An alphabet is a standard set of letters (basic written symbols or graphemes) which is used to write one or more languages based on the general principle that the letters represent phonemes (basic significant sounds) of the spoken language. This is in contrast to other types of writing systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme or semantic unit, and syllabaries, in which each character represents a syllable.

A true alphabet has letters for the vowels of a language as well as the consonants. The first true alphabet is believed to be the Greek alphabet,^[1][2] which is a modified form of the Phoenician alphabet. In other types of alphabet either the vowels are not indicated at all, as was the case in the Phoenician alphabet (such systems are known as abjads), or else the vowels are shown by diacritics or modification of consonants, as in the devanagari used in India and Nepal (these systems are known as abugidas or alphasyllabaries).

There are dozens of alphabets in use today, the most common being the Latin alphabet^[3] (which was derived from the Greek). Many languages use modified forms of the Latin alphabet, with additional letters formed using diacritical marks. While most alphabets have letters composed of lines (linear writing), there are also exceptions such as the alphabets used in Braille, fingerspelling, and Morse code.

Alphabets are usually associated with a standard ordering of their letters. This makes them useful for purposes of collation, specifically by allowing words to be sorted in alphabetical order. It also means that their letters can be used as an alternative method of "numbering" ordered items, in such contexts as numbered lists.

Etymology[link]

The English word alphabet came into Middle English from the Late Latin word alphabetum, which in turn originated in the Ancient Greek ἀλφάβητος (alphabētos), from alpha and beta, the first two letters of the Greek alphabet.^[4] Alpha and beta in turn came from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet, and originally meant ox and house respectively.

History[link]

A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia.

Middle Eastern scripts[link]

The history of the alphabet started in ancient Egypt. By the 27th century BCE Egyptian writing had a set of some 24 hieroglyphs which are called uniliterals,^[5] to represent syllables that begin with a single consonant of their language, plus a vowel (or no vowel) to be supplied by the native speaker. These glyphs were used as pronunciation guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections, and, later, to transcribe loan words and foreign names.^[6]

A specimen of Proto-Sinaitic script, one of the earliest (if not the very first) phonemic scripts

In the Middle Bronze Age an apparently "alphabetic" system known as the Proto-Sinaitic script is thought by some to have been developed in the Sinai peninsula during the 19th century BCE, by Canaanite workers in the Egyptian turquoise mines.^[7] Others suggest the alphabet was developed in central Egypt during the 15th century BCE for or by Semitic workers, but only one of these early writings has been deciphered and their exact nature remains open to interpretation.^[8] Based on letter appearances and names, it is believed to be based on Egyptian hieroglyphs.^[8] This script had no characters representing vowels. An alphabetic cuneiform script with 30 signs including three which indicate the following vowel was invented in Ugarit before the 15th century BCE. This script was not used after the destruction of Ugarit.^[9]

The Proto-Sinaitic script eventually developed into the Phoenician alphabet, which is conventionally called "Proto-Canaanite" before ca. 1050 BCE.^[10] The oldest text in Phoenician script is an inscription on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram. This script is the parent script of all western alphabets. By the tenth century two other forms can be distinguished namely Canaanite and Aramaic. The Aramaic gave rise to Hebrew.^[11] The South Arabian alphabet, a sister script to the Phoenician alphabet, is the script from which the Ge'ez alphabet (an abugida) is descended. Note that the scripts mentioned above are not considered proper alphabets, as they all lack characters representing vowels. These vowelless alphabets are called abjads, currently exemplified in scripts including Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac. The omission of vowels was not a satisfactory solution and some "weak" consonants were used to indicate the vowel quality of a syllable (matres lectionis). These had dual function since they were also used as pure consonants.^[12]

The Proto-Sinatic or Proto Canaanite script and the Ugaritic script were the first scripts with limited number of signs, in contrast to the other widely used writing systems at the time, Cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Linear B. The Phoenician script was probably the first phonemic script^[8][10] and it contained only about two dozen distinct letters, making it a script simple enough for common traders to learn. Another advantage of Phoenician was that it could be used to write down many different languages, since it recorded words phonemically.

The script was spread by the Phoenicians, across the Mediterranean.^[10] In Greece, the script was modified to add the vowels, giving rise to the ancestor of all alphabets in the West. The indication of the vowels is the same way as the indication of the consonants, therefore it was the first true alphabet. The Greeks took letters which did not represent sounds that existed in Greek, and changed them to represent the vowels. The vowels are significant in the Greek language, and the syllabical Linear B script which was used by the Mycenaean Greeks from the 16th century BCE had 87 symbols including 5 vowels. In its early years, there were many variants of the Greek alphabet, a situation which caused many different alphabets to evolve from it.

European alphabets[link]

Codex Zographensis in the Glagolitic alphabet from Medieval Bulgaria

The Greek alphabet, in its Euboean form, was carried over by Greek colonists to the Italian peninsula, where it gave rise to a variety of alphabets used to write the Italic languages. One of these became the Latin alphabet, which was spread across Europe as the Romans expanded their empire. Even after the fall of the Roman state, the alphabet survived in intellectual and religious works. It eventually became used for the descendant languages of Latin (the Romance languages) and then for most of the other languages of Europe.

Some adaptations of the Latin alphabet are augmented with ligatures, such as æ in Old English and Icelandic and Ȣ in Algonquian; by borrowings from other alphabets, such as the thorn þ in Old English and Icelandic, which came from the Futhark runes; and by modifying existing letters, such as the eth ð of Old English and Icelandic, which is a modified d. Other alphabets only use a subset of the Latin alphabet, such as Hawaiian, and Italian, which uses the letters j, k, x, y and w only in foreign words.

Another notable script is Elder Futhark, which is believed to have evolved out of one of the Old Italic alphabets. Elder Futhark gave rise to a variety of alphabets known collectively as the Runic alphabets. The Runic alphabets were used for Germanic languages from CE 100 to the late Middle Ages. Its usage is mostly restricted to engravings on stone and jewelry, although inscriptions have also been found on bone and wood. These alphabets have since been replaced with the Latin alphabet, except for decorative usage for which the runes remained in use until the 20th century.

The Old Hungarian script is a contemporary writing system of the Hungarians. It was in use during the entire history of Hungary, albeit not as an official writing system. From the 19th century it once again became more and more popular.

The Glagolitic alphabet was the initial script of the liturgical language Old Church Slavonic and became, together with the Greek uncial script, the basis of the Cyrillic script. Cyrillic is one of the most widely used modern alphabetic scripts, and is notable for its use in Slavic languages and also for other languages within the former Soviet Union. Cyrillic alphabets include the Serbian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, and Russian alphabets. The Glagolitic alphabet is believed to have been created by Saints Cyril and Methodius, while the Cyrillic alphabet was invented by the Bulgarian scholar Clement of Ohrid, who was their disciple. They feature many letters that appear to have been borrowed from or influenced by the Greek alphabet and the Hebrew alphabet.

Asian alphabets[link]

Beyond the logographic Chinese writing, many phonetic scripts are in existence in Asia. The Arabic alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet, and other abjads of the Middle East are developments of the Aramaic alphabet, but because these writing systems are largely consonant-based they are often not considered true alphabets.

Most alphabetic scripts of India and Eastern Asia are descended from the Brahmi script, which is often believed to be a descendent of Aramaic.

Zhuyin on a cell phone

In Korea, the Hangul alphabet was created by Sejong the Great^[13] Hangul is a unique alphabet: it is a featural alphabet, where many of the letters are designed from a sound's place of articulation (P to look like widened mouth, L sound to look like tongue pulled in, etc.); its design was planned by the government of the time; and it places individual letters in syllable clusters with equal dimensions, in the same way as Chinese characters, to allow for mixed script writing^{[citation needed]} (one syllable always takes up one type-space no matter how many letters get stacked into building that one sound-block).

