Russian language

# Russian language

## Abstract

Russian is an East Slavic language, spoken primarily in Russia. It is the native language of the Russians and belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is one of four living East Slavic languages, and is also a part of the larger Balto-Slavic languages. 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.


Opium (record label)

# Opium (record label)

## Abstract

Opium is an American record label and rap collective that was founded in 2019 by American rapper Playboi Carti. The label, which is based in Atlanta, Georgia, currently holds four acts all of whom are natives to the city; rappers Ken Carson and Destroy Lonely, and the duo Homixide Gang. The label is also affiliated with a variety of producers including KP Beatz, F1lthy, and Art Dealer, who all worked extensively on Playboi Carti's second studio album, Whole Lotta Red.

Opium artists usually feature a dark rap sound and aesthetic that is built upon the Atlanta rage rap scene and is influenced by the 70s and 80s punk rock era. The niche style of its artists strays away from mainstream trap rappers and has garnered its own cultlike fanbase.

## History

In July 2022, Ken Carson, who signed to Opium in 2010, released his second studio album X, which debuted at number 115 on the US Billboard 200 chart, and number 50 on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. In August 2022, Destroy Lonely, who signed to Opium in 2021, released his fifth mixtape No Stylist, which debuted at number 91 on the US Billboard 200 and number 57 on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. In October 2022, Ken Carson released deluxe edition to X, titled Xtended, containing 5 additional tracks. In November 2022, Destroy Lonely released a deluxe edition to No Stylist, titled NS+ (Ultra), containing several new tracks.

In May 2023, Destroy Lonely released his debut studio album If Looks Could Kill, which was supported by the lead single of the same name, released on March 3, 2023, after the unreleased snippet became viral on TikTok. The single debuted at number 30 on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. If Looks Could Kill received mostly positive reviews from music critics. The album debuted at number 18 on the US Billboard 200, earning 29,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, becoming Lonely's highest-charting album. In July 2023, Playboi Carti announced the dates for a global tour called "Antagonist Tour", alongside Ken Carson, Destroy Lonely, and Homixide Gang. Later in September 2023, the U.S. leg of the tour was rescheduled to early 2024.

In September 2023, Destroy Lonely released the deluxe edition of If Looks Could Kill, subtitled Director's Cut, containing all tracks from every edition (including vinyl, CD and digital versions). In October 2023, Ken Carson released his third studio album A Great Chaos, which debuted at number 11 on the US Billboard 200, earning 49,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, and becoming Carson's first US top 20 album. The album was supported by the release of one single: " I Need U ", which released on Valentine's Day. On May 31, 2024, Homixide Gang released their third studio album I5u5we5, being the duo’s first release under Interscope Records. On July 5, 2024, Ken Carson released the deluxe version of A Great Chaos, containing 7 new additional tracks; one of the being the single, " Overseas ".

## Discography

Seven studio albums and two mixtapes have been released through the label.

### Albums


Nwando

# Nwando

## Abstract

Nwando is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:

- Nwando Achebe (born 1970), Nigerian–American scholar

- Jacqueline Nwando Olayiwola, American physician


Tyrone Thurman

# Tyrone Thurman

## Abstract

Tyrone Thurman (born December 31, 1966) is an American former professional football player who was a wide receiver in the Canadian Football League (CFL) and Arena Football League (AFL). He played college football for the Texas Tech Red Raiders, earning first-team All-American honors as a kick returner in 1988.

## Career

### High school

Thurman played at the running back position at Robert E. Lee High School in Midland, Texas under coach Spike Dykes.

### College

Due to his small size at 5' 4" and 126 pounds, Thurman received little interest from Division I schools before being recruited to Texas Tech University with the hiring of his former high school coach Spike Dykes as the defensive coordinator for the Red Raiders in 1984. Thurman would play at the wide receiver position, but earned his accolades as a punt returner.

