Supporters' group

# Supporters' group

## Abstract

A supporters' group or supporters' club is an independent fan club or campaign group in sport, mostly association football.

Supporters' groups in continental Europe are generally known as ultras, which derives from the Latin word ultrā, meaning beyond in English, with the implication that their enthusiasm is 'beyond' the normal. In the Anglosphere, these groups are generally known as "supporters' groups". Most groups in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia call themselves "supporters' groups"; however, some do self-identify as ultras, particularly in communities with large Spanish, French, or Italian speaking populations. In Mexico, they are called porras, while in South America they are called either hinchada (plural of hincha, a Spanish word that was first used in Uruguay to refer to a single fan or supporter) or, exclusively in Brazil, torcida (plural of torcedor, which means 'supporter' in Portuguese) and fanaticada (plural of 'fan' in Portuguese). All of these terms are most commonly used to refer to the whole crowd of a team in the stadium and not just the groups within those crowds that lead the chants and display of choreographies and flags.

These groups in particular are barras bravas in Argentina and torcidas organizadas in Brazil (where there are also barras bravas, but are less in comparison). Both (but especially barras bravas) are organised supporters' groups that are not only focused on supporting their team and intimidating rivals, but also on antagonizing opposing fans, or defending (themselves and the rest of their club's supporters) from police repression or attacks by rival groups.

Supporters' groups and ultras are renowned for their fanatical vocal support in large groups, defiance of the authorities, and the display of banners at stadiums, which are used to create an atmosphere to intimidate opposing players and supporters, as well as cheering on their own team.

## Characteristics

Supporters' groups are usually centered around a core group (who tend to have executive control over the whole group), with smaller subgroups organised by location, friendship, or political stance. Supporters' groups tend to use various styles and sizes of banners and flags with the name and symbols of the group. Some supporters' groups sell their own merchandise such as scarves, hats, and jackets. The resulting culture is a mix of several supporting styles such as scarf-waving and chanting. A supporters' group can number from a handful of fans to hundreds, and often claim entire sections of a stadium for themselves.

According to a writer for Spiked, the four core points of the ultra mentality are:

- never stop singing or chanting during a match, no matter the result

- never sit down during a match

- attend as many games as possible (home and away), regardless of cost or distance

- loyalty to the stand in which the group is located

Supporters' groups usually have a representative who liaises with the club owners on a regular basis, mostly regarding tickets, seat allocations, and storage facilities. Some groups sell their own merchandise to raise funds for performing displays. Some clubs provide groups with cheaper tickets, storage rooms for flags, and banners and early access to the stadium before matches in order to prepare displays. These types of favoured relationships are often criticised as an abuse of power. and for displaying banners and flags, which hinder the view of those sitting behind.

### Match day

During matches of significant importance, many supporters' groups choreograph a large overhead display that is displayed just in the section of the stadium where the group is located or the entire stadium. Sometimes, small sheets of plastic or paper are held aloft to form a pattern, or to colour the stadium. Such a display is called a "mosaic" or "card display". Other materials used in certain types of displays include balloons, streamers, huge banners, flares, smoke bombs, and at times, giant dolls. Popular culture icons are often used on banners. Corporate brand logos and catchphrases are also often used. The displays, which can be expensive to make, often take months to prepare. All of the supporter-provided overhead displays, two-poles, banners, etc. are called tifo.

Supporters groups tend to be highly vocal at matches, with each group having several football chants. The melodies are mostly taken from popular songs.

### Hooliganism

Unlike hooligan firms, whose main aim is to fight fans of other clubs, the main focus of supporters' groups is to support their own team. Unlike some hooligans, who try to be inconspicuous when they travel in ways such as not wearing team colours in order to avoid detection by the police, team supporters tend to have a bolder attitude, and are more conspicuous when they travel. They proudly display their scarves and club colours while arriving en masse, which allows the police to keep a close eye on their movements. Although supporters' groups can become violent, the vast majority of matches go ahead with no violent incidents.

## By region

### Oceania

The main supporter group of the Australia national soccer team is Socceroos Active Support (SAS). SAS was founded in January 2015 as an independent group, that uses social media to organise and keep in touch. This replaced the former active support group Terrace Australis, who were founded by the FFA and fans in 2013, during Australia's 2014 World Cup qualification campaign. Its establishment came in the wake of poor off-field action and minimal community engagement. Previously, the emergence of Terrace Australis saw the Green and Gold Army relinquish its role as a hub for active support, which it had claimed since its establishment in 2001.

The main supporter group of the Australia national rugby league team is The Roo Crew.

The supporters of the New Zealand national football team are known as the 'White Noise', a play on the All Whites nickname.

The official South Sydney Rabbitohs supporter group is known as " The Burrow ". Their active supporter group is known as "Gate38" and is made up of young men who were involved in the "scumgate" scandal in 2013. The Rabbitohs also have a large supporter base in Perth, where they rival the Fremantle Dockers in supporter size.

The official New South Wales rugby league team supporter group is known as "Blatchy's Blues".

The official Queensland rugby league team supporter group is known as "Maroon Crusade".

The official Gold Coast Titans supporter group is known as "The Legion".

The official Canberra Raiders supporter group is known as "The Greenhouse".

The Brisbane Broncos have the largest fan base of any NRL club and they have been voted the most popular rugby league team in Australia for several years. A Broncos supporters' group called "The Thoroughbreds", made up of prominent businessmen, made an unsuccessful bid to purchase News Ltd's controlling share of the club in 2007.

The Bulldogs Army is the core support group for the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, with the section they sit within known as 'The Kennel'. To be sitting in this section, supporters must become a member of the club itself and register any large flags and/or banners which are brought to the game. At all away games the Bulldogs Army locates themselves in the general admission section. The main aim of the Bulldogs Army is to show support and passion for the Bulldogs.

As the region's traditional local representatives, the Bulldogs predominantly draw on a support base in and around the suburbs of Canterbury and Bankstown in south-western Sydney, although in recent years club administration and home matches have relocated to Sydney Olympic Park. The Bulldogs are the most supported NRL club in regional NSW – over 25% of Bulldog fans are located in regional NSW, over 25% are located outside of NSW and over 10% are located in QLD. The club has one of the highest average attendances in the league: over the 2010 season, it was one of only two clubs to record an average home crowd of more than 20,000.

The multicultural demographics of the suburbs in the club's support base, such as Lakemba, means the club has a large number of supporters from a range of non-Anglo ethnicities. In recent years the club has become particularly identified in the media with the Lebanese and the Greek community, particularly with the club's former star goalkicker Hazem El Masri, being a Lebanese immigrant who migrated from Lebanon as a young child. The Greek community has a huge history of Greeks playing for the club dating back to the 1970s with club legend George Peponis, being a Greek immigrant who migrated from Greece as a very young child who captained the Bulldogs and Australia. El Masri retired at the end of the 2009 season.

The Melbourne Storm 's supporter base grew from almost 500,000 in 2004 to almost 800,000 in 2009, making them the fourth most popular rugby team. The club's supporter group, the "Graveyard Crew", make an Aussie-rules -(AFL) style banner for the team to run through in important matches.

The Sydney Roosters have a strong support base across Australia. Aside from its traditional fan base in Sydney, which is most concentrated in its homeland in the affluent eastern suburbs, the club is also popular in South East Queensland, Canberra and Newcastle. The club has an internet message board for supporters, "The Wall", which has been the official forum since 1999. The club has announced that "The Wall" will be closing as of late January 2012. "The Chookpen" is an unofficial site.

In 2013 the club tallied the fourth-highest home attendance of all National Rugby League clubs (behind the Brisbane Broncos) with an average of 19,368 spectators at the Sydney Football Stadium.

At the club's home ground, the Sydney Football Stadium, the supporters congregate in distinct sections. The "Chook Pen", a designated area in Bay 35, is the preferred location for the most animated fans. Members of the Sydney Cricket and Sports Ground Trust are seated in the Members' Stand on the western side of the ground, and season ticket holders are located just beneath the Members' area, in Bays 12–14.

In 2014, the Roosters had nearly 17,000 paying members, in addition to the 45,550 members of the Roosters' Leagues Club, which is the major benefactor of the football club. The Easts Leagues Club and the Sydney Roosters "operate as one entity" known as the Easts Group. Under this arrangement, the Eastern Suburbs District Rugby League Football Club is the 'parent company' of the Easts Group. The Football Club delegates, however, overarching responsibility for both football and leagues club operations to a single general manager who oversees the whole group's performance. The leagues club group provides financial support to the football club, only where necessary, as in recent years the football club's sponsorships and TV revenues are generally covering most Rugby League expenditures.

Port Adelaide Football Club has many supporter groups, with every state or territory containing at least one supporter group. In addition, many country towns within South Australia have their own supporter group, many of which travel to both home and away games.

- Port Adelaide Cheer Squad

- Outer Army

- Alberton Crowd

- Interstate Groups

There are also a number of English supporters' groups located in Australia for premiership teams and championship teams. The Hornets Down Under are an example of a championship supporters' group.

### East Asia

In Japan, supporters' sections are known as oendan and are prominent at baseball games and football matches.

The supporters' group for the South Korea national football team is Bulgeun Angma (lit. 'Red Devils').

### South Asia

The India national football team has a supporters' group called the Blue Pilgrims. They were formed with a motive to support the national team and the U-17 team during the 2017 U17 World Cup held in India.

Mariners' Base Camp and East Bengal Ultras are the ultras fan group of Mohun Bagan Super Giant and East Bengal FC respectively, two of the oldest football clubs in Asia. Derbies of the two clubs called as Kolkata Derby often witness record breaking spectator, one such moment was during 1997 Kolkata Derby in the Federation Cup Semi-final, where a recorded crowd of 131,781 turned up for the match while the official capacity of the stadium was 120,000. Fans of the clubs formed in the early 2010's also created ultras fan group, like Manjappada, which supports Kerala Blasters FC, West Block Blues, which supports Bengaluru FC and some more.