Zhuyin (sometimes called Bopomofo) is a semi-syllabary used to phonetically transcribe Mandarin Chinese in the Republic of China. After the later establishment of the People's Republic of China and its adoption of Hanyu Pinyin, the use of Zhuyin today is limited, but it's still widely used in Taiwan where the Republic of China still governs. Zhuyin developed out of a form of Chinese shorthand based on Chinese characters in the early 1900s and has elements of both an alphabet and a syllabary. Like an alphabet the phonemes of syllable initials are represented by individual symbols, but like a syllabary the phonemes of the syllable finals are not; rather, each possible final (excluding the medial glide) is represented by its own symbol. For example, luan is represented as ㄌㄨㄢ (l-u-an), where the last symbol ㄢ represents the entire final -an. While Zhuyin is not used as a mainstream writing system, it is still often used in ways similar to a romanization system—that is, for aiding in pronunciation and as an input method for Chinese characters on computers and cell phones.

European alphabets, especially Latin and Cyrillic, have been adapted for many languages of Asia. Arabic is also widely used, sometimes as an abjad (as with Urdu and Persian) and sometimes as a complete alphabet (as with Kurdish and Uyghur).

Types[link]

The term "alphabet" is used by linguists and paleographers in both a wide and a narrow sense. In the wider sense, an alphabet is a script that is segmental at the phoneme level—that is, it has separate glyphs for individual sounds and not for larger units such as syllables or words. In the narrower sense, some scholars distinguish "true" alphabets from two other types of segmental script, abjads and abugidas. These three differ from each other in the way they treat vowels: abjads have letters for consonants and leave most vowels unexpressed; abugidas are also consonant-based, but indicate vowels with diacritics to or a systematic graphic modification of the consonants. In alphabets in the narrow sense, on the other hand, consonants and vowels are written as independent letters. The earliest known alphabet in the wider sense is the Wadi el-Hol script, believed to be an abjad, which through its successor Phoenician is the ancestor of modern alphabets, including Arabic, Greek, Latin (via the Old Italic alphabet), Cyrillic (via the Greek alphabet) and Hebrew (via Aramaic).

Examples of present-day abjads are the Arabic and Hebrew scripts; true alphabets include Latin, Cyrillic, and Korean hangul; and abugidas are used to write Tigrinya Amharic, Hindi, and Thai. The Canadian Aboriginal syllabics are also an abugida rather than a syllabary as their name would imply, since each glyph stands for a consonant which is modified by rotation to represent the following vowel. (In a true syllabary, each consonant-vowel combination would be represented by a separate glyph.)

All three types may be augmented with syllabic glyphs. Ugaritic, for example, is basically an abjad, but has syllabic letters for /ʔa, ʔi, ʔu/. (These are the only time vowels are indicated.) Cyrillic is basically a true alphabet, but has syllabic letters for /ja, je, ju/ (я, е, ю); Coptic has a letter for /ti/. Devanagari is typically an abugida augmented with dedicated letters for initial vowels, though some traditions use अ as a zero consonant as the graphic base for such vowels.

The boundaries between the three types of segmental scripts are not always clear-cut. For example, Sorani Kurdish is written in the Arabic script, which is normally an abjad. However, in Kurdish, writing the vowels is mandatory, and full letters are used, so the script is a true alphabet. Other languages may use a Semitic abjad with mandatory vowel diacritics, effectively making them abugidas. On the other hand, the Phagspa script of the Mongol Empire was based closely on the Tibetan abugida, but all vowel marks were written after the preceding consonant rather than as diacritic marks. Although short a was not written, as in the Indic abugidas, one could argue that the linear arrangement made this a true alphabet. Conversely, the vowel marks of the Tigrinya abugida and the Amharic abugida (ironically, the original source of the term "abugida") have been so completely assimilated into their consonants that the modifications are no longer systematic and have to be learned as a syllabary rather than as a segmental script. Even more extreme, the Pahlavi abjad eventually became logographic. (See below.)

Thus the primary classification of alphabets reflects how they treat vowels. For tonal languages, further classification can be based on their treatment of tone, though names do not yet exist to distinguish the various types. Some alphabets disregard tone entirely, especially when it does not carry a heavy functional load, as in Somali and many other languages of Africa and the Americas. Such scripts are to tone what abjads are to vowels. Most commonly, tones are indicated with diacritics, the way vowels are treated in abugidas. This is the case for Vietnamese (a true alphabet) and Thai (an abugida). In Thai, tone is determined primarily by the choice of consonant, with diacritics for disambiguation. In the Pollard script, an abugida, vowels are indicated by diacritics, but the placement of the diacritic relative to the consonant is modified to indicate the tone. More rarely, a script may have separate letters for tones, as is the case for Hmong and Zhuang. For most of these scripts, regardless of whether letters or diacritics are used, the most common tone is not marked, just as the most common vowel is not marked in Indic abugidas; in Zhuyin not only is one of the tones unmarked, but there is a diacritic to indicate lack of tone, like the virama of Indic.

The number of letters in an alphabet can be quite small. The Book Pahlavi script, an abjad, had only twelve letters at one point, and may have had even fewer later on. Today the Rotokas alphabet has only twelve letters. (The Hawaiian alphabet is sometimes claimed to be as small, but it actually consists of 18 letters, including the ʻokina and five long vowels.) While Rotokas has a small alphabet because it has few phonemes to represent (just eleven), Book Pahlavi was small because many letters had been conflated—that is, the graphic distinctions had been lost over time, and diacritics were not developed to compensate for this as they were in Arabic, another script that lost many of its distinct letter shapes. For example, a comma-shaped letter represented g, d, y, k, or j. However, such apparent simplifications can perversely make a script more complicated. In later Pahlavi papyri, up to half of the remaining graphic distinctions of these twelve letters were lost, and the script could no longer be read as a sequence of letters at all, but instead each word had to be learned as a whole—that is, they had become logograms as in Egyptian Demotic. The alphabet in the Polish language contains 32 letters.

The largest segmental script is probably an abugida, Devanagari. When written in Devanagari, Vedic Sanskrit has an alphabet of 53 letters, including the visarga mark for final aspiration and special letters for kš and jñ, though one of the letters is theoretical and not actually used. The Hindi alphabet must represent both Sanskrit and modern vocabulary, and so has been expanded to 58 with the khutma letters (letters with a dot added) to represent sounds from Persian and English.

The largest known abjad is Sindhi, with 51 letters. The largest alphabets in the narrow sense include Kabardian and Abkhaz (for Cyrillic), with 58 and 56 letters, respectively, and Slovak (for the Latin script), with 46. However, these scripts either count di- and tri-graphs as separate letters, as Spanish did with ch and ll until recently, or uses diacritics like Slovak č. The largest true alphabet where each letter is graphically independent is probably Georgian, with 41 letters.

Syllabaries typically contain 50 to 400 glyphs (though the Múra-Pirahã language of Brazil would require only 24 if it did not denote tone, and Rotokas would require only 30), and the glyphs of logographic systems typically number from the many hundreds into the thousands. Thus a simple count of the number of distinct symbols is an important clue to the nature of an unknown script.

Alphabetical order[link]

Alphabets often come to be associated with a standard ordering of their letters, which can then be used for purposes of collation – namely for the listing of words and other items in what is called alphabetical order.

The basic ordering of the Latin alphabet (ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ) is well established, although languages using this alphabet have different conventions for their treatment of modified letters (such as the French é, à, and ô) and of certain combinations of letters (multigraphs). In French, these are not considered to be additional letters for the purposes of collation. However, in Icelandic, the accented letters such as á, í, and ö are considered to be distinct letters of the alphabet. In Spanish, ñ is considered a separate letter, but accented vowels such as á and é are not. The ll and ch were also considered single letters, but in 1994 the Real Academia Española changed collating order so that ll is between lk and lm in the dictionary and ch is between cg and ci, and in 2010 the tenth congress of the Association of Spanish Language Academies changed it so they were no longer letters at all^[14][15]

In German, words starting with sch- (constituting the German phoneme /ʃ/) would be intercalated between words with initial sca- and sci- (all incidentally loanwords) instead of this graphic cluster appearing after the letter s, as though it were a single letter—a lexicographical policy which would be de rigueur in a dictionary of Albanian, i.e. dh-, ë-, gj-, ll-, rr-, th-, xh- and zh- (all representing phonemes and considered separate single letters) would follow the letters d, e, g, l, n, r, t, x and z respectively. Nor is, in a dictionary of English, the lexical section with initial th- reserved a place after the letter t, but is inserted between te- and ti-. German words with umlaut would further be alphabetized as if there were no umlaut at all—contrary to Turkish which allegedly adopted the German graphemes ö and ü, and where a word like tüfek, "gun", would come after tuz, "salt", in the dictionary.

