text:
Talk:Commodity market

Comment
This article has little practical relevance regarding current markets, exchanges, or an explanation or at least a reference to the CFTC, Futures, options, derivatives, financials, foreign exchanges, or any real discussion of Commodity Markets.

The discussion are presented as facts, but are nothing more than philosophies. Not even whole philosophies, but fragments that are poorly constructed and not properly referenced, are contained in this article.

Philosophically, the postulates have not yet formed into proper theories. As for commodity markets, the research is also incomplete and sloppily presented.

The economic impact of the development of commodity markets is hard to over-estimate. Through the 19th century "the exchanges became effective spokesmen for, and innovators of, improvements in transportation, warehousing, and financing, which paved the way to expanded interstate and international trade." - Jerry Hodges

Every time any of us add to a site we could quote ourselves. Where would it end? The use of this name appears inconsistent with other pages connected to this subject. GT

Whew. OK, no doubt you clowns who learned about commodity markets from a web site or high school business class will want to cut this to ribbons. But this time it's got plenty of meat. Some people won't like the way that US commodity trading is not the focus of the article, and UN proposals for new ways to use commodity methods to create fair trade is more prominent, but add up the numbers, folks - any UN proposal constitutes a more neutral view than any US centric snapshot of what's up now.

Not that that ever stopped you. Would appreciate a heads-up here first, or advice on how this might split into multiple articles. The history of the commodity markets and the use of commodity approaches to deal with negative goods (harms) might be two separate articles, even though the function of such markets is the same, e.g. emissions markets, etc. - but it's hard to keep such stuff separate from the "ecological production" arguments that air, water, etc., are natural commodities, so I just put it all here for now - 24

The most recent edit is an improvement overall - puts the key definition points up front, omits nothing currently important, and puts history in the middle just in time to explain delivery and other guarantees.

However, the role of the state in these guarantees can't be avoided, nor the way that empires rose directly out of their trusted role protecting trade routes, and handling the "defense, infrastructure, justice" of them. The differences between the Chinese (strict fiat) and Roman (silver coinage that became slowly debased) ways of creating money were extremely important in their later history. The Chinese Empire survived in one way or another until 1911, whereas the Romans lost the trust of Europe as administrators of the coinage - perhaps due to the more intense political competition, perhaps due to the fact they represtned their money as a commodity (silver) and cheated... all of that could go in commodity money.

But, the role of the state in the classical commodity markets is hard to avoid, as it illustrates the whole history Adam Smith wrote about in 1776. I suppose this material could be an intro in political economy since it's strictly about the relationship of capital factors.

It just isn't sensible to talk about these guarantees outside the concept of military fiat which how they were historically provided. One could say that as the probability of delivery depended more and more on the state, it became fiat money, and as it depended more and more on inter-participant trust, it became credit money, and if it depended on supply of some core standard commodity like gold, it became commodity money, and if it was anything else, it was a plain and simply a good old commodity market contract.

In other words, the commodity markets are the central organizing means by which civilization grew up, in a great many theories, and so if this article lacks a reasonable treatment of the states' role, of credits' role, of the role of the traders in, and growers of, many early commodities, it fails in that central purpose.

Basically, you should be able to come here as an anarchist and realize while reading this that everything you used to do so (the computer, the Internet Protocol compliant software, the house you live in, the eletricity that runs everything, the orange juice you're drinking) is delivered in a uniform way in part due to the operations of commodity markets. You should understand what role fiat and credit play in commodity definition, standardization, and the reliability of delivery. And you should understand that to some degree your CO2 exhalations, water supply, waged labor time in McJob, and free time are all commodities, since conceivably they all provide some uniform benefit or pain to someone (in the case of free time, to you).

If the article can't do that, it will become full of various pro-market and anti-market polemics, and suspicious cross-talk about whether the state can ever be sincerely committed to truly enforcing negative commodity markets... e.g. bounty hunting which is "a price on your head", which I didn't mention in "value of life" since the idea of assassination markets angers some people.

Anyway, I don't object to the article's current form, and maybe I did a poor job conveying the context above, but I'd like to know, if it's not this article and it's not money, where can this symbiosis between humanity's governance and its commodity flow be thoroughly explained? In evolution of societies we concentrated on the far more conventional non-economic theories and barely mentioned the whole track of belief in dialectical materialism (Marx) and commodification driving all concepts of civilization (anarchists).

Obviously, the view the commodity markets are a consequence of, and not a driver of, civilization, should be respected, strange and silly as I think it is, but this article now goes too far in assuming "the state" somehow in the background magically making delivery happen and market players honest.

In the age of Enron and Andersen etc., you'd think people would know better.24

- Your facts are wrong. The Chinese didn't use fiat money for most of its history. During the Qing dynasty, there was a bizarre system of bronze and copper along side a system using silver (mostly Mexican dollars).
 * ok, but I assume the Mexican dollars were a relatively late development ;-) That system sounds well worth a line or two of its own - got a link for it?
 * also, I don't mean to imply that the fiat money was always and exclusively used, but that the empire established (very early) the right to replace all commodity money with fiat money - as did the Union during the American Civil War. The Roman Empire never had nor claimed such authority, and thus when it debased the money, it lost credibility and appeared weak. 24

Structure
I've tried to create the beginnings of some structure, as a starting point for factoring the article. It's trying to do much (if it's trying to be a book, there are other Wiki projects for that!), and some of it should be split into daughter articles. Looks like it should end up with whilst this article focusses on how commodity markets work, with short sections to summarise relevant daughter articles (in the Main article: ... or See also.. way). Rd232 00:19, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Commodification
 * History of commodity markets
 * Emissions trading
 * LETS

Error

 * a history of commodity markets removed. Can't find server error message.  GT

Futures markets
Compared to Adam Smith’s relationships of capital factors, futures trading, seems trivial and insubstantial. Not long ago, we actually called commodity futures trading, trading commodities. Moreover, back then in some small way you could argue that even currencies were commodities. However, once we started trading totally illusionary (no physical manifestation), subjectively managed indexes like the S&P 500. We could no longer call them commodities. So, modern futures trading needs to be somehow distinguished from commodities trading even thou at one time they may have been same thing.

Merging these topics might be possible, what we are looking at is on the one hand physical commodities, which have been traded everywhere, at all times whenever two or more parties agreed. On the other hand futures contracts, based on those commodities and other unreal products, which are traded on organized exchanges should rightfully be called futures instead.

So, what we have is, physical commodities are real commodities. Contracts traded on these and other, man made securities, for future delivery on organized exchanges are called futures contracts. We have to decide if these should be merged or kept separate. Trading on physicals is probably based on supply and demand for products, whereas trading in futures markets is more likely based on price action for contracts. Personally I think futures contracts should be merged with a comprehensive article on futures markets or futures exchanges and only mentioned briefly in commodity markets. GT

Modern commodity markets
I removed this whole section. It seems to bring in a bunch of different unrelated issues, whilst being vague on all of them -   Crosbiesmith Despite the shift to fiat money, and credit money, direct commodity trade and barter has always remained active in the background in some form or another, and seems to have been revived due to global capitalism, wherein nearly every currency is widely traded as a commodity. Traditionally, "money-changing" or "banking" was one of the prime functions of commodity markets. The key difference between the ancient and modern commodity markets is the degree to which banking and clearing has been separated and regulated by consent of many governments which have surrendered some national sovereignty to enable the Bank for International Settlements, for instance, to back currencies in global trade, establish common risk and reserve standards, and, in the words of its chairman Andrew Crockett, "hardwire the credit culture". With credit concerns minimized or at least standardized, the commodity markets can then trade equity in enterprises as a "stock market", national currencies in a "money market", and everything else in a "commodity market" of its own.

Commodity and empire
Also removed this. I think the relevance of central banking, cheese, and the Knights Templar is not sufficiently explained. Europe did not establish a central banking system until the Knights Templar in the 13th century. A series of commodity markets prevailed in medieval Europe throughout that time, as wheat and cheese and iron and wood were traded in more local markets. The gold standard acquired its pre-eminence to back trade, as it did not depend on the constantly-shifting medieval feudal alliances.

Huh?
I came to this page to find out what commodity markets are. Even after following many of the links, I still have absolutely no idea whatsoever. Could someone who knows about the subject please insert some meaningful, jargon-free explanations for an ordinary person? Xezlec (talk) 03:36, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Weasel Words
"Some Argue" appears TWICE in this article. Stop trying to dodge NPOV! --169.244.139.8 (talk) 16:19, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Recent Trends
This section is totally loaded with Anglo-American POV. Trying to find reasons for a commodity boom is not a NPOV encyclopedia approach. "The 2008 global boom in commodity prices - for everything from coal to corn – was fueled by heated demand from the likes of China and India, plus unbridled speculation in forward markets."

If the editor really wants to put that viewpoint please cite it to someone like George W Bush who said the same thing, rather than putting it as a widely acceptable truth. Plus what does the phrase "everything from coal to corn" really mean?

I don't wanna argue economics here, because I clearly disagree with the above stuff in that section, but then it would be my viewpoint, and the wikipedia must be Neutral POV. Recent trends occurred where there was a bubble in commodity prices(a verifiable logical fact), but they were caused by surge in Asian demand is unverifiable illogical fact, because it could have equally occurred because of a surge in money supply of US Dollar(the choice of currency in the International market).