Thurman would play from 1985-1988, and earned Associated Press All-American 1st Team honors as a kick returner during his senior year in 1988. Thurman concluded his career holding several school records including longest punt return at 96 yards, return yards in a season (444 in 1986), returns in a career (126) and yards in a career (1,466). Several records still stand in 2013, with some having been broken by Mosi Tatupu Award winner Wes Welker.

### Professional

Thurman went undrafted in 1989 before being signed as a free agent for the Dallas Cowboys. He was cut from the roster before the 1989 season began and spent several years in both the Canadian Football League and the Arena Football League playing for teams including the Ottawa Rough Riders, Dallas Texans (Arena), Las Vegas Sting, Connecticut Coyotes and Texas Terror.


Xhorxhia Kristollari

# Xhorxhia Kristollari

## Abstract

Xhorxhia Kristollari (born 2 May 1995) is an Albanian professional racing cyclist. She signed to ride for the UCI Women's Team Pro Cycling Team Fanini for the 2019 women's road cycling season.


John Williamson (basketball, born 1951)

# John Williamson (basketball, born 1951)

## Abstract

John Lee Williamson (November 10, 1951 – November 30, 1996) was an American basketball player. He helped the New York Nets win two league championships in the American Basketball Association (ABA) in the 1970s.

Williamson played high school basketball at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven, Connecticut and played college basketball at New Mexico State University. He was a 6'2" guard. He was nicknamed "Super John" for his highly efficient jump shooting.

## High school career

While at Wilbur Cross High School, Williamson played on the Connecticut state champion teams of 1966–67 and 1967–68. In the 1968 title game, Cross won over Bridgeport Central, 123 – 82. Williamson's teammates, Alex Scott (24 points), and Clint Davis (40 points) led the way in the romp for Cross's third consecutive title. Williamson contributed 17 points, which was his average that year.

In 1969, Cross was runner up to crosstown rival Hillhouse in 1968–69, losing 76–71 in the final. For Williamson's senior (1969–70) year, he led the nation in scoring, averaging 38.7 points per game. His team was upset in a semi-final match, once again playing Bridgeport Central, with an ending score of 105 – 103.

## College career

Williamson went on to team up with Scott and Davis at New Mexico State University where he averaged 27 points per game within 2 years.

## Professional career

As a rookie, Williamson landed a roster spot with the New York Nets of the ABA as a free agent for the 1973–74 season. Before signing with the ABA Nets, he had been eligible for the NBA draft that year, being selected by the Atlanta Hawks in the 6th round with the 96th pick, but didn't make the cut for their roster. Despite being a rookie, Williamson quickly entered the New York starting lineup along with superstar Julius Erving and rising star rookie Larry Kenon (who would get traded a couple of years later). After Williamson became a starter, the team's fortunes quickly turned for the better and the team ended up winning the ABA Championship that season. Williamson was named to the 1974 ABA All-Rookie team.

Continuing with the Nets, Williamson, in Game 6 of the 1976 ABA Finals, scored 28 points with 16 of them coming in the fourth quarter. He and Erving carried the team's offense, combining for 59 points (31 of them from Erving) and leading the Nets to come back from 22 points behind to win the game, the series and the ABA championship.

In the 1976–77 season, Williamson was traded to the Indiana Pacers midseason; in the middle of the next season, he was traded back to the Nets. The Nets would make the playoffs in 1978–79 with Williamson scoring a then-record 38 points for an NBA playoff debut. The Nets would however lose 0–2 in the series to the Philadelphia 76ers. In the 1979–80 season he was traded from the Nets to the Washington Bullets who would be the last team he played for before the end of his NBA career until the 1980–81 season. By this time Williamson had largely declined as a player despite being only 29 years old and wouldn't return to the NBA after that season due to contract disagreements in free agency and not maintaining a healthy weight to play.

In 1982, he would play for the CBA Las Vegas Silvers in an attempt to get recruited back into the NBA but never received any offers.

In his ABA/NBA career, Williamson scored 9,017 points. He averaged between 11.5 and 29.5 points in every ABA/NBA season except for his last.

