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Sporran

The sporran (Scottish Gaelic for 'purse'), a traditional part of male Scottish Highland dress, is a pouch that functions as a pocket for the kilt. Made of leather or fur, the ornamentation of the sporran is chosen to complement the formality of dress worn with it. The sporran is worn on a leather strap or chain, conventionally positioned in front of the groin of the wearer.

Since the traditional kilt does not have pockets, the sporran serves as a wallet and container for any other necessary personal items. It is essentially a remnant of the common European medieval belt-pouch, superseded elsewhere as clothing came to have pockets, but continuing in the Scottish Highlands because of the lack of these accessories in traditional dress. The sporran hangs below the belt buckle; and much effort is made to match their style and design. The kilt belt buckle may be very ornate, and contain similar motifs to the sporran cantle and the sgian dubh. Early sporrans would have been worn suspended from the belt or on either of the hips, rather than hung from a separate strap in front of the wearer. When driving a car, dancing, playing drums, or engaging in any activity where a heavy pouch might encumber the wearer, the sporran may be turned around the waist to let it hang on the hip in a more casual position.

Day sporrans
Day sporrans are usually brown leather shovel pouches with simple adornment. These "day" sporrans often have three or more leather tassels and frequently Celtic knot designs carved or embossed into the leather. This style of traditional purse is convenient to use on a daily basis. This style is often made entirely of leather, with a leather flap, front, and three tassels or more. They are often embossed or hand-tooled with Celtic, thistle, or other designs on the flap and body, and fasten with a stud or hook closure.

Dress sporrans
Dress sporrans can be larger than the day variety, and are often highly ornate. Victorian examples were usually quite ostentatious, and much more elaborate than the simple leather pouch of the 17th or 18th century. They may have sterling or silver-plated cantles trimming the top of the pouch and a fur-covered face with fur or hair tassels. The cantle may contain intricate filigree or etchings of Celtic knots. The top of the cantle may have a set stone, jewel, or emblems such as Saint Andrew, a thistle, Clan, or Masonic symbols.

Full-dress sporrans
This style is regarded as the most formal type of sporran. It is an essential attachment for those who wear kilts in special ceremonies and formal events. It normally contains fur fronts, a fur gusset, 3–6 decorative fur tassels with regular or cross chains, and a metal cantle at the top. The cantle arcs along the top of the pouch and conceals a clasp, ordinarily made from pewter or silver. It might be decorated with Celtic symbols such as the lion rampant, thistle, stag, or Saltire. Some elaborate cantles may include gemstones, such as garnets. This style commonly fastens at the rear with a stud on a small flap that connects the front and rear of the sporran. It allows the wearer to carry a range of items due to the larger size of this sporran.

Semi-dress sporrans
Semi-dress sporrans combine the same shape and design as the day-wear sporran and a less formal version of the full dress sporran. They are often worn for semi-formal occasions with Argyll outfits. Designs may decorate the leather flap of this style, or a silver clan symbol or other insignia may adorn on the flap. The body fur of this style is normally a hair hide rather than a loftier material reserved for full dress sporrans. The basic figure is commonly included with a fur front, leather gusset, three decorated fur tassels with regular or cross-chains, and a leather flap at the top. Celtic or Scottish designs often are featured on the flap, and may have pewter badges' decoration to raise the design.

Full mask sporrans
This style is commonly made from the head of an animal such as the badger, otter, fox, kangaroo mouse, pine marten, or other small animals. The animal's head typically forms the front flap of the pouch, and the body of the pouch is made from the same pelt. This style displays the Scottish tradition, since the earliest pouches probably included the head with the pelt. Today, people do not wear this style very often for standard formal occasions, though it may be worn in historic re-enactments and festivals as a costume accessory.

Horsehair sporrans
This style is most commonly worn as part of regimental attire for the pipers or the drummers. In general, it is one of the most dramatic and biggest of dress-sporrans with a very formal style. A traditional horsehair pouch extends just below the belt to just below the hem of the kilt. The most ordinary pattern contains black horsehair tassels on a white horsehair background. Pewter or silver cantle is also carved on the sporran. This style made from horsehide rather than tail hair, are more able to keep with the compact shape and decor of less showy, semi-dress versions.

Materials and law
As sporrans are typically made of animal skin, their production, ownership, and transportation across borders may be regulated by legislation set to control the trade of protected and endangered species. A 2007 BBC report on legislation introduced by the Scottish Executive stated that sporran owners may need licences to prove that the animals used in construction of their pouch conformed to these regulations.

In 2009, European politicians voted to ban the sale of seal products putting an end to the use of seal in sporran production.

Tradition
Soldiers did not wear sporrans very often in daily life. The main function of sporrans were used as haversack, for each Highlander carried his own provision of oatmeal—eating it if necessary, raw, or mixed with a little cold water—as did Montrose in the dawn before the Battle of Inverlochy. To have enough comfort for a soldier to be able to walk, the sporran usually would be worn as high as possible. Soldiers normally could get a sporran from the regimental office free of charge, as long as they gave it back when they left the Regiment. However, some officers and sergeants had to pay and book their own unique styles of sporrans. That sporran was their private property, no matter if they still stayed and served in the Regiments.

For most highlander regiments, they used different number of tassels to distinguish their own unique symbol. For example, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders regiment used six tassels on sporrans to differ with other highlanders' regiments. The general rules for six tassels are: two at the top in a line, two under them in a line, and two in the centre to hang below these, so that a line drawn across the bottom of the side tassels would pass through the centre of the centre tassels. The sporran-belt when on the man is to be cut to three inches from the buckle, and to be cut to a point in the shoemaker's shop—it is not to be doubled into the keeper; one keeper will be sufficient—and the point of strap will be in the direction of the right hip, and the buckle will be worn exactly over the spine and not to one side.

The tradition of wearing sporran in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Regiment is a bit different from the daily wearing of other highlanders. The official description of the dress sporran is "engraved gilt top, five sided, square edges, with centre in black enamel. On the centre, Boar's head and scroll. Princess' Coronet on top with her Cypher, the cat and scroll similar to full dress headdress. Six small gold bullion tassels."

Here are the dress regulations to indicate; the dress sporran was not to exceed eleven inches in length, and the badger-skin sporran no more than thirteen inches. The dress sporran was not to have more than six tassels. Officers were permitted to wear undress sporran resembling the men's. Goatskins with silver tassels were differed as the style of the officers' sporran with other ranks. The knobs (i.e. the bells) on the tassels of the officer's purse were ordered to the gilt. The rank-and-file purse was of black hair with white tassels, and was still larger and broader than formerly.

Typical types
In terms of historic records, there are six different types of sporran which were used in the regimental events. The Badger-head sporrans were typically used by the officers and sergeants. The horsehair sporrans were widely used in different ranks. The swinging six sporrans were extremely popular for the soldiers.

Badger-head sporran typically forms as the front flap of the pouch, and the body of the pouch is made from the same pelt. From the year 1800, the badger skin probably was a widely used material for sporrans and became a new fashion trend for the officers and sergeants as in most Highland corps, opening in front, with a straight narrow silver or brass top, edged with crimson leather, two rows of small white tassels and silver bells, mounted on red leather and suspended by twisted white leather thongs or cords. In ordinary occasions, officers and sergeants started to wear a sporran of badger skin with the head and narrow brass curved top, edged with black leather, and six white tassels in brass cups.

The rank and file wore similar ones of black or grey goatskin, but the white tassels had red cords. The sporran had a white buff leather strap and was somewhat smaller and squarer than the modern pattern. It was worn in the old fashion, well braced up, close to the jacket. These sporrans, unlike the present day ones, had a large roomy pouch, the opening being concealed by the flat top.

Horsehair sporran was normally worn by pipers and drummers of the Regimental music band. The most ordinary pattern contains black horsehair tassels on a white horsehair background. Pewter or silver cantle is also carved on the sporran. Sometimes, the pattern thistle decorated cantle and tassel tops. It's widely distinguished as the most popular pattern of an officer's sporran with white horsehair background, and normal soldier's with black horsehair background.

Swinging six sporran is generally known as a "swinging six" due to the six white horse hair tassels which hang from the front of the sporran, made of black goatskin. Behind the brass cantle is a leather purse to keep money or personal items in. The style of sporran was adopted as part of the Sutherland Highlanders' uniform between 1823 and 1826 and was later worn as part of the uniform of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Regiment after the 93rd and 91st amalgamated in 1881. This type of sporran was commonly worn by the sergeants and soldiers.

White sporran was issued as a buff coloured leather sporran that had to be coated in a white liquid which dried to form a white surface (This often rubbed off onto the front of the kilt). A regimental sporran badge was then attached to the front. This style was only worn on limited occasions and did not replace the swinging six sporrans or the other plain leather one, both of which continued to be worn throughout this period. Most soldiers were happy when the white sporran was no longer issued as part of the uniform of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

Civilian sporran worn by General Duncan Campbell of Lochnell. The sporran has a silver cantle, a border decorated with thistle foliage, and a central coat of arms of the Campbell of Lochnell family; six silver thread tassels; and, a white goat hair covering on a white/light tan leather sporran edged in black leather.

Plain leather sporran has become very popular today, as it is convenient to wear daily. This style concentrates on practical function more than aesthetic value, it only keeps the Regimental badge without six tassels and another decorative pattern. This style is an essential accessory for the kilt to hold money, keys, etc.

title: Sporran


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List of nearest bright stars

This list of nearest bright stars is a table of stars found within 15 parsecs (48.9 light-years) of the nearest star, the Sun, that have an absolute magnitude of +8.5 or brighter, which is approximately comparable to a listing of stars more luminous than a red dwarf. Right ascension and declination coordinates are for the epoch J2000. The distance measurements are based on the Hipparcos Catalogue and other astrometric data. In the event of a spectroscopic binary, the combined spectral type and absolute magnitude are listed in italics.

The list is ordered by increasing distance.