Bangladesh Active Supporters' group {{fb|BAN}}

Bangladeshi Football Ultras

Bashundhara Kings Ultras

### South America

In South America, barras bravas are the main supporter' groups. Similar to hooligan firms and ultras, the phenomenon originated in Argentina in the 1950s, but it has spread throughout most of the region during the following decades. This gang-like groups coordinate chants (which accompany playing bass drums and, less, trumpets) and display choreographies (like throw balloons, confetti, smoke bombs and firecrackers when their team goes out to the pitch; and wave banners, flags and umbrellas during the whole matches) to encourage their teams and intimidate rivals and referees, seek fights against opposing barras bravas and repel police repression.

They wield enormous power and influence over football in their respective states, especially in Argentina, which is home to some of the largest and strongest organised supporter groups worldwide.

The exception is Brazil, where the clubs have active supporter' groups named torcidas organizadas, who play a similar role to the barras bravas. However, the southern part of Brazil, in the south part of Santa Catarina and in all Rio Grande do Sul, contrary to the rest of the country, the supporter groups are barras bravas.

### Continental Europe

In Europe, there are primarily three types of groups: official supporter groups, ultras, and hooligan firms.

Official supporter groups primary function is to liaise with the club board and protects supporter interest as well as have a say in the running of the clubs, and they usually represent all types of supporters of all ages ranging from fanatical supporters, to disabled supporters, to supporters who rarely frequent games, however they are still an independent body. The oldest of which is Torcida founded in 1950 as supporters of Hajduk Split from Croatia.

Ultras groups are independent of the club; however, they too are frequently supported by the club as they cater to the majority of the most vocal and committed supporters, producing atmosphere and encouraging the players. However, frequent tensions also arise, due to often vocal and pro-active criticism of management or players and the illegality of some their actions, such as graffiti and lighting pyrotechnics during matches. Many ultras groups, to maintain their independence and raise money, run their own shops selling supporter merchandise, most commonly clothing such as supporter scarves, and sometimes in collaboration with the club match tickets.

Hooligan firms are largely restricted to a secretive sub-culture, due to the illegal nature of their activity. As they mostly socialise with other hooligans, they therefore have little contact with other sets of supporters.

In the past, the distinction between ultras and hooligans was blurred, with the majority being considered both. Due to the increase in condemnation and punishment of hooligan activity, the divide has become increasingly visible, however for some groups, especially groups who support smaller teams and therefore have less members, this divide is still very much blurred; some groups have started using the label hooltras.

### Britain and Ireland

Most supporters' groups are not only officially endorsed by the affiliated club, but also recognised on the club's website and hold regular meetings at the stadium.

In England and Wales, nearly all official supporter groups are affiliated with the Football Supporters' Federation. Also In England and Wales only, Supporters Direct are an umbrella organization promoting fan-ownership. For example. Leeds United has a number of supporters groups representing people with protected characteristics which include Punjabi Whites. LGBT fan group inclusion in Leeds United.

There are also numerous hooligan firms in Britain, also known as casuals in itself a style of support and sub-culture, stemming largely from the fact that Britain is the birthplace of the phenomenon of football hooliganism.

In the Republic of Ireland the supporters embrace a mixture of both ultra and casual styles.

### North America

The major supporters' group for the United States men's and women's national teams is The American Outlaws. The major supporters' group in Canada is The Voyageurs.

There are independent supporters' groups for teams in Major League Soccer (MLS), which operates in the United States and Canada, and the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL), as well as for many teams of the lower divisions of the United States soccer pyramid. Many of these groups are members of the Independent Supporters Council. MLS holds an annual "Supporters' Summit" to meet with the leadership of most of its supporter groups to discuss issues including security, self-policing, supporter group managed sections, and strategies for league success. Many teams in other leagues, including the National Premier Soccer League, USL Pro, USL Premier Development League, and North American Soccer League (2010) have associated supporters' groups. Supporters' groups can be found for some NCAA soccer programs such as Legion 1818 at Saint Louis University, Englemann Elite at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, or the Red Cedar Rowdies, influenced by Detroit City FC's Northern Guard Supporters, at Michigan State University. In Canada, there are supporters' groups for all Canadian Premier League teams. There are also supporters' groups in cities hoping to get a CanPL team in the future.

Major League Baseball supporters' groups include Dodgers ' Pantone 294 group and Oakland Athletics ' Section 149.

NFL supporters' groups include the Raiders ' Black Hole, Pittsburgh Steelers ' Steel City Mafia, Arizona Cardinals ' Bird Gang, and the New Orleans Saints Big Easy Mafia, which includes international chapters. The Dallas Cowboys, who bill themselves as "America's Team", and other successful teams such as New England Patriots, have supporters' groups around the U.S., and Jacksonville Jaguars ' Bold City Brigade includes a UK chapter as part of its bid to promote Jaguars as London's "home team".

NHL supporters' groups include the New York Islanders ' Blue and Orange Army est2009. The Blue and Orange Army aka BOA, was officially formed in 2009, and is the first true supporters section in the NHL.

In Mexico there are porras, that are older and are not violent like the first ones. Some association football clubs in Mexico also have animation groups, which stage tifo and other choreographed displays. A brawl between groups at Querétaro - Atlas match in 2022 injured 20 fans and resulted in Liga MX banning animation groups from organizing in opponents' stadiums.


Quasi-analog signal

# Quasi-analog signal

## Abstract

In telecommunications, a quasi-analog signal is a digital signal that has been converted to a form suitable for transmission over a specified analog channel.

The specification of the analog channel should include frequency range, bandwidth, signal-to-noise ratio, and envelope delay distortion. When quasi-analog form of signaling is used to convey message traffic over dial-up telephone systems, it is often referred to as voice- data. A modem may be used for the conversion process.


Prince Daddy & the Hyena

# Prince Daddy & the Hyena

## Abstract

Prince Daddy & the Hyena is an American punk rock band from Albany, New York, formed in 2014. They have released three full-length albums and four extended plays.

## History

### Formation and early years

Prince Daddy and the Hyena was formed in 2014 when Kory Gregory, Alex Ziembiec and Zakariya Houacine were inspired to start a band after seeing Rozwell Kid live. According to Gregory, Rozwell Kid was a substantial influence on much of his early songwriting. The origin of the band's name is obscure; Gregory has stated that he "would make up a different dumbass story each time". He has variously explained that it was derived from a game that Gregory played with the band's TM & merch person – Luis Wiest – at recess in elementary school, that it was the name of Gregory's childhood guinea pig, or that it is his parents' anniversary. He has also tweeted that there is a comma missing between Prince and Daddy, due to a grammatical error.

The band met lead guitarist Cameron Handford through house shows and mutual friends eventually leading up to his joining of the band. Prince Daddy & the Hyena began in 2014 with the release of an extended play titled Skip Cutscenes! Blow Loud!. In 2015, the band went into the headroom studio with Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Algernon Cadwallader) and recorded their first album, but the release was delayed several times.

The band released the EP Adult Summers in 2015 through Broken World Media and again in 2017 through.

Their first full-length album I Thought You Didn't Even Like Leaving was finally released in 2016 on Broken World Media. I Thought You Didn't Like Leaving was written during Gregory's high school days, the album was about working at Panera Bread and "being so sad about your friends leaving you that you lay in bed, eat Cheetos, and smoke weed".

In 2017, Ziembiec left the band on good terms due to exhaustion from touring. Daniel Gorham from Pictures of Vernon took over on drums.

### Cosmic Thrill Seekers

In 2019, the band released its second full-length album titled Cosmic Thrill Seekers on Counter Intuitive Records, and embarked on several extensive tours in support of the album. This tour would prove difficult for the band, as they were involved in a traffic accident which left the band and members of their team temporarily disabled. After recovering from this incident, the band's tour van was broken into, leading to the loss of $7,500 worth of equipment. The band went on tour Europe with Oso Oso in further support of the record in the fall of 2019. In 2020, the band embarked on their co-headlining tour with Oso Oso with support from Just Friends.

### Self-titled album

In 2021, the band signed to Pure Noise Records and released the single "Curly Q.", which Gregory wrote for his nephew.

In 2022, they announced their forthcoming third album, Prince Daddy & the Hyena, to release on April 15. The album is conceptually about the fear of death, and was inspired by a van crash the band experienced. The album was also supported by the singles "A Random Exercise In Impermanence (The Collector)," "El Dorado," and "Shoelaces," as well as a headlining tour throughout the United States with Macseal, Insignificant Other, and California Cousins.

In November 2022, they announced original drummer Alex Ziembiec's death.

In February 2023, they embarked on a co-headlining tour with Drug Church, with support from Anxious and Webbed Wing.

## Musical style

The band has self-identified themselves as a punk rock band in an interview with The Fader. Critically, the band has been described as "smartly crafted slacker punk" with elements of power pop, post-hardcore, and emo by AllMusic. Pitchfork has identified the band as both punk rock and emo.

Frontman Kory Gregory has cited Weezer, the Strokes, Jeff Rosenstock, and Green Day as major influences on the sound. In an interview with The Fader, Gregory described the sound on the band's second album Cosmic Thrill Seekers as "the soundtrack to a Disney film played by a punk rock band."