Williamson still holds Nets team records in various categories, including most free throw attempts in a game, with 24 (since tied by Vince Carter and Devin Harris).

Williamson's jersey number (23) was retired by the New York/New Jersey Nets franchise on December 7, 1990; Williamson is one of three players who were with the Nets during their ABA days with a retired number; the other two are Bill Melchionni and Julius Erving.

## Personal life

After professional basketball, Williamson would end up working in a juvenile detention center back in his hometown of New Haven, Connecticut.

At age 45, Williamson died of kidney failure related to diabetes on November 30, 1996. He was survived by his wife Bertha Williamson and his four children.

## ABA and NBA career statistics


Discalced Carmelites

# Discalced Carmelites

## Abstract

The Discalced Carmelites, known officially as the Order of the Discalced Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel (Latin: Ordo Fratrum Carmelitarum Discalceatorum Beatae Mariae Virginis de Monte Carmelo) or the Order of Discalced Carmelites (Latin: Ordo Carmelitarum Discalceatorum; abbrev.: OCD; sometimes called in earlier times, Latin: Ordo Carmelitarum Excalceatorum), is a Catholic mendicant order with roots in the eremitic tradition of the Desert Fathers. The order was established in the 16th century, pursuant to the reform of the Carmelite Order by two Spanish saints, Teresa of Ávila (foundress) and John of the Cross (co-founder). Discalced is derived from Latin, meaning "without shoes".

The Carmelite Order, from which the Discalced Carmelites branched off, is also referred to as the Carmelites of the Ancient Observance to distinguish them from their discalced offshoot. The third order affiliated to the Discalced Carmelites is the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites.

## Background

The Discalced Carmelites are friars and nuns who dedicate themselves to a life of prayer. The Carmelite nuns live in cloistered (enclosed) monasteries and follow a completely contemplative life. The Carmelite friars, while following a contemplative life, also engage in the promotion of spirituality through their retreat centres, parishes and churches. Lay people, known as the Secular Order, follow their contemplative call in their everyday activities. Devotion to the Virgin Mary is a characteristic of Carmelites and is symbolised by wearing the brown scapular.

Carmelites trace their roots and their name to Mount Carmel in the Holy Land. There, in the 13th century, a band of European men gathered together to live a simple life of prayer. Their first chapel was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and they called themselves the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel.

The Muhraka monastery on the top of Mount Carmel near Haifa in Israel is a historic Carmelite monastery. The monastery stands on the place where the prophet Elijah is said to have lived and fought the prophets of Baal.

The first Carmelites were pilgrims to Mount Carmel who settled there in solitude. These early hermits were mostly laity, who lived a life of poverty, penance and prayer. Between 1206 and 1214, Albert Avogadro, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, brought the hermits on Mount Carmel together into community. At their request he wrote them a rule, which expressed their own intention and reflected the spirit of the pilgrimage to the Holy Land and of the early community of Jerusalem. They were also inspired by the prophet Elijah, who had been associated with Mount Carmel. The words of Elijah, "With zeal have I been zealous for the Lord God of hosts" (IKg 19:10) appear on the Carmelite crest. Around 1238, within fifty years of receiving their rule, the Carmelite hermits were forced by the Saracens to leave Mount Carmel and to settle in Europe.

## Founding

A combination of political and social conditions that prevailed in Europe in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries – the Hundred Years' War, Black Plague, the Reformation and the Humanist revival – adversely affected the Order. Many Carmelites and even whole communities succumbed to contemporary attitudes and conditions diametrically opposed to their original vocation. To meet this situation the rule was "mitigated" several times. Consequently, the Carmelites bore less and less resemblance to the first hermits of Mount Carmel.

Teresa of Avila considered the surest way to prayer to be a return to Carmel's authentic vocation. A group of nuns assembled in her cell one September evening in 1560, taking their inspiration from the primitive tradition of Carmel and the discalced reform of Peter of Alcantara, a controversial movement within Spanish Franciscanism, proposed to found a monastery of an eremitical kind.