Stars within 10 parsecs
These stars are estimated to be within 32.6 light-years of the Sun.

Stars between 10 and 13 parsecs
These stars are estimated to be from 32.7 to 42.4 light years distant from the Sun.

Stars between 13 and 15 parsecs
These stars are estimated to be from 42.5 to 48.9 light years distant from the Sun. A value of 48.9 light years corresponds to a minimum parallax of 66.7 mas.

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

title: List of nearest bright stars


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Anjem Choudary

Anjem Choudary (, aka Abu Luqman; born 18 January 1967) is a Pakistani-British Islamist and a social and political activist who has been described as "the face" of militant Islamism or the "best known" Islamic extremist in Britain.

Members of his group have been accused of being linked to between 25 and 40% of terrorist events in Britain up to 2015 (according to various researchers, journalists and others), and of inspiring more than 100 foreign fighters to fight in jihad (according to the UK government). After staying "just within the law" for many years (according to police), in summer of 2014 Choudary pledged allegiance to the Islamic State's "caliphate", and its "caliph" (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) by Skype. Two years later he was convicted under the Terrorism Act 2000 of inviting support for a proscribed organisation, namely the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. He was subsequently subject to sanctions by both the U.S. State Department and the U.N. Security Council freezing his assets. He has been denounced by mainstream Muslim groups and heavily criticised in the UK media.

In 1996, Choudary, with Omar Bakri Muhammad, helped form the Islamist al-Muhajiroun organisation in Britain. The group organised several anti-Western demonstrations, including a banned protest march in London for which Choudary was summoned to appear in court. The UK government banned Al-Muhajiroun in 2010 and Choudary subsequently founded or helped found a series of organizations considered by many to be Al-Muhajiroun under new names —such as Al Guraba', Islam4UK, Sharia4UK, Sharia4Belgium. Among the controversial causes espoused and statements made by Choudary and the group include implementation of Sharia throughout the UK, "Europe, and the wider world";   the conversion of famous British landmarks (Buckingham Palace, Nelson's Column) into palaces for a caliph, minarets, and mosques;  praise for those responsible for the 11 September 2001 and 7 July 2005 attacks; calling for the execution of the Pope for criticizing the Islamic prophet Muhammad; and declaring that Muslims reject the concepts of freedom of expression, democracy, and human rights.

Choudary was convicted of supporting a proscribed organisation on 6 September 2016, and was sentenced to five years and six months in prison. He was released automatically on licence in October 2018 with restrictions on speaking in public or to the media. On 18 July 2021, his ban on speaking in public was lifted after his licence ended, and as of October 2021 he has reportedly resumed his online campaigns.

Early life
Anjem Choudary was born in on 18 January 1967. The son of market trader, his parents were Punjabi Muslims who migrated to what became Pakistan from East Punjab during the Partition of India in 1947. He attended Mulgrave Primary School, in Woolwich.

In 1996, Choudary married Rubana Akhtar (or Akhgar), who had recently joined al-Muhajiroun, which he led at the time. She later became the group's head of women. The couple have four children.

He enrolled as a medical student at Barts Medical School. While attending university, he was reputed to have indulged in drink and drugs. Responding to claims that he was a "party animal" who joined his friends in "getting stoned", in 2014 Choudary commented "I admit that I wasn't always practising... I committed many mistakes in my life."

He switched to law at the University of Southampton and spent his final year as a legal student (1990–1991) at Guildford, before moving to London to teach ESL. He found work at a legal firm and completed his legal qualifications to become a lawyer. In the early 1990s, he worked in his spare time as an organizer for preacher/scholar Omar Bakri Muhammad, who also supported the reestablishment of the Sunni caliphate.

Choudary became the chairman of the Society of Muslim Lawyers, but was removed from the roll of solicitors (the official register of legal practitioners) in 2002.

Jihadist military training in Britain
On 7 November 1999, The Sunday Telegraph reported that Muslims were receiving weapons training at secret locations in Britain. Most of those who trained at these centres would then fight for Osama bin Laden's International Islamic Front in Chechnya, while others would fight in such places as Kosovo, Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir. The report identified Anjem Choudary as a key figure in recruiting for these training centres.

Organisations
Choudary's first organization, Al-Muhajiroun, was established in Britain in 1996 and banned in 2010. Choudary was present at the launch of its intended successor, Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah, and after that he helped form Al Ghurabaa, which was banned in July 2006. Choudary then became the spokesman for Islam4UK until it was proscribed in 2010. (While some sources refer to the Al Guraba', Islam4UK, etc., as successors of Al-Muhajiroun, others describe them as "other names the organisation [Al-Muhajiroun] goes by" to circumvent the ban on the original group.)

Al-Muhajiroun
Choudary embraced Islamism and, with the Islamist militant leader Omar Bakri Muhammed, co-founded al-Muhajiroun, a Salafi organisation. The two men had met at a local mosque, where Bakri was giving a tafsir (an interpretation of the Qur'an). In 2002, following a bazaar organised by al-Muhajiroun (advertised by leaflet and word of mouth), Choudary gave a talk on education in Slough. His lecture outlined his ideas for a parallel system of Islamic education in the UK and included elements of the group's ideology. In the same year, although they were refused a permit by the then Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, on 25 August the group held a rally in London. Choudary was summonsed to Bow Street Magistrates' Court in January 2003, on charges which included "exhibiting a notice, advertisement or any other written or pictorial matter", "using apparatus for the amplification of sound", "making a public speech or address" and "organising an assembly".

In 2003 or 2004, he organised an Islamic-themed camping trip, at which Bakri lectured, on the 54 acre grounds of the Jameah Islamiyah School in East Sussex. Advertised by word-of-mouth, the trip was attended by 50 Muslim men, most of whom were members of al-Muhajiroun. Bakri later claimed the camp's activities included lectures on Islam, football and paintballing. In September 2006, following allegations that it was used in the training and recruitment of terrorists, police searched the school. According to testimony from Al Qaeda suspects held at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, in 1997 and 1998, Abu Hamza and groups of around 30 of his followers held training camps at the school, which included training with AK47 rifles and handguns, and a mock rocket launcher. No arrests were made, and students and faculty were allowed to return on 23 September 2006, the first day of Ramadan.

The UK government had investigated expelling Bakri even before the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, and in July 2003 the headquarters of al-Muhajiroun, and the homes of Bakri and Choudary, were raided by the police. The following year, under new anti-terrorist legislation, the government announced that it wanted to ban al-Muhajiroun. In 2005, Bakri learned that he was at risk of prosecution for his support of the 7 July 2005 London bombers, and in August left the UK for Lebanon, where he claimed that he was on holiday. After leaving a television station where he said "I will not return to Britain unless I want to go there as a visitor or as a tourist", he was detained by Lebanon's general security department and held in a Beirut prison. Several days later, Bakri was excluded from returning to Britain by the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, on the grounds that his presence in Britain was "not conducive to the public good." Choudary condemned the decision and demanded to know what Bakri had done to justify the ban. He claimed that ministers were inventing rules to ensure that Bakri could not return. In November, Choudary and three other followers of Bakri were deported from Lebanon and returned to the UK. Choudary blamed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for orchestrating their deportations, claiming that the four were there to help Bakri set up a madrasah.

Following his deportation, Choudary attended the launch in London of Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah, the intended successor organisation to al-Muhajiroun. Choudary said that Bakri was not on the committee of the new group, but that "we would love for the sheikh to have a role." The organisation operates mainly through an invitation-only internet forum, to which Choudary contributes under the screen name Abou Luqman. A reporter visiting the site found calls for holy war, and recordings by Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Omar Bakri Mohammed.

Al-Muhajiroun attempted a relaunch in June 2009 at Conway Hall, in Holborn. Several speakers were invited to share a platform with Choudary, but some later claimed that they had been invited under false pretences. When the group refused to allow women into the meeting, the chairman of the society that runs the hall cancelled the event. He was heckled by many of those in the audience. Choudary took the microphone from the chairman and led chants of "Sharia for UK", saying in reference to the exclusion of women: "Jews and Christians will never make peace with you until you either become like them or adopt their ways." Outside the hall, Choudary criticised British society, predicting that Muslims would make up the majority within one or two decades. When asked why, if society were so bad, he lived here, he replied: "We come here to civilise people, get them to come out of the darkness and injustice into the beauty of Islam."

Al Ghurabaa
Choudary was also a spokesman for Al Ghurabaa, believed to have been an offshoot of al-Muhajiroun. It was proscribed in 2006 by the then Home Secretary John Reid. Choudary was outraged: "The easy option when one is losing an argument is to ban the opposition voice. ... We [al-Ghurabaa] are not a military organisation; we have only been vociferous in our views—views concerning everything from the government's foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan to the host of draconian laws, which they've introduced against us in this country."

Islam4UK
In November 2008, Choudary organised a meeting of the then recently formed Islam4UK, which, according to its website, was "established by sincere Muslims as a platform to propagate the supreme Islamic ideology within the United Kingdom as a divine alternative to man-made law", and to "convince the British public about the superiority of Islam ... thereby changing public opinion in favour of Islam in order to transfer the authority and power ... to the Muslims in order to implement the Sharee’ah (here in Britain)".

According to Ed Husain, co-founder of the counter-terrorism think-tank the Quilliam Foundation, Islam4UK was a "splinter group of al-Muhajiroun and Hizb ut-Tahrir, the originators of extremism in Britain." Islam4UK was "previously known as al-Muhajiroun, al-Ghurabaa and Muslims Against Crusades", according to the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD. The meeting, advertised as a conference to "rise to defend the honour of the Muslims", was held at the Brady Arts and Community Centre in Tower Hamlets. Choudary then announced that Bakri would be speaking, via a video-conference link, although technical problems meant that his address was instead given over a telephone line. When asked by a Muslim woman how the comments of one of the event's speakers could be justified, with regard to Islam being a religion of peace, Choudary stated, "Islam is not a religion of peace ... It is a religion of submission. We need to submit to the will of Allah."