Similarly "unbridled speculation caused bubble" is another loaded phrase, suffering from the logical fallacy of confusing causation and effect(like blaming Rap Music for crime and violence). Again that point can be explained with the dollar bubble. --68.197.93.248 (talk) 22:23, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't seem very controversial that there has been a huge increase in demand for several commodities from China (and, to a lesser extent, India). Increased demand provides upward pressure on prices (unless you reject one of the most basic tenets of economics). But on the detail, some the comment above is correct - the text needs to be replaced by hard facts with references. Oh, speculation definitely does cause bubbles. In fact it's the only thing that can do so. Whether Rap music causes crime seems a bit off topic... 86.24.87.222 (talk) 00:46, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

--Globally, prices also increased in part because of a shift in production from crops like cotton to crops like corn, soybeans, and sugar cane which aresuitable for use in creating ethanol and other biofuels. Someone else might be able to expand on this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.193.124.36 (talk) 06:20, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Commodities derivatives cause starvation
http://stopgamblingonhunger.com/

== The commodity markets and the geographical locis - The questions and issues pertaining to the commodity markets and or the stock markets are essentially held for the variations in the seasonal cropping in the calendar year in the geographical locis ==

The commodity markets - Research and Development for the systems and the organization Wednesday, 06th April 2011

The preamble to the commodity markets -

The commodity markets and the stock markets are both terms applied in the diverse nations trading in the stock markets / public listed companies in shares or brokers in the transactions through auctions and agreed terms for trade and in the commodity markets essentially defined for the seasonal output in the agricultural sector. The seasonal output are both in the seasonal cropping systems in the calendar year in the perennial cropping systems in the calendar year.

The current questions and issues in the commodity markets -

The supply chain solutions adopted in the australian systems and the links to the production systems for the calendar year and the links for the commodity markets in the calendar year in the geographical locis.

The supply chain solutions adopted in the australian systems and the links to the 'Enterprise Resource Planning' as per the transactions in the trade in the financial year in each of the production systems linked through the supply chain solutions in the specific geographical locis

The capital requirements for the seasonal cropping systems and the diverse terms for the transactions in the capital markets for the range of purchases including the purchase of assets as per agreed schedules for the repayments.

The capital requirements through the capital markets for the operations per season for each of the type of cropping system and the schedules for the repayments as per the earning per season.

The capital requirements through the capital markets for the maintenance of the on farm ventures in the seasonal cropping practices and the schedules for the repayments.

The considerations for the types of borrowing/s and the corresponding repayment/s as expenses as per the varied seasonal cropping systems in the accounting systems to be adopted for the financial year.

To be continued -> — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kala Maheswaran (talk • contribs) 01:51, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

History without dates??
The entire history section of this article has not a single date beyond a vague reference to "the 19th century", as well as a lack of references. Clearly it has been written off the top of the heads of people who only had a vague idea of the facts, and probably had forgotten where they got those vague ideas.

Has anyone out there got a decent source for putting in some dates, places, facts and referencing these properly? 86.24.87.222 (talk) 00:38, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Criticism?
The first I heard of commodity trading was in reference to rising food prices, that speculation on the commodities market was creating a bubble that will make food unaffordable for many, until the bubble bursts and puts farmers out of business, causing a shortage of supply of food and making more people going hungry. Is there any truth to this, and if so, shouldn't there be a dedicated criticism section? 130.159.234.62 (talk) 09:50, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Copyedit
Copyedited this. Feedback encouraged. Comments:
 * This is still a mess. It is very poorly organized (although better now) and full of repetition.
 * There is no need for once-recent market updates. They're now out-of-date and even if updated, would soon be again. Add a link to a pricing database if you like.
 * Cheers. Lfstevens (talk) 22:55, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Exchange Traded Commodities are not Commodities Exchange Traded Funds
An Exchange Traded Commodity or ETC has nothing to do with a Commodity ETF beyond the fact that they both belong to the Exchange Traded Product family of securities. The ETC is put on the market by an SPV which is not a fund, this frees it from the requirements funds have, so it can both effect direct investments and its' investments concentrated. Can you please explain why the article suggest they are the same? 93.36.53.115 (talk) 18:33, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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CFDs???
OK, you CAN trade CFDs on commodities, but this segment seems like it was written by a cfds broker. a little more depth or kill it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.191.212.116 (talk) 10:07, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

General Review
The article should be reviewed completely and reorganized. The most striking aspect in my opinion is that it fails to separate physical trading and paper trading. This greatly affects the readability and intelligibility... I would thus advocate the present article to be split into one focusing on commodity future markets (or commodity derivatives in general) and one focusing on physical commodity trading. I note that those two "worlds" are deeply connected yet they differ on many fundamental issues (to name one, you don't need to store/transport/secure thousands of metric tons of physical corn if you trade futures, at least if you offset before expiry). I may take the time in the future to look more in depth into this article. Meanwhile, if editors familiar to the subject could kindly raise the major issues or debate on my proposition, that would be nice! FOBSCIF (talk) 18:12, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

RE: Disputed inline = "Futures are secured by physical assets." This is not the case to my knowledge, and it is rather the contrary. The future's underlying is a standardized commodity but is no way secured by a physical collateral. + the provided source do not make this claim. Would recommend to simply delete this line. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FOBSCIF (talk • contribs) 18:31, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

 * In general, this article is very technical, but completely lacks any discussion of the ethical and environmental aspects of commodity trading. --TadejM my talk 13:02, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Standardization and other unclear sections
As has been noted before, the article is both technical and incomplete. It is in need of attention by an expert.

Other sections suffer from similar issues, but "standardization" is particularly bad. It lacks a definition and simply dives into a detailed example of what constitutes "standard grade" and "deliverable grade" soybeans. If this grading reflects the "standardization", should the heading be called "grading" or "trading grades"? If not, why?

In its last paragraph, it also adds that there's "technological standardization", which seems to rely on "messages to be sent, received and processed in the same format as stocks or equities"; but it is unclear why standardizing messages would be equivalent or relevant to standardization of traded goods as in the example.

MiG-25 (talk) 01:44, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Commodity market


text:
National Liberation Army

National Liberation Army is the name of:

 * National Liberation Army (Algeria) (Armée de Libération Nationale), a liberation movement in the Algerian War of Independence
 * National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, refers to its fighters as the National Liberation Army
 * National Liberation Army (Bolivia) (Ñancahuazú Guerrilla), a Marxist–Leninist movement during the 1960s and 1970s
 * National Liberation Army (Colombia) (ELN - Ejército de Liberación Nacional), an active movement associated with the Colombian Civil War
 * National Liberation Army of Iran, the paramilitary branch of the M.E.K., Currently Inactive
 * Irish National Liberation Army, an Irish Republican group active during The Troubles
 * Kosovo Liberation Army, also known as the National Liberation Army of Kosovo
 * National Liberation Army (Libya), the armed forces of Libyan rebels during the Libyan civil war
 * National Liberation Army (North Macedonia), a militant group in the 2001 insurgency in the Republic of North Macedonia
 * Macedonian National Liberation Army, a partisan detachment during the People's Liberation War of Macedonia in World War II
 * National Liberation Army (Peru)
 * Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Sri Lanka
 * West Papua National Liberation Army, a separatist army in Western New Guinea, Indonesia
 * National Liberation Army (Yugoslavia), Yugoslav World War II resistance movement, the Partisans
 * Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, military wing of the Zimbabwe African National Union during the Rhodesian Bush War

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

title: National Liberation Army


text:
Camera obscura

A camera obscura is a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto a wall  or table opposite the hole. The image (or the principle of its projection) of lensless camera obscuras is also referred to as "pinhole image".

Camera obscura can also refer to analogous constructions such as a box or tent in which an exterior image is projected inside. Camera obscuras with a lens in the opening have been used since the second half of the 16th century and became popular as aids for drawing and painting. The concept was developed further into the photographic camera in the first half of the 19th century, when camera obscura boxes were used to expose light-sensitive materials to the projected image.

The camera obscura was used to study eclipses without the risk of damaging the eyes by looking directly into the Sun. As a drawing aid, it allowed tracing the projected image to produce a highly accurate representation, and was especially appreciated as an easy way to achieve proper graphical perspective.

Before the term camera obscura was first used in 1604, other terms were used to refer to the devices: cubiculum obscurum, cubiculum tenebricosum, conclave obscurum, and locus obscurus.

A camera obscura without a lens but with a very small hole is sometimes referred to as a pinhole camera, although this more often refers to simple (homemade) lensless cameras where photographic film or photographic paper is used.

Physical explanation
Rays of light travel in straight lines and change when they are reflected and partly absorbed by an object, retaining information about the color and brightness of the surface of that object. Lighted objects reflect rays of light in all directions. A small enough opening in a barrier admits only the rays that travel directly from different points in the scene on the other side, and these rays form an image of that scene where they reach a surface opposite from the opening.

The human eye (and that of many other animals) works much like a camera obscura, with rays of light entering an opening (pupil), getting focused through a convex lens and passing a dark chamber before forming an inverted image on a smooth surface (retina). The analogy appeared early in the 16th century and would in the 17th century find common use to illustrate Western theological ideas about God creating the universe as a machine, with a predetermined purpose (just like humans create machines). This had a huge influence on behavioral science, especially on the study of perception and cognition. In this context, it is noteworthy that the projection of inverted images is actually a physical principle of optics that predates the emergence of life (rather than a biological or technological invention) and is not characteristic of all biological vision.

Technology

A camera obscura consists of a box, tent, or room with a small hole in one side or the top. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside, where the scene is reproduced, inverted (upside-down) and reversed (left to right), but with color and perspective preserved.