The Danish and Norwegian alphabets end with æ—ø—å, whereas the Swedish, Finnish and Estonian ones conventionally put å—ä—ö at the end.

It is unknown whether the earliest alphabets had a defined sequence. Some alphabets today, such as the Hanuno'o script, are learned one letter at a time, in no particular order, and are not used for collation where a definite order is required. However, a dozen Ugaritic tablets from the fourteenth century BCE preserve the alphabet in two sequences. One, the ABCDE order later used in Phoenician, has continued with minor changes in Hebrew, Greek, Armenian, Gothic, Cyrillic, and Latin; the other, HMĦLQ, was used in southern Arabia and is preserved today in Ethiopic.^[16] Both orders have therefore been stable for at least 3000 years.

The historical order was abandoned in Runic and Arabic, although Arabic retains the traditional "abjadi order" for numbering.

The Brahmic family of alphabets used in India use a unique order based on phonology: The letters are arranged according to how and where they are produced in the mouth. This organization is used in Southeast Asia, Tibet, Korean hangul, and even Japanese kana, which is not an alphabet.

Names of letters[link]

The Phoenician letter names, in which each letter was associated with a word that begins with that sound, continue to be used to varying degrees in Samaritan, Aramaic, Syriac, Hebrew, Greek and Arabic. The names were abandoned in Latin, which instead referred to the letters by adding a vowel (usually e) before or after the consonant (the exception is zeta, which was retained from Greek). In Cyrillic originally the letters were given names based on Slavic words; this was later abandoned as well in favor of a system similar to that used in Latin.

Orthography and pronunciation[link]

When an alphabet is adopted or developed for use in representing a given language, an orthography generally comes into being, providing rules for the spelling of words in that language. In accordance with the principle on which alphabets are based, these rules will generally map letters of the alphabet to the phonemes (significant sounds) of the spoken language. In a perfectly phonemic orthography there would be a consistent one-to-one correspondence between the letters and the phonemes, so that a writer could predict the spelling of a word given its pronunciation, and a speaker could predict the pronunciation of a word given its spelling. However this ideal is not normally achieved in practice; some languages (such as Spanish and Finnish) come close to it, while others (such as English) deviate from it to a much larger degree.

The pronunciation of a language often evolves independently of its writing system, and writing systems have been borrowed for languages they were not designed for, so the degree to which letters of an alphabet correspond to phonemes of a language varies greatly from one language to another and even within a single language.

Languages may fail to achieve a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds in any of several ways:

• A language may represent a given phoneme with a combination of letters rather than just a single letter. Two-letter combinations are called digraphs and three-letter groups are called trigraphs. German uses the tesseragraphs (four letters) "tsch" for the phoneme [tʃ] and "dsch" for [dʒ], although the latter is rare. Kabardian also uses a tesseragraph for one of its phonemes.
• A language may represent the same phoneme with two different letters or combinations of letters. An example is modern Greek which may write the phoneme [i] in six different ways: ⟨ι⟩, ⟨η⟩, ⟨υ⟩, ⟨ει⟩, ⟨οι⟩, and ⟨υι⟩ (although the last is rare).
• A language may spell some words with unpronounced letters that exist for historical or other reasons. For example, the spelling of the Thai word for "beer" [เบียร์] retains a letter for the final consonant "r" present in the English word it was borrowed from, but silences it. Otherwise, according to Thai pronunciation rules, the word might be pronounced more like "bean".
• Pronunciation of individual words may change according to the presence of surrounding words in a sentence (sandhi).
• Different dialects of a language may use different phonemes for the same word.
• A language may use different sets of symbols or different rules for distinct sets of vocabulary items, such as the Japanese hiragana and katakana syllabaries, or the various rules in English for spelling words from Latin and Greek, or the original Germanic vocabulary.

National languages generally elect to address the problem of dialects by simply associating the alphabet with the national standard. However, with an international language with wide variations in its dialects, such as English, it would be impossible to represent the language in all its variations with a single phonetic alphabet.

Some national languages like Finnish, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian (Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian) and Bulgarian have a very regular spelling system with a nearly one-to-one correspondence between letters and phonemes. Strictly speaking, these three languages lack a word corresponding to the verb "to spell" (meaning to split a word into its letters), the closest match being a verb meaning to split a word into its syllables. Similarly, the Italian verb corresponding to 'spell', compitare^{[dubious – discuss]}, is unknown to many Italians because the act of spelling itself is rarely needed: Italian spelling is highly phonemic. In standard Spanish, it is possible to tell the pronunciation of a word from its spelling, but not vice versa; this is because certain phonemes can be represented in more than one way, but a given letter is consistently pronounced. French, with its silent letters and its heavy use of nasal vowels and elision, may seem to lack much correspondence between spelling and pronunciation, but its rules on pronunciation, though complex, are actually consistent and predictable with a fair degree of accuracy.

At the other extreme, are languages such as English, where the spelling of many words simply has to be memorized as they do not correspond to sounds in a consistent way. For English, this is partly because the Great Vowel Shift occurred after the orthography was established, and because English has acquired a large number of loanwords at different times, retaining their original spelling at varying levels. Even English has general, albeit complex, rules that predict pronunciation from spelling, and these rules are successful most of the time; rules to predict spelling from the pronunciation have a higher failure rate.

Sometimes, countries have the written language undergo a spelling reform to realign the writing with the contemporary spoken language. These can range from simple spelling changes and word forms to switching the entire writing system itself, as when Turkey switched from the Arabic alphabet to a Turkish alphabet of Latin origin.

The sounds of speech of all languages of the world can be written by a rather small universal phonetic alphabet. A standard for this is the International Phonetic Alphabet.

See also[link]

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Coulmas, Florian (1989). The Writing Systems of the World. Blackwell Publishers Ltd.. ISBN 0-631-18028-1. http://books.google.com/?id=VOywmavmZ3UC. 
• Daniels, Peter T.; Bright, William (1996). The World's Writing Systems. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507993-0.  Overview of modern and some ancient writing systems.
• Driver, G. R. (1976). Semitic Writing (Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology S.) 3Rev Ed. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-725917-0. 
• Haarmann, Harald (2004). Geschichte der Schrift (2nd ed.). München: C. H. Beck. ISBN 3-406-47998-7 
• Hoffman, Joel M. (2004). In the Beginning: A Short History of the Hebrew Language. NYU Press. ISBN 0-8147-3654-8. http://www.newjewishbooks.org/ITB/toc.html.  Chapter 3 traces and summarizes the invention of alphabetic writing.
• Logan, Robert K. (2004). The Alphabet Effect: A Media Ecology Understanding of the Making of Western Civilization. Hampton Press. ISBN 1-57273-523-6. 
• McLuhan, Marshall; Logan, Robert K. (1977). Alphabet, Mother of Invention. Etcetera. Vol. 34, pp. 373–383
• Millard, A. R. (1986). "The Infancy of the Alphabet". World Archaeology 17 (3): 390–398. DOI:10.1080/00438243.1986.9979978 
• Ouaknin, Marc-Alain; Bacon, Josephine (1999). Mysteries of the Alphabet: The Origins of Writing. Abbeville Press. ISBN 0-7892-0521-1. 
• Powell, Barry (1991). Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-58907-X. 
• Powell, Barry B. 2009. Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization, Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-6256-2
• Sacks, David (2004) (PDF). Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet from A to Z. Broadway Books. ISBN 0-7679-1173-3. http://www.uca.edu.ar/esp/sec-ffilosofia/esp/docs-institutos/s-cehao/boletin/damqatum3_eng2007.pdf. 
• Saggs, H. W. F. (1991). Civilization Before Greece and Rome. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-05031-3.  Chapter 4 traces the invention of writing

External links[link]

Look up alphabet in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• The Origins of abc
• "Language, Writing and Alphabet: An Interview with Christophe Rico", Damqātum 3 (2007)
• Alphabetic Writing Systems
• Michael Everson's Alphabets of Europe
• Evolution of alphabets, animation by Prof. Robert Fradkin at the University of Maryland
• How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs—Biblical Archaeology Review

Chubb Rock (born Richard Simpson on May 28, 1968 in Kingston, Jamaica) is a New York-based rapper who released several commercially successful hip hop albums in the early 1990s. A former National Merit Scholar, Chubb Rock was a pre-med student who dropped out of Brown University to pursue his musical career.^[1]

1990s and earlier[link]

Discovered and produced by his first cousin DJ / Producer Howie Tee, Chubb Rock first appeared on the national scene with his 1988 self-titled debut "Chubb Rock" and 1989's "And the winner is..." The latter produced the minor hit "Ya Bad Chubbs" which garnered air play on Yo! MTV Raps during that time.

