germany, 1938, based on Our Little Wife)
 * Mia moglie si diverte (Italy, 1938, based on Our Little Wife)
 * Gröna hissen (Sweden, 1944, based on Fair and Warmer)
 * Getting Gertie's Garter (1945, based on Getting Gertie's Garter)
 * Painting the Clouds with Sunshine (1951, based on The Gold Diggers)
 * The Green Lift (1952 film) (Sweden, 1952, based on Fair and Warmer)
 * The Model Husband (West Germany, 1956, based on Fair and Warmer)
 * The Bat (1959, based on The Bat)
 * The Model Husband (Switzerland, 1959, based on Fair and Warmer)
 *  (Denmark, 1961, based on Fair and Warmer)
 * Den grønne heisen (Norway, 1981, based on Fair and Warmer)

title: Avery Hopwood


text:
Antipope Felix II

Antipope Felix II, an archdeacon of Rome, was installed as Pope in 355 AD after the Emperor Constantius II banished the reigning Pope, Liberius, for refusing to subscribe to a sentence of condemnation against Saint Athanasius.

Biography
In May 357 AD the Roman laity, which had remained faithful to Liberius, demanded that Constantius, who was on a visit to Rome, should recall Liberius. The Emperor planned to have Felix and Liberius rule jointly, but when Liberius returned Felix was forced to retire to Porto, near Rome, where, after making an unsuccessful attempt to establish himself again in Rome, he died on 22 November 365 AD.

This Felix was later confused with a Roman martyr named Felix, with the result that he was included in lists of the Popes as Felix II and that the succeeding Popes of the same name (Pope Felix III and Pope Felix IV) were given wrong numerals, as was Antipope Felix V.

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1909) called this confusion a "distortion of the true facts" and suggested that it arose because the "Liber Pontificalis", which at this point may be registering a reliable tradition, says that this Felix built a church on the Via Aurelia, which is where the Roman martyr of an earlier date was buried. However, a more recent source says that of the martyr Felix nothing is known except his name, that he was a martyr, and that he was buried in the cemetery on the Via Portuensis that bears his name.

The Catholic Encyclopedia remarked that "the real story of the antipope was lost and he obtained in local Roman history the status of a saint and a confessor. As such he appears in the Roman Martyrology on 29 July." At that time (1909) the Roman Martyrology had the following text: "At Rome, on the Aurelian Way, St. Felix II, pope and martyr. Being expelled from his See by the Arian emperor Constantius for defending the Catholic faith, and being put to the sword privately at Cera in Tuscany, he died gloriously. His body was taken away from that place by clerics, and buried on the Aurelian Way. It was afterwards brought to the Church of the Saints Cosmas and Damian, where, under the Sovereign Pontiff Gregory XIII, it was found beneath the altar with the relics of the holy martyrs Mark, Marcellian, and Tranquillinus, and with the latter was put back in the same place on 31 July. In the same altar were also found the bodies of the holy martyrs Abundius, a priest, and Abundantius, a deacon, which were shortly after solemnly transferred to the church of the Society of Jesus, on the eve of their feast." This entry was based on what the Catholic Encyclopedia called later legends that confound the relative positions of Felix and Liberius. More recent editions of the Roman Martyrology have instead: "At Rome, at the third milestone on the Via Portuensis, in the cemetery dedicated to his name, Saint Felix, martyr."

The feast day of the Roman martyr Felix is 29 July. The antipope Felix died, as stated above, on a 22 November, and his death was not a martyr's, occurring when the Peace of Constantine had been in force for half a century.

As well as the Roman Martyrology, the Roman Missal identified the Saint Felix of 29 July with the antipope. This identification, still found in the 1920 typical edition, does not appear in the 1962 typical edition. To judge by the Marietti printing of 1952, which omits the numeral "II" and the word "Papae", the correction had already been made by then. One Catholic writer excuses this by saying that the antipope "himself did refuse to accept Arianism, and so his feast has been kept in the past on [29 July]".

title: Antipope Felix II


text:
Alkaloid

Alkaloids are a class of basic, naturally occurring organic compounds that contain at least one nitrogen atom. This group also includes some related compounds with neutral and even weakly acidic properties. Some synthetic compounds of similar structure may also be termed alkaloids. In addition to carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, alkaloids may also contain oxygen or sulfur. More rarely still, they may contain elements such as phosphorus, chlorine, and bromine.