With few resources and often bitter opposition, Teresa succeeded in 1562 in establishing a small monastery with the austerity of desert solitude within the heart of the city of Ávila, Spain, combining eremitical and community life. On 24 August 1562, the new Convent of St. Joseph was founded. Teresa's rule, which retained a distinctively Marian character, contained exacting prescriptions for a life of continual prayer, safeguarded by strict enclosure and sustained by the asceticism of solitude, manual labor, perpetual abstinence, fasting, and fraternal charity. In addition to this, Teresa envisioned an order fully dedicated to poverty.

Working in close collaboration with Teresa was John of the Cross, who with Anthony of Jesus founded the first convent of Discalced Carmelite friars in Duruelo, Spain on 28 November 1568.

The Discalced Carmelites were established as a separate province of the Carmelite Order by the decree Pia consideratione of Pope Gregory XIII on 22 June 1580. By this decree the Discalced Carmelites were still subject to the Prior General of the Carmelite Order in Rome, but were otherwise distinct from the Carmelites in that they could elect their own superiors and author their own constitutions for their common life. The following Discalced Carmelite Chapter at Alcala de Henares, Spain in March 1581 established the constitutions of the Discalced Carmelites and elected the first provincial of the Discalced Carmelites, Jerome Gratian. This office was later translated into that of Superior General of the Discalced Carmelites.

## The Carmelite charism

The heart of the Carmelite charism is prayer and contemplation. The quality of prayer determines the quality of the community life and the quality of the service which is offered to others. Prayer and contemplation for the Carmelite are not private matters between the individual and God but are to be shared with others since the charism is given for the whole world. Therefore, there is an emphasis in the order on the ministry of teaching prayer and giving spiritual direction.

For a Carmelite, prayer is guided by the teachings and experience of Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, as well as the saints who have followed in their steps, such as Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face, Elizabeth of the Trinity, Teresa of Jesus of Los Andes, and martyrs such as Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Père Jacques and the sixteen Martyrs of Compiegne. Fraternity, service, and contemplation are essential values for all Carmelites.

When the Carmelites were forced to leave Mount Carmel, they changed their practice from being hermits to friars. The major difference is that friars are called to serve the People of God in some active apostolate. Some congregations were founded for a specific work, but the Carmelite Order tries to respond to what it sees as the needs of the church and the world - which differ according to time and place. Many friars work in such institutions as parishes, schools, universities, retreat centres, prisons and hospitals. Each individual friar will serve in roles depending on the perceived needs of the people with whom he lives and his own particular talents.

Each day is marked by silence for prayer. In addition to the daily celebration of the full Liturgy of the Hours, two hours (one in the morning, one in the evening) are set aside for silent prayer. Communities should not have more than 21 members. The friars practice a broadly-based discipline of study.

## Bishops

## Communities of Discalced Carmelite tradition

- Byzantine Discalced Carmelites

- Carmelites of Mary Immaculate

- Monks of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel

- Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites

- Sisters of the Apostolic Carmel

- Episcopal Carmel of Saint Teresa


Queuing delay

# Queuing delay

## Abstract

In telecommunications and computer engineering, the queuing delay or queueing delay is the time a job waits in a queue until it can be executed. It is a key component of network delay. In a switched network, queuing delay is the time between the completion of signaling by the call originator and the arrival of a ringing signal at the call receiver. Queuing delay may be caused by delays at the originating switch, intermediate switches, or the call receiver servicing switch. In a data network, queuing delay is the sum of the delays between the request for service and the establishment of a circuit to the called data terminal equipment (DTE). In a packet-switched network, queuing delay is the sum of the delays encountered by a packet between the time of insertion into the network and the time of delivery to the address.

## Router processing

This term is most often used in reference to routers. When packets arrive at a router, they have to be processed and transmitted. A router can only process one packet at a time. If packets arrive faster than the router can process them (such as in a burst transmission) the router puts them into the queue (also called the buffer) until it can get around to transmitting them. Delay can also vary from packet to packet so averages and statistics are usually generated when measuring and evaluating queuing delay.