## Band members

Current

- Korneilious "Kory" Jophus Gregory – lead vocals, guitar (2014–present)

- Cameron "Cambo" Hanford – guitar (2014–present)

- Daniel "Podwick" Gorham – drums, backing vocals (2018–present)

- Jordan "J Nasty" Chmielowski – bass (2024–present; touring 2022–2023)

Past

- Zakariya "Hardly Knew Yee" Houacine – bass (2014–2019)

- Alex "Al Al Bean" Ziembiec – drums (2014–2017; died 2022)

- Adam Dasilva – bass (2020–2022)

Touring

- Jake Sulzer – drums (2017), bass (2023)

- James Ringness – drums (2017)

- Cole Syzilagyi – bass (2022)

### Timeline

## Discography

Studio albums

- I Thought You Didn't Even Like Leaving (2016, Broken World Media/2017, Counter Intuitive Records)

- Cosmic Thrill Seekers (2019, Counter Intuitive Records)

- Prince Daddy & the Hyena (2022, Pure Noise Records)

EPs

- Skip Cutscenes! Blow Loud! (2014, Wallflower Records)

- Adult Summers (2015, Broken World Media, 2017 Counter Intuitive Records)

Splits

- Prince Daddy & The Hyena/Just Friends (2016, Broken World Media)

- Now That's What I Call Music Vol. 420 (2017, Counter Intuitive Records)

Singles

- Adult Summers Pt. 2 (2015, Broken World Media) HIDDEN TRACK* (2015, Broken World Media)

- HIDDEN TRACK* (2015, Broken World Media)

- I Thought You Didn't Even Like Leaving (2016, Broken World Media)

- Hundo Pos (2016, Broken World Media)

- I Forgot To Take My Meds Today (2017, Broken World Media)

- I Lost My Life (2019, Counter Intuitive Records)

- Lauren (Track 2) (2019, Counter Intuitive Records)

- Fuckin' A (2019, Counter Intuitive Records)

- Prototype of The Ultimate Life-form (2019, Counter Intuitive Records)

- Curly Q (2021, Pure Noise Records)

- A Random Exercise in Impermanence (The Collector) (2022, Pure Noise Records)

- El Dorado (2022, Pure Noise Records)

- Shoelaces (2022, Pure Noise Records)


Russian language

# Russian language

## Abstract

Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians. It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union. Russian has remained an official language in independent Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine, Moldova, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel.

Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe, the most spoken Slavic language, as well as the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia. It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers, and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers. Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station, one of the six official languages of the United Nations, as well as the fourth most widely used language on the Internet.

Russian is written using the Russian alphabet of the Cyrillic script; it distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without—the so-called "soft" and "hard" sounds. Almost every consonant has a hard or soft counterpart, and the distinction is a prominent feature of the language. Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Stress, which is often unpredictable, is not normally indicated orthographically, though an optional acute accent may be used to mark stress – such as to distinguish between homographic words (e.g. замо́к and за́мок), or to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names.

## Classification

Russian is an East Slavic language of the wider Indo-European family. It is a descendant of Old East Slavic, a language used in Kievan Rus', which was a loose conglomerate of East Slavic tribes from the late 9th to the mid-13th centuries. From the point of view of spoken language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn, the other three languages in the East Slavic branch. In many places in eastern and southern Ukraine and throughout Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably, and in certain areas traditional bilingualism resulted in language mixtures such as Surzhyk in eastern Ukraine and Trasianka in Belarus. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although it vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is sometimes considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. Also, Russian has notable lexical similarities with Bulgarian due to a common Church Slavonic influence on both languages, but because of later interaction in the 19th and 20th centuries, Bulgarian grammar differs markedly from Russian.

Over the course of centuries, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have also been influenced by Western and Central European languages such as Greek, Latin, Polish, Dutch, German, French, Italian, and English, and to a lesser extent the languages to the south and the east: Uralic, Turkic, Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew.

According to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, Russian is classified as a level III language in terms of learning difficulty for native English speakers, requiring approximately 1,100 hours of immersion instruction to achieve intermediate fluency.

## Standard Russian

Feudal divisions and conflicts created obstacles between the Russian principalities before and especially during Mongol rule. This strengthened dialectal differences, and for a while, prevented the emergence of a standardized national language. The formation of the unified and centralized Russian state in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the gradual re-emergence of a common political, economic, and cultural space created the need for a common standard language. The initial impulse for standardization came from the government bureaucracy for the lack of a reliable tool of communication in administrative, legal, and judicial affairs became an obvious practical problem. The earliest attempts at standardizing Russian were made based on the so-called Moscow official or chancery language, during the 15th to 17th centuries. Since then, the trend of language policy in Russia has been standardization in both the restricted sense of reducing dialectical barriers between ethnic Russians, and the broader sense of expanding the use of Russian alongside or in favour of other languages.

The current standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language (современный русский литературный язык – "sovremenny russky literaturny yazyk"). It arose at the beginning of the 18th century with the modernization reforms of the Russian state under the rule of Peter the Great and developed from the Moscow (Middle or Central Russian) dialect substratum under the influence of some of the previous century's Russian chancery language.

Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, the spoken form of the Russian language was that of the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie. Russian peasants, the great majority of the population, continued to speak in their own dialects. However, the peasants' speech was never systematically studied, as it was generally regarded by philologists as simply a source of folklore and an object of curiosity. This was acknowledged by the noted Russian dialectologist Nikolai Karinsky, who toward the end of his life wrote: "Scholars of Russian dialects mostly studied phonetics and morphology. Some scholars and collectors compiled local dictionaries. We have almost no studies of lexical material or the syntax of Russian dialects."

After 1917, Marxist linguists had no interest in the multiplicity of peasant dialects and regarded their language as a relic of the rapidly disappearing past that was not worthy of scholarly attention. Nakhimovsky quotes the Soviet academicians A.M Ivanov and L.P Yakubinsky, writing in 1930:

The language of peasants has a motley diversity inherited from feudalism. On its way to becoming proletariat peasantry brings to the factory and the industrial plant their local peasant dialects with their phonetics, grammar, and vocabulary, and the very process of recruiting workers from peasants and the mobility of the worker population generate another process: the liquidation of peasant inheritance by way of leveling the particulars of local dialects. On the ruins of peasant multilingual, in the context of developing heavy industry, a qualitatively new entity can be said to emerge—the general language of the working class... capitalism has the tendency of creating the general urban language of a given society.

## Geographic distribution

In 2010, there were 259.8 million speakers of Russian in the world: in Russia – 137.5 million, in the CIS and Baltic countries – 93.7 million, in Eastern Europe – 12.9 million, Western Europe – 7.3 million, Asia – 2.7 million, in the Middle East and North Africa – 1.3 million, Sub-Saharan Africa – 0.1 million, Latin America – 0.2 million, U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – 4.1 million speakers. Therefore, the Russian language is the seventh-largest in the world by the number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi -Urdu, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Portuguese.

Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for both Russian as a second language (RSL) and native speakers in Russia, and in many former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics.

### Europe

In Belarus, Russian is a second state language alongside Belarusian per the Constitution of Belarus. 77% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 67% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2019 Belarusian census, out of 9,413,446 inhabitants of the country, 5,094,928 (54.1% of the total population) named Belarusian as their native language, with 61.2% of ethnic Belarusians and 54.5% of ethnic Poles declaring Belarusian as their native language. In everyday life in the Belarusian society the Russian language prevails, so according to the 2019 census 6,718,557 people (71.4% of the total population) stated that they speak Russian at home, for ethnic Belarusians this share is 61.4%, for Russians — 97.2%, for Ukrainians — 89.0%, for Poles — 52.4%, and for Jews — 96.6%; 2,447,764 people (26.0% of the total population) stated that the language they usually speak at home is Belarusian, among ethnic Belarusians this share is 28.5%; the highest share of those who speak Belarusian at home is among ethnic Poles — 46.0%.

In Estonia, Russian is spoken by 29.6% of the population, according to a 2011 estimate from the World Factbook, and is officially considered a foreign language. School education in the Russian language is a very contentious point in Estonian politics, and in 2022, the parliament approved a bill to close up all Russian language schools and kindergartens by the school year. The transition to only Estonian language schools and kindergartens will start in the 2024-2025 school year.

In Latvia, Russian is officially considered a foreign language. 55% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 26% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 18 February 2012, Latvia held a constitutional referendum on whether to adopt Russian as a second official language. According to the Central Election Commission, 74.8% voted against, 24.9% voted for and the voter turnout was 71.1%. Starting in 2019, instruction in Russian will be gradually discontinued in private colleges and universities in Latvia, and in general instruction in Latvian public high schools. On 29 September 2022, Saeima passed in the final reading amendments that state that all schools and kindergartens in the country are to transition to education in Latvian. From 2025, all children will be taught in Latvian only. On 28 September 2023, Latvian deputies approved The National Security Concept, according to which from 1 January 2026, all content created by Latvian public media (including LSM) should be only in Latvian or a language that "belongs to the European cultural space". The financing of Russian-language content by the state will cease, which the concept says create a "unified information space". However, one inevitable consequence would be the closure of public media broadcasts in Russian on LTV and Latvian Radio, as well as the closure of LSM's Russian-language service.

In Lithuania, Russian has no official or legal status, but the use of the language has some presence in certain areas. A large part of the population, especially the older generations, can speak Russian as a foreign language. However, English has replaced Russian as lingua franca in Lithuania and around 80% of young people speak English as their first foreign language. In contrast to the other two Baltic states, Lithuania has a relatively small Russian-speaking minority (5.0% as of 2008). According to the 2011 Lithuanian census, Russian was the native language for 7.2% of the population.

In Moldova, Russian was considered to be the language of interethnic communication under a Soviet-era law. On 21 January 2021, the Constitutional Court of Moldova declared the law unconstitutional and deprived Russian of the status of the language of interethnic communication. 50% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 19% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. According to the 2014 Moldovan census, Russians accounted for 4.1% of Moldova's population, 9.4% of the population declared Russian as their native language, and 14.5% said they usually spoke Russian.

According to the 2010 census in Russia, Russian language skills were indicated by 138 million people (99.4% of the respondents), while according to the 2002 census – 142.6 million people (99.2% of the respondents).