To produce a reasonably clear projected image, the aperture is typically smaller than 1/100th the distance to the screen. As the pinhole is made smaller, the image gets sharper, but dimmer. With too small of a pinhole, sharpness is lost because of diffraction. Optimum sharpness is attained with an aperture diameter approximately equal to the geometric mean of the wavelength of light and the distance to the screen.

In practice, camera obscuras use a lens rather than a pinhole because it allows a larger aperture, giving a usable brightness while maintaining focus.

If the image is caught on a translucent screen, it can be viewed from the back so that it is no longer reversed (but still upside-down). Using mirrors, it is possible to project a right-side-up image. The projection can also be displayed on a horizontal surface (e.g., a table). The 18th-century overhead version in tents used mirrors inside a kind of periscope on the top of the tent.

The box-type camera obscura often has an angled mirror projecting an upright image onto tracing paper placed on its glass top. Although the image is viewed from the back, it is reversed by the mirror.

Prehistory to 500 BC: Possible inspiration for prehistoric art and possible use in religious ceremonies, gnomons
There are theories that occurrences of camera obscura effects (through tiny holes in tents or in screens of animal hide) inspired paleolithic cave paintings. Distortions in the shapes of animals in many paleolithic cave artworks might be inspired by distortions seen when the surface on which an image was projected was not straight or not in the right angle. It is also suggested that camera obscura projections could have played a role in Neolithic structures.

Perforated gnomons projecting a pinhole image of the sun were described in the Chinese Zhoubi Suanjing writings (1046 BC–256 BC with material added until c. 220 AD). The location of the bright circle can be measured to tell the time of day and year. In Arab and European cultures its invention was much later attributed to Egyptian astronomer and mathematician Ibn Yunus around 1000 AD.

500 BC to 500 AD: Earliest written observations

One of the earliest known written records of a pinhole image is found in the Chinese text called Mozi, dated to the 4th century BC, traditionally ascribed to and named for Mozi (circa 470 BC-circa 391 BC), a Chinese philosopher and the founder of Mohist School of Logic. These writings explain how the image in a "collecting-point" or "treasure house" is inverted by an intersecting point (pinhole) that collects the (rays of) light. Light coming from the foot of an illuminated person gets partly hidden below (i.e., strikes below the pinhole) and partly forms the top of the image. Rays from the head are partly hidden above (i.e., strike above the pinhole) and partly form the lower part of the image.

Another early account is provided by Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC), or possibly a follower of his ideas. Similar to the later 11th-century Arab scientist Alhazen, Aristotle is also thought to have used camera obscura for observing solar eclipses. The formation of pinhole images is touched upon as a subject in the work Problems – Book XV, asking: "Why is it that when the sun passes through quadri-laterals, as for instance in wickerwork, it does not produce a figure rectangular in shape but circular?" and further on: "Why is it that an eclipse of the sun, if one looks at it through a sieve or through leaves, such as a plane-tree or other broadleaved tree, or if one joins the fingers of one hand over the fingers of the other, the rays are crescent-shaped where they reach the earth? Is it for the same reason as that when light shines through a rectangular peep-hole, it appears circular in the form of a cone?"

In an attempt to explain the phenomenon, the author described how the light formed two cones; one between the Sun and the aperture and one between the aperture and the Earth. However, the roundness of the image was attributed to the idea that parts of the rays of light (assumed to travel in straight lines) are cut off at the angles in the aperture become so weak that they can't be noticed.

Many philosophers and scientists of the Western world would ponder the contradiction between light travelling in straight lines and the formation of round spots of light behind differently shaped apertures, until it became generally accepted that the circular and crescent-shapes described in the "problem" were pinhole image projections of the sun.

In his book Optics (circa 300 BC, surviving in later manuscripts from around 1000 AD), Euclid proposed mathematical descriptions of vision with "lines drawn directly from the eye pass through a space of great extent" and "the form of the space included in our vision is a cone, with its apex in the eye and its base at the limits of our vision." Later versions of the text, like Ignazio Danti's 1573 annotated translation, would add a description of the camera obscura principle to demonstrate Euclid's ideas.

500 to 1000: Earliest experiments, study of light
In the 6th century, the Byzantine-Greek mathematician and architect Anthemius of Tralles (most famous as a co-architect of the Hagia Sophia) experimented with effects related to the camera obscura. Anthemius had a sophisticated understanding of the involved optics, as demonstrated by a light-ray diagram he constructed in 555 AD.

In his optical treatise De Aspectibus, Al-Kindi (c. 801–873) wrote about pinhole images to prove that light travels in straight lines.

In the 10th century Yu Chao-Lung supposedly projected images of pagoda models through a small hole onto a screen to study directions and divergence of rays of light.

1000 to 1400: Optical and astronomical tool, entertainment

Arab physicist Ibn al-Haytham (known in the West by the Latinised Alhazen) (965–1040) extensively studied the camera obscura phenomenon in the early 11th century.

In his treatise "On the shape of the eclipse" he provided the first experimental and mathematical analysis of the phenomenon. He understood the relationship between the focal point and the pinhole.

"The image of the sun at the time of the eclipse, unless it is total, demonstrates that when its light passes through a narrow, round hole and is cast on a plane opposite to the hole it takes on the form of a moon-sickle. The image of the sun shows this peculiarity only when the hole is very small. When the hole is enlarged, the picture changes, and the change increases with the added width. When the aperture is very wide, the sickle-form image will disappear, and the light will appear round when the hole is round, square if the hole is square, and if the shape of the opening is irregular, the light on the wall will take on this shape, provided that the hole is wide and the plane on which it is thrown is parallel to it."

In his Book of Optics (circa 1027), Ibn al-Haytham explained that rays of light travel in straight lines and are distinguished by the body that reflected the rays, writing: "Evidence that light and color do not mingle in air or (other) transparent bodies is (found in) the fact that, when several candles are at various distinct locations in the same area, and when they all face an aperture that opens into a dark recess, and when there is a white wall or (other white) opaque body in the dark recess facing that aperture, the (individual) lights of those candles appear individually upon that body or wall according to the number of those candles; and each of those lights (spots of light) appears directly opposite one (particular) candle along a straight line passing through that window. Moreover, if one candle is shielded, only the light opposite that candle is extinguished, but if the shielding object is lifted, the light will return."

Latin translations of the Book of Optics from about 1200 onward seemed very influential in Europe. Among those Ibn al-Haytham is thought to have inspired are Witelo, John Peckham, Roger Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci, René Descartes and Johannes Kepler. However, On the shape of the eclipse remained exclusively available in Arabic until the 20th century and no comparable explanation was found in Europe before Kepler addressed it. It were actually al-Kindi's work and especially the widely circulated pseudo-Euclidean De Speculis that were cited by the early scholars who were interested in pinhole images.

In his 1088 book, Dream Pool Essays, the Song dynasty Chinese scientist Shen Kuo (1031–1095) compared the focal point of a concave burning-mirror and the "collecting" hole of camera obscura phenomena to an oar in a rowlock to explain how the images were inverted:

"'When a bird flies in the air, its shadow moves along the ground in the same direction. But if its image is collected (shu)(like a belt being tightened) through a small hole in a window, then the shadow moves in the direction opposite of that of the bird.[...] This is the same principle as the burning-mirror. Such a mirror has a concave surface, and reflects a finger to give an upright image if the object is very near, but if the finger moves farther and farther away it reaches a point where the image disappears and after that the image appears inverted. Thus the point where the image disappears is like the pinhole of the window. So also the oar is fixed at the rowlock somewhere at its middle part, constituting, when it is moved, a sort of 'waist' and the handle of the oar is always in the position inverse to the end (which is in the water).'"

Shen Kuo also responded to a statement of Duan Chengshi in Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang written in about 840 that the inverted image of a Chinese pagoda tower beside a seashore, was inverted because it was reflected by the sea: "This is nonsense. It is a normal principle that the image is inverted after passing through the small hole."

English statesman and scholastic philosopher Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175 – 9 October 1253) was one of the earliest Europeans who commented on the camera obscura.

English philosopher and Franciscan friar Roger Bacon (c. 1219/20 – c. 1292) falsely stated in his De Multiplicatione Specerium (1267) that an image projected through a square aperture was round because light would travel in spherical waves and therefore assumed its natural shape after passing through a hole. He is also credited with a manuscript that advised to study solar eclipses safely by observing the rays passing through some round hole and studying the spot of light they form on a surface.

A picture of a three-tiered camera obscura (see illustration) has been attributed to Bacon, but the source for this attribution is not given. A very similar picture is found in Athanasius Kircher's Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (1646).

Polish friar, theologian, physicist, mathematician and natural philosopher Vitello wrote about the camera obscura in his very influential treatise Perspectiva (circa 1270–1278), which was largely based on Ibn al-Haytham's work.

English archbishop and scholar John Peckham (circa 1230 – 1292) wrote about the camera obscura in his Tractatus de Perspectiva (circa 1269–1277) and Perspectiva communis (circa 1277–79), falsely arguing that light gradually forms the circular shape after passing through the aperture. His writings were influenced by Roger Bacon.

At the end of the 13th century, Arnaldus de Villa Nova is credited with using a camera obscura to project live performances for entertainment.

French astronomer Guillaume de Saint-Cloud suggested in his 1292 work Almanach Planetarum that the eccentricity of the Sun could be determined with the camera obscura from the inverse proportion between the distances and the apparent solar diameters at apogee and perigee.

Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī (1267–1319) described in his 1309 work Kitab Tanqih al-Manazir (The Revision of the Optics) how he experimented with a glass sphere filled with water in a camera obscura with a controlled aperture and found that the colors of the rainbow are phenomena of the decomposition of light.

French Jewish philosopher, mathematician, physicist and astronomer/astrologer Levi ben Gershon (1288–1344) (also known as Gersonides or Leo de Balneolis) made several astronomical observations using a camera obscura with a Jacob's staff, describing methods to measure the angular diameters of the Sun, the Moon and the bright planets Venus and Jupiter. He determined the eccentricity of the Sun based on his observations of the summer and winter solstices in 1334. Levi also noted how the size of the aperture determined the size of the projected image. He wrote about his findings in Hebrew in his treatise Sefer Milhamot Ha-Shem (The Wars of the Lord) Book V Chapters 5 and 9.

1450 to 1600: Depiction, lenses, drawing aid, mirrors
Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), familiar with the work of Alhazen in Latin translation and having extensively studied the physics and physiological aspects of optics, wrote the oldest known clear description of the camera obscura, in 1502 (found in the Codex Atlanticus, translated from Latin):

"If the facade of a building, or a place, or a landscape is illuminated by the sun and a small hole is drilled in the wall of a room in a building facing this, which is not directly lighted by the sun, then all objects illuminated by the sun will send their images through this aperture and will appear, upside down, on the wall facing the hole. You will catch these pictures on a piece of white paper, which placed vertically in the room not far from that opening, and you will see all the above-mentioned objects on this paper in their natural shapes or colors, but they will appear smaller and upside down, on account of crossing of the rays at that aperture. If these pictures originate from a place which is illuminated by the sun, they will appear colored on the paper exactly as they are. The paper should be very thin and must be viewed from the back."

These descriptions, however, would remain unknown until Venturi deciphered and published them in 1797.

Da Vinci was clearly very interested in the camera obscura: over the years he drew circa 270 diagrams of the camera obscura in his notebooks. He systematically experimented with various shapes and sizes of apertures and with multiple apertures (1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 16, 24, 28 and 32). He compared the working of the eye to that of the camera obscura and seemed especially interested in its capability of demonstrating basic principles of optics: the inversion of images through the pinhole or pupil, the non-interference of images and the fact that images are "all in all and all in every part".

The oldest known published drawing of a camera obscura is found in Dutch physician, mathematician and instrument maker Gemma Frisius’ 1545 book De Radio Astronomica et Geometrica, in which he described and illustrated how he used the camera obscura to study the solar eclipse of 24 January 1544

Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano described using a glass disc – probably a biconvex lens – in a camera obscura in his 1550 book De subtilitate, vol. I, Libri IV. He suggested to use it to view "what takes place in the street when the sun shines" and advised to use a very white sheet of paper as a projection screen so the colours wouldn't be dull.

Sicilian mathematician and astronomer Francesco Maurolico (1494–1575) answered Aristotle's problem how sunlight that shines through rectangular holes can form round spots of light or crescent-shaped spots during an eclipse in his treatise Photismi de lumine et umbra (1521–1554). However this wasn't published before 1611, after Johannes Kepler had published similar findings of his own.

Italian polymath Giambattista della Porta described the camera obscura, which he called "obscurum cubiculum", in the 1558 first edition of his book series Magia Naturalis. He suggested to use a convex lens to project the image onto paper and to use this as a drawing aid. Della Porta compared the human eye to the camera obscura: "For the image is let into the eye through the eyeball just as here through the window". The popularity of Della Porta's books helped spread knowledge of the camera obscura.

In his 1567 work La Pratica della Perspettiva Venetian nobleman Daniele Barbaro (1513-1570) described using a camera obscura with a biconvex lens as a drawing aid and points out that the picture is more vivid if the lens is covered as much as to leave a circumference in the middle.

In his influential and meticulously annotated Latin edition of the works of Ibn al-Haytham and Witelo, Opticae thesauru (1572), German mathematician Friedrich Risner proposed a portable camera obscura drawing aid; a lightweight wooden hut with lenses in each of its four walls that would project images of the surroundings on a paper cube in the middle. The construction could be carried on two wooden poles. A very similar setup was illustrated in 1645 in Athanasius Kircher's influential book Ars Magna Lucis Et Umbrae.

Around 1575 Italian Dominican priest, mathematician, astronomer, and cosmographer Ignazio Danti designed a camera obscura gnomon and a meridian line for the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Florence and he later had a massive gnomon built in the San Petronio Basilica in Bologna. The gnomon was used to study the movements of the Sun during the year and helped in determining the new Gregorian calendar for which Danti took place in the commission appointed by Pope Gregorius XIII and instituted in 1582.

In his 1585 book Diversarum Speculationum Mathematicarum Venetian mathematician Giambattista Benedetti proposed to use a mirror in a 45-degree angle to project the image upright. This leaves the image reversed, but would become common practice in later camera obscura boxes.

Giambattista della Porta added a "lenticular crystal" or biconvex lens to the camera obscura description in the 1589 second edition of Magia Naturalis. He also described use of the camera obscura to project hunting scenes, banquets, battles, plays, or anything desired on white sheets. Trees, forests, rivers, mountains "that are really so, or made by Art, of Wood, or some other matter" could be arranged on a plain in the sunshine on the other side of the camera obscura wall. Little children and animals (for instance handmade deer, wild boars, rhinos, elephants, and lions) could perform in this set. "Then, by degrees, they must appear, as coming out of their dens, upon the Plain: The Hunter he must come with his hunting Pole, Nets, Arrows, and other necessaries, that may represent hunting: Let there be Horns, Cornets, Trumpets sounded: those that are in the Chamber shall see Trees, Animals, Hunters Faces, and all the rest so plainly, that they cannot tell whether they be true or delusions: Swords drawn will glister in at the hole, that they will make people almost afraid." Della Porta claimed to have shown such spectacles often to his friends. They admired it very much and could hardly be convinced by Della Porta's explanations that what they had seen was really an optical trick.

1600 to 1650: Name coined, camera obscura telescopy, portable drawing aid in tents and boxes
The earliest use of the term "camera obscura" is found in the 1604 book Ad Vitellionem Paralipomena by German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer Johannes Kepler. Kepler discovered the working of the camera obscura by recreating its principle with a book replacing a shining body and sending threads from its edges through a many-cornered aperture in a table onto the floor where the threads recreated the shape of the book. He also realized that images are "painted" inverted and reversed on the retina of the eye and figured that this is somehow corrected by the brain. In 1607, Kepler studied the Sun in his camera obscura and noticed a sunspot, but he thought it was Mercury transiting the Sun. In his 1611 book Dioptrice, Kepler described how the projected image of the camera obscura can be improved and reverted with a lens. It is believed he later used a telescope with three lenses to revert the image in the camera obscura.

In 1611, Frisian/German astronomers David and Johannes Fabricius (father and son) studied sunspots with a camera obscura, after realizing looking at the Sun directly with the telescope could damage their eyes. They are thought to have combined the telescope and the camera obscura into camera obscura telescopy.

In 1612, Italian mathematician Benedetto Castelli wrote to his mentor, the Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician Galileo Galilei about projecting images of the Sun through a telescope (invented in 1608) to study the recently discovered sunspots. Galilei wrote about Castelli's technique to the German Jesuit priest, physicist, and astronomer Christoph Scheiner.

From 1612 to at least 1630, Christoph Scheiner would keep on studying sunspots and constructing new telescopic solar-projection systems. He called these "Heliotropii Telioscopici", later contracted to helioscope. For his helioscope studies, Scheiner built a box around the viewing/projecting end of the telescope, which can be seen as the oldest known version of a box-type camera obscura. Scheiner also made a portable camera obscura.

In his 1613 book Opticorum Libri Sex Belgian Jesuit mathematician, physicist, and architect François d'Aguilon described how some charlatans cheated people out of their money by claiming they knew necromancy and would raise the specters of the devil from hell to show them to the audience inside a dark room. The image of an assistant with a devil's mask was projected through a lens into the dark room, scaring the uneducated spectators.

By 1620 Kepler used a portable camera obscura tent with a modified telescope to draw landscapes. It could be turned around to capture the surroundings in parts.

Dutch inventor Cornelis Drebbel is thought to have constructed a box-type camera obscura which corrected the inversion of the projected image. In 1622, he sold one to the Dutch poet, composer, and diplomat Constantijn Huygens who used it to paint and recommended it to his artist friends. Huygens wrote to his parents (translated from French):"I have at home Drebbel's other instrument, which certainly makes admirable effects in painting from reflection in a dark room; it is not possible for me to reveal the beauty to you in words; all painting is dead by comparison, for here is life itself or something more elevated if one could articulate it. The figure and the contour and the movements come together naturally therein and in a grandly pleasing fashion."

German Orientalist, mathematician, inventor, poet, and librarian Daniel Schwenter wrote in his 1636 book Deliciae Physico-Mathematicae about an instrument that a man from Pappenheim had shown him, which enabled movement of a lens to project more from a scene through the camera obscura. It consisted of a ball as big as a fist, through which a hole (AB) was made with a lens attached on one side (B). This ball was placed inside two-halves of part of a hollow ball that were then glued together (CD), in which it could be turned around. This device was attached to a wall of the camera obscura (EF). This universal joint mechanism was later called a scioptric ball.

In his 1637 book Dioptrique French philosopher, mathematician and scientist René Descartes suggested placing an eye of a recently dead man (or if a dead man was unavailable, the eye of an ox) into an opening in a darkened room and scraping away the flesh at the back until one could see the inverted image formed on the retina.