Alkaloids are produced by a large variety of organisms including bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals. They can be purified from crude extracts of these organisms by acid-base extraction, or solvent extractions followed by silica-gel column chromatography. Alkaloids have a wide range of pharmacological activities including antimalarial (e.g. quinine), antiasthma (e.g. ephedrine), anticancer (e.g. homoharringtonine), cholinomimetic (e.g. galantamine), vasodilatory (e.g. vincamine), antiarrhythmic (e.g. quinidine), analgesic (e.g. morphine), antibacterial (e.g. chelerythrine), and antihyperglycemic activities (e.g. berberine). Many have found use in traditional or modern medicine, or as starting points for drug discovery. Other alkaloids possess psychotropic (e.g. psilocin) and stimulant activities (e.g. cocaine, caffeine, nicotine, theobromine), and have been used in entheogenic rituals or as recreational drugs. Alkaloids can be toxic too (e.g. atropine, tubocurarine). Although alkaloids act on a diversity of metabolic systems in humans and other animals, they almost uniformly evoke a bitter taste.

The boundary between alkaloids and other nitrogen-containing natural compounds is not clear-cut. Compounds like amino acid peptides, proteins, nucleotides, nucleic acid, amines, and antibiotics are usually not called alkaloids. Natural compounds containing nitrogen in the exocyclic position (mescaline, serotonin, dopamine, etc.) are usually classified as amines rather than as alkaloids. Some authors, however, consider alkaloids a special case of amines.

Naming

The name "alkaloids" (Alkaloide) was introduced in 1819 by German chemist Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Meissner, and is derived from late Latin root alkali and the Greek-language suffix -οειδής -('like'). However, the term came into wide use only after the publication of a review article, by Oscar Jacobsen in the chemical dictionary of Albert Ladenburg in the 1880s.

There is no unique method for naming alkaloids. Many individual names are formed by adding the suffix "ine" to the species or genus name. For example, atropine is isolated from the plant Atropa belladonna; strychnine is obtained from the seed of the Strychnine tree (Strychnos nux-vomica L.). Where several alkaloids are extracted from one plant their names are often distinguished by variations in the suffix: "idine", "anine", "aline", "inine" etc. There are also at least 86 alkaloids whose names contain the root "vin" because they are extracted from vinca plants such as Vinca rosea (Catharanthus roseus); these are called vinca alkaloids.

History
Alkaloid-containing plants have been used by humans since ancient times for therapeutic and recreational purposes. For example, medicinal plants have been known in Mesopotamia from about 2000 BC. The Odyssey of Homer referred to a gift given to Helen by the Egyptian queen, a drug bringing oblivion. It is believed that the gift was an opium-containing drug. A Chinese book on houseplants written in 1st–3rd centuries BC mentioned a medical use of ephedra and opium poppies. Also, coca leaves have been used by Indigenous South Americans since ancient times.

Extracts from plants containing toxic alkaloids, such as aconitine and tubocurarine, were used since antiquity for poisoning arrows.

Studies of alkaloids began in the 19th century. In 1804, the German chemist Friedrich Sertürner isolated from opium a "soporific principle" (principium somniferum), which he called "morphium", referring to Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams; in German and some other Central-European languages, this is still the name of the drug. The term "morphine", used in English and French, was given by the French physicist Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac.

A significant contribution to the chemistry of alkaloids in the early years of its development was made by the French researchers Pierre Joseph Pelletier and Joseph Bienaimé Caventou, who discovered quinine (1820) and strychnine (1818). Several other alkaloids were discovered around that time, including xanthine (1817), atropine (1819), caffeine (1820), coniine (1827), nicotine (1828), colchicine (1833), sparteine (1851), and cocaine (1860). The development of the chemistry of alkaloids was accelerated by the emergence of spectroscopic and chromatographic methods in the 20th century, so that by 2008 more than 12,000 alkaloids had been identified.