With the announcement by Islam4UK that it planned to hold a protest march through Wootton Bassett (known for the military funeral repatriations of dead British soldiers returning from the war in Afghanistan), Choudary said "You may see one or two coffins being returned to the UK every other day, but when you think about the people of Afghanistan its a huge number [being killed] in comparison ... I intend to write a letter to the parents of British soldiers telling them the reality of what they died for." Choudary's open letter was published on 3 January 2010. It explained his reasons for proposing the march, endorsed his religious beliefs, and claimed that UK politicians had been lying about the war. Choudary wrote that the proposed march was to "engage the British public's minds on the real reasons why their soldiers are returning home in body bags and the real cost of the war." In an interview with Sky News, he stated that the location was chosen to effect a level of media attention which "it would not have gained anywhere else". The proposal was condemned by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who said that to offend the families of dead or wounded troops would be "completely inappropriate". The Minhaj-ul-Quran International UK centre in Forest Gate also condemned the proposal, as did the Muslim Council of Britain, which stated that it "condemns the call by the fringe extremist group Islam4UK for their proposed march in Wootton Bassett." The planned march was cancelled by the group on 10 January 2010.

From 14 January 2010, Islam4UK was proscribed under the Terrorism Act 2000, making membership illegal and punishable by imprisonment. Choudary condemned the order. In an interview on BBC Radio he said "we are now being targeted as an extremist or terrorist organisation and even banned for merely expressing that" and "I feel this is a failure of the concept of democracy and freedom." Following his arrest and subsequent release in September 2014 on suspicion of encouraging terrorism, Choudary claimed he was questioned about his membership of or support for proscribed groups including Islam4UK and Need4Khalifah, both of which the government believes are successors to al-Muhajiroun.

Activism
Choudary has regularly attended public marches and, following a protest march outside the Danish Embassy in London on 3 February 2006, held in response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. As a member of a panel of interviewees on the BBC news programme Newsnight he claimed that the police had inspected and allowed the controversial placards used in the demonstration. Choudary was criticised by his fellow panellists, who included Ann Cryer (then MP for Keighley), Humera Khan (al-Nisa Muslim Women's Group, who accused him of demonising Islam), Sayeeda Warsi (vice-chair of the Conservative Party), Professor Tariq Ramadan (who claimed that Choudary's actions were designed to evoke a strong response from the media), and Roger Knapman (leader of the UK Independence Party).

On 15 March 2006, he was among five men arrested in connection with the demonstration, which had been organised by al Ghurabaa. He was arrested again on 4 May at Stansted Airport for an alleged breach of bail, and charged with organising the protest without notifying police. He was bailed to appear before Bow Street Magistrates' Court on 11 May. On 4 July 2006 he was convicted and fined £500 with £300 court costs.

The following day, at an Al Ghurabaa press conference at the Al Badr centre in Leyton, Choudary claimed that the blame for the London bombings lay with the British government, and said that the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had "blood on his hands". He also urged Muslims to defend themselves against perceived attacks by "whatever means they have at their disposal", and referred to the 2 June 2006 Forest Gate raid in which Mohammed Abdul Kahar was shot in the shoulder. He encouraged Muslims not to cooperate with the police under any circumstances. Local council leader Clyde Loakes criticised Choudary's comments, stating "I am sure the vast majority of Waltham Forest residents do not support these views."

Several days later, on 9 June 2006, Choudary organised a demonstration outside the Forest Gate police station in London, to protest against the arrest of the two Forest Gate men. The men's families said that an extremist protest would "only give another opportunity for our community to be portrayed in a negative light" and sent a statement to more than twenty mosques (read to worshippers during prayers) urging them to disassociate themselves from the event. About 35 men and 15 women attended the demonstration.

In September 2006, Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech on the question of the "reasonableness" of the Christian faith, to the University of Regensburg in Germany. In the Regensburg lecture he spoke about rationality in faith, and cited comments by the fourteenth-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, who, as the Pope put it, said "show me just what Mohamed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The citation attracted severe criticism from Muslims around the world, including the parliament of Pakistan, which condemned the Pope for his comments and sought an apology from him. Following the speech, on 17 September Choudary led a protest outside Westminster Cathedral, where he told reporters "Whoever insults the message of Mohammed is going to be subject to capital punishment." The Metropolitan Police investigated his comments, but concluded that "no substantive offences" were committed during the demonstration. The Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, who had called for action to be taken against Choudary, said: "It is quite disgraceful. It sends out a message to Muslim extremists that we, as a country, do not have the moral courage to stand up to them." However, unnamed sources claim that UK law enforcement had, on multiple occasions, sufficient evidence to make an arrest. They were prevented from doing so as he was allegedly being monitored by British Security Services.

He attempted to enter France to demonstrate against the French government's decision to ban the burka, but was stopped at the port of Calais. His passport was seized and he was issued documents banning him from France indefinitely.

On 13 December 2013, Choudary led a march in Brick Lane, organised by the east London-based Sharia Project, demanding a ban on alcohol being sold by Muslim establishments. An East London Mosque official, speaking of the patrols, identified The Shariah Project as "strongly linked" to Anjem Choudary's banned group Al-Muhajiroun. Abu Rumaysah of The Shariah Project had predicted "hundreds" would join the demonstration, claiming that groups of Muslims would come from as far away as the Midlands to take part. In the event, only a few dozen protesters took part in the march.

Choudary afterwards explained its purpose: "What we did is we posted a notice to the shop owners saying that under Sharia and under the Koran the sale of alcohol is prohibited and if one were to also drink alcohol, that would be 40 lashes. We were there to teach them that just because they are living among non-Muslims is no excuse because Sharia law will be implemented in Britain, and so they should be aware that just because it is not Sharia today, they can't just do whatever they like." He said the Shariah Project group would be arranging many more such rallies.

Charge, conviction and imprisonment
For decades, Choudary had "stayed [on] the right side of the law"—other than a minor conviction for failing to notify police of a demonstration. But in June 2014, the terror group ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) broke through the border between Syria and Iraq. They declared their leader a caliph, their law Sharia, and themselves The Islamic State. Since Choudary had called for the establishment of an Islamic state for many years in his lectures, "he came under intense sustained pressure from his acolytes", to declare his support for the new state. In a private social media message, one supporter, Abu Rumaysah al-Britani, demanded, "We have to declare our position - enough stalling!" Shortly afterwards, Choudary pledged allegiance to the Islamic State's “caliphate,” and its "caliph" (Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) "'via Skype, text and phone' during dinner at a restaurant in London."

But there were legal implications to swearing allegiance. Journalist Dominic Casciani pointed out that Choudary might circumvent laws on terrorism if "he was supporting a political concept" (an Islamic state) - "not the proscribed terrorist group behind it" (the Islamic State). Choudary believed he had, but British detectives "found the evidence — including a crucial IS oath of allegiance published by one of his Indonesian supporters that could be traced back to private social media conversations".

On 5 August 2015, Choudary was charged with one offence under section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 for inviting support of a proscribed organisation, namely Islamic State, between June 2014 and March 2015. The trial was postponed to 27 June 2016, and was expected to last no more than four weeks. Choudary was convicted on 28 July 2016. At the Old Bailey on 6 September 2016, Mr Justice Holroyde sentenced Choudary to five years and six months in prison, telling him that he had "crossed the line between the legitimate expression of your own views and a criminal act".

Release and further arrests
Choudary was released from prison on 19 October 2018. Shortly after his release, it was reported that Choudary would be placed in a probation hostel in London Borough of Camden for six months where he would be required to abide by a number of conditions, such as ban from preaching at or attending certain mosques, he would only be allowed to associate with people who have been approved by the authorities, he would be allowed one phone and was banned from using an internet-enabled device without permission, use of the internet was to be supervised, he was restricted from travel outside Greater London's M25 and he was to not be able to leave the UK without permission.

In mid-May 2019, Choudary was released from a probation hostel and began "the gradual process of becoming a free man". Other members of his organization were also released around that time, and began to "remobilize" their campaign to replace democracy in the U.K. with a caliphate ruled by Shariah law. Their area of focus (according to The New York Times), included East London and Bedfordshire (including the town of Luton). Their methods included "lower-profile tactics, ... encrypted apps"; instead of  recruiting with "provocative public preaching and demonstrations", they now employ "secret internet forums and smaller group meetings in inconspicuous locations". These meeting are legal if the group holding the meeting uses a name that has not been "identified as that of a terrorist outfit" or otherwise banned.

On 18 July 2021, Choudary's ban on speaking in public was lifted —though he was banned from Twitter almost immediately. As of October 2021 he has reportedly resumed his online campaigns.

On 17 July 2023, Choudary was arrested by Metropolitan Police counter terrorism officers, along with Khaled Hussein of Canada. On 23 July Choudary was charged with membership of a proscribed organisation and directing and encouraging support for a proscribed organisation, all contrary to section 56 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Hussein was charged with membership of a proscribed organisation. The court case began in June 2024 and is being held at Woolwich Crown Court.

Views
Choudary referred to the hijackers in the 11 September attacks as "magnificent martyrs". In 2003, he said that al-Muhajiroun would "encourage people to fulfil their Islamic duties and responsibilities", although he also said that the group was a political movement and not responsible for individual actions. In 2004, he said that a terror attack on British soil was "a matter of time". He refused to condemn the 7 July 2005 London bombings, but accused the Muslim Council of Britain (who had) of "selling their souls to the devil". He blamed the 2013 murder of Lee Rigby, an off-duty British soldier, on British foreign policy.

Choudary has voiced support for the Muslim community in Somalia, who, he claims, have been "violated" by Christian-backed Ethiopians, and has also called for other members to fight jihad.

The Wall Street Journal describes Choudary as a supporter of "the fundamentalist strain of Islamic teaching known as Salafism". He believes in the primacy of Islam over all other faiths, and the implementation of Sharia law, in its entirety, in the UK. In 2001, he stated that his allegiance is to Islam, and not a country. He believes that, for a true Muslim, "a British passport is no more than a travel document."