Italian Jesuit philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer Mario Bettini wrote about making a camera obscura with twelve holes in his Apiaria universae philosophiae mathematicae (1642). When a foot soldier would stand in front of the camera, a twelve-person army of soldiers making the same movements would be projected.

French mathematician, Minim friar, and painter of anamorphic art Jean-François Nicéron (1613–1646) wrote about the camera obscura with convex lenses. He explained how the camera obscura could be used by painters to achieve perfect perspective in their work. He also complained how charlatans abused the camera obscura to fool witless spectators and make them believe that the projections were magic or occult science. These writings were published in a posthumous version of La Perspective Curieuse (1652).

1650 to 1800: Introduction of the magic lantern, popular portable box-type drawing aid, painting aid
The use of the camera obscura to project special shows to entertain an audience seems to have remained very rare. A description of what was most likely such a show in 1656 in France, was penned by the poet Jean Loret, who expressed how rare and novel it was. The Parisian society were presented with upside-down images of palaces, ballet dancing and battling with swords. Loret felt somewhat frustrated that he did not know the secret that made this spectacle possible. There are several clues that this may have been a camera obscura show, rather than a very early magic lantern show, especially in the upside-down image and Loret's surprise that the energetic movements made no sound.

German Jesuit scientist Gaspar Schott heard from a traveler about a small camera obscura device he had seen in Spain, which one could carry under one arm and could be hidden under a coat. He then constructed his own sliding box camera obscura, which could focus by sliding a wooden box part fitted inside another wooden box part. He wrote about this in his 1657 Magia universalis naturæ et artis (volume 1 – book 4 "Magia Optica" pages 199–201).

By 1659 the magic lantern was introduced and partly replaced the camera obscura as a projection device, while the camera obscura mostly remained popular as a drawing aid. The magic lantern can be regarded as a (box-type) camera obscura device that projects images rather than actual scenes. In 1668, Robert Hooke described the difference for an installation to project the delightful "various apparitions and disappearances, the motions, changes and actions" by means of a broad convex-glass in a camera obscura setup: "if the picture be transparent, reflect the rays of the sun so as that they may pass through it towards the place where it is to be represented; and let the picture be encompassed on every side with a board or cloth that no rays may pass beside it. If the object be a statue or some living creature, then it must be very much enlightened by casting the sun beams on it by refraction, reflexion, or both." For models that can't be inverted, like living animals or candles, he advised: "let two large glasses of convenient spheres be placed at appropriate distances".

The 17th century Dutch Masters, such as Johannes Vermeer, were known for their magnificent attention to detail. It has been widely speculated that they made use of the camera obscura, but the extent of their use by artists at this period remains a matter of fierce contention, recently revived by the Hockney–Falco thesis.

German philosopher Johann Sturm published an illustrated article about the construction of a portable camera obscura box with a 45° mirror and an oiled paper screen in the first volume of the proceedings of the Collegium Curiosum, Collegium Experimentale, sive Curiosum (1676).

Johann Zahn's Oculus Artificialis Teledioptricus Sive Telescopium, published in 1685, contains many descriptions, diagrams, illustrations and sketches of both the camera obscura and the magic lantern. A hand-held device with a mirror-reflex mechanism was first proposed by Johann Zahn in 1685, a design that would later be used in photographic cameras.

The scientist Robert Hooke presented a paper in 1694 to the Royal Society, in which he described a portable camera obscura. It was a cone-shaped box which fit onto the head and shoulders of its user.

From the beginning of the 18th century, craftsmen and opticians would make camera obscura devices in the shape of books, which were much appreciated by lovers of optical devices.

One chapter in the Conte Algarotti's Saggio sopra Pittura (1764) is dedicated to the use of a camera ottica ("optic chamber") in painting.

By the 18th century, following developments by Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, more easily portable models in boxes became available. These were extensively used by amateur artists while on their travels, but they were also employed by professionals, including Paul Sandby and Joshua Reynolds, whose camera (disguised as a book) is now in the Science Museum in London. Such cameras were later adapted by Joseph Nicephore Niepce, Louis Daguerre and William Fox Talbot for creating the first photographs.

Role in the modern age
While the technical principles of the camera obscura have been known since antiquity, the broad use of the technical concept in producing images with a linear perspective in paintings, maps, theatre setups, and architectural, and, later, photographic images and movies started in the Western Renaissance and the scientific revolution. Although Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) had already observed an optical effect and developed a pioneering theory of the refraction of light, he was less interested in producing images with it (compare Hans Belting 2005); the society he lived in was even hostile (compare Aniconism in Islam) toward personal images.

Western artists and philosophers used the Arab findings in new frameworks of epistemic relevance. For example, Leonardo da Vinci used the camera obscura as a model of the eye, René Descartes for eye and mind, and John Locke started to use the camera obscura as a metaphor of human understanding per se. The modern use of the camera obscura as an epistemic machine had important side effects for science.

While the use of the camera obscura has waxed and waned, one can still be built using a few simple items: a box, tracing paper, tape, foil, a box cutter, a pencil, and a blanket to keep out the light. Homemade camera obscura are popular primary- and secondary-school science or art projects.

In 1827, critic Vergnaud complained about the frequent use of camera obscura in producing many of the paintings at that year's Salon exhibition in Paris: "Is the public to blame, the artists, or the jury, when history paintings, already rare, are sacrificed to genre painting, and what genre at that!... that of the camera obscura." (translated from French)

British photographer Richard Learoyd has specialized in making pictures of his models and motifs with a camera obscura instead of a modern camera, combining it with the ilfochrome process which creates large grainless prints.

Other contemporary visual artists who have explicitly used camera obscura in their artworks include James Turrell, Abelardo Morell, Minnie Weisz, Robert Calafiore, Vera Lutter, Marja Pirilä, and Shi Guorui.

Digital cameras
Camera obscura principle pinhole objectives machined out of aluminium are commercially available. As the luminosity of the image is very weak in the phenomenon, long exposure times or high sensitivity must be used in digital photography. The resulting image has a hazy appearance and the image is not that sharp, even if the objective is attached to a state of the art camera body.

title: Camera obscura


text:
Green money

Green money refers to:

 * Money used for ecological purposes (ecocurrency)
 * Money from Islamic businesses, Islamic banks, and the religious sector
 * Money for agricultural accounting

title: Green money


text:
National Liberation Army (Macedonia)

The National Liberation Army (NLA; Ushtria Çlirimtare Kombëtare, abbr. UÇK; Ослободителна народна армија, abbr. ONA), also known as the Macedonian UÇK (UÇK Maqedonase; Македонски UÇK) was an ethnic Albanian militant and separatist militia that operated in the Republic of Macedonia in 2001 and was closely associated with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Following the 2001 insurgency in Macedonia, it was disarmed through the Ohrid Framework Agreement, which gave greater rights and autonomy to the state's Macedonian Albanians.

Background
In 1992–1993, ethnic Albanians created the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which started attacking police forces and secret-service officials who abused Albanian civilians in 1995. Starting in 1998, the KLA was involved in frontal battle, with increasing numbers of Yugoslav security forces. Escalating tensions led to the Kosovo War in February 1998.

After the end of the Kosovo War in 1999 with the signing of the Kumanovo agreement, a 5-kilometre-wide Ground Safety Zone (GSZ) was created. It served as a buffer zone between the Yugoslav Army and the Kosovo Force (KFOR). In June 1999, a new Albanian militant insurgent group was formed under the Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac (UÇPMB), which started training in the GSZ. The group began attacking Serbian civilians and police, which escalated into an insurgency.

With the signing of the Končulj Agreement in May 2001, the former KLA and UÇPMB fighters next moved to western Macedonia where they established the NLA, which fought against the Macedonian government in 2001. Ali Ahmeti organized the NLA from former KLA and UÇPMB fighters from Kosovo, Albanian insurgents from the Liberation Army of Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac in Serbia, young Albanian radicals, nationalists from Macedonia, and foreign mercenaries. The acronym was the same as the KLA's in Albanian.

2001 insurgency in Macedonia
The NLA was founded in the fall of 1999 and initially led by former KLA Commander Ali Ahmeti, a nephew of one of the founders of the KLA. The NLA operated secretly until it began to openly engage the Macedonian military and police. The NLA's proclaimed goal was equal rights for the ethnic Albanian minority within a confederate Macedonia. Senior NLA commanders insisted that "We do not want to endanger the stability and the territorial integrity of Macedonia, but we will fight a guerrilla war until we have won our basic rights, until we are accepted as an equal people inside Macedonia." The Macedonian government claimed the NLA were an extremist terrorist organization seeking to separate Albanian majority areas and unite those territories with Albania, though high-ranking members of the group have denied this.

On 22 January 2001, the NLA attacked a police station in Tearce, killing 1 and injuring 3. After the attack, the NLA began to carry out attacks on Macedonian security forces using light weapons. The conflict soon escalated and, by the start of March 2001, the NLA had taken effective control of a large swathe of northern and western Macedonia and had come within 12 miles of the capital Skopje.

In March 2001, NLA members failed to take the city of Tetovo in an open attack, but controlled the hills and mountains between Tetovo and Kosovo. On 3 May, a Macedonian government counteroffensive failed in the Kumanovo area. By 8 June, the rebels took Aračinovo, a village outside of Skopje. On 13 August, the two sides signed a peace deal ending the open conflict. The crisis is considered to be the turning point during the insurgency.