His 1991 release entitled The One, reached #13 on Billboard's "Top Hip-Hop/R&B" chart for that year. Three singles from that release, "Treat'em Right", "Just The Two Of Us" and "The Chubbster", made it to #1 on Billboard's "Top Rap Single" chart list for the same year.

The following year saw the release of I Gotta Get Mine Yo, a release which features guest performances from Grand Puba Maxwell and Poke. This release also helped fledgling music producers Trackmasters, on their rise to prominence, as they handled production duties on the recording. Chubb Rock also makes an appearance on MC Serch's 1992 song, "Back to The Grill."

Chubb Rock was a member of the 1995 incarnation of the Crooklyn Dodgers, a rap act that also featured O.C. and Jeru The Damaja. His backup dancers started their own group, A.T.E.E.M, and released their debut A Hero Ain't Nothin' But A Sandwich in 1992 on Select Records.

In 1996, he appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation CD, America is Dying Slowly, alongside Wu-Tang Clan, Coolio, and Fat Joe, among others. The album, meant to raise awareness of the AIDS epidemic among African-American men, was heralded as a masterpiece by The Source magazine.

2000s and on[link]

Chubb Rock's work in the 2000s has been limited to only a few songs. He appears on a song for Raptivism Records' "No More Prisons" project with Lil' Dap of Group Home and Ed O.G., and also worked with Mr. Len on the song "Dummy Smacks", where he says, "Some people thought I was gone... never that!" He made an appearance alongside Vast Aire on the 2007 Zimbabwe Legit album House of Stone with the song "Wake Up".

In 2008, his single "Treat em right" was ranked number 82 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop. Chubb Rock also released Obama We Believe in support of President Barack Obama. His most recent appearance was on the K'naan single "ABC's". He also collaborated with Polish rapper eMCeeM on a track for his album To dopiero poczatek.

February 2009 Chubb Rock can be heard on his new single "Back In" featuring Wordsmith and Kimia Collins.

His latest album "Bridging The Gap", a collaboration with Wordsmith, was released on July 14, 2009.

Chubb Rock is featured in the new single "Summertime Anthem" by Eric Roberson in which they filmed the video on the streets of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, New York where he credited his wife and manager, KeKe Simpson, for putting the duo together.

Chubb Rock also released a new EP in September 2011.

In 2011 Chubb Rock appeared with his wife and childhood sweetheart of 24 years, KeKe "Diamond" Simpson on the NBC game show The Marriage Ref.

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

Singles[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Chubb Rock at Allmusic
• Discogs: Chubb Rock

India.Arie
Background information
Birth name	India Arie Simpson
Born	(1975-10-03) October 3, 1975 (age 36) Denver, Colorado United States
Origin	Atlanta, Georgia
Genres	Soul, R&B, neo soul, blues, folk, pop
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, record producer
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, flute, keyboard
Years active	2000–present
Labels	Motown (1999–2007) SoulBird / Universal Republic (2007–present)
Website	www.indiaarie.com www.soulbird.com

India.Arie (born India Arie Simpson; October 3, 1975) is a Grammy Award-winning American singer-songwriter and record producer .^[1] She has sold over 3.3 million records in the U.S. and 10 million worldwide. She has won four Grammy Awards from her 15 nominations, including Best R&B Album.

Background[link]

Simpson was born in Denver, Colorado. Her musical skills were encouraged by both parents early in life. Her mother Joyce is a former singer (she was signed to Motown as a teenager and opened for Stevie Wonder and Al Green)^[2] and is now her stylist. She has an older brother named J'On. After her parents divorced, Simpson's mother moved the family to Atlanta, Georgia when she was thirteen.^[3] Simpson had taken up a succession of musical instruments throughout her schooling in Denver, but her interest in the guitar while attending the Savannah College of Art and Design, in Savannah, led to a personal revelation about songwriting and performing. "When I started tapping into my own sensitivity, I started to understand people better. It was a direct result of writing songs", she said at the press release of her debut album, Acoustic Soul.

Co-founding the Atlanta-based independent music collective Groovement EarthShare (Groovement was the collective artists' name and EarthShare was their independent label name), her one-song turn on a locally-released compilation led to a second-stage gig at the 1998 Lilith Fair. In 1999, a Universal/Motown music scout spotted her and made an introduction to former Motown CEO Kedar Massenberg. Arie resides in Atlanta, Georgia.

Musical career[link]

Acoustic Soul was released on March 27, 2001 and debuted at number ten on the U.S. Billboard 200 and number three on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. Within months, without the concentrated radio airplay that typically powers pop and rap albums, Acoustic Soul was certified double platinum, selling 2,180,000 copies in the U.S. and 3,000,000 copies worldwide. Arie performed a duet with rock singer-guitarist John Mellencamp on the song "Peaceful World" for his 2001 album Cuttin' Heads. While Arie and the album were nominated for seven Grammy awards in 2002, they won no awards, losing in five of seven categories to Alicia Keys. She closed the ceremony with a performance of her song "Video". Arie performed a duet with jazz singer Cassandra Wilson on the song "Just Another Parade" for her 2002 album Belly of the Sun.

Arie followed the success of her debut on September 24, 2002 with the release of Voyage to India. It debuted at number six on the Billboard 200 and number one on the R&B chart. In 2003 it won her two Grammy Awards in 2003—"Best R&B Album" and Best Urban/Alternative Performance" for the song "Little Things". Soon after its release, Voyage to India was certified platinum selling 1,400,000 copies^{[citation needed]}in the U.S. and 2,300,000 worldwide^{[citation needed]}.

On September 12, 2005, Arie performed "Just 4 2day", a song written for her appearance on the debut of The Tyra Banks Show.^[4]She also performed "What About the Child", a song that did not air but was made available as a one-dollar Internet download to support child victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.^[5] Arie is also featured on Stevie Wonder's album A Time to Love, released on October 18, 2005. Arie and Wonder duet on the title track "A Time to Love", written by Arie, which was nominated for "Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals" at the 2006 Grammy Awards. Three years earlier, their rendition of Mel Tormé's 1944 classic "The Christmas Song", recorded for the holiday TV commercial for retailer Target, had been nominated for the same category, making it the first song created and financed exclusively for a commercial to be nominated for a Grammy Award.^[6]

India.Arie performing in Lokeren Belgium, August 3, 2004

Arie's third studio album, Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationship, was released on June 27, 2006. It gave Arie her first number-one spot on the Billboard 200 and was her second chart-topper on the R&B charts. This album was also the first number-one album for Motown in twelve years^{[citation needed]}. Its first-week sales of 161,000 copies are Arie's best sales week to date and was certified gold in August 2006, selling 730,000 in US and 1,300,000 worldwide. "I Am Not My Hair" was the most successful release from Testimony: Vol. 1., reaching the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 at #97 and the UK Singles Chart at #65. Arie collaborated with Akon for her song "I Am Not My Hair". On the April 16, 2007 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show entitled "After Imus: Now What?", Arie guest-starred as a panelist. Arie performed a duet with singer Anthony David for his song "Words" for his 2008 album Acey Duecy.

Her next album, Testimony: Vol. 2, Love & Politics was released on Tuesday, February 10, 2009. It debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, and No. 2 on the R&B chart. Within this CD, Arie collaborated with such artists as Sezen Aksu, Keb Mo, Gramps Morgan and Musiq Soulchild to fulfill her self-proclaimed desire to "do projects with people who are making music that is meaningful, with a lot of integrity and a lot of sonic diversity". Arie also identified this CD as her first to to write and sing songs without worrying about public opinion after a much-needed vacation to Hawaii. The album was her first produced and released after her departure from Motown to Universal Records.^[7] Arie performed "Video" with British singer Adele at the 2009 VH1 Divas. Arie is one of over 70 artists singing on "We Are the World: 25 for Haiti", a charity single in aid of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Arie contributed vocals to "Imagine" for the 2010 Herbie Hancock album, The Imagine Project along with Seal, P!nk, Jeff Beck, Konono N°1, Oumou Sangare and others.^[8]

Arie at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in 2010.