In Ukraine, Russian is a significant minority language. According to estimates from Demoskop Weekly, in 2004 there were 14,400,000 native speakers of Russian in the country, and 29 million active speakers. 65% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 38% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work. On 5 September 2017, Ukraine's Parliament passed a new education law which requires all schools to teach at least partially in Ukrainian, with provisions while allow indigenous languages and languages of national minorities to be used alongside the national language. The law faced criticism from officials in Russia and Hungary. The 2019 Law of Ukraine "On protecting the functioning of the Ukrainian language as the state language" gives priority to the Ukrainian language in more than 30 spheres of public life: in particular in public administration, media, education, science, culture, advertising, services. The law does not regulate private communication. A poll conducted in March 2022 by RATING in the territory controlled by Ukraine found that 83% of the respondents believe that Ukrainian should be the only state language of Ukraine. This opinion dominates in all macro-regions, age and language groups. On the other hand, before the war, almost a quarter of Ukrainians were in favour of granting Russian the status of the state language, while after the beginning of Russia's invasion the support for the idea dropped to just 7%. In peacetime, the idea of raising the status of Russian was traditionally supported by residents of the south and east. But even in these regions, only a third of the respondents were in favour, and after Russia's full-scale invasion, their number dropped by almost half. According to the survey carried out by RATING in August 2023 in the territory controlled by Ukraine and among the refugees, almost 60% of the polled usually speak Ukrainian at home, about 30% – Ukrainian and Russian, only 9% – Russian. Since March 2022, the use of Russian in everyday life has been noticeably decreasing. For 82% of respondents, Ukrainian is their mother tongue, and for 16%, Russian is their mother tongue. IDPs and refugees living abroad are more likely to use both languages for communication or speak Russian. Nevertheless, more than 70% of IDPs and refugees consider Ukrainian to be their native language.

In the 20th century, Russian was a mandatory language taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR. According to the Eurobarometer 2005 survey, fluency in Russian remains fairly high (20–40%) in some countries, in particular former Warsaw Pact countries.

### Asia

In Armenia, Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as a minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. 30% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 2% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work.

In Azerbaijan, Russian has no official status, but is a lingua franca of the country. 26% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 5% used it as the main language with family, friends, or at work.

In China, Russian has no official status, but it is spoken by the small Russian communities in the northeastern Heilongjiang and the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Russian was also the main foreign language taught in school in China between 1949 and 1964.

In Georgia, Russian has no official status, but it is recognized as a minority language under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. Russian is the language of 9% of the population according to the World Factbook. Ethnologue cites Russian as the country's de facto working language.

In Kazakhstan, Russian is not a state language, but according to article 7 of the Constitution of Kazakhstan its usage enjoys equal status to that of the Kazakh language in state and local administration. The 2009 census reported that 10,309,500 people, or 84.8% of the population aged 15 and above, could read and write well in Russian, and understand the spoken language. In October 2023, Kazakhstan drafted a media law aimed at increasing the use of the Kazakh language over Russian, the law stipulates that the share of the state language on television and radio should increase from 50% to 70%, at a rate of 5% per year, starting in 2025.

In Kyrgyzstan, Russian is a co-official language per article 5 of the Constitution of Kyrgyzstan. The 2009 census states that 482,200 people speak Russian as a native language, or 8.99% of the population. Additionally, 1,854,700 residents of Kyrgyzstan aged 15 and above fluently speak Russian as a second language, or 49.6% of the population in the age group.

In Tajikistan, Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication under the Constitution of Tajikistan and is permitted in official documentation. 28% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 7% used it as the main language with family, friends or at work. The World Factbook notes that Russian is widely used in government and business.

In Turkmenistan, Russian lost its status as the official lingua franca in 1996. Among 12% of the population who grew up in the Soviet era can speak Russian, other generations of citizens that do not have any knowledge of Russian. Primary and secondary education by Russian is almost non-existent.

In Uzbekistan, Russian is the language of inter-ethnic communication. It has some official roles, being permitted in official documentation and is the lingua franca of the country and the language of the elite. Russian is spoken by 14.2% of the population according to an undated estimate from the World Factbook.

In 2005, Russian was the most widely taught foreign language in Mongolia, and was compulsory in Year 7 onward as a second foreign language in 2006.

Around 1.5 million Israelis spoke Russian as of 2017. The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian and there are Russian newspapers, television stations, schools, and social media outlets based in the country. There is an Israeli TV channel mainly broadcasting in Russian with Israel Plus. See also Russian language in Israel.

Russian is also spoken as a second language by a small number of people in Afghanistan.

In Vietnam, Russian has been added in the elementary curriculum along with Chinese and Japanese and were named as "first foreign languages" for Vietnamese students to learn, on equal footing with English.

### North America

The Russian language was first introduced in North America when Russian explorers voyaged into Alaska and claimed it for Russia during the 18th century. Although most Russian colonists left after the United States bought the land in 1867, a handful stayed and preserved the Russian language in this region to this day, although only a few elderly speakers of this unique dialect are left. In Nikolaevsk, Alaska, Russian is more spoken than English. Sizable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada, such as New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, Nashville, San Francisco, Seattle, Spokane, Toronto, Calgary, Baltimore, Miami, Portland, Chicago, Denver, and Cleveland. In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and live in ethnic enclaves (especially the generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to the United States Census, in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States.

## As an international language

Russian is one of the official languages (or has similar status and interpretation must be provided into Russian) of the following:

- United Nations

- International Atomic Energy Agency

- World Health Organization

- International Civil Aviation Organization

- UNESCO

- World Intellectual Property Organization

- International Telecommunication Union

- World Meteorological Organization

- Food and Agriculture Organization

- International Fund for Agricultural Development

- International Criminal Court

- International Olympic Committee

- Universal Postal Union

- World Bank

- Commonwealth of Independent States

- Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

- Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

- Eurasian Economic Community

- Collective Security Treaty Organization

- Antarctic Treaty Secretariat

- International Organization for Standardization

- International Mathematical Olympiad

The Russian language is also one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station – NASA astronauts who serve alongside Russian cosmonauts usually take Russian language courses. This practice goes back to the Apollo–Soyuz mission, which first flew in 1975.

In March 2013, Russian was found to be the second-most used language on websites after English. Russian was the language of 5.9% of all websites, slightly ahead of German and far behind English (54.7%). Russian was used not only on 89.8% of.ru sites, but also on 88.7% of sites with the former Soviet Union domain.su. Websites in former Soviet Union member states also used high levels of Russian: 79.0% in Ukraine, 86.9% in Belarus, 84.0% in Kazakhstan, 79.6% in Uzbekistan, 75.9% in Kyrgyzstan and 81.8% in Tajikistan. However, Russian was the sixth-most used language on the top 1,000 sites, behind English, Chinese, French, German, and Japanese.

## Dialects

Despite leveling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary and phonetics, a number of dialects still exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of Russian into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between the two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern, Central (or Middle), and Southern, with Moscow lying in the Central region.

The Northern Russian dialects and those spoken along the Volga River typically pronounce unstressed /o/ clearly, a phenomenon called okanye (оканье). Besides the absence of vowel reduction, some dialects have high or diphthongal /e⁓i̯ɛ/ in place of Proto-Slavic * ě and /o⁓u̯ɔ/ in stressed closed syllables (as in Ukrainian) instead of Standard Russian /e/ and /o/, respectively. Another Northern dialectal morphological feature is a post-posed definite article -to, -ta, -te similar to that existing in Bulgarian and Macedonian.

In the Southern Russian dialects, instances of unstressed /e/ and /a/ following palatalized consonants and preceding a stressed syllable are not reduced to (as occurs in the Moscow dialect), being instead pronounced in such positions (e.g. несл и is pronounced, not) – this is called yakanye (яканье). Consonants include a fricative /ɣ/, a semivowel /w⁓u̯/ and /x⁓xv⁓xw/, whereas the Standard and Northern dialects have the consonants /ɡ/, /v/, and final /l/ and /f/, respectively. The morphology features a palatalized final /tʲ/ in 3rd person forms of verbs (this is unpalatalized in the Standard and Northern dialects).

## Comparison with other Slavic languages

During the Proto-Slavic (Common Slavic) times all Slavs spoke one mutually intelligible language or group of dialects. There is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian, and a moderate degree of it in all modern Slavic languages, at least at the conversational level.

## Derived languages

- Balachka, a Ukrainian dialect spoken in Krasnodar region, Don, Kuban, and Terek, brought by relocated Cossacks in 1793 and is based on the so-called "southwest Russian" dialect (Ukrainian dialect). During the Russification of the aforementioned regions in the 1920s to 1950s, it was replaced by the Russian language.

- Esperanto has some words of Russian and Slavic origin and some features of its grammar could be derived from Russian.

- Fenya, a criminal argot of ancient origin, with Russian grammar, but with distinct vocabulary

- Lojban, Russian is one of its six source languages, weighed for the number of Russian speakers in 1985.

- Medny Aleut language, an extinct mixed language that was spoken on Bering Island and is characterized by its Aleut nouns and Russian verbs

- Padonkaffsky jargon, a slang language developed by padonki of Runet

- Quelia, a macaronic language with Russian-derived basic structure and part of the lexicon (mainly nouns and verbs) borrowed from German

- Runglish, a Russian-English pidgin. This word is also used by English speakers to describe the way in which Russians attempt to speak English using Russian morphology or syntax.

- Russenorsk, an extinct pidgin language with mostly Russian vocabulary and mostly Norwegian grammar, used for communication between Russians and Norwegian traders in the Pomor trade in Finnmark and the Kola Peninsula

- Surzhyk, a range of mixed (macaronic) sociolects of Ukrainian and Russian languages used in certain regions of Ukraine and adjacent lands.

- Trasianka, a heavily russified variety of Belarusian used by a large portion of the rural population in Belarus

- Taimyr Pidgin Russian, spoken by the Nganasan on the Taimyr Peninsula

## Alphabet

Russian is written using a Cyrillic alphabet. The Russian alphabet consists of 33 letters. The following table gives their forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound:

Older letters of the Russian alphabet include ⟨ ѣ ⟩, which merged to ⟨ е ⟩ (/je/ or /ʲe/); ⟨ і ⟩ and ⟨ ѵ ⟩, which both merged to ⟨ и ⟩ (/i/); ⟨ ѳ ⟩, which merged to ⟨ ф ⟩ (/f/); ⟨ ѫ ⟩, which merged to ⟨ у ⟩ (/u/); ⟨ ѭ ⟩, which merged to ⟨ ю ⟩ (/ju/ or /ʲu/); and ⟨ ѧ ⟩ and ⟨ ѩ ⟩, which later were graphically reshaped into ⟨ я ⟩ and merged phonetically to /ja/ or /ʲa/. While these older letters have been abandoned at one time or another, they may be used in this and related articles. The yers ⟨ ъ ⟩ and ⟨ ь ⟩ originally indicated the pronunciation of ultra-short or reduced /ŭ/, /ĭ/.