In October 2006, he addressed an audience at Trinity College, Dublin to oppose the motion that "This house believes that Islamist violence can never be justified". In February 2008 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, commented that "as a matter of fact certain provisions of sharia are already recognised in our society and under our law". Choudary responded by saying that Sharia "has to be adopted wholesale", and that "it will come either by embracing Islam because it is the fastest growing religion in the country, or by an Islamic country conquering Britain or by elements embracing Islam and imposing it."

In 2008, he spoke of the "flag of Sharia" flying over Downing Street by 2020, claimed that some Muslim families in east London were having "10 or 12 children each", and that hundreds were converting to Islam each day. Choudary has spoken against elements of the Christian faith. In December 2008, he posted a sermon on an Islamic website, in which he stated: "Every Muslim has a responsibility to protect his family from the misguidance of Christmas, because its observance will lead to hellfire. Protect your Paradise from being taken away – protect yourself and your family from Christmas".

In an interview with Iran's Press TV (which was subsequently posted online on 11 April 2013), Choudary stated "As Muslims, we reject democracy, we reject secularism, and freedom, and human rights. We reject all of the things that you espouse as being ideals ... There is nothing called a republic in Islam. When we talk about the shari'a, we are talking about only the shari'a. We are talking about rejecting the U.N., the IMF, and the World Bank."

In September 2014, Choudary described Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, as "the caliph of all Muslims and the prince of the believers".

Facing a court sentence for inciting terrorism, Choudhary wanted to move to the Islamic State, and said that he thought it a much better society in terms of welfare benefits and other factors.

Rationale for doctrine
In interviews with Graeme Wood, Choduary gave explanations for some of his beliefs on the necessity of Sharia, terror and caliphate government.

According to Choduary, Sharia provides the best form of law enforcement, because many of its punishments (hand chopping, head chopping, stoning, etc.) though severe, deter crime; while its exemptions (stolen goods must be non-perishable and of significant value, the thief cannot be very poor, etc.) and provisions for preventing false conviction, mean the punishments are seldom enforced, and so demonstrate mercy.

However, "maybe 85% of the Shariah" is "in abeyance until we have khilafah" (caliphate). Sharia punishments, for example, cannot be done by vigilantes but require legal system, "with courts and an executive", which a caliphates provides. While it is true the Islamic State has been criticised for administering stonings, beheadings and amputations at a much higher rate than in classical Muslim times, this is to be expected because "the Islamic State is new and the people living under it have spent many years under kafir governments", so it really should not be "any surprise that they would require correction"

Another distinction between Islam without a caliphate and Islam with, is that defensive jihad can be performed without a caliphate, but offensive jihad (jihad al talab) to forcibly expand the realm of true Islam into countries ruled by non-Muslims (in fact all countries, since "Muslim" countries are actually ruled by apostates), requires a caliphate. And offensive jihad will not be an option for the caliphate but an obligation. "The caliph must wage war to expand the domain of Islam, or remove obstacles to its practice, at least once a year", with its goal being world conquest. Because the caliphate should be working to gain territory from neighboring countries, is forbidden by Islamic law (according to Choduary) to have fixed borders with them, and forbidden to have treaties and ceasefires with the enemy lasting more than a decade, (treaties may be renewed but "may not be applied to all enemies at once").

Shirk — polytheism — the worst sin in Islam, is found in a great many things that others might find innocent of that vice (according to Choduary) — diplomacy, sending an ambassador to the United Nations, voting in UK elections. This is because these things "recognize an authority other than God's".

The brutality of terrorism is justified because it leads to "less suffering". By striking terror into the enemy with slaughter and enslavement, jihadis will hasten victory and thus prevent a long drawn out war with more suffering.

Designation
On 30 March 2017, Choudary was declared a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States Department of State. The designation blocks his assets and prohibits him from engaging in trade or financial transactions with US persons.

On 15 October 2018, Choduary was added into the Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee list of the United Nations Security Council. The designation means that each UN member state is legally obliged to freeze financial assets belonging to Choudary, prevent him from entering or transiting their countries and stop any weapons reaching him.

Influence
"It is hard to overstate the role Mr. Choudary has played in motivating Islamic extremists", in the words of Ceylan Yeğinsu. According to journalist Graeme Wood, quoting Raffaello Pantucci, "members of Choudary's group have been linked to 23 out of 51" terrorist events in Britain as of circa 2015. These include the murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich in 2013 and the July 7, 2005 bombings in London which killed 52. The New York Times estimates Choudary's group, was linked to "25% of all Islamist terrorism-related convictions in Britain between 1998 and 2015". Usman Khan, a convicted terrorist and the main perpetrator in the London Bridge terrorist attack on 29 November 2019, was said to be a member of his group. In 2019, the BBC reported that Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed, one of the attackers in the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter bombings, that killed more than 250 people, was radicalized by Choudary after attending his sermons in the U.K. in 2006.

The British government estimates that "Choudary and his followers" have "inspired or influenced" more than 100 foreign fighters to fight in jihad. According to the head of Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command, Dean Haydon, “These men have stayed just within the law for many years, but there is no one within the counter-terrorism world that has any doubts of the influence that they have had, the hate they have spread and the people that they have encouraged to join terrorist organisations. “Over and over again we have seen people on trial for the most serious offences who have attended lectures or speeches given by these men.”

AIVD, the Dutch intelligence agency, also assessed Choudary "to be a key influence in the spread of the jihadi movement in the Netherlands". Groups led by Choudary were “the single biggest gateway to terrorism in recent British history”, according to "the leftwing group Hope Not Hate". In 2013, Hope not Hate presented a report which identified Choudary as "a serious player on the international Islamist scene", saying that although there was no evidence that he was directly responsible for instigating any terrorist plots, "he helped shape the mindset of many of those behind them" and "through his networks linked them up to terror groups and supporters across the world." Choudary dismissed the claims as "fanciful", saying that if they were true, UK security services would have arrested him.

Public reception and criticism
Choudary has enjoyed wide exposure in the UK through "frequent media appearances", and according to Graeme Wood, "accepting absolutely every media request that he receives".

He has been heavily criticised by most UK newspapers, some of which describe him as an extremist, or radical cleric or preacher. In January 2010, British Muslim Guardian contributor Mehdi Hasan wrote: "Is Choudary an Islamic scholar whose views merit attention or consideration? No. Has he studied under leading Islamic scholars? Nope. Does he have any Islamic qualifications or credentials? None whatsoever. So what gives him the right to pontificate on Islam, British Muslims or 'the hellfire'? Or proclaim himself a 'sharia judge'?" Hasan also claimed that Choudary was "as unrepresentative of British Muslim opinion, as he is of British anti-war opinion."

The Conservative Party leader David Cameron said that Choudary "is one of those people who needs to be looked at seriously in terms of the legality of what he's saying because he strays, I think, extremely close to the line of encouraging hatred, extremism and violence."

Salma Yaqoob, then leader of the Respect Party, said in 2010 of Choudary: "He is a bigot whose goal in life is to provoke division. He engages in these provocations because he is deeply hostile to any coming together of Muslims and non-Muslims. For him, the fact that a majority of the British people – Muslim and non-Muslim – oppose the war in Afghanistan is not something to be celebrated, but is something to be feared."

Rod Liddle, writing in The Spectator, said: "Anjem Choudray ... is one of those thick-as-mince gobby little chancers who could only possibly come from Britain." Conservatives in the United States have also been critical of Choudary. Fox News host Sean Hannity invites Choudary on "regularly" (according to journalist Graeme Wood), where he "plays to type" serving as a "howling weird-beard of radical Islam ... in the villain-hero dichotomy of pro wrestling, a Muslim 'heel' to Sean Hannity's Christian 'face'." (Hannity has called Choudary "one sick, miserable, evil S.O.B." during a segment on his show discussing the 2011 Egyptian protests).

Choudary has been denounced by mainstream Muslim groups. However, in January 2010, Jamie Bartlett, a writer for The Daily Telegraph, speculated that he might have "some" support among the minority of Muslims in the UK who could be considered to hold similar views. The following year, Peter Oborne, defending Baroness Warsi's criticism of how British Muslims have been treated, singled out Choudary as an exception to the majority that were "decent people". According to journalist Graeme Wood, despite his "genius for publicity", Choudary has "considerable ignorance" of Islam and the language of its scriptures -- Arabic. When "confronted on fine details of Islamic law, his main tactic is to change the subject". According to Wood, his Muslim critics "destroy" him in public debate, and Wood quotes one British Muslim as saying, 'How the hell he passes himself off as a Shariah court judge, I'll never know.' At least one fellow Islamic State supporter (Musa Cerantonio) has criticized him and his followers on doctrinal grounds—for their acceptance of qiyas (eye-for-an-eye punishment), their veneration of Omar Bakri Muhammad (whom they consider a mujaddid), and failure to emigrate to the Islamic State ("we say, 'Some of you have got passports! Why are you still there?'").

Tabloid criticism of Islam4UK and Choudary since news of the proposed march first became public has, generally, been vitriolic, calling him a "hate preacher".

Among the claims made about him is that he collects Jobseeker's Allowance (with four children he collects £25,000, or almost US$39,000 per year), and has explained "to followers how to receive government assistance they can use to fund a Muslim holy war". In a "secretly recorded video" he called the allowance "Jizya" (protection money or tribute paid to Muslims by non-Muslims) "which is ours anyway".

Publications
He has written many pamphlets and articles, including Human Rights: Comparison between the Declaration of Human Rights and Divine Rights in Islam and Groups and Parties in Islam: The Islamic Verdict.

title: Anjem Choudary


text:
User talk:WayneMaurer

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia! Hope you like it here, and stick around.