The first complete synthesis of an alkaloid was achieved in 1886 by the German chemist Albert Ladenburg. He produced coniine by reacting 2-methylpyridine with acetaldehyde and reducing the resulting 2-propenyl pyridine with sodium.

Classifications

Compared with most other classes of natural compounds, alkaloids are characterized by a great structural diversity. There is no uniform classification. Initially, when knowledge of chemical structures was lacking, botanical classification of the source plants was relied on. This classification is now considered obsolete.

More recent classifications are based on similarity of the carbon skeleton (e.g., indole-, isoquinoline-, and pyridine-like) or biochemical precursor (ornithine, lysine, tyrosine, tryptophan, etc.). However, they require compromises in borderline cases; for example, nicotine contains a pyridine fragment from nicotinamide and a pyrrolidine part from ornithine and therefore can be assigned to both classes.

Alkaloids are often divided into the following major groups:

 * 1) "True alkaloids" contain nitrogen in the heterocycle and originate from amino acids. Their characteristic examples are atropine, nicotine, and morphine. This group also includes some alkaloids that besides the nitrogen heterocycle contain terpene (e.g., evonine ) or peptide fragments (e.g. ergotamine ). The piperidine alkaloids coniine and coniceine may be regarded as true alkaloids (rather than pseudoalkaloids: see below) although they do not originate from amino acids.
 * 2) "Protoalkaloids", which contain nitrogen (but not the nitrogen heterocycle) and also originate from amino acids. Examples include mescaline, adrenaline and ephedrine.
 * 3) Polyamine alkaloids – derivatives of putrescine, spermidine, and spermine.
 * 4) Peptide and cyclopeptide alkaloids.
 * 5) Pseudoalkaloids – alkaloid-like compounds that do not originate from amino acids. This group includes terpene-like and steroid-like alkaloids, as well as purine-like alkaloids such as caffeine, theobromine, theacrine and theophylline. Some authors classify ephedrine and cathinone as pseudoalkaloids. Those originate from the amino acid phenylalanine, but acquire their nitrogen atom not from the amino acid but through transamination.

Some alkaloids do not have the carbon skeleton characteristic of their group. So, galanthamine and homoaporphines do not contain isoquinoline fragment, but are, in general, attributed to isoquinoline alkaloids.

Main classes of monomeric alkaloids are listed in the table below:

Properties
Most alkaloids contain oxygen in their molecular structure; those compounds are usually colorless crystals at ambient conditions. Oxygen-free alkaloids, such as nicotine or coniine, are typically volatile, colorless, oily liquids. Some alkaloids are colored, like berberine (yellow) and sanguinarine (orange).

Most alkaloids are weak bases, but some, such as theobromine and theophylline, are amphoteric. Many alkaloids dissolve poorly in water but readily dissolve in organic solvents, such as diethyl ether, chloroform or 1,2-dichloroethane. Caffeine, cocaine, codeine and nicotine are slightly soluble in water (with a solubility of ≥1g/L), whereas others, including morphine and yohimbine are very slightly water-soluble (0.1–1 g/L). Alkaloids and acids form salts of various strengths. These salts are usually freely soluble in water and ethanol and poorly soluble in most organic solvents. Exceptions include scopolamine hydrobromide, which is soluble in organic solvents, and the water-soluble quinine sulfate.

Most alkaloids have a bitter taste or are poisonous when ingested. Alkaloid production in plants appeared to have evolved in response to feeding by herbivorous animals; however, some animals have evolved the ability to detoxify alkaloids. Some alkaloids can produce developmental defects in the offspring of animals that consume but cannot detoxify the alkaloids. One example is the alkaloid cyclopamine, produced in the leaves of corn lily. During the 1950s, up to 25% of lambs born by sheep that had grazed on corn lily had serious facial deformations. These ranged from deformed jaws to cyclopia (see picture). After decades of research, in the 1980s, the compound responsible for these deformities was identified as the alkaloid 11-deoxyjervine, later renamed to cyclopamine.