Composition and military capabilities
The NLA was estimated to comprise 5,000 men at its peak. As was the case with the KLA, they were fairly lightly armed – generally with small arms and mortars – though there were later reports that they had acquired SAM-7 anti-aircraft missiles. As the war progressed the rebels managed to acquire heavy weapons including T-55 tanks and armoured personnel carriers captured from Macedonian government forces. The NLA had also thousands of land and anti-tank mines.

Organization
The NLA was organized into six brigades, each with their own commanders:

The 111th, 113th, and 114th Brigades operated within the Skopska Crna Gora, while the 112th operated around and within the Tetovo municipality. The 116th Brigade operated in the Gostivar municipality while the 115th Brigade was responsible for Skopje.
 * 111th Brigade, unknown commanders
 * 112th Brigade, commanded by Rahim Beqiri
 * 113th Brigade, commanded by Xhezair Shaqiri
 * 114th Brigade, commanded by Nazim Bushi
 * 115th Brigade, commanded by Rafiz Aliti
 * 116th Brigade, commanded by Tahir Sinani

NLA veterans in politics
Some former leaders of the NLA have taken positions in politics in North Macedonia and Kosovo.

 * Ali Ahmeti, founder of the NLA, is the leader and founder of the third largest political party in North Macedonia, called the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI).
 * Gëzim Ostreni, former NLA general, created the political party "Unity", along with Zulfi Adeli. The party was later merged with the Alliance for Albanians (AA) political party in North Macedonia.
 * Jakup Asipi, former NLA commander, was elected to be the mufti for the municipalities of Kumanovo and Lipkovo.
 * Talat Xhaferi, former NLA commander, who is serving as prime minister of North Macedonia, was the president of the Assembly of North Macedonia up until 26 January 2024, and the Minister of Defense of Macedonia from 2013 to 2014.

Alleged war crimes
According to Human Rights Watch, "Ethnic Albanian rebels in Macedonia tortured, sexually abused road workers after abducting them from the Skopje–Tetovo highway."

Dozens of ethnic Macedonians were kidnapped. While many were released after a short time, 12 people apparently remained missing after the NLA released 14 others in late September. In October, reports suggested that the 12 may have been killed and buried in mass graves near Neproshteno. The case was referred by the Macedonian government to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for investigation.

Another incident is the Vejce ambush, where Albanian guerrillas ambushed and killed eight Macedonian special forces from the Lions unit, a patrol of 16 special operatives. The families of the dead soldiers and several ministers claim that the information was sold to the guerrillas and that a major betrayal took place. The guerillas set up an ambush, attacking the patrol's lightly armored Humvee vehicles with small arms fire and RPGs. The patrol stopped and Macedonian forces and guerrillas exchanged fire in a short skirmish, after which the soldiers started retreating. Half of the patrol managed to escape, one soldier was shot and seven others captured and executed with knives and then their corpses were burned.

News of the massacre sparked local uprisings against Muslim Albanians in several towns and cities across Macedonia, and such revolts included burning and vandalizing shops and mosques. Surviving members of the roadside patrol that was massacred gave eyewitness testimony of the killings. They claimed that the massacre was carried out by a group of 10 bearded men. The bodies were never released to the public or civilian investigators and autopsies were carried out in a military morgue.

There was also an NLA bombing of the 13th century Orthodox monastery Sveti Atanasij in the village of Lesok on August 21, 2001. The attack occurred at around 3 am Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The interior had been gratified and destroyed by the NLA. NATO military experts said that "the fact that the battery was lying within an area spattered by rubble and wreckage seemed to suggest that it was detonated using a relatively sophisticated timer device;".

Ceasefire and disarmament
After the Ohrid Agreement, the NLA agreed to a ceasefire in June. Under the Ohrid Agreement, the Macedonian government pledged to improve the rights of the Albanian population, that make up around 20% of the population, a percentage heavily disputed by Macedonians. Those rights include making Albanian an official language, increasing the participation of ethnic Albanians in government institutions, police and the army. Most importantly, under the Ohrid Agreement, the Macedonian government agreed to a new model of decentralization.

The Albanian side agreed to give up any separatist demands and to fully recognize all Macedonian institutions. In addition, the NLA was to disarm and hand over their weapons to a NATO force. Operation Essential Harvest was officially launched on 22 August and effectively started on 27 August. This 30-day mission was to initially involve approximately 3,500 NATO troops, a number that went up to 4,200 NATO troops and Macedonian troops, to disarm the NLA and destroy their weapons. Just hours after NATO wrapped up the operation, Ali Ahmeti told reporters attending a news conference in the rebel stronghold of Sipkovica that he was dissolving the National Liberation Army and that it was time for ethnic reconciliation. Many members of the NLA, led by Ali Ahmeti, later formed the Democratic Union for Integration, a political party that won the majority of the Albanian votes in the 2002 election and formed part of the ruling coalition along with SDSM and LDP until August 2006 when, following July 2006 parliamentary elections, a conservative VMRO-DPMNE / DPA coalition came to government.

The total casualties of the war on each side are not known, but both sides claimed their own military casualties were around 60 each, while about 60–80 ethnic Albanian civilians and possibly about ten Macedonian civilians are thought to have been killed.

Formation of the Albanian National Army
In July 2001, members of the NLA formed the Albanian National Army (ANA, AKSh), and announced itself on 3 August 2001. The group is associated with FBKSh (National Front for Reunification of Albanians), its political wing. The group participated in attacks against Macedonian forces with the NLA. After the NLA disbanded, the ANA later went and operated in the Preševo Valley. The ANA continued to attack Macedonian security forces, while the NLA still claimed responsibility for attacks that occasionally occurred.

Later developments
After the Ohrid Agreement on 26 March 2002, ANA members attacked former NLA members in the village and former NLA stronghold Mala Rečica near Tetovo. The battle between former members of the NLA and members of the ANA lasted four hours and about 100 militants participated in it. According to some sources, 1 to 2 militants died in this skirmish.

In 2004, Avdil Jakupi, a ANA commander, surrendered to authorities in Kosovo, were he was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for kidnapping two policemen and attempting to bomb railway lines.

In 2004 and 2005 a group of 80 militants led by Agim Krasniqi controlled the village of Kondovo twice. Through the media, Krasniqi threatened to shell Skopje and his men kidnapped and beat four police officers. Krasniqi was later arrested my Macedonian Police and sent to court. He was charged with acts of terror, which he and his group pleaded not guilty to.

On 7 November 2007, ANA insurgents of the "Jakupi Group" controlled the region of the village Brodec on the Šar Mountains. The Macedonian police force later crackdown on the group, dubbed Operation Mountain Storm. The operation was carried out by a multi-ethnic police force, and according to Macedonian authorities, six members of the ANA were killed.

In April 2010, a weapon cache believed to be intended for group actions was discovered near the border with Serbia; it included uniforms with UÇK marks.

A movement calling itself the NLA claimed responsibility for the 2014 Skopje government attack. The organization, in the letter signed by "Kushtrimi" to the government, claimed that the "Hasan Prishtina" elite force hit the government building in a coordinated action. The organization claims it is dissatisfied with the 2001 Ohrid Agreement.

On 9 December 2014 at 8 p.m members of the National Liberation Army carried out bomb attacks near Macedonian police stations in Kumanovo and Tetovo. The Ministry of the Interior announced that in both cases it was not about bombs, but about a kind of explosive device. there were no injuries and no major damage. A private car parked near the train station was damaged. After the attack, the NLA took over responsibility.

On 21 April 2015, a group of 40 armed men with NLA patches attacked a border police station at Gošince. The group tied the policemen up and beat them, then stole their arms and communication devices. Before they left for Kosovo, the issued the message: "We are from the National Liberation Army. Tell them that neither Ali Ahmeti nor Nikola Gruevski can save you. We do not want any framework agreement and if we see you here again, we will kill you. We want our own state."

On 14 May 2015, a series of shootouts happened in Kumanovo between Macedonian police and a group who claimed they were the NLA. Between 50-70 militants were present during the fighting. Ten militants were killed, and reports state they wore uniforms with NLA insignia, with 30 more being arrested. According to Nikola Gruevski the armed group did not have the support of members of the Albanian minority contrary to the 2001 conflict.

title: National Liberation Army (Macedonia)


text:
Lime

Lime most commonly refers to:
 * Lime (fruit), a green citrus fruit
 * Lime (material), inorganic materials containing calcium, usually calcium oxide or calcium hydroxide
 * Lime (color), a color between yellow and green

Lime may also refer to:

Botany

 * Australian lime, a species of Citrus native to Australia and Papua New Guinea
 * Key lime, a citrus hybrid with a spherical fruit
 * Persian lime, a citrus fruit species of hybrid origin
 * Tilia, a genus of trees known in Britain as lime trees, lime-wood, basswood, or linden
 * Wild lime or Zanthoxylum fagara, a green fruit native to the Americas

Chemistry

 * Agricultural lime, a soil additive containing calcium carbonate and other ingredients
 * Birdlime, a sticky substance spread on branches to trap small birds
 * Calcium hydroxide, a.k.a. slaked lime, slack lime, limewater, pickling lime or hydrated lime
 * Hydraulic lime, used to make lime mortar
 * Limewater, saturated calcium hydroxide solution
 * Calcium oxide, a.k.a. burnt lime or quicklime

Surname

 * Harold Lime (1928–2008), American pornographic film director
 * Rickey Lime (born 1980), American musician
 * Yvonne Lime (born 1935), American former actress; philanthropist