India.Arie's new album, a work produced in collaboration with Israeli singer Idan Raichel is due to be released in summer, 2012.^[9]

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

• 2001: Acoustic Soul
• 2002: Voyage to India
• 2006: Testimony: Vol. 1, Life & Relationship
• 2009: Testimony: Vol. 2, Love & Politics
• 2012: Open Door

Awards[link]

India.Arie on the red carpet VH1 Divas 2009.

Grammy Awards[link]

The Grammy Awards are awarded annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Arie has won four awards from twenty-one nominations, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist, she lost all. In 2002, She got record Most Nominations in One Night without winning with received seven nominations.

BET Awards

2002 - Best Female R&B Artist (Won)

2003 - Best Female R&B Artist (Won)

MTV Video Music Award

2001 - MTV2 Award for "Video" (Nominated)

Soul Train Music Award

2003 - Female R&B/Soul Single for "Little Things" (Nominated)

Tours[link]

Headlining

• Voyage to World Tour (2002/03)
• Testimony Tour (2006/10)

Opening act

• Lovers Rock Tour (2001)

Filmography[link]

• 2002: Soul Food - Herself "Lovers and Other Strangers"
• 2003: American Dreams - ....Nina Simone "Act of Contrition"
• 2003: The Bernie Mac Show - Herself "Raging Election"
• 2004: Tinseltown TV - Herself
• 2006: One on One - Herself "I Love L.A"
• 2011: Pastor Brown - Lateefah

Theater[link]

In 2009, India.Arie portrayed Nina Simone in a staged reading at the Roundabout Theatre Company of the upcoming Broadway musical "Soul Doctor", about the life of Shlomo Carlebach written by Daniel Wise.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: India.Arie

• Official website

J. K. Rowling, OBE, FRSL
Rowling at the White House Easter Egg Roll, 2010
Born	Joanne Rowling (1965-07-31) 31 July 1965 (age 46)[1] Yate, Gloucestershire, England
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	British
Education	Bachelor of Arts
Alma mater	University of Exeter
Genres	Children's literature, fantasy
Subjects	Wizards and witches
Notable work(s)	Harry Potter series
Spouse(s)	Jorge Arantes (m. 1992–95) Neil Murray (m. 2001–present)
Children	2 daughters, 1 son
Influences Harry Potter influences and analogues
www.jkrowling.com

Joanne "Jo" Rowling, ( /ˈroʊlɪŋ/) OBE, FRSL ^[2] (born 31 July 1965),^[3] known as J. K. Rowling,^[4] is a British novelist, best known as the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series. The Potter books have gained worldwide attention, won multiple awards, sold more than 400 million copies^[5] to become the best-selling book series in history^[6] and been the basis for a popular series of films, in which Rowling had overall approval on the scripts^[7] as well as maintaining creative control by serving as a producer on the final instalment.^[8] Rowling conceived the idea for the series on a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990.^[9]

Rowling has led a "rags to riches" life story, in which she progressed from living on social security to multi-millionaire status within five years. As of March 2011^[update], when its latest world billionaires list was published, Forbes estimated Rowling's net worth to be US$1 billion.^[10] The 2008 Sunday Times Rich List estimated Rowling's fortune at £560 million ($798 million), ranking her as the twelfth richest woman in the United Kingdom.^[11] Forbes ranked Rowling as the forty-eighth most powerful celebrity of 2007,^[12] and Time magazine named her as a runner-up for its 2007 Person of the Year, noting the social, moral, and political inspiration she has given her fans.^[13] In October 2010, J. K. Rowling was named 'Most Influential Woman in Britain' by leading magazine editors.^[14] She has become a notable philanthropist, supporting such charities as Comic Relief, One Parent Families, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain, and Lumos (formerly the Children's High Level Group).

On 12 April 2012, Rowling announced that her new adult novel The Casual Vacancy would be published in the UK by Little, Brown & Company on 27 September 2012.^[15]

Name[link]

Although she writes under the pen name "J. K. Rowling", pronounced like rolling,^[16] her name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply "Joanne Rowling". Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers demanded that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling.^[17][18] She calls herself "Jo" and has said, "No one ever called me 'Joanne' when I was young, unless they were angry."^[19] Following her marriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business.^[20][21] During the Leveson Inquiry she gave evidence under the name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling.^[22]

Background[link]

Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling and Anne Rowling (née Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol.^[23] Her mother Anne was half-French, half-Scottish. Her mother's maternal grandfather, Dr. Dugald Campbell, was born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran.^[24] Her mother's paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during the First World War.^[25]

Rowling's sister Dianne^[9] was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old.^[23] The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four.^[26] She attended St Michael's Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More.^[27][28] Her headmaster at St Michael's, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore.^[29]

As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She recalls that "I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee."^[16] At the age of nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales.^[23] When she was a young teenager, her great aunt, who Rowling said "taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind", gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford's autobiography, Hons and Rebels.^[30] Mitford became Rowling's heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.^[31]

She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother, Anne, had worked as a technician in the Science Department.^[32] Rowling said of her adolescence, "Hermione [A bookish, know-it-all Harry Potter character] is loosely based on me. She's a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I'm not particularly proud of."^[33] Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books. "Ron Weasley [Harry Potter's best friend] isn't a living portrait of Sean, but he really is very Sean-ish."^[34] Of her musical tastes of the time, she said "My favourite group in the world is The Smiths. And when I was going through a punky phase, it was The Clash."^[35] Rowling studied A Levels in English, French and German^[36] before reading for a BA in French and Classics at the University of Exeter, which she says was a "bit of a shock" as she "was expecting to be amongst lots of similar people – thinking radical thoughts." Once she made friends with "some like-minded people" she says she began to enjoy herself.^[37] After a year of study in Paris, Rowling moved to London to work as a researcher and bilingual secretary for Amnesty International.^[38]

After working at Amnesty International in London, Rowling and her then-boyfriend decided to move to Manchester.^[23] In 1990, while she was on a four-hour-delayed train trip from Manchester to London, the idea for a story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry "came fully formed" into her mind.^[39] She told The Boston Globe that "I really don't know where the idea came from. It started with Harry, then all these characters and situations came flooding into my head."^[23][39] When she had reached her Clapham Junction flat, she began to write immediately.^[23][40]

In December of that year, Rowling's mother died, after ten years suffering from multiple sclerosis.^[23] Rowling commented, "I was writing Harry Potter at the moment my mother died. I had never told her about Harry Potter."^[21] Rowling said this death heavily affected her writing^[21][41] and that she introduced much more detail about Harry's loss in the first book, because she knew about how it felt.^[42]

Rowling then moved to Porto in Portugal to teach English as a foreign language.^[9][31] While there, on 16 October 1992, she married Portuguese television journalist Jorge Arantes. Their child, Jessica Isabel Rowling Arantes (named after Jessica Mitford), was born on 27 July 1993 in Portugal.^[43] They separated in November 1993.^[43][44] In December 1993, Rowling and her daughter moved to be near Rowling's sister in Edinburgh, Scotland.^[23]

Seven years after graduating from university, Rowling saw herself as "the biggest failure I knew."^[45] Her marriage had failed, she was jobless with a dependent child, but she described her failure as liberating:

Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy to finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one area where I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter, and a big idea. And so rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. – J. K. Rowling, Harvard commencement address, 2008.^[45]

In order to teach in Scotland she would need a postgraduate certificate of education (PGCE), requiring a full-time, year-long course of study. She began this course in August 1995,^[46] after completing her first novel while having survived on social security.^[47] She wrote in many cafés, especially Nicolson's Café,^[48] wherever she could get Jessica to fall asleep.^[23][49] In a 2001 BBC interview, Rowling denied the rumour that she wrote in local cafés to escape from her unheated flat, remarking, "I am not stupid enough to rent an unheated flat in Edinburgh in midwinter. It had heating." Instead, as she stated on the American TV programme A&E Biography, one of the reasons she wrote in cafés was because taking her baby out for a walk was the best way to make her fall asleep.^[49]