### Transliteration

Because of many technical restrictions in computing and also because of the unavailability of Cyrillic keyboards abroad, Russian is often transliterated using the Latin alphabet. For example, мороз ('frost') is transliterated moroz, and мышь ('mouse'), mysh or myš'. Once commonly used by the majority of those living outside Russia, transliteration is being used less frequently by Russian-speaking typists in favor of the extension of Unicode character encoding, which fully incorporates the Russian alphabet. Free programs are available offering this Unicode extension, which allow users to type Russian characters, even on Western 'QWERTY' keyboards.

### Computing

The Russian language was first introduced to computing after the M-1, and MESM models were produced in 1951.

### Orthography

According to the Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, an optional acute accent (знак ударения) may, and sometimes should, be used to mark stress. For example, it is used to distinguish between otherwise identical words, especially when context does not make it obvious: замо́к (zamók – "lock") – за́мок (zámok – "castle"), сто́ящий (stóyashchy – "worthwhile") – стоя́щий (stoyáshchy – "standing"), чудно́ (chudnó – "this is odd") – чу́дно (chúdno – "this is marvellous"), молоде́ц (molodéts – "well done!") – мо́лодец (mólodets – "fine young man"), узна́ю (uznáyu – "I shall learn it") – узнаю́ (uznayú – "I recognize it"), отреза́ть (otrezát – "to be cutting") – отре́зать (otrézat – "to have cut"); to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words, especially personal and family names, like афе́ра (aféra, "scandal, affair"), гу́ру (gúru, "guru"), Гарси́я (García), Оле́ша (Olésha), Фе́рми (Fermi), and to show which is the stressed word in a sentence, for example Ты́ съел печенье? (Tý syel pechenye? – "Was it you who ate the cookie?") – Ты съе́л печенье? (Ty syél pechenye? – "Did you eat the cookie?) – Ты съел пече́нье? (Ty syel pechénye? "Was it the cookie you ate?"). Stress marks are mandatory in lexical dictionaries and books for children or Russian learners.

## Phonology

The Russian syllable structure can be quite complex, with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to four consecutive sounds. Using a formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant, the maximal structure can be described as follows:

(C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C)

### Consonants

Russian is notable for its distinction based on palatalization of most of its consonants. The phoneme / ts / is generally considered to be always hard; however, loan words such as Цюрих and some other neologisms contain / tsʲ / through the word-building processes (e.g. фрицёнок, шпицята). Palatalization means that the center of the tongue is raised during and after the articulation of the consonant. In the case of /tʲ/ and /dʲ/, the tongue is raised enough to produce slight frication (affricate sounds; cf. Belarusian ць, дзь, or Polish ć, dź). The sounds /t, d, ts, s, z, n, rʲ/ are dental, that is, pronounced with the tip of the tongue against the teeth rather than against the alveolar ridge. According to some linguists, the "plain" consonants are velarized as in Irish, something which is most noticeable when it involves a labial before a hard vowel, such as мы, /mˠɨː/, "we", or бэ, /bˠɛ/, "the letter Б".

### Vowels

Russian has five or six vowels in stressed syllables, /i, u, e, o, a/, and in some analyses /ɨ/, but in most cases these vowels have merged to only two to four vowels when unstressed: /i, u, a/ (or /ɨ, u, a/) after hard consonants and /i, u/ after soft ones. These vowels have several allophones, which are displayed on the diagram to the right.

## Grammar

Russian has preserved an Indo-European synthetic - inflectional structure, although considerable leveling has occurred.Russian grammar encompasses:

- a highly fusional morphology

- a syntax that, for the literary language, is the conscious fusion of three elements: a polished vernacular foundation; a Church Slavonic inheritance; a Western European style.

- a polished vernacular foundation;

- a Church Slavonic inheritance;

- a Western European style.

The spoken language has been influenced by the literary one but continues to preserve characteristic forms. The dialects show various non-standard grammatical features.

In terms of actual grammar, there are three tenses in Russian – past, present, and future – and each verb has two aspects (perfective and imperfective). Russian nouns each have a gender – either feminine, masculine, or neuter, chiefly indicated by spelling at the end of the word. Words change depending on both their gender and function in the sentence. Russian has six cases: Nominative (for the grammatical subject), Accusative (for direct objects), Dative (for indirect objects), Genitive (to indicate possession or relation), Instrumental (to indicate 'with' or 'by means of'), and Prepositional (used after the locative prepositions в "in", на "on", о "about", при "in the presence of"). Verbs of motion in Russian – such as 'go', 'walk', 'run', 'swim', and 'fly' – use the imperfective or perfective form to indicate a single or return trip, and also use a multitude of prefixes to add shades of meaning to the verb. Such verbs also take on different forms to distinguish between concrete and abstract motion.

## Vocabulary

The number of listed words or entries in some of the major dictionaries published during the past two centuries, are as follows:

## History and literary language

No single periodization is universally accepted, but the history of the Russian language is sometimes divided into the following periods:

- Old Russian or Old East Slavic (until the 14th or 15th century)

- Middle Russian (14th or 15th century until the 17th or 18th century)

- Modern Russian (17th century or 18th century to the present)

The history of the Russian language is also divided into Old Russian from the 11th to 17th centuries, followed by Modern Russian.

The political reforms of Peter the Great (Пётр Вели́кий, Pyótr Velíky) were accompanied by a reform of the alphabet, and achieved their goal of secularization and Westernization. Blocks of specialized vocabulary were adopted from the languages of Western Europe. By 1800, a significant portion of the gentry spoke French daily, and German sometimes. Many Russian novels of the 19th century, e.g. Leo Tolstoy 's (Лев Толсто́й) War and Peace, contain entire paragraphs and even pages in French with no translation given, with an assumption that educated readers would not need one.

The modern literary language is usually considered to date from the time of Alexander Pushkin (Алекса́ндр Пу́шкин) in the first third of the 19th century. Pushkin revolutionized Russian literature by rejecting archaic grammar and vocabulary (so-called высо́кий стиль — "high style") in favor of grammar and vocabulary found in the spoken language of the time. Even modern readers of younger age may only experience slight difficulties understanding some words in Pushkin's texts, since relatively few words used by Pushkin have become archaic or changed meaning. In fact, many expressions used by Russian writers of the early 19th century, in particular Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov (Михаи́л Ле́рмонтов), Nikolai Gogol (Никола́й Го́голь), Aleksander Griboyedov (Алекса́ндр Грибое́дов), became proverbs or sayings which can be frequently found even in modern Russian colloquial speech.

During the Soviet period, the policy toward the languages of the various other ethnic groups fluctuated in practice. Though each of the constituent republics had its own official language, the unifying role and superior status was reserved for Russian, although it was declared the official language only in 1990. Following the break-up of the USSR in 1991, several of the newly independent states have encouraged their native languages, which has partly reversed the privileged status of Russian, though its role as the language of post-Soviet national discourse throughout the region has continued.

The Russian language in the world declined after 1991 due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and decrease in the number of Russians in the world and diminution of the total population in Russia (where Russian is an official language), however this has since been reversed.

According to figures published in 2006 in the journal " Demoskop Weekly " research deputy director of Research Center for Sociological Research of the Ministry of Education and Science (Russia) Arefyev A. L., the Russian language is gradually losing its position in the world in general, and in Russia in particular. In 2012, A. L. Arefyev published a new study "Russian language at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries", in which he confirmed his conclusion about the trend of weakening of the Russian language after the Soviet Union's collapse in various regions of the world (findings published in 2013 in the journal " Demoskop Weekly "). In the countries of the former Soviet Union the Russian language was being replaced or used in conjunction with local languages. Currently, the number of speakers of Russian in the world depends on the number of Russians in the world and total population in Russia.

## Sample text

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Russian:

Все люди рождаются свободными и равными в своем достоинстве и правах. Они наделены разумом и совестью и должны поступать в отношении друг друга в духе братства.

The romanization of the text into Latin alphabet:

Vse lyudi rozhdayutsya svobodnymi i ravnymi v svoyem dostoinstve i pravakh. Oni nadeleny razumom i sovest'yu i dolzhny postupat' v otnoshenii drug druga v dukhe bratstva.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English:

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


The Curve (1998 film)

# The Curve (1998 film)

## Abstract

The Curve is a 1998 American thriller film starring Matthew Lillard, Keri Russell and Michael Vartan, which premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival under its original title, Dead Man's Curve. It draws on the urban legend that a student will receive an A letter grade should their roommate commit suicide (pass by catastrophe).

## Plot

After hearing of a school policy granting anyone whose roommate commits suicide an automatic 4.0 GPA, Harvard Business School aspirants Chris and Tim plot to kill their roommate Rand and make it look like a suicide. They're successful, but when the fallout breeds unforeseen consequences and two local detectives close in, guilt and mistrust fester, jeopardizing Chris's relationship with his girlfriend Emma and the roommates' futures.

## Cast

- Matthew Lillard as Tim

- Michael Vartan as Chris

- Keri Russell as Emma

- Randall Batinkoff as Rand

- Dana Delany as Dr. Ashley

- Tamara Craig Thomas as Natalie

- Bo Dietl as Detective Amato

- Anthony Griffith as Detective Shipper

- Kevin Ruf as Ernie

- Kris McGaha as Renee

## Production

Filming took place in Baltimore, Maryland at Elk Neck State Park, Johns Hopkins University, and Towson University in August 1997.

## Release

The film premiered at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival as an Official Selection. The film was renamed The Curve after its Sundance premiere to avoid confusion with the film Dead Man on Campus, a comedy with a similar pass by catastrophe premise about two college roommates who try to get another roommate to commit suicide which was released the same year. In the UK and Australia, however, the film was released as Dead Man's Curve.