Places

 * Lime, Oregon, United States
 * Limé, a French commune in the Aisne department
 * Lime Lake Township, Minnesota, United States
 * Lime Township, Blue Earth County, Minnesota, United States
 * Orio al Serio Airport, ICAO code LIME

Music

 * Lime (band), a Canadian synthpop duo
 * Lime (singer) (Kim Hye-lim, born 1993), a member of the girl group Hello Venus
 * Lime (album), by Arvingarna, 1999

Television

 * Lime Pictures, a TV production company
 * Lime TV, a website and former television network

Other uses in arts, entertainment, and media

 * Lime (magazine), an Asian lifestyle magazine
 * Lime (video game company), a sister brand of the Japanese adult video game company Navel
 * Lime, a 1996 Saber Marionette J character
 * Harry Lime, a character in 1949 film The Third Man

Brands and enterprises

 * LIME (telecommunications company), a Caribbean telecommunications company
 * Lime (transportation company), a company which operates dockless bicycle and scooter sharing systems

Technology

 * Lime (test framework), a PHP testing framework
 * LIME, an acronym for "Landline, Internet, Mobile, Entertainment", used in the Internet industry

Other uses

 * LIME Sports Club, a cricket club in Barbados

title: Lime


text:
NLA

NLA may refer to:
 * NLA, the IATA code for Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport in Ndola, Zambia
 * National Language Authority, a regulatory institution of Urdu language in Pakistan
 * National League A, the premier ice hockey league in Switzerland
 * National Leather Association International, a BDSM organization based in the United States
 * National Liberation Army (disambiguation)
 * National Lipid Association, an American association of healthcare providers dedicated to improve lipid management in clinical medicine
 * Network Level Authentication, in computing, a user authorizing technology
 * New Large Airplane, a defunct airplane project
 * New London Architecture, a resource and forum for London's built environment
 * Newspaper Licensing Agency, a newspaper licensing organization in the United Kingdom
 * Numerical linear algebra, the study of algorithms for performing linear algebra computations

Libraries

 * Nebraska Library Association
 * Nevada Library Association

National libraries

 * National Library of Afghanistan, based in Kabul University prior to its destruction in a civil war.
 * National Library of Agriculture, more accurately known as the United States National Agricultural Library
 * National Library of Albania
 * National Library of Aleppo
 * National Library of Algeria
 * National Library of Andorra, more accurately known as the Andorra National Library
 * National Library of Angola
 * National Library of Argentina, more accurately known as the Mariano Moreno National Library of the Argentine Republic
 * National Library of Armenia
 * National Library of Aruba
 * National Library of Australia
 * National Library of Austria, more accurately known as the Austrian National Library
 * National Library of Azerbaijan

title: NLA


text:
Article (grammar)

In grammar, an article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech.

In English, both "the" and "a(n)" are articles, which combine with nouns to form noun phrases. Articles typically specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun phrase, but in many languages, they carry additional grammatical information such as gender, number, and case. Articles are part of a broader category called determiners, which also include demonstratives, possessive determiners, and quantifiers. In linguistic interlinear glossing, articles are abbreviated as.

Definite article
A definite article is an article that marks a definite noun phrase. Definite articles, such as the English the, are used to refer to a particular member of a group. It may be something that the speaker has already mentioned, or it may be otherwise something uniquely specified.

For example, Sentence 1 uses the definite article and thus, expresses a request for a particular book. In contrast, Sentence 2 uses an indefinite article and thus, conveys that the speaker would be satisfied with any book.

 * 1) Give me the book.
 * 2) Give me a book.

The definite article can also be used in English to indicate a specific class among other classes:
 * The cabbage white butterfly lays its eggs on members of the Brassica genus.

However, recent developments show that definite articles are morphological elements linked to certain noun types due to lexicalization. Under this point of view, definiteness does not play a role in the selection of a definite article more than the lexical entry attached to the article.

Some languages (such as the continental North Germanic languages, Bulgarian or Romanian) have definite articles only as suffixes.

Indefinite article
An indefinite article is an article that marks an indefinite noun phrase. Indefinite articles are those such as English "a" or "an", which do not refer to a specific identifiable entity. Indefinites are commonly used to introduce a new discourse referent which can be referred back to in subsequent discussion:

 * 1) A monster ate a cookie. His name is Cookie Monster.

Indefinites can also be used to generalize over entities who have some property in common:

 * 1) A cookie is a wonderful thing to eat.

Indefinites can also be used to refer to specific entities whose precise identity is unknown or unimportant.

 * 1) A monster must have broken into my house last night and eaten all my cookies.
 * 2) A friend of mine told me that happens frequently to people who live on Sesame Street.

Indefinites also have predicative uses:

 * 1) Leaving my door unlocked was a bad decision.

Indefinite noun phrases are widely studied within linguistics, in particular because of their ability to take exceptional scope.

Proper article
A proper article indicates that its noun is proper, and refers to a unique entity. It may be the name of a person, the name of a place, the name of a planet, etc. The Māori language has the proper article a, which is used for personal nouns; so, "a Pita" means "Peter". In Māori, when the personal nouns have the definite or indefinite article as an important part of it, both articles are present; for example, the phrase "a Te Rauparaha", which contains both the proper article a and the definite article Te refers to the person name Te Rauparaha.

The definite article is sometimes also used with proper names, which are already specified by definition (there is just one of them). For example: the Amazon, the Hebrides. In these cases, the definite article may be considered superfluous. Its presence can be accounted for by the assumption that they are shorthand for a longer phrase in which the name is a specifier, i.e. the Amazon River, the Hebridean Islands. Where the nouns in such longer phrases cannot be omitted, the definite article is universally kept: the United States, the People's Republic of China.

This distinction can sometimes become a political matter: the former usage the Ukraine stressed the word's Russian meaning of "borderlands"; as Ukraine became a fully independent state following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it requested that formal mentions of its name omit the article. Similar shifts in usage have occurred in the names of Sudan and both Congo (Brazzaville) and Congo (Kinshasa); a move in the other direction occurred with The Gambia. In certain languages, such as French and Italian, definite articles are used with all or most names of countries: la France, le Canada, l'Allemagne; l'Italia, la Spagna, il Brasile.

"If a name [has] a definite article, e.g. the Kremlin, it cannot idiomatically be used without it: we cannot say Boris Yeltsin is in Kremlin."

- R. W. Burchfield

Some languages use definite articles with personal names, as in Portuguese (a Maria, literally: "the Maria"), Greek (η Μαρία, ο Γιώργος, ο Δούναβης, η Παρασκευή), and Catalan (la Núria, el/en Oriol). Such usage also occurs colloquially or dialectally in Spanish, German, French, Italian and other languages. In Hungarian, the colloquial use of definite articles with personal names, though widespread, is considered to be a Germanism.

The definite article sometimes appears in American English nicknames such as "the Donald", referring to former president Donald Trump, and "the Gipper", referring to former president Ronald Reagan.

Partitive article
A partitive article is a type of article, sometimes viewed as a type of indefinite article, used with a mass noun such as water, to indicate a non-specific quantity of it. Partitive articles are a class of determiner; they are used in French and Italian in addition to definite and indefinite articles. (In Finnish and Estonian, the partitive is indicated by inflection.) The nearest equivalent in English is some, although it is classified as a determiner, and English uses it less than French uses de.
 * French: Veux-tu du café ?
 * Do you want (some) coffee?

 * For more information, see the article on the French partitive article.

Haida has a partitive article (suffixed -gyaa) referring to "part of something or... to one or more objects of a given group or category," e.g., tluugyaa uu hal tlaahlaang "he is making a boat (a member of the category of boats)."

Negative article
A negative article specifies none of its noun, and can thus be regarded as neither definite nor indefinite. On the other hand, some consider such a word to be a simple determiner rather than an article. In English, this function is fulfilled by no, which can appear before a singular or plural noun:
 * No man has been on this island.
 * No dogs are allowed here.
 * No one is in the room.

In German, the negative article is, among other variations, kein, in opposition to the indefinite article ein.
 * Ein Hund – a dog
 * Kein Hund – no dog

The equivalent in Dutch is geen:
 * een hond – a dog
 * geen hond – no dog

Zero article
The zero article is the absence of an article. In languages having a definite article, the lack of an article specifically indicates that the noun is indefinite. Linguists interested in X-bar theory causally link zero articles to nouns lacking a determiner. In English, the zero article rather than the indefinite is used with plurals and mass nouns, although the word "some" can be used as an indefinite plural article.

 * Visitors end up walking in mud.

Crosslinguistic variation

Articles are found in many Indo-European languages, Semitic languages (only the definite article), and Polynesian languages; however, they are formally absent from many of the world's major languages including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, many Turkic languages (including Tatar, Bashkir, Tuvan and Chuvash), many Uralic languages (incl. Finnic and Saami languages), Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, Tamil, the Baltic languages, the majority of Slavic languages, the Bantu languages (incl. Swahili). In some languages that do have articles, such as some North Caucasian languages, the use of articles is optional; however, in others like English and German it is mandatory in all cases.

Linguists believe the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, Proto-Indo-European, did not have articles. Most of the languages in this family do not have definite or indefinite articles: there is no article in Latin or Sanskrit, nor in some modern Indo-European languages, such as the families of Slavic languages (except for Bulgarian and Macedonian, which are rather distinctive among the Slavic languages in their grammar, and some Northern Russian dialects ), Baltic languages and many Indo-Aryan languages. Although Classical Greek had a definite article (which has survived into Modern Greek and which bears strong functional resemblance to the German definite article, which it is related to), the earlier Homeric Greek used this article largely as a pronoun or demonstrative, whereas the earliest known form of Greek known as Mycenaean Greek did not have any articles. Articles developed independently in several language families.