[edit] Harry Potter

[edit] Harry Potter books

"The Elephant House" – one of the cafés in Edinburgh in which Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter novel.^[50]

In 1995, Rowling finished her manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on an old manual typewriter.^[51] Upon the enthusiastic response of Bryony Evens, a reader who had been asked to review the book's first three chapters, the Fulham-based Christopher Little Literary Agents agreed to represent Rowling in her quest for a publisher. The book was submitted to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected the manuscript.^[43] A year later she was finally given the green light (and a £1500 advance) by editor Barry Cunningham from Bloomsbury, a small publishing house in London.^[43][52] The decision to publish Rowling's book apparently owes much to Alice Newton, the eight-year-old daughter of Bloomsbury's chairman, who was given the first chapter to review by her father and immediately demanded the next.^[53] Although Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book, Cunningham says that he advised Rowling to get a day job, since she had little chance of making money in children's books.^[54] Soon after, in 1997, Rowling received an £8000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council to enable her to continue writing.^[55] In early 1998, an auction was held in the United States for the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc., for $105,000. In Rowling's own words, she "nearly died" when she heard the news.^[56]

In June 1997, Bloomsbury published Philosopher's Stone with an initial print run of 1,000 copies, 500 of which were distributed to libraries. Today, such copies are valued between £16,000 and £25,000.^[57] Five months later, the book won its first award, a Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. In February, the novel won the prestigious British Book Award for Children's Book of the Year, and later, the Children's Book Award. In October 1998, Scholastic published Philosopher's Stone in the US under the title of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: a change Rowling claims she now regrets and would have fought if she had been in a better position at the time.^[58] Its sequel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, was published in July 1998 and again Rowling won the Smarties Prize.^[59]

In December 1999, the third novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, won the Smarties Prize, making Rowling the first person to win the award three times running.^[60] She later withdrew the fourth Harry Potter novel from contention to allow other books a fair chance. In January 2000, Prisoner of Azkaban won the inaugural Whitbread Children's Book of the Year award, though it lost the Book of the Year prize to Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf.^[61]

The fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was released simultaneously in the UK and the U.S. on 8 July 2000, and broke sales records in both countries. Some 372,775 copies of the book were sold in its first day in the UK, almost equalling the number Prisoner of Azkaban sold during its first year.^[62] In the US, the book sold three million copies in its first 48 hours, smashing all literary sales records.^[62] Rowling admitted that she had had a moment of crisis while writing the novel; "Halfway through writing Four, I realised there was a serious fault with the plot ... I've had some of my blackest moments with this book ... One chapter I rewrote 13 times, though no-one who has read it can spot which one or know the pain it caused me."^[63] Rowling was named author of the year in the 2000 British Book Awards.^[64]

A wait of three years occurred between the release of Goblet of Fire and the fifth Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This gap led to press speculation that Rowling had developed writer's block, speculations she fervently denied.^[65] Rowling later admitted that writing the book was a chore. "I think Phoenix could have been shorter", she told Lev Grossman, "I knew that, and I ran out of time and energy toward the end."^[66]

The sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was released on 16 July 2005. It too broke all sales records, selling nine million copies in its first 24 hours of release.^[67] While writing, she told a fan online, "Book six has been planned for years, but before I started writing seriously I spend two months re-visiting the plan and making absolutely sure I knew what I was doing."^[68] She noted on her website that the opening chapter of book six, which features a conversation between the Minister of Magic and the British Prime Minister, had been intended as the first chapter first for Philosopher's Stone, then Chamber of Secrets then Prisoner of Azkaban.^[69] In 2006, Half-Blood Prince received the Book of the Year prize at the British Book Awards.^[70]

The title of the seventh and final Harry Potter book was revealed 21 December 2006 to be Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.^[71] In February 2007 it was reported that Rowling wrote on a bust in her hotel room at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh that she had finished the seventh book in that room on 11 January 2007.^[72] Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released on 21 July 2007 (0:01 BST)^[73] and broke its predecessor's record as the fastest-selling book of all time.^[74] It sold 11 million copies in the first day of release in the United Kingdom and United States.^[74] She wrote the last chapter of the book "in something like 1990", as part of her earliest work on the entire series.^[75] During a year period when Rowling was completing the last book, she allowed herself to be filmed for a documentary which aired in Britain on ITV on 30 December 2007. It was entitled J K Rowling... A Year In The Life and showed her returning to her old Edinburgh tenement flat where she lived, and completed the first Harry Potter book.^[76] Re-visiting the flat for the first time reduced her to tears, saying it was "really where I turned my life around completely."^[76]

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Rowling gave credit to her mother for the success of the series saying that "the books are what they are because she died...because I loved her and she died."^[77] During this period Rowling was diagnosed with clinical depression, and contemplated suicide.^[78] It was the feeling of her illness which brought her the idea of Dementors, soul-sucking creatures introduced in the third book.^[79]

Harry Potter is now a global brand worth an estimated £7 billion ($15 billion),^[80] and the last four Harry Potter books have consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history.^[74][81] The series, totalling 4,195 pages,^[82] has been translated, in whole or in part, into 65 languages.^[83]

The Harry Potter books have also gained recognition for sparking an interest in reading among the young at a time when children were thought to be abandoning books for computers and television,^[84] although it is reported that despite the huge uptake of the books, adolescent reading has continued to decline.^[85]

[edit] Harry Potter films

In October 1998, Warner Bros. purchased the film rights to the first two novels for a seven-figure sum.^[86] A film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was released on 16 November 2001, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on 15 November 2002.^[87] Both films were directed by Chris Columbus. 4 June 2004 saw the release of the film version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, directed by Alfonso Cuarón. The fourth film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was directed by another new director, Mike Newell, and released on 18 November 2005. The film of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released on 11 July 2007.^[87] David Yates directed, and Michael Goldenberg wrote the screenplay, having taken over the position from Steve Kloves. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was released on 15 July 2009.^[88][89] David Yates directed again, and Kloves returned to write the script.^[90] In March 2008, Warner Bros. announced that the final instalment of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, would be filmed in two segments, with part one being released in November 2010 and part two being released in July 2011. Yates would again return to direct both films.^[91][92]

Warner Bros took considerable notice of Rowling's desires and thoughts when drafting her contract. One of her principal stipulations was the films be shot in Britain with an all-British cast, which has been adhered to strictly.^[93] In an unprecedented move, Rowling also demanded that Coca-Cola, the victor in the race to tie in their products to the film series, donate $18 million to the American charity Reading is Fundamental, as well as a number of community charity programs.^[94]

The first four, sixth and seventh films were scripted by Steve Kloves; Rowling assisted him in the writing process, ensuring that his scripts did not contradict future books in the series. She has said that she told him more about the later books than anybody else (prior to their release), but not everything.^[95] She also told Alan Rickman (Severus Snape) and Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) certain secrets about their characters before they were revealed in the books.^[96] Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) asked her if Harry died at any point in the series; Rowling answered him by saying, "You have a death scene", thereby not explicitly answering the question.^[97] Director Steven Spielberg was approached to helm the first film, but dropped out. The press has repeatedly claimed that Rowling played a role in his departure, but Rowling stated that she has no say in who directs the films and would not have vetoed Spielberg if she had.^[98] Rowling's first choice for the director had been Monty Python member Terry Gilliam, as she is a fan of his work, but Warner Bros. wanted a more family-friendly film and chose Columbus.^[99]

Rowling had gained creative control on the films, approving all the scripts^[100] as well as acting as a producer on the final two-part instalment, Deathly Hallows.^[101]

On her website, Rowling revealed that she was considered to have a cameo in the first film as Lily Potter in the Mirror of Erised scene. Rowling, however, turned down the role, stating that she was not cut out to be an actor and, "would have messed it up somehow".^[102] The role ultimately went to Geraldine Somerville.