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Wikipedia talk:Chemistry/to do

 * 1) Put together list of compound articles to fix.
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title: Wikipedia talk:Chemistry/to do


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Talk:Havran

Dear Wikipedians,

This page is a candidate for deletion. I tried to save it - reforming to a diambiguation page. However, I easily survive cancellation because I can hardly imagine these definitions turn into real Wiki-pages.

--Millisits 20:39, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

VfD results
The following is a copy/paste from the VfD vote for this article:

 * Keep. The original page would have been deletion-worthy, but Millisits' edits have turned this into a decent disambiguation page (even if the disambiguated-between articles are unlikely to be fleshed out any time soon). --Aponar Kestrel (talk) 23:27, 2004 Aug 22 (UTC)

End copy/paste of VfD vote. SWAdair | Talk  09:56, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Havran


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nibby

Nibby: vanity slang / neologism. --Ianb 20:39, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete, for the reasons noted by Ianb. • Benc • 21:20, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. slang neologism used by a grand total of two people.   — Gwalla | Talk 21:48, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete: We're not going to advertise their site for them, or invite them over for Thanksgiving dinner. Geogre 01:48, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

title: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nibby


text: User talk:65.10.215.9

title: User talk:65.10.215.9


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Talk:Pitch-accent language

Examples?
This is a really interesting concept that is entirely new to me; does anyone know enough to provide some examples? — OwenBlacker 20:40, Aug 15, 2004 (UTC)

 * Apart from the examples with anden, I also know about one-syll "stegen"("the steps"(plur) ) two-syll "stegen" ("the ladder") Also, the words "norrmän" and "normen" are spelled different but pronounced similar, (at least in the high-variety Stockholm dialect.) except for the pitch.

one-syll "norrmän"("norwegians" (people) ) two-syll normen "the norm/standard". I also know about an example in norwegian: "bønner" and "bønner". One means "beans", the other "farmers", although I can't recall now which was which...
 * I'm not sure about the "norrmän" example -- the word stresses both syllables, unlike "normen", which only stresses the first. And "farmers" is "bønder", with accent 1 (and a silent "d", making the "nd" combo into a double "n" -- and thereby rendering the vowel short, just like in "bønner"... in case you were wondering).76.113.104.58 (talk) 05:43, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Pitch/Melodic
What is the diference between a "pitch accent" and a "melodic accent"?

 * Different function. They have the pitch variation in common, though. Melodic accent depends on grammatical rules, and may for instance accentuate in a similar way as vocal stress is used in other languages — or together with vocal stress.

What might be called the utilization of melodic accent to express differences depending on the roots of words is explained at http://www.webgraph.se/bosse.thoren/prosodi_eng.html — however, I do not agree with the author of that page when he states that there be no difference in vocal stress. That page also lacks comparisons between the different melodic accents typical for the language's high status varieties. (Copied from Johan Magnus' answer at the "Pitch accent" page.)

 * Is this term really used in any linguistic literature? Because it seems fairly rare when you Google for it and a lot of the hits are references from Wikipedia mirrors or even using us as a source . The usage elsewhere seems to be about prosody in general. And there is actually a completely different definition for "melodic accent" that has to do with music, not language that seems very common. Neither, though, can be found in EB. It seems somewhat of a neologism that is only used when refering to Scandinavian languages (and only passingly about others).
 * Could someone cite a source for this one so we can clearly define it? Peter Isotalo 19:49, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

 * Almost forgot the source: Olle Engstrand, Fonetikens grunder, 2004 ("The Basics of Phonetics") page 188 (my translation):
 * "Since the difference between grave and accute accent is mainly about tone level, the accents are termed tonal and since they operate on a word-level, i.e. forming contrasts between otherwise identical words, they are considered to be word accents. The grave and acute accents are the tonal word accents of Swedish."
 * The source used by Johan Magnus also describes it as a tonal accent. Peter Isotalo 20:17, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

There seem to be a confusion between two things here: "accent" as in "distinguishably different ways of realizing phonetical stress", and "accent" as in "foreign accent" or "linguistic variety". The recent additions of Fred and his comment at Talk:Swedish language about "sing-songy Scandinavian accents" leads me to believe that he is interpreting "Melodic accent" as the later. The original article, however, seems to concentrate on the former - the feature Peter in his response to Fred at Talk:Swedish language calls tonal word accent. I share his suspicion that the term "Melodic accent" used in this sense is probably a neologism, and as we've seen it also easily leads to misinterpretations. The most used English term for this phenomenon, however, actually seem to be Pitch accent. Googling gives the following results: "pitch accent" swedish OR norwegian -wikipedia 638, "melodic accent" swedish OR norwegian -wikipedia 173, and "tonal word accent" swedish OR norwegian -wikipedia 29. It could be argued that this makes no particular distinction between the rather different concept of Japanese pitch accent or the seemingly more related concepts in Serbo-Croatian (see Serbo-Croatian) and Lithuanian. (Possibly the intention of the original author was to make such a distinction. However, the differences Johan Magnus states exist between the two terms is not as clear cut as he makes them sound.) My suggestion is to merge this page into Pitch accent and cover all the different aspects of the phonological phenomenon there, or, as a less desirable alternative, renaming this page Pitch accent in Scandinavian languages. / Alarm 10:53, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

 * You are correct. I don't understand it, and chances are others also don't. So I agree to merge it. Neither article is very large. But we should wait for Isotalo (I will call him Isotalo as I don't consider it insulting, but a cool name, and he can get upset all he wants) who might have objections. --Fred-Chess 11:54, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, there is some work to do on the subject, since there are several different articles making quite different statements on the topic. For example, I very much doubt the factual accuracy of this quote from Tone (linguistics) about tonal languages:
 * Some Indo-European are usually characterized as tonal, such as Lithuanian, Old Church Slavonic, Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, but they are in fact pitch accent languages; Limburgian, Swedish and Norwegian may be closer to being true tone languages.
 * I am still reading up on the subject and hope to be able to write a new and more correct version. But I, too, would appreciate Peter's input. Meanwhile, I hope you don't mind if I revert your changes, since I think they only add to the confusion. Even the statement that Serbo-Croatic and Lithuanian are the only other European languages with a similar feature is incorrect. As the above quote hints, the Limburgish language (or rather, dialect) posesses a similar distinction, as does some dialects of Basque (See Basque language) and, it seems, Slovenian (although the usage of different terms in the text in Slovenian language seems to be a good example of the confusing usage around here.) / Alarm 16:52, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I think the linguists are fairly unanimous on the subject. I've looked it up in Engstrands Fonetikens grunder and David Crystal's The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (which is a great resource for general linguistic information, btw) and this is how they seem to seperate the terms:
 * Tone languages: The most well-known languages in this category are Chinese (with the exception of Shanghai dialect), Thai and Vietnamese where the tone of individual syllables changes the meaning, and where each tone is unpredictable from morphological context. Moreover a lot of the tones are glides. There are not just high, middle or low tones, but also dynamic tones, like low falling rising or high falling. The classic example of Mandarin four forms of "ma" illustrates this quite nicely. There are also langauges like Twi where change in tone means a change in tense, and there are examples like Gbe languages (thanks to Mark for brigning that to my attention) that have much simpler tone systems than Mandarin or Vietnamese.
 * Pitch accent languages: These are the languages like Swedish, Japanese and Serbo-Croatian, where individual words can change meaning depending on a certain tonal accent, but where this feature is not very prominent, or like in Swedish, where the tone is completely predictable from the morphology of a word; any native listener could understand these languages even if the foreign speaker ignored the tonal accent. For obvious reasons, this also means that only words with two or more syllables can feature the tonal accent. I don't know if I've actually read any linguists classifying, for example Swedish, as a tone language, but I've certainly read Swedish linguists firmly dismissing saying why it is not a tone language, because of the above mentioned reasons.
 * And then, of course, there are the languages that use stress. In some, like Finnish or Farsi, the stress is almost always on the same syllable (first and last respectively), while English and Russian aren't quite as predictable. It must be noted here that Japanese doesn't use stress at all, while Swedish combines stress with the pitch accent-features called tonal word accent.
 * As for melodic accent, I have to remind you that the term actually means something entirely different that has to do with accent in a musical context. This article should probably be cleared out from the linguistic meaning or perhaps just redirected to accent (music).
 * I must say that this among the trickiest linguistic definitions I've come across so far, what with all the terminology intertwining. Do you feel any wiser after this attempt at clarifying?
 * Peter Isotalo 12:00, May 21, 2005 (UTC)

 * Thanks for your interesting contributions.
 * Looking back in the history, Ruhrjung noted the origin of the text to be a "Nordic FAQ". Ruhrjung's link currently doesn't work, but it can be found here: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/nordic-faq/part2_NORDEN/section-1.html (search in the text for melodic accent). There seems to be no source other than "common knowledge". The term seems to have been invented by the author of the FAQ (so you were right, Peter).
 * I think we sometimes engage a little too much in bickering over unverifiable subjects instead of doing something useful, with this I mean add material from verifyable sources. This page seems rather irrelevant.
 * This page links to no other article page. As it was originally written in a Nordiq FAQ, lets incorporate interesting parts (if any) into Swedish Language and recreate this page as just a link to the musical term. And then don't argue about this any more as we have no sources.
 * Peter's material above is perfectly in order and might be suitable on a responding page.
 * --Fred-Chess 19:43, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

 * Actually, I wouldn't call this bickering or arguing. Rather, I see it as a discussion that will ultimately lead to the improvement of Wikipedia. I agree with almost everything Peter is saying. To be constructive, I've written a draft for a new version of Pitch accent at User:Alarm/Pitch accent. My intention is that this should replace the current article, incorporating all the relevant facts in the current Melodic accent article. If it passes some close scrutiny and replaces the current version, I'd suggest we turn Melodic accent into a disambiguation page, with links to Accent (music), Pitch accent and perhaps Intonation and/or Non-native pronunciations of English. Anyway, all feedback on the new draft is very much welcome. / Alarm 17:17, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

 * I agree with Alarm here. I know it must seem rather pointless to have such voluminous discussions about articles that have turned out to be pretty wrong, but at least we've learned something. Some things need to take time, I guess.
 * I think what you've written att pitch accent looks like a very good start, Alarm. I also support redirecting this to accent (music), and I think adding comments in other articles is probably a good idea as well.
 * Peter Isotalo 20:42, May 23, 2005 (UTC)

Southern dialects
I will make a rough generalization based on my experience.