Not all languages have both definite and indefinite articles, and some languages have different types of definite and indefinite articles to distinguish finer shades of meaning: for example, French and Italian have a partitive article used for indefinite mass nouns, whereas Colognian has two distinct sets of definite articles indicating focus and uniqueness, and Macedonian uses definite articles in a demonstrative sense, with a tripartite distinction (proximal, medial, distal) based on distance from the speaker or interlocutor. The words this and that (and their plurals, these and those) can be understood in English as, ultimately, forms of the definite article the (whose declension in Old English included thaes, an ancestral form of this/that and these/those).

In many languages, the form of the article may vary according to the gender, number, or case of its noun. In some languages the article may be the only indication of the case. Many languages do not use articles at all, and may use other ways of indicating old versus new information, such as topic–comment constructions.

Tables
The following examples show articles which are always suffixed to the noun:

 * Albanian: zog, a bird; zogu, the bird
 * Aramaic: שלם (shalam), peace; שלמא (shalma), the peace
 * Note: Aramaic is written from right to left, so an Aleph is added to the end of the word. ם becomes מ when it is not the final letter.
 * Assamese: "কিতাপ (kitap)", book; "কিতাপখন (kitapkhôn)": "The book"
 * Bengali: "বই (bôi)", book; "বইটি (bôiti)/বইটা (bôita)/বইখানা (bôikhana)" : "The Book"
 * Bulgarian: стол stol, chair; столът stolǎt, the chair (subject); стола stola, the chair (object)
 * Danish: hus, house; huset, the house; if there is an adjective: det gamle hus, the old house
 * Icelandic: hestur, horse; hesturinn, the horse
 * Macedonian: стол stol, chair; столот stolot, the chair; столов stolov, this chair; столон stolon, that chair
 * Persian: sib, apple. (There is no definite articles in the Standard Persian. It has one indefinite article 'yek' that means 'one'. In Standard Persian, if a noun is not indefinite, it is a definite noun. 'Sib e' man' means 'my apple'. Here, 'e' is like 'of' in English, so literally 'sib e man' means 'the apple of mine'. However, in Iranian Persian, "-e" is used as a definite article, quite different from Standard Persian. pesar, boy; pesare, the boy; pesare in'o be'm dād, the boy gave me this.)
 * Romanian: drum, road; drumul, the road (the article is just "l", "u" is a "connection vowel" vocală de legătură)
 * Swedish and Norwegian: hus, house; huset, the house; if there is an adjective: det gamle (N)/gamla (S) huset, the old house

Examples of prefixed definite articles:
 * ילד, transcribed as yeled, a boy; הילד, transcribed as hayeled, the boy
 * ktieb, a book; il-ktieb, the book; għotja, a donation; l-għotja, the donation; ċavetta, a key; iċ-ċavetta, the key; dar, a house; id-dar, the house; nemla, an ant; in-nemla, the ant; ras, a head; ir-ras, the head; sodda, a bed; is-sodda, the bed; tuffieħa, an apple; it-tuffieħa, the apple; xahar, a month; ix-xahar, the month; zunnarija, a carrot; iz-zunnarija, the carrot; żmien, a time; iż-żmien, the time

A different way, limited to the definite article, is used by Latvian and Lithuanian. The noun does not change but the adjective can be defined or undefined. In Latvian: galds, a table / the table; balts galds, a white table; baltais galds, the white table. In Lithuanian: stalas, a table / the table; baltas stalas, a white table; baltasis stalas, the white table.

Languages in the above table written in italics are constructed languages and are not natural, that is to say that they have been purposefully invented by an individual (or group of individuals) with some purpose in mind. They do, however, all belong to language families themselves. Esperanto is derived from European languages and therefore all of its roots are found in Proto-Indo-European and cognates can be found in real-world languages like French, German, Italian and English. Interlingua is also based on European languages but with its main source being that of Italic descendant languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, with German and Russian being secondary sources, with words from further afield (but internationally known and often borrowed) contributing to the language's vocabulary (such as words taken from Japanese, Arabic and Finnish). The result is a supposedly easy-to-learn language for the world. As well as these "auxiliary" languages the list contains two more: Quenya and Sindarin; these two languages were created by Professor Tolkien and used in his fictional works. They are not based on any real-world language family (as are Esperanto and Interlingua), but do share a common history with roots in Common Eldarin.

Tokelauan
When using a definite article in Tokelauan language, unlike in some languages like English, if the speaker is speaking of an item, they need not have referred to it previously as long as the item is specific. This is also true when it comes to the reference of a specific person. So, although the definite article used to describe a noun in the Tokelauan language is te, it can also translate to the indefinite article in languages that requires the item being spoken of to have been referenced prior. When translating to English, te could translate to the English definite article the, or it could also translate to the English indefinite article a. An example of how the definite article te can be used as an interchangeable definite or indefinite article in the Tokelauan language would be the sentence “Kua hau te tino”. In the English language, this could be translated as “A man has arrived” or “The man has arrived” where using te as the article in this sentence can represent any man or a particular man. The word he, which is the indefinite article in Tokelauan, is used to describe ‘any such item’, and is encountered most often with negatives and interrogatives. An example of the use of he as an indefinite article is “Vili ake oi k'aumai he toki ”, where ‘he toki ’ mean ‘an axe’. The use of he and te in Tokelauan are reserved for when describing a singular noun. However, when describing a plural noun, different articles are used. For plural definite nouns, rather than te, the article nā is used. ‘Vili ake oi k'aumai nā nofoa’ in Tokelauan would translate to “Do run and bring me the chairs” in English. There are some special cases in which instead of using nā, plural definite nouns have no article before them. The absence of an article is represented by 0. One way that it is usually used is if a large amount or a specific class of things are being described. Occasionally, such as if one was describing an entire class of things in a nonspecific fashion, the singular definite noun te would is used. In English, ‘Ko te povi e kai mutia’ means “Cows eat grass”. Because this is a general statement about cows, te is used instead of nā. The ko serves as a preposition to the “te” The article ni is used for describing a plural indefinite noun. ‘E i ei ni tuhi?’ translates to “Are there any books?”

Historical development
Articles often develop by specialization of adjectives or determiners. Their development is often a sign of languages becoming more analytic instead of synthetic, perhaps combined with the loss of inflection as in English, Romance languages, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Torlakian.

Joseph Greenberg in Universals of Human Language describes "the cycle of the definite article": Definite articles (Stage I) evolve from demonstratives, and in turn can become generic articles (Stage II) that may be used in both definite and indefinite contexts, and later merely noun markers (Stage III) that are part of nouns other than proper names and more recent borrowings. Eventually articles may evolve anew from demonstratives.

Definite articles
Definite articles typically arise from demonstratives meaning that. For example, the definite articles in most Romance languages—e.g., el, il, le, la, lo, a, o — derive from the Latin demonstratives ille (masculine), illa (feminine) and illud (neuter).

The English definite article the, written þe in Middle English, derives from an Old English demonstrative, which, according to gender, was written se (masculine), seo (feminine) (þe and þeo in the Northumbrian dialect), or þæt (neuter). The neuter form þæt also gave rise to the modern demonstrative that. The ye occasionally seen in pseudo-archaic usage such as "Ye Olde Englishe Tea Shoppe" is actually a form of þe, where the letter thorn (þ) came to be written as a y.

Multiple demonstratives can give rise to multiple definite articles. Macedonian, for example, in which the articles are suffixed, has столот (stolot), the chair; столов (stolov), this chair; and столон (stolon), that chair. These derive from the Proto-Slavic demonstratives *tъ "this, that", *ovъ "this here" and *onъ "that over there, yonder" respectively. Colognian prepositions articles such as in dat Auto, or et Auto, the car; the first being specifically selected, focused, newly introduced, while the latter is not selected, unfocused, already known, general, or generic.

Standard Basque distinguishes between proximal and distal definite articles in the plural (dialectally, a proximal singular and an additional medial grade may also be present). The Basque distal form (with infix -a-, etymologically a suffixed and phonetically reduced form of the distal demonstrative har-/hai-) functions as the default definite article, whereas the proximal form (with infix -o-, derived from the proximal demonstrative hau-/hon-) is marked and indicates some kind of (spatial or otherwise) close relationship between the speaker and the referent (e.g., it may imply that the speaker is included in the referent): etxeak ("the houses") vs. etxeok ("these houses [of ours]"), euskaldunak ("the Basque speakers") vs. euskaldunok ("we, the Basque speakers").

Speakers of Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, a modern Aramaic language that lacks a definite article, may at times use demonstratives aha and aya (feminine) or awa (masculine) – which translate to "this" and "that", respectively – to give the sense of "the". In Indonesian, the third person possessive suffix -nya could be also used as a definite article.

Indefinite articles
Indefinite articles typically arise from adjectives meaning one. For example, the indefinite articles in the Romance languages—e.g., un, una, une—derive from the Latin adjective unus. Partitive articles, however, derive from Vulgar Latin de illo, meaning (some) of the.

The English indefinite article an is derived from the same root as one. The -n came to be dropped before consonants, giving rise to the shortened form a. The existence of both forms has led to many cases of juncture loss, for example transforming the original a napron into the modern an apron.

The Persian indefinite article is yek, meaning one.

title: Article (grammar)