As a queue begins to fill up due to traffic arriving faster than it can be processed, the amount of delay a packet experiences going through the queue increases. The speed at which the contents of a queue can be processed is a function of the transmission rate of the facility. This leads to the classic delay curve. The average delay any given packet is likely to experience is given by the formula 1/(μ-λ) where μ is the number of packets per second the facility can sustain and λ is the average rate at which packets are arriving to be serviced. This formula can be used when no packets are dropped from the queue.

The maximum queuing delay is proportional to buffer size. The longer the line of packets waiting to be transmitted, the longer the average waiting time is. The router queue of packets waiting to be sent also introduces a potential cause of packet loss. Since the router has a finite amount of buffer memory to hold the queue, a router which receives packets at too high a rate may experience a full queue. In this case, the router has no other option than to simply discard excess packets.

When the transmission protocol uses the dropped-packets symptom of filled buffers to regulate its transmit rate, as the Internet's TCP does, bandwidth is fairly shared at near theoretical capacity with minimal network congestion delays. Absent this feedback mechanism the delays become both unpredictable and rise sharply, a symptom also seen as freeways approach capacity; metered onramps are the most effective solution there, just as TCP's self-regulation is the most effective solution when the traffic is packets instead of cars). This result is both hard to model mathematically and quite counterintuitive to people who lack experience with mathematics or real networks. Failing to drop packets, choosing instead to buffer an ever-increasing number of them, produces bufferbloat.

## Notation

In Kendall's notation, the M/M/1/K queuing model, where K is the size of the buffer, may be used to analyze the queuing delay in a specific system. Kendall's notation should be used to calculate the queuing delay when packets are dropped from the queue. The M/M/1/K queuing model is the most basic and important queuing model for network analysis.


The Conspirator

# The Conspirator

## Abstract

The Conspirator is a 2010 American mystery historical drama film directed by Robert Redford and based on an original screenplay by James D. Solomon. It is the debut film of the American Film Company. The film tells the story of Mary Surratt, the only female conspirator charged in the Abraham Lincoln assassination and the first woman to be executed by the US federal government. It stars Robin Wright as Mary Surratt, together with James McAvoy, Justin Long, Evan Rachel Wood, Jonathan Groff, Tom Wilkinson, Alexis Bledel, Kevin Kline, John Cullum, Toby Kebbell, and James Badge Dale.

The Conspirator premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2010 followed by a special premiere screening on March 29, 2011 at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. Another premiere screening was held on April 10, 2011 at Ford's Theatre in Washington, DC, the site of the assassination. The US theatrical release took place on April 15, 2011, the 146th anniversary of the death of Lincoln. The film was released in Canada on April 29, 2011 and was in the UK on July 1, 2011. Lionsgate Home Entertainment released the DVD and Blu-ray on August 16, 2011.

## Plot

On April 14, 1865, five days after the Civil War ends with Robert E. Lee 's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, lawyer and Union veteran Frederick Aiken, with his friends, William Thomas Hamilton and Nicholas Baker, and his wife, Sarah Weston, celebrate. Later that night, after John Wilkes Booth enters Ford’s Theater, Southerner Lewis Powell (referred to as Lewis Payne in the film) stabs Secretary of State William Seward, seriously wounding him in an unsuccessful assassination attempt. German immigrant and carriage repair business owner George Atzerodt is assigned to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson, but becomes afraid, gets drunk, and runs away. Meanwhile, Booth sneaks into the President’s box and shoots his target, President Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head as he watches the play, Our American Cousin. Booth stabs diplomat and military officer Henry Rathbone, who was a guest in Lincoln's box, and leaps onto the stage, shouting, " Sic Semper Tyrannis ! The South is avenged!" before escaping into Maryland. A crowd, including Aiken, Hamilton, and Baker, watches in horror as the unconscious President is taken to a nearby boarding house, where he dies early the next morning. Andrew Johnson becomes the next President.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton orders the arrest of all suspects, including Mary Surratt. Booth and David Herold manage to evade capture for some days, but Union soldiers find a barn where they suspect the conspirators are hiding and set it on fire. Herold surrenders while Booth is shot and killed by sergeant Boston Corbett when he sees Booth raising a rifle at the other soldiers.