The "Standard" Swedish we in Scania here most of is the Stockholmian accent. Probably because there are so many well educated Stockholmians who move down here to take jobs.

Anyways, the Stockholmian word melody would go something like this: da-dá-di-du-dá-dí-dí-de-dé-de-di-dá-da.

While the Scanian would go like this: Duh-dau-dau-deu-döu-deh-döu For instance : "Döu, jau skau ente göura deatta, döu." It has a more provocative sound, and some would say aggressive, using more of a "uh" sound.

I would assume, from having lived 9 years in Sweden's most southern city Trelleborg, that this is most notable in the southern Scanian accents and on the country side and that the dialect "brightens" the more north you travel.

I can easily provide soundfiles of spoken dialects around here if requested. --Fred-Chess 10:21, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Scanian dialects (along with some other Southern Sweden dialects, like Småländska and some Halländska and Blekingska) is actually Danish dialects. They sound more like Swedish then the Danish spoken in Denmark, because these areas became Swedish before the Danish in Denmark went through some large changes (they also share a lot of vocabulary with Swedish). The people in these areas have been systematically brainwashed by Swedish propaganda to identify them self as Swedish, though. See also Dacke War, Scanian War and this part in the article about Skåneland. You won't find as many and fanatic Swedish nationalists anywhere else in Sweden, as you find in the "Danish" speaking regions in Sweden. Ironically, most of the extreme right parties and organisations, that is very hostile against anything non-Swedish, have their roots in these parts of the country too. Ironically, because most of the culture in the Southern parts of Sweden is very foreign to us "real Swedes" (I really hate calling myself a "real Swede", as anybody should have the right to call them-self Swedish, but not to deny anybody else that right; but it piss me of when "Danes" call them self "Swedish" and then deny other people to do the same thing). --Se mj (talk) 21:27, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Redirecting
I don't know enough about the musical aspects of melodic accent to write anything about, so I'll just redirect it to accent (music) for now.

Peter Isotalo 11:58, May 28, 2005 (UTC)

Shouldn't the article say Enlish uses pitch accent? (For example, contrast is usually marked by L+H* pitch accent.)Jirka6 03:38, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

No, it shouldn't. English is an intonation language which employs pitch contours for various syntactic and pragmatic ends, but crucially not for lexical distinctions.213.47.123.225 20:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

 * Okay, I understand that "English does not use pitch accent to make lexical distinctions" but it still does not mean one cannot say "English uses pitch accent to mark various syntactic and pragmatic functions". --Jirka6 00:52, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

 * It says already: "In a wider sense of the term, ”pitch accent” is sometimes also used to describe intonation, such as methods of conveying surprise, changing a statement into a question, or expressing Information Structure (topic-focus, contrasting), using variations in pitch. A great number of languages use pitch in this way, including English as well as all other major European languages. They are often called intonation languages."
 * Is this your contribution? Anyway, I think it's very much acceptable this way, as long as the distinction between pitch accent languages and intonation languages is not obscured.213.47.123.225 13:55, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Merge with melodic accent
What is the diference between a "pitch accent" and a "melodic accent"? --User:213.112.113.118 13:28, 4 Dec 2004

Different function. They have the pitch variation in common, though. Melodic accent depends on grammatical rules, and may for instance accentuate in a similar way as vocal stress is used in other languages — or together with vocal stress.

What might be called the utilization of melodic accent to express differences depending on the roots of words is explained at http://www.webgraph.se/bosse.thoren/prosodi_eng.html — however, I do not agree with the author of that page when he states that there be no difference in vocal stress. That page also lacks comparisons between the different melodic accents typical for the language's high status varieties.

--Johan Magnus 16:09, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * There is a revival of this discussion over at Talk:Melodic accent that would benefit from contributions from anyone with an interest in this question. / Alarm 16:58, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I've now written a draft for a new version of Pitch accent at User:Alarm/Pitch accent. My intention is that this should replace the current article, incorporating all the relevant facts in the current Melodic accent article. If it passes some close scrutiny and replaces the current version, I'd suggest we turn Melodic accent into a disambiguation page, with links to Accent (music), Pitch accent and perhaps Intonation and/or Non-native pronunciations of English. Anyway, all feedback on the new draft is very much welcome. / Alarm 17:23, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Preservation
What affects the pitch of an instrument? Re the addition of Swedish and Norwegian by Wiglaf, is this really the pitch accent of PIE which has been preserved all this time, or could it be an innovation? (in the absence of sources, I think the latter is more likely). --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 13:03, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

 * An innovation, as in the Southern Slavic languages. kwami 18:36, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

You are quite correct to write that the 2 or 3 tones of modern continental Scandinavian languages (Norwegian, Swedish; the presence or absence of the Stød glottalization corresponds to these tones in Danish) is unrelated to the proto-IE pitch accent. But you are entirely WRONG to apply this to the pitch accents in the western South Slavic (Serbo-Croat-Bosnian and Slovenian) and Baltic (Latvian, Lithuanian) languages. Indeed, Lithuanian and the Čakavica (Adriatic coastal) dialects of Croatian are (with Homeric Greek and Vedic Sanskrit) probably the best witnesses to both the position and the character of the original proto-IE pitch accent. Unfortunately, I can't cite references from memory, but you will find an account of this in every treatment of proto-IE phonology. (preceding unsigned comment by 08:56, 17 October 2005)

Since the Baltic and Slavic languages have the same ancestor, Proto-Balto-Slavic, would it not make sense that if the pitch accent system was preserved from PIE in LIthuanian, it was also preserved in Serbo-Croatian? Does anyone have any proof that Serbo-Croatian developed a pitch-accent system on its own rather than preserving it from PIE? Didn't Proto-Slavic have a pitch accent system? Edrigu 18:08, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Old "Melodic accent" article
(I copy the old "melodic accent" article here, in case someone would want to write a section about Swedish and Norwegian.)

Melodic accent

Norwegian and Swedish except Finland-Swedish are among the few modern European languages which have a melodic accent, even though we presume that the Indo-European proto-language was melodically accented. Others are Lithuanian and Serbo-Croatian.

Scandinavian languages (Norwegian and Swedish)

The way this prosody is expressed varies quite a lot between different dialects of the language, and the dichotomy exists in most varieties. It's important for differentiating words that are identically spelled, but derived from different roots.

Words with one syllable, words stressed on the end, and short words with an unstressed suffix, usually have what is refered to as acute accent or accent 1. It's only rarely marked in orthography, but then with an acute accent. Words derived from the two-syllable roots usually have an almost equal stress on both syllables. the acute accent. For example, in Swedish, and·en pronounced with accent 1 means "the duck", while ande·n with the accent 2 means "the spirit".

and-en [ándɛn] — "the duck" ande-n [àndɛn] — "the spirit"

In southern Swedish dialects accent 1 is expressed as a falling tone of voice on the first syllable, while accent 2 is expressed as a rise and a fall of the tone on the first syllable.

Questions are expressed by using a rising tone on the second syllable.

In most Danish dialects (and some Scanian too) this type of lexical stress has been replaced by a glottal stop (stød)  in place of an acute accent.

See also
 * North Germanic languages
 * On the issue of tonal accent distinctions, see:
 * pitch accent
 * tonal language

Category:Phonology

惑乱 分からん 13:13, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Misleading introduction?
Isn't the 2nd introductory paragraph misleading? The examples given seem to demonstrate a stress-accent rather then a pitch-accent language: "The pitch-accent language, on the other hand, only has two possibilities: accented on the first syllable, [ába], or on the second, [abá]". At least for Serbian/Croatian (and as far as I know similarly for Scandinavian), the distinction is actually that you can have two qualitatively different accents (usually described as "falling" and "rising" for S/C and as I and II for Scandinavian) on the first syllable, with no distinctions on the unaccented syllable. Know it is true, at least for Serbian/Croatian, that the system resulted from a previous pretty much as described here, but the present situation is rather "ába" and "àba".213.47.123.225 14:07, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

 * I need to overhaul this. But a bit of research first, as I'm somewhat rusty. Pitch accent is a different setup than a stress language like English, which after all also uses pitch. There can be two or three distinct tones, in some langs, but only one per word, or a word may or may not have an accent, which isn't the case for stress languages (at least not for lexical categories), where every word has an accent. kwami 23:20, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Not a great improvement, but a start. I have a question too: does anyone actually say English has pitch accent because of the role of prosody? Should that comment be deleted? kwami 17:21, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

IE pitch ancestral to BS?
We now state that IE pitch accent was ancestral to B-Slavic, and it retained in Lith. & S-C. Has it been settled that that's the case? kwami (talk) 10:16, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, though the significant advances in Balto-Slavic accentology made in the last 20-30 years have not entered the standard handbooks yet. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:33, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

The nature of the Vedic accent was musical, depending on the pitch of the voice, like that of the ancient Greeks. This remained the character of the Sanskrit accent till later than the time of Pāṇini. But just as the old Greek musical accent, after the beginning of our era, was transformed into a stress accent, so by the seventh century A.D. (and probably long before) the Sanskrit accent had undergone a similar change. While, however, in modern Greek the stress accent has remained, owing to the high pitch of the old acute, on the same syllable as bore the musical accent in the ancient language, the modern pronunciation of Sanskrit has no connection with the Vedic accent, but is dependent on the quantity of the last two or three syllables, much the same as in Latin. Thus the penultimate, if long, is accented, e.g. Kālidā́sa, or the antepenultimate, if long and followed by a short syllable, e.g. brā́hmaṇa or himā́laya ("abode of snow"). This change of accent in Sanskrit was brought about by the influence of Prākrit, in which, as there is evidence to show, the stress accent is very old, going back several centuries before the beginning of our era. Also, šuma means primarily "forest" not "wood", grȃd is primarly "city" (big settlement) not "town", u nemogućnosti does not mean anything like "outside possibility" (? ˘_˘), and ne vidim more appropriately translates as proper English "I can't see" (not being able to see), not this dialectal American interjective "I don't see". Please Kwami don't revert good-faiths edits by native speakers if you're not 100% sure of what you're doing. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 10:49, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * RE this: - yes, the pronunciation of Sanskrit was very much under the influence of Prakrits. Vedic had free pitch-accent based system, and Classical Sanskrit had fixed stress-based. Quoting Macdonell (1900):

 * Sorry, none of the Slavic stuff was intentional. I only meant to change the wording of one line, not to revert everything you did!