Distribution in nature

Alkaloids are generated by various living organisms, especially by higher plants – about 10 to 25% of those contain alkaloids. Therefore, in the past the term "alkaloid" was associated with plants.

The alkaloids content in plants is usually within a few percent and is inhomogeneous over the plant tissues. Depending on the type of plants, the maximum concentration is observed in the leaves (for example, black henbane), fruits or seeds (Strychnine tree), root (Rauvolfia serpentina) or bark (cinchona). Furthermore, different tissues of the same plants may contain different alkaloids.

Beside plants, alkaloids are found in certain types of fungus, such as psilocybin in the fruiting bodies of the genus Psilocybe, and in animals, such as bufotenin in the skin of some toads and a number of insects, markedly ants. Many marine organisms also contain alkaloids. Some amines, such as adrenaline and serotonin, which play an important role in higher animals, are similar to alkaloids in their structure and biosynthesis and are sometimes called alkaloids.

Extraction

Because of the structural diversity of alkaloids, there is no single method of their extraction from natural raw materials. Most methods exploit the property of most alkaloids to be soluble in organic solvents but not in water, and the opposite tendency of their salts.

Most plants contain several alkaloids. Their mixture is extracted first and then individual alkaloids are separated. Plants are thoroughly ground before extraction. Most alkaloids are present in the raw plants in the form of salts of organic acids. The extracted alkaloids may remain salts or change into bases. Base extraction is achieved by processing the raw material with alkaline solutions and extracting the alkaloid bases with organic solvents, such as 1,2-dichloroethane, chloroform, diethyl ether or benzene. Then, the impurities are dissolved by weak acids; this converts alkaloid bases into salts that are washed away with water. If necessary, an aqueous solution of alkaloid salts is again made alkaline and treated with an organic solvent. The process is repeated until the desired purity is achieved.

In the acidic extraction, the raw plant material is processed by a weak acidic solution (e.g., acetic acid in water, ethanol, or methanol). A base is then added to convert alkaloids to basic forms that are extracted with organic solvent (if the extraction was performed with alcohol, it is removed first, and the remainder is dissolved in water). The solution is purified as described above.

Alkaloids are separated from their mixture using their different solubility in certain solvents and different reactivity with certain reagents or by distillation.

A number of alkaloids are identified from insects, among which the fire ant venom alkaloids known as solenopsins have received greater attention from researchers. These insect alkaloids can be efficiently extracted by solvent immersion of live fire ants or by centrifugation of live ants followed by silica-gel chromatography purification. Tracking and dosing the extracted solenopsin ant alkaloids has been described as possible based on their absorbance peak around 232 nanometers.

Biosynthesis
Biological precursors of most alkaloids are amino acids, such as ornithine, lysine, phenylalanine, tyrosine, tryptophan, histidine, aspartic acid, and anthranilic acid. Nicotinic acid can be synthesized from tryptophan or aspartic acid. Ways of alkaloid biosynthesis are too numerous and cannot be easily classified. However, there are a few typical reactions involved in the biosynthesis of various classes of alkaloids, including synthesis of Schiff bases and Mannich reaction.

Synthesis of Schiff bases
Schiff bases can be obtained by reacting amines with ketones or aldehydes. These reactions are a common method of producing C=N bonds.

In the biosynthesis of alkaloids, such reactions may take place within a molecule, such as in the synthesis of piperidine:

Mannich reaction
An integral component of the Mannich reaction, in addition to an amine and a carbonyl compound, is a carbanion, which plays the role of the nucleophile in the nucleophilic addition to the ion formed by the reaction of the amine and the carbonyl.