Maryland Senator Reverdy Johnson, Aiken's boss, is Mary Surratt's defense attorney. Her son, John Surratt, has escaped and now hundreds of agents are looking for him. Also charged are Herold, Powell, Atzerodt, Michael O'Laughlen, Edman Spangler, Samuel Mudd, and Samuel Arnold. Reverdy feels unable to defend Surratt because he is a Southerner and asks a reluctant Aiken who is a Northerner to take over the defense.

Aiken visits Mary in her cell to question her. Mary asks Aiken to look in on her daughter, Anna. Aiken does so and searches the boarding house for clues. He finds a ticket with the initials "LJW" (Louis J. Weichmann). At the court, Weichmann, a seminary friend of Mary's son John, is the first witness. He describes John's meetings with Booth, and points out Herold, Powell, and Atzerodt as frequent guests in Mary's boarding house. Aiken incriminates Weichmann by making him appear as guilty as the rest of the conspirators.

Aiken again tries to stop defending Mary because he believes that she is guilty. He meets with her intending to get evidence of her guilt when she explains that John and the others conspired to kidnap Lincoln, not to kill him. They were about to attack a carriage but were stopped by Booth, who reported that Lincoln was elsewhere. She says that John left town and went into hiding two weeks before the assassination and that she has no idea where he is. Aiken asks Anna for information to help with his trial preparations, but she refuses.

At the court, Chief Prosecutor Joseph Holt brings the innkeeper John Lloyd to the stand. Lloyd claims that Mary gave him binoculars to give to Booth and told him to prepare shooting irons and whiskey for Booth and Herold on the night of the assassination. Aiken angers Lloyd by implying that he, an admitted alcoholic, was bribed with whiskey for his testimony. Lloyd is dragged out of the courtroom after he threatens Aiken.

Aiken arrives at the Century Club to attend a party and discovers that his membership has been revoked for defending Mary Surratt. This triggers an argument with Sarah, who disowns and leaves him. Aiken asks Anna to testify. Anna testifies that Mary had no part in the assassination of Lincoln and that it was her brother John who did. Anna visits Aiken at his house and tells him about Booth and John. Aiken then visits Father Jacob Walter, who has been attending to Mary, but he also insists he does not know where John is. Aiken asks Walter to deliver a message to John saying that his mother will hang for his crimes if he does not surrender. On July 6, Mary is found guilty on all charges and is at first sentenced to life in prison, but with Stanton's intervention, she is then sentenced to hang with Powell, Herold, and Atzerodt while Mudd, Arnold, O'Laughlen, and Spangler are given prison sentences. Aiken procures a writ of habeas corpus, signed by a reluctant Judge Andrew Wylie, for the release of Mary so that she can be tried in a civilian court, but President Johnson suspends the writ, and the four condemned prisoners are hanged.

Sixteen months later, Aiken visits John Surratt, who was captured abroad and is in jail. John thanks him for his kindness to his mother. Aiken offers him Mary's rosary, but he declines. The epilogue goes on to state that a year later, the US Supreme Court ruled that citizens were entitled to trial by a civilian jury, not a military tribunal, even in times of war (Ex parte Milligan), and that a jury of Northerners and Southerners could not agree on a verdict for John Surratt, and he was freed. Aiken left the law and became The Washington Post ' s first City Editor.