Rowling, producers David Heyman and David Barron, along with directors David Yates, Mike Newell and Alfonso Cuarón collected the Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema at the 2011 British Academy Film Awards in honour of the Harry Potter film franchise.^[103]

[edit] Life after Harry Potter

Forbes has named Rowling as the first person to become a U.S.-dollar billionaire by writing books,^[104] the second-richest female entertainer and the 1,062nd richest person in the world.^[105] When first listed as a billionaire by Forbes in 2004, Rowling disputed the calculations and said she had plenty of money, but was not a billionaire.^[106] In addition, the 2008 Sunday Times Rich List named Rowling the 144th richest person in Britain.^[11] In 2001, Rowling purchased a 19th-century estate house, Killiechassie House, on the banks of the River Tay, near Aberfeldy, in Perth and Kinross, Scotland.^[107] Rowling also owns a home in Edinburgh, and a £4.5 million ($9 million) Georgian house in Kensington, West London,^[108] on a street with 24-hour security.^[109]

On 26 December 2001, Rowling married Neil Michael Murray (born 30 June 1971), an anaesthetist, in a private ceremony at her Aberfeldy home.^[110] This was a second marriage for both Rowling and Murray, as Murray had previously been married to Dr. Fiona Duncan in 1996. Murray and Duncan separated in 1999 and divorced in mid-2001. Rowling's and Murray's son, David Gordon Rowling Murray, was born on 24 March 2003.^[111] Shortly after Rowling began writing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince she took a break from working on the novel to care for him in his early infancy.^[112] Rowling's youngest child, daughter Mackenzie Jean Rowling Murray, to whom she dedicated Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was born on 23 January 2005.^[113]

Rowling is a close friend of Sarah Brown, wife of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whom she met when they collaborated on a charitable project (see below). When Brown's son Fraser was born in 2003, Rowling was one of the first to visit her in the hospital.^[114]

Rowling has received honorary degrees from St Andrews University, the University of Edinburgh, Napier University, the University of Exeter,^[115] the University of Aberdeen^[116][117] and Harvard University, for whom she spoke at the 2008 commencement ceremony.^[118] In 2009 Rowling was awarded the Légion d'honneur by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.^[119]

Subsequent writing[link]

In an interview with Stephen Fry in 2005, Rowling claimed that she would much prefer to write any subsequent books under a pseudonym; however, she conceded to Jeremy Paxman in 2003 that if she did, the press would probably "find out in seconds."^[120] In 2006, Rowling revealed that she had finished writing a few short stories and another children's book (a "political fairy story") about a monster, aimed at a younger audience than Harry Potter readers.^[121]

As regards the possibility of an eighth Harry Potter book, she has said, "I can't say I'll never write another book about that world just because I think, what do I know, in ten years' time I might want to return to it but I think it's unlikely."^[122] On 1 October 2010, in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Rowling stated a new book on the saga might happen.^[123]

Rowling plans to write an encyclopaedia of Harry Potter's wizarding world consisting of various unpublished material and notes.^[124] Any profits from such a book would be given to charity.^[125] During a news conference at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre in 2007, Rowling, when asked how the encyclopaedia was coming along, said, "It's not coming along, and I haven't started writing it. I never said it was the next thing I'd do."^[126] At the end of 2007, Rowling said that the encyclopaedia could take up to ten years to complete, stating "There is no point in doing it unless it is amazing. The last thing I want to do is to rush something out".^[76] On 13 April 2012, following the release of her new website, Rowling confirmed that she had started work on the project and would donate all royalties to charity as she had previously planned.^[127]

In July 2007, Rowling said that she wants to dedicate "lots" of her time to her family, but is currently "sort of writing two things", one for children and the other for adults.^[128] She did not give any details about the two projects but did state that she was excited because the two book situation reminded her of writing the Philosopher's Stone, explaining how she was then writing two books until Harry took over.^[129] She stated in October 2007 that her future work was unlikely to be in the fantasy genre, explaining, "I think probably I've done my fantasy ... it would be incredibly difficult to go out and create another world that didn't in some way overlap with Harry's or maybe borrow a little too much from Harry."^[130] In November 2007, Rowling said that she was working on another book, a "half-finished book for children that I think will probably be the next thing I publish."^[131] In March 2008, Rowling confirmed that her "political fairy tale" for children was nearing completion.^[132]

In March 2008, Rowling revealed in an interview that she had returned to writing in Edinburgh cafés, intent on composing a new novel for children. "I will continue writing for children because that's what I enjoy," she told The Daily Telegraph. "I am very good at finding a suitable café; I blend into the crowd and, of course, I don't sit in the middle of the bar staring all around me."^[133]

In June 2011, Rowling announced that future Harry Potter projects, and all electronic downloads, would be concentrated in a new website, called Pottermore.^[134] The site includes 18,000 words of additional information on characters, places and objects in the Harry Potter universe.^[135] The following month, she parted company with her agent, Christopher Little, moving to a new agency founded by one of his staff, Neil Blair.^[136]

On 23 February 2012, Rowling's agency, The Blair Partnership announced on its website that Rowling was set to publish a new book targeted at adults. In a press release, Rowling noted the differences between her new project and the Potter series, saying "Although I've enjoyed writing it just as much, my next novel will be very different from the Harry Potter series." On 12 April 2012, Little, Brown & Company announced that the book was entitled The Casual Vacancy and would be released on 27 September 2012.^[137]

Philanthropy[link]

In 2000, Rowling established the Volant Charitable Trust, which uses its annual budget of £5.1 million to combat poverty and social inequality. The fund also gives to organisations that aid children, one parent families, and multiple sclerosis research.^[138] Rowling said, "I think you have a moral responsibility when you've been given far more than you need, to do wise things with it and give intelligently."^[128]

Anti-poverty and children's welfare[link]

Rowling, once a single parent herself, is now president of the charity Gingerbread (originally One Parent Families), having already become their first Ambassador in 2000.^[139][140] Rowling collaborated with Sarah Brown to write a book of children's stories to aid One Parent Families.^[141]

In 2001, the UK anti-poverty fundraiser Comic Relief asked three best-selling British authors – cookery writer and TV presenter Delia Smith, Bridget Jones creator Helen Fielding, and Rowling – to submit booklets related to their most famous works for publication.^[142] Rowling's two booklets, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages, are ostensibly facsimiles of books found in the Hogwarts library. Since going on sale in March 2001, the books have raised £15.7 million ($30 million) for the fund. The £10.8 million ($20 million) they have raised outside the UK have been channelled into a newly created International Fund for Children and Young People in Crisis.^[143]

In 2005, Rowling and MEP Emma Nicholson founded the Children's High Level Group (now Lumos).^[144] In January 2006, Rowling went to Bucharest to highlight the use of caged beds in mental institutions for children.^[145] To further support the CHLG, Rowling auctioned one of seven handwritten and illustrated copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a series of fairy tales referred to in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The book was purchased for £1.95 million by on-line bookseller Amazon.com on 13 December 2007, becoming the most expensive modern book ever sold at auction.^[146][147] Rowling commented, "This will mean so much to children in desperate need of help. It means Christmas has come early to me."^[147][148] Rowling gave away the remaining six copies to those who have a close connection with the Harry Potter books.^[147] In 2008, Rowling agreed to publish the book with the proceeds going to the Children's High Level Group.^[146] On 1 June 2010 (International Children’s Day), Lumos launched an annual initiative – Light a Birthday Candle for Lumos. To support the campaign on 1 June 2011, JK Rowling gave an interview to Redonline.co.uk

Multiple sclerosis[link]

Rowling has contributed money and support for research and treatment of multiple sclerosis, from which her mother suffered before her death in 1990. In 2006, Rowling contributed a substantial sum toward the creation of a new Centre for Regenerative Medicine at Edinburgh University, later named the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic.^[149] In 2010 she donated a further £10 million to the centre.^[150] For reasons unknown, Scotland, Rowling's country of adoption, has the highest rate of multiple sclerosis in the world.^[151] In 2003, Rowling took part in a campaign to establish a national standard of care for MS sufferers.^[152] In April 2009, she announced that she was withdrawing her support for Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland, citing her inability to resolve an ongoing feud between the organisation's northern and southern branches that had sapped morale and led to several resignations.^[152]

Other philanthropic work[link]