## Reception

The Curve was met with a mostly negative reception. It holds a score of 0% on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 8 reviews. In a review for Variety, Dennis Harvey commented that " Curve bends too low for upscale auds, it’s also problematic for mainstream ones as a near-horror thriller sans onscreen violence (or genuinely surprising plot twists). It will take aggressive marketing to reap quick payoff on a film likely to get just lukewarm critical and word-of-mouth response."

In a more favorable review, William Thomas of Empire rated the film 4/5 stars and stated that it has "boasting originality, an easy-going hipness and a disregard for convention, this represents all that's good about the American indie scene."

## Soundtrack

Prior to the start of filming, writer/director Dan Rosen and score composer Shark made a mixtape of songs they were considering for use in the film, which Rosen gave to the principal actors in The Curve to establish the film's tone. When editor Glenn Garland put together the first edit of the film, he used music from this mix tape as "temp music," and many of the songs ended up in the final film.

A song-based soundtrack album featuring songs from The Curve was released in Japan through Toho Records.

Chromatic Records released a soundtrack album that featured 14 tracks composed by Shark, an aria from the 1892 opera La Wally and the songs "Die" by Starbelly, " Bela Lugosi's Dead " by Bauhaus and "Wake Up Sad (remix)" by Wild Colonials.


Eastern European Time

# Eastern European Time

## Abstract

Eastern European Time (EET) is one of the names of UTC+02:00 time zone, 2 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time.

A number of African countries use UTC+02:00 all year long, where it is called Central Africa Time (CAT), although Egypt and Libya also use the term Eastern European Time.

The most populous city in the Eastern European Time zone is Cairo, with the most populous EET city in Europe being Kyiv.

## Usage

The following countries, parts of countries, and territories use Eastern European Time all year round:

- Egypt, since 21 April 2015; used EEST (UTC+02:00; UTC+03:00 with daylight saving time) from 1988–2010 and 16 May–26 September 2014. See also Egypt Standard Time.

- Kaliningrad Oblast (Russia), since 26 October 2014; also used EET in years 1945 and 1991–2011. See also Kaliningrad Time.

- Libya, since 27 October 2013; switched from Central European Time, which was used in 2012. Used year-round EET from 1980–1981, 1990–1996 and 1998–2012.

The following countries, parts of countries, and territories use Eastern European Time during the winter only:

- Bulgaria, since 1894, except between 1942 and 1945

- Estonia, in years 1921–40 and since 1990

- Finland, since 1921

- Greece, since 1916

- Israel, since 1948 (see also Israel Standard Time)

- Latvia, in years 1926–40 and since 1990

- Lebanon

- Lithuania, in 1920–40 and since 1990 with break 1998–1999

- Moldova, in years 1918–40, 1941–44 and since 1991 Including Transnistria

- Including Transnistria

- Palestine (see also Palestine Standard Time)

- Romania

- Ukraine, in years 1922–30 and since 1990

The following countries, parts of countries, and territories used Eastern European Time in the past:

- Moscow used EET in years 1922–30 and 1991–92.

- Belarus, in years 1922–30 and 1990–2011

- Jordan used EET until permanently switching to DST in 2022.

- In Poland, this time was used in years 1919–22.

- Crimea used EET as part of Ukraine between 1991–1994 and 1996–2014 and started using Moscow Time due to the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014.

- Syria used EET until permanently switching to DST in 2022.

- Turkey, used EET in years 1910–1978 and re-used it again in years 1985–2016.

Sometimes, due to its use on Microsoft Windows, FLE Standard Time (for Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, or sometimes Finland, Latvia, Estonia) or GTB Standard Time (for Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria) are used to refer to Eastern European Time.

## Anomalies

Since political, in addition to purely geographical, criteria are used in the drawing of time zones, it follows that time zones do not precisely adhere to meridian lines. The EET (UTC+02:00) time zone, were it drawn by purely geographical terms, would consist of exactly the area between meridians 22°30' E and 37°30' E. As a result, there are European locales that despite lying in an area with a "physical" UTC+02:00 time, are in another time zone; likewise, there are European areas that have gone for UTC+02:00, even though their "physical" time zone is different from that. Following is a list of such anomalies:

### Areas outside UTC+02:00 longitudes using Eastern European Time (UTC+02:00) time

#### Areas west of 22°30' E ("physical" UTC+01:00) that use UTC+02:00

- The westernmost part of Greece, including the cities of Patras and Ioannina, and the Ionian Islands

- The very westernmost parts of the Bulgarian provinces of Vidin and Kyustendil

- The westernmost part of Romania, including most of the area of the counties of Caraș-Severin, Timiș (capital Timișoara), Arad, and Bihor, as well as the westernmost tips of the counties of Mehedinți and Satu Mare

- The extreme westernmost tip of Ukraine, near the border with Hungary and Slovakia, at the Ukrainian Transcarpathian Oblast (Zakarpattia Oblast), essentially comprising the city of Uzhhorod and its environs

- Most of the Kaliningrad Oblast, including the cities of Kaliningrad and Baltiysk

- Western Lithuania, including the cities of Klaipėda, Tauragė, and Telšiai

- Western Latvia, including the cities of Liepāja and Ventspils

- The westernmost parts of the Estonian islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, including the capital of the Saare County, Kuressaare

- The southwestern coast of Finland, including the city of Turku; also the Åland islands (of Finnish jurisdiction) – the Åland islands are the westernmost locale applying EET in the whole of Europe

- Most of Libya including the capital Tripoli

- The western half of the munincipality of Enontekiö in northwestern Finland

Areas east of 37°30' E ("physical" UTC+03:00) that use UTC+02:00

- Eastern parts of Ukraine, including the city of Mariupol

### Areas within UTC+02:00 longitudes (22°30' E – 37°30' E) using other time zones

#### Areas that use UTC+01:00

These areas have sunrises and sunsets at least half an hour earlier than places on the UTC+01:00 meridian.

- The easternmost part of North Macedonia, including the city of Strumica.

- The absolutely easternmost part of Serbia, in the Pirot District, including the city of Pirot.

- The extreme easternmost tips of Hungary and Slovakia, bordering to the north and south respectively the Ukrainian Transcarpathian Oblast (Zakarpattia Oblast), a bit to the east of the Vásárosnamény, Hungary – Uzhhorod, Ukraine (both at 22°18' E) line

- The easternmost part of Poland, including the cities of Lublin and Białystok

- The extreme northeast of Sweden, in the Norrbotten province, including the cities of Kalix and Haparanda

- The northeast of Norway, lying north of Finland, roughly coinciding with the county of Finnmark. The easternmost town in Norway, Vardø, lies at 30°51' E, which is east of the central meridian of UTC+02:00, i.e. east of Istanbul and Alexandria. The Norwegian-Russian border and Belarus–Poland border are the only places where CET (UTC+1) borders Moscow time (UTC+03:00), resulting in a one (or two in winter) hour time change when crossing that border. There is a "tri-zone" point (where UTC+01:00, UTC+02:00, and UTC+03:00 meet) at the Norway-Finland-Russia tripoint, near the town of Rayakoski.

#### Areas that use UTC+03:00

Most of the following countries use winter time year round, so they coincide with Eastern European Summer Time in summer.

- Belarus is between 23°11′E and 32°47′E and is thus fully within the physical UTC+02:00 area, but it uses UTC+03:00 year around.

- Practically all European Russia west of Moscow (except Kaliningrad Oblast); this includes the chunk of land from Murmansk all the way south to Belgorod, including the cities of St. Petersburg, Novgorod, and Pskov, to name only a few. (The westernmost point of contiguous Russia, near Lavry, Pskov Oblast, 27°19' E, is the westernmost point in European Russia where UTC+03:00 is applied.) This also includes the city of Anapa, at the westernmost tip of the Krasnodar Krai near the entrance to the Sea of Azov, at 37°22' E.

- Parts of western Syria, including the capital Damascus

- Most of Jordan, including the capital Amman

- Western half of Turkey, including the capital Ankara and the most populous city Istanbul

### Tripoints and borders between zones

- The Norway–Russia–Finland "tri-zone" point at Muotkavaara (see Central European Time) is surrounded by three different times in winter, two in summer. It had three time zones year-around before 2014.

- Two of the four tripoints of Belarus and the tripoint of the Kaliningrad Region are surrounded by three different times in winter.

## Major metropolitan areas

Winter only

- Athens, Greece

- Beirut, Lebanon

- Brașov, Romania

- Bucharest, Romania

- Chișinău, Moldova

- Cluj-Napoca, Romania

- Constanța, Romania

- Daugavpils, Latvia

- Dnipro, Ukraine

- Gaza, Palestine

- Helsinki, Finland

- Iași, Romania

- Jerusalem, Israel/Palestine

- Kaunas, Lithuania

- Kharkiv, Ukraine

- Kyiv, Ukraine

- Nicosia, Cyprus

- Odesa, Ukraine

- Oradea, Romania

- Oulu, Finland

- Plovdiv, Bulgaria

- Ramallah, Palestine

- Riga, Latvia

- Sofia, Bulgaria

- Tallinn, Estonia

- Tampere, Finland

- Tel Aviv, Israel

- Thessaloniki, Greece

- Timișoara, Romania

- Turku, Finland

- Varna, Bulgaria

- Vilnius, Lithuania

Year round

- Alexandria, Egypt

- Benghazi, Libya

- Cairo, Egypt

- Giza, Egypt

- Kaliningrad, Russia

- Port Said, Egypt

- Tripoli, Libya


Learning the Ropes

# Learning the Ropes

## Abstract

Learning the Ropes is a Canadian-produced sitcom that aired on CTV in Canada and in syndication in the United States from September 1988 to March 1989. The series stars Lyle Alzado as Robert Randall, a teacher who works as a professional wrestler in the evening. Although his children knew about Randall's double life, the family was forced to keep it secret at school. The series featured guest appearances by many wrestlers of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). The sitcom was shot in Toronto.