 * As for the change I did make, the implication from your context was that you were discussing the historical changes of Vedic to Prakrit. I never would have guessed you meant changes in Sanskrit as an artificially maintained language. (I.e. Vedic as a living language was never in contact with Prakrit.) I think the normal changes in the development of Indic are more appropriate here, as they parallel the coverage of the history of Greek and Balto-Slavic. kwami (talk) 11:48, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, some authors also make a notion of so-called "Vedic Prakrits", which are unattested but which would be ancestral to a number of Prakrit idioms, as Old Indo-Aryan was dialectally by no means a uniform language, and some noticeable dialectal diversification is present even in the Rigveda itself. Vedic is not really an Indo-Aryan dialect(s) ancestral to all modern Indo-Aryan idioms, but is dangerously close to it (it can be treated as such for all practical purposes, comparative to e.g. Old Church Slavonic whose >50% corpus can serve de facto as an attestation of Late Proto-Slavic).
 * The current formulation :"and Vedic (being lost entirely from the Prākrits of the Classical period)." insinuates 1) the direct relationship of Vedic and Prakrits 2) connects the adjective Classical to Prakrits which in the original formulation referred to the period of Classical Sanskrit (i.e. post-Paninean Sanskrit). What the abovequoted Macdonell's paragraph explains is, from my understanding, that the pronunciation of Sanskrit as a form of "refined speech" (we can neglect the controversial issue who spoke it, where and for what purposes here) was influenced by Prakrits in the change of free pitch-accent system to phonologically predictable stress-based accentual system. That change, according to Macdonell (I don't know what is the modern-day communis opinio in the scholarship of IA dialectology with regard to this particular issue), occurred many centuries previously in Prakrits. These pitch-accent pre-Prakrits are unattested, i.e. hypothetical, so it's pointless to speak on them here when we have no written record on them, which we do have for Sanskrit writings throughout the ages. IMHO my original formulation more precisely describes that kind of development: "and Vedic, which under the influence of Prākrits turned to prominence-based stress accent in the Classical period.". Now, I'm not a native English speaker and moreover can't imagine how should someone completely ignorant to this issue understand my formulation, but I do perceive that yours formulation is a bit more "problematic" than mine for the reasons stated previously. Could you please rewrite it an a manner that includes linking to the [[Vedic accent]] article, and saying that it refers to the development of the pron. of Sanskrit from Rigvedic down to the Classical times, the change prob. being under the influence of Prakrits (and not the change of Prakrits themselves)? Many thanks. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 03:51, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

 * Your English is fine, and if you want to revert, I won't fight you about it. I just think that, since we're discussing *IE tone and its retention or lack thereof in modern IE languages, it would be more useful to say that Indic was once tonal but no longer is. Vedic was tonal; by the time we get to Prakrits, they are not tonal. Classical Greek was tonal; Modern Greek is not. *B-S was tonal, and several modern B-S languages still are. That strikes me as a more coherent presentation. kwami (talk) 07:53, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Current formulation looks OK by me. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 08:33, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

"Ancient Greek has two types of accent (acute vs. circumflex) on stressed syllables."
What about the grave accent? Does that not count as a stressed syllable?--86.179.208.101 (talk) 17:23, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

 * Ancient_Greek_phonology. kwami (talk) 01:42, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Serbo-Croatian language
The term is a subject to many controversies. Even International standardisation institute (ISO) standardised separately Croatian and Serbian language. Today, standard Croatian language is official in Croatia and Serbian in Serbia. Therefore, I dont see the need to write "serbo-croatian" in the article. If the intention is to denote all the south-west slavic languages then it can be done by writing this geographical indication, as is done for Scandinavian languages. Also, Croatian chakavian and kajkavian dialects have a pitch accent (and are absolutely not included in the term serbo-croatian language). Because of controversy of the named term, I suggest to use either separate Serbian and Croatian language, or one of the two: south-west slavic languages or Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian languages. Can somebody explain me how old is this Serbo-Croatian language? Created by Yugoslav communists in 1950.-ies (let alone that Serbs spoke Serbian and Croats Croatian and that it was a king of "administrative language"). This language stopped being an administrative after 1990. It is quite stupid to neglect long history of Serbian and Croatian languages (more than 1000 years) because of this communist era that tried to destroy every simbol of separate culture and create a communistic nation. I don't see the point in promotion of this s-c language denomination any more. It is obviously a pretension comming from this communistic era. Can someone find a country where serbo-croatian language is officialy spoken and recommend a grammar book and a dictionary for it because I am interested in studying it? And which alphabet is used in s-c language?Hammer of Habsburg (talk) 02:17, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

 * For our purposes, SC can be considered a single language. The fact that one of its dialects has 2 or 3 official registers is largely irrelevant to a parenthetical mention such as this. "South-west Slavic languages" is not a normal term in English, SC is. kwami (talk) 04:10, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
 * The "controversy" exists only in the native terminology, the term is still widely used in English-speaking world (and elsewhere). What you misleadingly perceive as "different languages" (Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Montenegrin) is by any reasonable linguistic criteria one and the same entity (a stylised variety of Neoštokavian dialect). All 4 modern-day "standards" are 100% mutually intelligible, have 99% identical grammar (the same phonology, accentuation system, inflection, syntax) and differ themselves only in trivial details. All the "differences" among 4 standards can fit on some 2 pages of text. Also please educate yourself a bit more on the Serbo-Croatian history - the term itself predates communist Yugoslavia by at least a century. As for the grammar books and dictionary, the best introductory textbooks would be Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, a grammar: with sociolinguistic commentary by Ronelle Alexander and Introduction to the Croatian and Serbian Language by Thomas F. Magner, the best specialised linguistic overview would be the chapter on Serbo-Croat written by Wayles Browne in Comrie&Corbett, the most comprehensive dictionary would be Morton-Benson. Alphabets used are both Cyrillic and Latin - of modern-day nascent "languages", Cyrillic is used by all except Croatian standard. It would also be advised that you keep your objections strictly in the linguistic domain, we don't care about your nationalist frustrations resulting from "historical injustices". --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 11:19, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. I respect your facts and you have a point in it all. But, naming of languages is more political than a linguistic issue. Nowdays this language that you are referning to is not official in any sovereign country today. I agree, on the other hand to use this term as an umbrella for these languages, but not as a language itself. The differences between Czeck and Slovak languages is even smaller but still, they are refered as separate ones. Not to mention Norwegian and Swedish. Also, the problem is, if Croatians have s-c as a native language, that they can not read their own mother tounge texsts if they are written Cyrillic, as they, after 90.ies do not have compulsory learning of this alphabet in schools.Hammer of Habsburg (talk) 17:13, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

 * Some 98% of world's languages are not official languages of some sovereign country. Whether some country recognizes a languages in its constitution or similar legislative device as "official" or not is a political and not linguistic issue - the named entity is one and the same regardless of its "officiality". Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks and Montenegrins didn't start speaking "different languages" in 1991, 1993, 1997 and 2009 when these "new languages" were invented, given "official" status and assigned ISO codes.
 * The differences between Czech and Slovak are 100 times more numerous than between B/C/S/M standards. When literary Slovak was codified in the 19th century, its chief creator was looking to make it as distinct as possible from contemporary literary Czech, which was in use at that time by most of the Slovak intelligentsia. OTOH, Croatian and Serbian linguists dumped all the other literary dialects in favor of one that was shared by all the nations (Neoštokavian), and based their common literary standard on it. The differences between Norwegian (either of the 2 standards) and Swedish are even bigger.
 * Language is not determined by the alphabet in use. imat ću, имаћу and '[ǐmatɕu]' are different written forms of phonetically the same underlying word. Cyrillic script can be read by most of the Croats (most of the population is above 20, mind you) and its knowledge is a matter of basic literacy. In case you didn't know, Croatian writers used Cyrillic script for centuries (see bosančica). At any case, all of the Wikipedia's SC words are either biscripted or given only in Latin alphabet, so I see know problem with that. You just ignore what you can't read. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 17:40, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

OK. Everyone has a right on his own opinion. Your assertion is that the majority of Croats are illiterate as they can not read or write texts in their own language in Cyrillic script. I doubt that more than 10% of them can even read cyrillic fluently, let alone writing exercises. People born before 50.-ies didn't learn cyrillic as well. If you didn't know, elementary education in Croatia starts at the age of 6/7, so you have 27 generations that never had the opportunity to read or write it's own native language in both scripts, not to mention emigrant native speakers (that didn't take part in Yu education system when both scripts were taught) of "this language" - many of them would not even be able to recognise "their own mother language" in cyrillic script - amazing! Not amazing, just a matter of their basic illiteracy. Hahaha!!! Croats, besides bosancica, used several other scripts throughout the history (like glagolitic), but almost none can read or write it. Again, according to your deduction method, just a matter of their basic illiteracy!Hammer of Habsburg (talk) 21:10, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