## Cast

- James McAvoy as Captain Frederick Aiken, an idealistic young war hero who reluctantly defends Surratt and, in the process, comes to believe in her innocence

- Robin Wright as Mary Surratt, the only woman among the group charged with killing Lincoln

- Evan Rachel Wood as Anna Surratt, Mary Surratt's daughter

- Kevin Kline as Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War

- Tom Wilkinson as Reverdy Johnson, a former attorney general and current US Senator who is Aiken's mentor

- Alexis Bledel as Sarah Weston, Aiken's girlfriend

- Danny Huston as Brigadier General Joseph Holt, the prosecuting attorney

- Stephen Root as John M. Lloyd, a principal witness for the prosecution

- Jonathan Groff as Louis Weichmann, a principal witness for the prosecution

- Justin Long as Nicholas Baker, Aiken's best friend, an injured Civil War veteran

- Johnny Simmons as John Surratt, Mary Surratt's son

- Toby Kebbell as John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinates Lincoln.

- Norman Reedus as Lewis Payne, the man who attempts to assassinate William H. Seward

- John Cullum as Andrew Wylie, a judge of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia who reluctantly signs Aiken's writ to retry Marry Surratt

- Marcus Hester as David Herold, one of the conspirators

- Colm Meaney as Major General David Hunter, president of the military commission that tries the conspirators

- Shea Whigham as Captain Cottingham, a witness for the defense

- James Badge Dale as William Hamilton, a friend of Aiken's

- Jim True-Frost as Brigadier General John F. Hartranft, commander of the Old Capitol Prison

- John Michael Weatherly as George Atzerodt, a conspirator

- Chris Bauer as Major Smith, a witness for the prosecution

- David Andrews as Father Walter, a Roman Catholic priest attending on Mrs. Surratt

- James Kirk Sparks as Edman Spangler, one of those charged with conspiracy

- John Curran as Major General Albion P. Howe, a member of the military commission

- Robert C. Treveiler as Major General Thomas Maley Harris, a member of the military commission

- Brian F. Durkin as a lieutenant

- Cullen Moss as Stanton's officer

- Jason Hatfield as Harry Hawk, the actor playing Asa Trenchard in Our American Cousin, the play being watched by the Lincolns

- Gerald Bestrom as Abraham Lincoln, the President who is assassinated in the beginning of the film. Bestrom, who does not speak, was a professional Lincoln lookalike who died in April 2012.

- Marshall Canney as Mary Todd Lincoln, Lincoln's wife

- Andy Martin as Major Henry Rathbone, present in Lincoln's box during the assassination

- Dennis Clark as Andrew Johnson, Vice President and then 17th President

- Amy Tipton as Female Guest #2

- Glenn R. Wilder as William H. Seward, Secretary of State

- Brian Duffy as Frederick W. Seward, Seward's son

- Cal Johnson as Army Sergeant

- John Bankson as Alexander Gardner, the photographer of the executions

- Craig Crumpton as Major General Robert Sanford Foster, a member of the military commission

- John Deifer as Brigadier General James A. Ekin, a member of the military commission

- Ron Stafford as Benn Pitman, stenographer at the trial

- Jeremy Tuttle as Samuel Arnold, one of the conspirators

## Production

Principal photography began in October 2009, in Savannah, Georgia and wrapped in December 2009. Fort Pulaski National Monument, located east of Savannah, served as the military prison in the film. Civil war reenactors and living historians were used to portray soldiers in various scenes. To supplement the reenactors, extras from the local community were also employed as soldiers.

The Mary E. Surratt Boarding House still stands, and is located at 604 H Street NW in Washington D.C.'s Chinatown. Mary Surratt's farmhouse in Clinton, Maryland, is now a museum. The town in which the farmhouse stands was originally called Surrattsville. The United States Post Office renamed the town Robeysville due to the notoriety of the Surratt name. In 1879, Robeysville was renamed Clinton.

## Release

The Conspirator premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2010. A few days after its screening, the film was acquired by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions for distribution. The film was released theatrically on April 15, 2011.

## Reception

### Box office

The film performed poorly at the box office grossing only $3,506,602 during its opening weekend. After its initial run, the film grossed $11,538,204 domestically with a worldwide total of $15,478,800. Because the film had a budget of $25 million, the film is considered a box office flop despite the fact that its widest release was in 849 theaters.