## Synopsis

Learning the Ropes follows a single father who works as a private school teacher and vice principal, and also moonlights as a professional wrestler. Robert Randall, played by retired National Football League defensive lineman Lyle Alzado, would balance day to day problems with his students and with his kids Ellen, played by Nicole Stoffman and Mark, portrayed by Yannick Bisson. Randall had an ex-wife who was enrolled in a law school in London, leaving him to raise the children by himself. He worked as a wrestler to help pay his bills, but was forced by his school's principal to keep his second job a secret. Randall's children and the people he worked with at the wrestling shows knew about his teaching job, however. The show also featured the relationship between Randall and Carol Dixon, one of his fellow teachers. Dixon, who was the niece of Principal Whitcomb Mallory, was attracted to Randall and frequently pursued him.

Each episode featured several minutes of footage of National Wrestling Alliance wrestlers competing in the ring, including Ric Flair, Tully Blanchard, Ronnie Garvin, and The Road Warriors. In wrestling segments filmed for the sitcom, Randall's character (known as the rulebreaking "Masked Maniac") was played by real-life wrestler Steve Williams. During the filming of the show, Williams sustained some legitimate injuries, including a blown knee and a cut that required 39 stitches. He has referred to his pay from the show as "the most painful $2,000" that he ever earned. Randall was not a successful wrestler, competing as a jobber to the stars.

The show premiered in October 1988 and ran for one season, totaling 26 episodes. It was created by Ed Self and directed by Alan Erlich. The show's connection to the National Wrestling Alliance allowed for cross-promotion, and Alzado appeared on the NWA's Clash of the Champions II event to discuss and promote the sitcom. It has been inducted on the WrestleCrap website, which bills itself as a collection of the "very worst of pro wrestling".

## Cast

- Lyle Alzado as Robert Randall

- Steve Williams (as Steve 'Dr. Death' Williams) as The Masked Maniac

- Yannick Bisson as Mark Randall

- Nicole Stoffman as Ellen Randall

- Cheryl Wilson as Carol Dixon

- Richard W. Farrell as Principal Whitcomb Mallory

- Barry Stevens as Dr. Jerry Larson

- Jacqueline Mahon as Beth

- Gordon Michael Woolvett as Brad

- Grant Cowan as Bertie Baxter

- Jefferson Mappin as Cheetah

- Kevin Rushton as Q Ball

The show would also feature actual wrestlers from the National Wrestling Alliance. In each episode there would be matches involving such wrestling stars as Sting, Lex Luger, Ric Flair, Hawk and Animal of The Road Warriors, Ron Simmons, Dick Murdoch and many more.


EA Sports FC 25

# EA Sports FC 25

## Abstract

EA Sports FC 25 is an upcoming football video game published by Electronic Arts. It will be the second instalment in the EA Sports FC series and the 32nd overall instalment of EA Sports ' football simulation games. The game is being developed by EA Sports and is set to be released worldwide on 27 September 2024. Preorders are able to play it on 20 September for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. This new instalment introduces several innovative features aimed at enhancing gameplay and player engagement, according to EA developers. The Ultimate Edition cover features football players Gianluigi Buffon, Aitana Bonmatí, Jude Bellingham, Zinedine Zidane, and David Beckham in a room filled with trophies they have won, symbolising their careers, while the Standard Edition cover features just Bellingham.

## New Features

FC IQ: This is a comprehensive overhaul of the tactical system, allowing players to influence team strategies more effectively. It includes modernised team tactics and smarter AI for teammates, enabling a more dynamic gameplay experience. Players can now emulate the tactics of famous managers, adapting formations fluidly during matches.

Player Roles: The game introduces distinct roles for players, enhancing how they fit into team strategies. This feature is designed to ensure that players are utilised effectively according to their strengths, making team composition more critical than ever.

Goalkeeper PlayStyles: New gameplay mechanics for goalkeepers have been added, providing more depth to the position and allowing for varied styles of play.

5v5 Rush Mode: Players can team up with friends in a new 5v5 mode, which adds a fresh competitive element to the game.

## Competitions

UEFA Champions League, UEFA Women's Champions League, UEFA Europa League and UEFA Conference League will return. The Coupe de France will be fully licensed in the game.

## Licenses

The majority of clubs from FC 24 will be returning, except Serie A clubs Inter Milan, SS Lazio, Atalanta and AC Milan, which will be named Lombardia FC, Latium, Bergamo Calcio and Milano FC, respectively, as well as the Belgium national team, and the Canada women's national team, whom EA has lost the licenses to. Serie A clubs Roma and Napoli will be making their return after four and two years respectively since their last appearances in FIFA 20 and FIFA 22. In addition, the Greek club and 2023–24 UEFA Europa Conference League champions Olympiacos, who last appeared in FIFA 22, will be returning, as well as 11 time Azerbaijan Premier League champions Qarabag, who has never appeared in a FIFA/FC game. The Finland women's national team will be making their debut in the FC series.

## Ultimate Team

Ahead of the launch, EA Sports announced the members of a launch set of Heroes – usable cards for retired footballers and/or depicting special moments, with comic book art styles created by Marvel and each associated with a league for team chemistry purposes. All are new Heroes with the exception of Yaya Touré. Similarly, Icons (usable cards for retired footballers, depicting their rating at their peak; styled "ICONs" in the game), are returning to Ultimate Team, only associated with their nations for chemistry purposes. The eight new Icons are Gianluigi Buffon, Gareth Bale, Lotta Schelin, Julie Foudy, Lilian Thuram, Nadine Angerer, Aya Miyama, and Marinette Pichon.


The Dark Backward

# The Dark Backward

## Abstract

The Dark Backward (also known as The Man with Three Arms) is a 1991 American black comedy film written and directed by Adam Rifkin. It stars Judd Nelson, Bill Paxton, and Wayne Newton. It follows a garbage man who tries his hand at stand-up comedy, failing miserably until a third arm mysteriously grows from his back.

The film was given a limited theatrical release in the United States on July 26, 1991, by Greycat Films. It received mixed reviews from critics and underperformed at the box office, but has since become a cult film. For his performance, Newton was nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor.

## Plot summary

Marty Malt (Judd Nelson) is an unhappy garbage man who moonlights as an atrociously unfunny standup comic. He lives in a dark, grimy, garbage-strewn urban netherworld, where a company named Blump's apparently owns everything. His best friend and fellow trash collector, Gus (Bill Paxton), is the only one who laughs at his jokes, and his sincerity is questionable. The obnoxiously exuberant Gus plays an accordion, which he always carries with him. Marty is seeing Rosarita (Lara Flynn Boyle), a waitress, but she doesn't seem too interested in him.

One day, Gus convinces a talent agent, Jackie Chrome (Wayne Newton), to check out Marty's act. Jackie isn't impressed. Marty's luck seems to take a turn for the worse when a large lump starts growing on his back. He goes to a quack doctor (James Caan), who calls him a wimp and puts a Band-Aid on the lump. The lump continues to grow, eventually becoming a full-sized arm. While Gus uses Marty's newfound freakishness to impress his morbidly obese girlfriends, a horrified Rosarita breaks up with Marty, and he gets fired from the club where he does his act.

Marty is despondent until Gus brings him to see Jackie, who, it turns out, has always dreamed of finding a real three-armed comic. Re-christened "Desi the Three-Armed Wonder Comic," and with Gus now providing musical accompaniment, Marty gets a fresh start on his career. Marty and Gus have a few semi-successful shows and eventually meet Hollywood talent agent Dirk Delta (Rob Lowe), who offers them a job. Marty, Gus and Jackie celebrate this big break and everything seems to be looking up until Marty wakes up the following morning and discovers his third arm has inexplicably vanished.

He goes with Gus to see Jackie, who is furious at first but calms down and decides to tell Dirk the truth upon Marty's suggestion. After calling Dirk and telling him the bad news, Dirk surprisingly asks them to send Gus to fill the spot with his accordion playing. Gus is ecstatic and leaves almost immediately. Marty is sad but gets his job back at the club and uses the story of his third arm in his act and finally gets a few laughs from the crowd.

## Cast

- Judd Nelson as Marty Malt

- Bill Paxton as Gus

- Wayne Newton as Jackie Chrome

- Lara Flynn Boyle as Rosarita

- James Caan as Doctor Scurvy

- Rob Lowe as Dirk Delta

- King Moody as Twinkee Doodle

- Claudia Christian as Kitty

- Danny Dayton as Syd

- Carrie Lynn as Nicolette

- Anna Berger as Mrs. Malt

- Lydell M. Cheshier as Dexter

- Tom Hodges as Marjorie Zipp

- Theodocia Goodrich as Mrs. Bielfuss

- Laurianne Jameson as Shirley

- Debra Perkins as Pickles

- Charles Knapp as Sloppy

- Clifford Streit as Raoul

- Richard Morrison as Elvis

- Charles Winkler as Dirk Delta's Assistant

- Landon Godfrey as Unfamiliar Waitress

- Gary Vonderlinden as Joey

- Bobs Gannaway as Denny Ginkle

- Marc David Decker as Barber

- Scott Goldman as Mouseman

- Adam Rifkin as Rufus Bing

- Michele Rifkin as Seamstress

- Harold Sokol as Apples Yonahan

- Steve Bing as Basketball Player

- Tony Cox as Human Xylophone

## Production

The Dark Backward was the first screenplay that Adam Rifkin ever wrote. He was just 19 years old when he was inspired to write it after watching a night of stand-up comedy in 1985.

Principal photography began on August 14, 1990, in Los Angeles, California, and concluded in mid-September 1990.

## Release

### Theatrical

The Dark Backward had its world premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on March 9, 1991. It was released in New York City on July 26, 1991, and in Los Angeles on November 22, 1991.

### Home media

The film was released on VHS in the United States by RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video in 1992. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment later released a special edition DVD on October 3, 2007.

## Reception

### Box office

The Dark Backward grossed only $28,654 in North America.

### Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 45% of 11 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.6/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 48 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.

Janet Maslin of The New York Times stated, " The Dark Backward concentrates only on stomach-turning trivia and on the kind of exaggeratedly stupid behavior that amounts to directorial condescension. The film's efforts to say something about success and its capriciousness never succeed in rising above an elbow-in-the-ribs obviousness." Maslin opined that Judd Nelson "gives the film's best performance, which is not to say anything pleasant about the others."

Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote, " The Dark Backward is ultimately a tale of liberation with the notion that only when you are truly free can you be truly funny. These may seem awfully sober thoughts for what looks to be a candidate for a midnight cult movie. However, for all its gross-out humor The Dark Backward is a work of real craftsmanship that builds well and boasts superlative production design, incorporating thrift-store kitsch from the past couple of decades, fine moody camera work and a driving, cockamamie carousel music score."

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone commented, "Adam Rifkin wrote the script for this comedy six years ago when he was nineteen. The result would be more excusable if he had written it nineteen years ago when he was six." Travers also stated, "Instead of the high satire of How to Get Ahead in Advertising (in which a boil on Richard E. Grant's neck grows into a talking head), Rifkin has conjured up a new low in cinematic ineptitude."

The film has gained a cult following over the years. In 2018, Rifkin said that " The Dark Backward is and forever will be my sentimental favorite. It is the only thing I ever wrote that isn't influenced by outside voices. Every script you write, to some degree, is influenced by the business at large. I wrote it purely from my heart. It was something I wanted to write because it was something I wanted to see. Because that will never ever happen again, that's why it holds such a place in my heart."


Ohinewai railway station

# Ohinewai railway station

## Abstract

Ohinewai Railway Station was a flag station on the North Island Main Trunk line, serving Ohinewai in the Waikato District of New Zealand, 59 mi (95 km) south of Auckland. It was 8.18 km (5.08 mi) north of Huntly, 7.26 km (4.51 mi) south of Rangiriri and 33 ft (10 m) above sea level. It was in the village, just north of Tahuna Rd.

## History

The station opened on 13 August 1877. The early service averaged about 13 mph (21 km/h), taking about 4hr 45 mins to Auckland, 15mins to Rangiriri and 23mins to Ruawaro (Huntly). A goods train took 1½hrs to Newcastle (Ngāruawāhia) and 1hr 17mins to Mercer, 3 days a week.

Tablet signalling was introduced in 1905.

In 1902 there were complaints of thefts due to lack of a caretaker. It seems one had been appointed by 1915, as a storeman at the station was killed at Gallipoli.

There was protest in 1925, when the only train which had allowed an Auckland day trip was withdrawn. The previous year the Great South Rd had metal added at Ohinewai, so that it could be used all year, and a bus started linking Ohinewai with Auckland, Morrinsville and Te Aroha in 1929. Ohinewai's rail service was so poor that a wartime plan, to connect the bus with trains at Ohinewai, had to be amended to meeting at Mercer instead.

Track doubling to ease congestion had been authorised in 1914, but work was delayed by the war. 300 men worked on doubling the track between Huntly and Ohinewai, which opened on 27 August 1939. To the north, doubling to Te Kauwhata didn't open until 14 December 1958.

In 1965 the station closed to passengers and on 31 December 1978 it closed completely.


2024 São Paulo FC season

# 2024 São Paulo FC season

## Abstract

The 2024 season is São Paulo 's 95th season in the club's history and their 64th in the top-flight of Brazilian football. Along with Série A, São Paulo compete in the Campeonato Paulista, Copa do Brasil, Copa Libertadores and Supercopa do Brasil.

## First-team squad

Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

### Youth players with first team numbers

Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

### Other players under contract

Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

### Out on loan

Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

### Retired numbers

- 01 – Rogério Ceni, Goalkeeper (1990–2015)

## Transfers

## Competitions

### Overview

Source: Competitions

### Campeonato Paulista

#### Matches

#### Quarter-final

### Copa Libertadores

The draw for the group stage was held in 18 March 2024, 20:00 PYST (UTC−3), at the CONMEBOL Convention Centre in Luque, Paraguay.

#### Round of 16

The draw for the round of 16 was held in 3 June, 12:00 PYST (UTC−4), at the CONMEBOL Convention Centre in Luque, Paraguay.

#### Quarter-finals

### Série A

#### League table

#### Results summary

Source:

#### Results by round

#### Matches

The league fixtures were announced on 29 February 2024.

### Copa do Brasil

#### Third round

#### Round of 16

#### Quarter-finals

### Supercopa do Brasil

São Paulo qualified for the 2024 Supercopa do Brasil by winning the 2023 Copa do Brasil.


Prince Daddy & the Hyena

# Prince Daddy & the Hyena

## Abstract

Prince Daddy & the Hyena is an American punk rock band from Albany, New York, formed in 2014. They have released three full-length albums and four extended plays.

## History

### Formation and early years

Prince Daddy and the Hyena was formed in 2014 when Kory Gregory, Alex Ziembiec and Zakariya Houacine were inspired to start a band after seeing Rozwell Kid live. According to Gregory, Rozwell Kid was a substantial influence on much of his early songwriting. The origin of the band's name is obscure; Gregory has stated that he "would make up a different dumbass story each time". He has variously explained that it was derived from a game that Gregory played with the band's TM & merch person – Luis Wiest – at recess in elementary school, that it was the name of Gregory's childhood guinea pig, or that it is his parents' anniversary. He has also tweeted that there is a comma missing between Prince and Daddy, due to a grammatical error.

The band met lead guitarist Cameron Handford through house shows and mutual friends eventually leading up to his joining of the band. Prince Daddy & the Hyena began in 2014 with the release of an extended play titled Skip Cutscenes! Blow Loud!. In 2015, the band went into the headroom studio with Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Algernon Cadwallader) and recorded their first album, but the release was delayed several times.

The band released the EP Adult Summers in 2015 through Broken World Media and again in 2017 through Counter Intuitive Records.

Their first full-length album I Thought You Didn't Even Like Leaving was finally released in 2016 on Broken World Media. I Thought You Didn't Like Leaving was written during Gregory's high school days, the album was about working at Panera Bread and "being so sad about your friends leaving you that you lay in bed, eat Cheetos, and smoke weed".

In 2017, Ziembiec left the band on good terms due to exhaustion from touring. Daniel Gorham from Pictures of Vernon took over on drums.

### Cosmic Thrill Seekers

In 2019, the band released its second full-length album titled Cosmic Thrill Seekers on Counter Intuitive Records, and embarked on several extensive tours in support of the album. This tour would prove difficult for the band, as they were involved in a traffic accident which left the band and members of their team temporarily disabled. After recovering from this incident, the band's tour van was broken into, leading to the loss of $7,500 worth of equipment. The band went on tour Europe with Oso Oso in further support of the record in the fall of 2019. In 2020, the band embarked on their co-headlining tour with Oso Oso with support from Just Friends.

### Self-titled album

In 2021, the band signed to Pure Noise Records and released the single "Curly Q.", which Gregory wrote for his nephew.

In 2022, they announced their forthcoming third album, Prince Daddy & the Hyena, to release on April 15. The album is conceptually about the fear of death, and was inspired by a van crash the band experienced. The album was also supported by the singles "A Random Exercise In Impermanence (The Collector)," "El Dorado," and "Shoelaces," as well as a headlining tour throughout the United States with Macseal, Insignificant Other, and California Cousins.

In November 2022, they announced original drummer Alex Ziembiec's death.

In February 2023, they embarked on a co-headlining tour with Drug Church, with support from Anxious and Webbed Wing.

## Musical style

The band has self-identified themselves as a punk rock band in an interview with The Fader. Critically, the band has been described as "smartly crafted slacker punk" with elements of power pop, post-hardcore, and emo by AllMusic. Pitchfork has identified the band as both punk rock and emo.

Frontman Kory Gregory has cited Weezer, the Strokes, Jeff Rosenstock, and Green Day as major influences on the sound. In an interview with The Fader, Gregory described the sound on the band's second album Cosmic Thrill Seekers as "the soundtrack to a Disney film played by a punk rock band."

## Band members

Current

- Korneilious "Kory" Jophus Gregory – lead vocals, guitar (2014–present)

- Cameron "Cambo" Hanford – guitar (2014–present)

- Daniel "Podwick" Gorham – drums, backing vocals (2018–present)

- Jordan "J Nasty" Chmielowski – bass (2024–present; touring 2022–2023)

Past

- Zakariya "Hardly Knew Yee" Houacine – bass (2014–2019)

- Alex "Al Al Bean" Ziembiec – drums (2014–2017; died 2022)

- Adam Dasilva – bass (2020–2022)

Touring

- Jake Sulzer – drums (2017), bass (2023)

- James Ringness – drums (2017)

- Cole Syzilagyi – bass (2022)

### Timeline

## Discography

Studio albums

- I Thought You Didn't Even Like Leaving (2016, Broken World Media/2017, Counter Intuitive Records)

- Cosmic Thrill Seekers (2019, Counter Intuitive Records)

- Prince Daddy & the Hyena (2022, Pure Noise Records)

EPs

- Skip Cutscenes! Blow Loud! (2014, Wallflower Records)

- Adult Summers (2015, Broken World Media, 2017 Counter Intuitive Records)

Splits

- Prince Daddy & The Hyena/Just Friends (2016, Broken World Media)

- Now That's What I Call Music Vol. 420 (2017, Counter Intuitive Records)

Singles

- Adult Summers Pt. 2 (2015, Broken World Media) HIDDEN TRACK* (2015, Broken World Media)

- HIDDEN TRACK* (2015, Broken World Media)

- I Thought You Didn't Even Like Leaving (2016, Broken World Media)

- Hundo Pos (2016, Broken World Media)

- I Forgot To Take My Meds Today (2017, Broken World Media)

- I Lost My Life (2019, Counter Intuitive Records)

- Lauren (Track 2) (2019, Counter Intuitive Records)

- Fuckin' A (2019, Counter Intuitive Records)

- Prototype of The Ultimate Life-form (2019, Counter Intuitive Records)

- Curly Q (2021, Pure Noise Records)

- A Random Exercise in Impermanence (The Collector) (2022, Pure Noise Records)

- El Dorado (2022, Pure Noise Records)

- Shoelaces (2022, Pure Noise Records)