 * As I said, the choice of script/orthography used for transcription does not influence or determine the properties of actually spoken language or an idealized form thereof properties of which happen to be the topic of this article. Modern-day standard varieties of Serbo-Croatian have identical accentual system and it makes absolutely no sense to treat them separately. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 21:38, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

 * And Serbian is written in Latin script, so if you have a modern SC word written in Latin, it's generally impossible to say whether it's "Croatian" or "Serbian".
 * Beside that, Hammer, your attitude is not appropriate for civilized discourse. I'll ignore you now unless you decide you want to behave seriously. kwami (talk) 21:48, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

pitch accent is the sound your mom makes —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.81.166.149 (talk) 14:36, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

NON-IPA symbols for Serbo-Croatian pitch accent
Wikipedia articles for Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian sadly use symbols which are not international. Diacritics as on ǎ, ê, ȕ are taken from the local tradition. Incredibly, they are even labelled in these artcicles as IPA. But they have never been part of IPA, they are inconsistent, non-iconic, and unintelligible to phoneticians who haven't learnt these languages and haven't dealt with local studies in South-Slavic linguistics. Even on a phonemic/tonemic level, they make no sense. Viktor Laszlo (talk) 21:28, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Bad Swedish?
"Är det tomten på tomten?" is a very strange (possibly Swenglish) sentence. It could mean "Is THAT(!) Santa out in the yard?", "Is it the Santa (a statue) out in the yard?", or "In the yard, is it the Santa?", depending how you say it. Should probably be "Är tomten på tomten?", which could mean "Is that Santa out in the yard?", "Is the gnome out in the yard?", "Is the gardening gnome (statue) out in the yard", or "Is the yard on the estate?", depending on how you say it. (Both sentences can have other meanings too, but these are the ones that make sense to me). I can't explain how you say these sentences to get these different meanings (and in some Swedish dialects (e.g. Stockholmska), you can't); I'm Swedish, it comes natural to me.

I read "Banan på banan", first as "The curvature of the banana" and, since that seem unnatural to say, my brain then corrected it as "The curvature of the course/trajectory". That it could mean "Banana on the track", never even occurred to me. Although correct, the sentence is bad/confusing Swedish and I think it is a possible case of Swenglish. A more likely Swedish sentence would be "En banan på banan" ("A banana on the track") or "Bananer på banan" ("Bananas on the track").

Of course, it would be easier if the sentences where within a context. I think they prove that Swedish was never meant to be written with the Latin alphabet ;-)

--Se mj (talk) 22:26, 17 December 2011 (UTC)
 * When Old Norse was written in the younger futhark, it would actually have been even more cnfusing. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:11, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Confusion
I fail to get this. Do "pitch-accent" languages not also have stress? The terms "stress-accent" and "pitch-accent" are used as if they are mutually exclusive, but to me they are unrelated. As far as I know all languages use stress in various ways, and all languages use pitch in various ways (and in particular, pitch is often a part of stress). A "pitch-accent language" seems to mean a language that uses pitch at least in one specified way (to make lexical distinctions, but only with respect to particular [stressed?] syllables within a word). Is a "stress-accent" language defined as a language that is neither a tonal language nor a pitch-accent language? If so, it seems a rather misleading name (as indeed is "pitch-accent language", but that one at least seems to be well established). Can anyone straighten out my thoughts on this? W. P. Uzer (talk) 12:48, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

 * As for your first question, the prototypical pitch-accent language (if there is such a thing) does not have lexical stress. It will have prosodic stress, just as English has prosodic tone.  I remember people investigating whether a single language can have both lexical stress and lexical tone.  I suspect that some do, but haven't kept up w the lit.  Basically, languages with lexical "accent" have a tonic syllable in a word.  ("Tonic" ≠ "tone"!)  The difference is whether the tonic syllable is realized by stress (which tends to carry pitch, vowel length, etc.) or just by tone.  In many languages that use tone (pitch-accent languages), most words have no tonic syllable.  In languages that use stress, on the other hand, all (or at least most) lexical words have a tonic syllable.  But Larry Hyman has written that there is no coherent definition of "pitch accent" that works for all pitch-accent languages.  (Others disagree.)  Pitch-accent might be thought of as being the simple extreme of word-tone.
 * In the case of European pitch-accent languages, people speak of an accented (tonic) syllable that may have one of several tones (often just a choice of two). Sometimes it's called the "stressed" syllable, but that's just a confusion of terminology.  In the case of Japanese, a word either does or does not have a tonic syllable; most don't, but if they do, the only question is which syllable it is.  There's no choice of tone on that syllable (for Tokyo dialect).  (Personally, I think the Tokyo system is more productively thought of as downstep than as pitch accent, but that's perhaps just a philosophical difference.)
 * — kwami (talk) 07:41, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that helps quite a bit, but there still seems to be a mixing of two different concepts that are both referred to using the term "pitch accent". Are you saying that in languages like Japanese and Swedish, there are no additional cues for the "tonic" syllable other than pitch? (That is, that there is no extra acoustic force or vowel length or anything else "stress-like" on that syllable?) I would be surprised if this were the case. W. P. Uzer (talk) 22:41, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Sound files
We really could use some soundfiles on this page, especially of minimal pairs or sets of words distinguished by different pitch accents. Are there users who speak Latvian or Lithuanian, Bosnian, Croation, Serbian, Montenegrin, or Slovenian, Japanese, Wu Chinese, or other languages who could record some examples? — Eru·tuon 21:58, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

"Description"
The paragraph headed "Description" which starts the article is unsatisfactory. What is needed here are some definitions from academic publications and perhaps some mention of the controversy which surrounds this subject. Instead we have a lot of irrelevant information which belongs later in the article, such as "The Indic system was lost by the time of the Prākrits" and so on. The paragraph needs deleting. Kanjuzi (talk) 06:45, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

Article title
I suggest the article should be renamed "Pitch-accent languages", since that is what it is about. It would also help to differentiate the subject of this article from Pitch accent (intonation). Kanjuzi (talk) 05:55, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

Luxembourgish
An editor,, suggests that Luxembourgish should not be included among the Franconian dialects that have a pitch accent. But here is a quote from an article by Carlos Gussenhoven of Nijmegen University, "In defense of a dialect-contact scenario of the Central Franconian tonogenesis":

 * "One of the most intriguing phenomena in the phonology of continental West Germanic occurs, or in some cases occurred until recently, in a group of Central Franconian dialects, which include Limburgish as spoken in Belgium and the Netherlands as well as Luxembourgish. This is the lexical tone opposition known as Accent 1 vs. Accent 2."

So although I don't know Luxembourgish personally I think it should be restored to the text, unless there is a better authority. Kanjuzi (talk) 05:09, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Did you check Luxembourgish phonology? Mr KEBAB (talk) 05:36, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The article there is silent about whether that it has, or doesn't have, a pitch-accent. But Carlos Gussenhoven is a well-known authority on the subject, so I think we should trust him, unless, as I say, there is a better authority. Kanjuzi (talk) 05:45, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The information is there. Just look at the very bottom of the Diphthongs section. The source says that no variant of what can be called Luxembourgish has tonemes. Because of that, it's clear that when Gussenhoven says or in some cases occurred until recently in your quote, that refers to Luxembourgish and perhaps some other varieties. Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:38, 2 May 2018 (UTC)
 * So it does. I stand corrected. Kanjuzi (talk) 03:36, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

 * In the map next to the text, Luxembourg is still colored orange and contradicts the text. --PeterTrompeter (talk) 05:30, 28 March 2021 (UTC)
 * The map is based on data from about 100 years ago. It's bound to be outdated in some aspects. Not to mention that there are some traces of the former pitch accent contrast in Luxembourgish phonology, so that the language can still be analyzed as tonal in its underlying form, with the tonal contrasts realized as only as length/quality contrast in the surface forms, so that faul 'rotten' vs. faul  'lazy' can be analyzed as  vs.  that surface as  vs. . The same goes for Weert Limburgish (not that specific example, but the principle). But I admit that it's a very abstract analysis. Languages are typically not analyzed as tonal when their speakers cannot produce any tonal contrasts, even if the language has once featured them in the past. It's like repainting a car - when you paint it yellow, it's no longer black, and so when the police go looking for it, they'll be looking for a yellow car, not a black one. It's a silly example, but it points to the fact that the contemporary lack of tone contrast is probably more important and the formerly allophonic distinction between  and  has been turned into a proper phonemic opposition ( vs. ), now that the tonal distinction no longer exists. In Ripuarian, it's only allophonic because tones are still contrastive (though the lengthened [Accent 2] diphthong is closer to, I think, or with a central onset in both cases, so ).
 * The downside of not analyzing Luxembourgish as underlyingly tonal is that it makes the comparison with other Central Franconian language varieties somewhat more difficult. Then again, Luxembourgish has unrounded the historical front rounded vowels, whereas in (some?) Ripuarian dialects they've retained their rounding. So it's probably not that big of a deal.
 * Probably the most reasonable solution is to introduce a third layer of complexity, a 'morphophonemic' analysis akin to that of Hans Basbøll's analysis of Standard Copenhagen Danish. According to that analysis, 'rotten' would be, whereas 'lazy' would be (I'd get rid of the length marks in the middle (phonemic) transcription if you ask me, but anyway). This allows us to show that the former tone contrasts are still detectable in some places in the phonology of Luxembourgish, without suggesting that its speakers actually make any tonal distinctions. The introduction of that analysis would also allow us to treat the  and  mergers after short back vowels (the fricativization of the rhotic after short front vowels is no merger, as the underlying uvular fricatives surface as alveolo-palatal/postalveolar [depending on whether you have that merger or not] in that position, which is something that never happens to the Luxembourgish rhotic) as phonemic, rather than allophonic. But without WP:RS's that adopt this analysis, our hands are pretty much tied. A book akin to The Phonology of Danish would be an invaluable contribution to the research into the phonology of Luxembourgish. Sol505000 (talk) 12:33, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Pitch-accent language