### Critical reception

Upon its release, the film received a mixed reception from critics. Metacritic gave the film a weighted average score of 55/100 based on 37 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Rotten Tomatoes reports that 56% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 173 reviews, with an average score of 6.1/10. The website's critical consensus states that " The Conspirator is well cast and tells a worthy story, but many viewers will lack the patience for Redford's deliberate, stagebound approach."

Critics have cited it as an analogy to the post-9/11 atmosphere. Writing for Jacobin in 2015, Eileen Jones criticized the film for promoting the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.


# Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban Design

## Abstract

Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban Design is an architecture book by Roger Trancik, an educator and practitioner of urban design. The book has been translated into "simple" as well as "orthodox" Chinese translations. This book introduces the theory, vocabulary and issues of urban spatial design. It identifies and introduces the issue of ‘Lost Spaces’ that had emerged in the cities with the modern urban development and growth. The book was intended primarily for designers and students of the city. The book includes theoretical and critical discussion along with practical applications and strategies for correcting the problems of spatial structure.

Trancik, a professor in the Cornell University Landscape Architecture Program, has experience in the academic as well as professional field of Urban Design. He has written three books, authored 45 professional planning studies, journal articles, and scholarly papers. He taught at the Harvard GSD from 1970 to 1981, and at Cornell since 1982. He has received national awards from the American Planners Association and American Society of Landscape Architects, which elected him a national fellow in 1990.

## Background

The book was written after the modern movement had seen its peak in urban areas and had started facing reactions against its lack of human scale and its focus on individual buildings. The ' Team 10 ' was one of the first groups in 1953 which challenged many of the approaches including lack of consideration of the context, relation between a building and its environment, and accommodation of the cultural needs of people. After that many other groups and architects also started looking into the shortcomings of ' Modern Architecture '. One such movement was the ' Post-Modern movement in Architecture ' propagated by various architects and theorists like Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Michael Graves and Philip Johnson which criticized the Modern Movement for reasons including its austerity, formality, lack of variety and complete neglect of the context where it appeared. The author, Roger Trancik, feels that the traditional urban spaces consisted of an underlying fundamental principle of structure while the modern cities had lost them. The modern cities that focused on buildings as isolated objects in a landscape, have given rise to the left over spaces, anti-spaces or ‘Lost spaces’. The book examines the reasons of these ‘Lost spaces’ and suggest ways to restore traditional values and meaning to the urban open spaces.

## Summary/content

The author defines Lost Space as the left-over unstructured space or landscape or edges. They are the ‘no-man's land’ that nobody cares about maintaining or using. They are “….the undesirable urban areas that are in need of redesign – anti-spaces making no positive contribution to the surroundings or users”

The first chapter introduces the problem of lost urban spaces and five parameters leading to it: the automobile, the Modern Movement in architectural design, urban renewal and zoning policies, the dominance of private over public interests, and changes in land use in the inner city

The second chapter details the evolution of twentieth century spaces and significant movements in design and physical planning. It discusses the impact of Functionalism ideals of the city on urban areas and the concerns of the resultant physical manifestations like modern streets and squares in the predominantly vertical city, sunken plazas and internalized malls, counterpart movements like the Garden city movement, suburbia and New Towns.

The third chapter discusses historic precedents of urban space approaches. It discusses hard and soft space, their relevance and appropriate situations.

The fourth chapter examines three approaches to urban design theory: figure-ground theory, linkage theory and place theory.

The fifth chapter studies four urban case studies to show the application of urban design theories at various scales.

The last chapter discusses an integrated approach to design including lateral enclosure, bridging and fusion of outdoor and indoor space. It explains strategies like incrementalism and advocacy necessary for an integrated design.

## Awards and reception

The book received an award grant from the “Research Award, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, for preparation of textbook Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban Design. 1982” and “American Society of Landscape Architects National Merit Award. 1986” The book has been translated into "simple" as well as "orthodox" Chinese.

## Publication

The book was originally published by Van Nostrand Reinhold in 1986 and was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in the 1990s.