The Mannich reaction can proceed both intermolecularly and intramolecularly:

Dimer alkaloids
In addition to the described above monomeric alkaloids, there are also dimeric, and even trimeric and tetrameric alkaloids formed upon condensation of two, three, and four monomeric alkaloids. Dimeric alkaloids are usually formed from monomers of the same type through the following mechanisms:
 * Mannich reaction, resulting in, e.g., voacamine
 * Michael reaction (villalstonine)
 * Condensation of aldehydes with amines (toxiferine)
 * Oxidative addition of phenols (dauricine, tubocurarine)
 * Lactonization (carpaine).

There are also dimeric alkaloids formed from two distinct monomers, such as the vinca alkaloids vinblastine and vincristine, which are formed from the coupling of catharanthine and vindoline. The newer semi-synthetic chemotherapeutic agent vinorelbine is used in the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer. It is another derivative dimer of vindoline and catharanthine and is synthesised from anhydrovinblastine, starting either from leurosine or the monomers themselves.

Biological role
Alkaloids are among the most important and best-known secondary metabolites, i.e. biogenic substances not directly involved in the normal growth, development, or reproduction of the organism. Instead, they generally mediate ecological interactions, which may produce a selective advantage for the organism by increasing its survivability or fecundity. In some cases their function, if any, remains unclear. An early hypothesis, that alkaloids are the final products of nitrogen metabolism in plants, as urea and uric acid are in mammals, was refuted by the finding that their concentration fluctuates rather than steadily increasing.

Most of the known functions of alkaloids are related to protection. For example, aporphine alkaloid liriodenine produced by the tulip tree protects it from parasitic mushrooms. In addition, the presence of alkaloids in the plant prevents insects and chordate animals from eating it. However, some animals are adapted to alkaloids and even use them in their own metabolism. Such alkaloid-related substances as serotonin, dopamine and histamine are important neurotransmitters in animals. Alkaloids are also known to regulate plant growth. One example of an organism that uses alkaloids for protection is the Utetheisa ornatrix, more commonly known as the ornate moth. Pyrrolizidine alkaloids render these larvae and adult moths unpalatable to many of their natural enemies like coccinelid beetles, green lacewings, insectivorous hemiptera and insectivorous bats. Another example of alkaloids being utilized occurs in the poison hemlock moth (Agonopterix alstroemeriana). This moth feeds on its highly toxic and alkaloid-rich host plant poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) during its larval stage. A. alstroemeriana may benefit twofold from the toxicity of the naturally-occurring alkaloids, both through the unpalatability of the species to predators and through the ability of A. alstroemeriana to recognize Conium maculatum as the correct location for oviposition. A fire ant venom alkaloid known as solenopsin has been demonstrated to protect queens of invasive fire ants during the foundation of new nests, thus playing a central role in the spread of this pest ant species around the world.

In medicine
Medical use of alkaloid-containing plants has a long history, and, thus, when the first alkaloids were isolated in the 19th century, they immediately found application in clinical practice. Many alkaloids are still used in medicine, usually in the form of salts widely used including the following:

Many synthetic and semisynthetic drugs are structural modifications of the alkaloids, which were designed to enhance or change the primary effect of the drug and reduce unwanted side-effects. For example, naloxone, an opioid receptor antagonist, is a derivative of thebaine that is present in opium.

In agriculture
Prior to the development of a wide range of relatively low-toxic synthetic pesticides, some alkaloids, such as salts of nicotine and anabasine, were used as insecticides. Their use was limited by their high toxicity to humans.

Use as psychoactive drugs
Preparations of plants and fungi containing alkaloids and their extracts, and later pure alkaloids, have long been used as psychoactive substances. Cocaine, caffeine, and cathinone are stimulants of the central nervous system. Mescaline and many indole alkaloids (such as psilocybin, dimethyltryptamine and ibogaine) have hallucinogenic effect. Morphine and codeine are strong narcotic pain killers.

There are alkaloids that do not have strong psychoactive effect themselves, but are precursors for semi-synthetic psychoactive drugs. For example, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are used to produce methcathinone and methamphetamine. Thebaine is used in the synthesis of many painkillers such as oxycodone.

title: Alkaloid