In May 2008, bookseller Waterstones asked Rowling and 12 other writers (Sebastian Faulks, Doris Lessing, Lisa Appignanesi, Margaret Atwood, Lauren Child, Richard Ford, Neil Gaiman, Nick Hornby, Michael Rosen, Axel Scheffler, Tom Stoppard and Irvine Welsh) to compose a short piece of their own choosing on a single A5 card, which would then be sold at auction in aid of the charities Dyslexia Action and English PEN. Rowling's contribution was an 800-word Harry Potter prequel that concerns Harry's father, James Potter, and godfather, Sirius Black, and takes place three years before Harry was born.^[153][154] The cards were collected together and sold for charity in book form in August 2008.^[154]

On 1 and 2 August 2006 she read alongside Stephen King and John Irving at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. Profits from the event were donated to the Haven Foundation, a charity that aids artists and performers left uninsurable and unable to work, and the medical NGO Médecins Sans Frontières.^[155] In May 2007, Rowling pledged a donation reported as over £250,000 or over $495,000 to a reward fund started by the tabloid News of the World for the safe return of a young British girl, Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in Portugal.^[156] Rowling, along with Nelson Mandela, Al Gore, and Alan Greenspan, wrote an introduction to a collection of Gordon Brown's speeches, the proceeds of which are donated to the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory.^[157]

Rowling is a supporter of The Shannon Trust, which runs the Toe by Toe Reading Plan and the Shannon Reading Plan in prisons across Britain, helping and giving tutoring to prisoners who cannot read.^[158]

Political views[link]

In September 2008, on the eve of the Labour Party Conference, Rowling announced that she had donated £1 million to the Labour Party, and publicly endorsed Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown over Tory challenger David Cameron, saying in a statement:

I believe that poor and vulnerable families will fare much better under the Labour Party than they would under a Cameron-led Conservative Party. Gordon Brown has consistently prioritised and introduced measures that will save as many children as possible from a life lacking in opportunity or choice. The Labour government has reversed the long-term trend in child poverty, and is one of the leading EU countries in combating child poverty. David Cameron's promise of tax perks for the married, on the other hand, is reminiscent of the Conservative government I experienced as a lone parent. It sends the message that the Conservatives still believe a childless, dual-income, but married couple is more deserving of a financial pat on the head than those struggling, as I once was, to keep their families afloat in difficult times.^[159]

Rowling discussed the 2008 United States presidential election with the Spanish-language newspaper El País. She said she was obsessed with the United States elections because they would have a profound effect on the rest of the world. In February 2008, she said that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would be "extraordinary" in the White House. In the same interview, she also said her hero was Robert F. Kennedy.^[160]

In April 2010, Rowling published an article in The Times in which she heavily criticised Cameron's plan to encourage married couples to stay together by offering them a £150 annual tax credit.

Nobody who has ever experienced the reality of poverty could say "it's not the money, it's the message". When your flat has been broken into, and you cannot afford a locksmith, it is the money. When you are two pence short of a tin of baked beans, and your child is hungry, it is the money. When you find yourself contemplating shoplifting to get nappies, it is the money. If Mr Cameron's only practical advice to women living in poverty, the sole carers of their children, is "get married, and we'll give you £150", he reveals himself to be completely ignorant of their true situation. How many prospective husbands did I ever meet, when I was the single mother of a baby, unable to work, stuck inside my flat, night after night, with barely enough money for life's necessities? Should I have proposed to the youth who broke in through my kitchen window at 3 am? Half a billion pounds, to send a message – would it not be more cost-effective, more personal, to send all the lower-income married people flowers?^[161]

Religious views[link]

Over the years, some religious people have decried Rowling's books for supposedly promoting witchcraft. Rowling identifies as a Christian; she attended a Church of Scotland congregation while writing Harry Potter and her eldest daughter, Jessica, was baptised there.^[162] "I go to church myself", she says, "I don't take any responsibility for the lunatic fringes of my own religion".^[163] She once said, "I believe in God, not magic."^[164] Early on she felt that if readers knew of her Christian beliefs, they would be able to "guess what is coming in the books."^[165]

In 2007, Rowling described her religious background in an interview with the Dutch newspaper the Volkskrant:^[166]

I was officially raised in the Church of England, but I was actually more of a freak in my family. We didn't talk about religion in our home. My father didn't believe in anything, neither did my sister. My mother would incidentally visit the church, but mostly during Christmas. And I was immensely curious. From when I was 13, 14 I went to church alone. I found it very interesting what was being said there, and I believed in it. When I went to university, I became more critical. I got more annoyed with the smugness of religious people and I went to church less and less. Now I'm at the point where I started: yes, I believe. And yes, I go to the church. A Protestant church here in Edinburgh. My husband is also raised Protestant, but he comes from a very strict Scottish group. One where they couldn't sing and talk.

Rowling has occasionally expressed ambivalence about her religious faith. In a 2006 interview with Tatler magazine, Rowling noted that, "like Graham Greene, my faith is sometimes about if my faith will return. It's important to me."^[21] In a British documentary, JK Rowling: A Year in the Life, when asked if she believed in God, she said, "Yes. I do struggle with it; I couldn't pretend that I'm not doubt-ridden about a lot of things and that would be one of them but I would say yes." When asked if she believed in an afterlife, she said, "Yes; I think I do."^[167] She further said, "It's something that I wrestle with a lot. It preoccupies me a lot, and I think that's very obvious within the books."^[168] In a 2008 interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Rowling said, "I feel very drawn to religion, but at the same time I feel a lot of uncertainty. I live in a state of spiritual flux. I believe in the permanence of the soul."^[169] In an interview with the Today Show in July 2007, she said, "...until we reached Book Seven, views of what happens after death and so on... would give away a lot of what was coming. So... yes, my belief and my struggling with religious belief and so on I think is quite apparent in this book."^[170]

Legal disputes[link]

Rowling, her publishers, and Time Warner, the owner of the rights to the Harry Potter films, have taken numerous legal actions to protect their copyright. The worldwide popularity of the Harry Potter series has led to the appearance of a number of locally produced, unauthorised sequels and other derivative works, sparking efforts to ban or contain them.^[171]

Another area of legal dispute involves a series of injunctions obtained by Rowling and her publishers to prohibit anyone from reading her books before their official release date.^[172] The injunction drew fire from civil liberties and free speech campaigners and sparked debates over the "right to read".^[173][174]

Relationship with the press[link]

Rowling has had a difficult relationship with the press. She admits to being "thin-skinned" and dislikes the fickle nature of reporting. "They went in one day from saying, 'She's got writer's block' to saying, 'She's been self-indulgent'", she told The Times in 2003, "And I thought, well, what a difference 24 hours makes." Rowling disputes her reputation as a recluse who hates to be interviewed.^[175] In 2001, the Press Complaints Commission upheld a complaint by Rowling over a series of unauthorised photographs of her with her daughter on the beach in Mauritius published in OK! Magazine.^[176] In 2007, Rowling's young son, David, assisted by Rowling and her husband, lost a court fight to ban publication of a photograph of him. The photo, taken by a photographer using a long-range lens, was subsequently published in a Sunday Express article featuring Rowling's family life and motherhood.^[20] The judgment was overturned in David's favour in May 2008.^[177][178]

Rowling has said she particularly dislikes the British tabloid the Daily Mail, which made references to a stalker Rowling insists does not exist, and conducted interviews with her estranged ex-husband. As one journalist noted, "Harry's Uncle Vernon is a grotesque philistine of violent tendencies and remarkably little brain. It is not difficult to guess which newspaper Rowling gives him to read [in Goblet of Fire]."^[179]

Some have speculated that Rowling's fraught relationship with the press was the inspiration behind the character Rita Skeeter, a gossipy celebrity journalist who first appears in Goblet of Fire, but Rowling noted in 2000 that the character actually predates her rise to fame: "People have asked me whether Rita Skeeter was invented [to reflect Harry Potter's popularity], but in fact she was always planned."^[180] "I tried to put Rita in Philosopher's Stone – you know when Harry walks into the Leaky Cauldron for the first time and everyone says, "Mr. Potter you're back!", I wanted to put a journalist in there. She wasn't called Rita then but she was a woman. And then I thought, as I looked at the plot overall, I thought, that's not really where she fits best, she fits best in Four when Harry's supposed to come to terms with his fame."^[181]

In September 2011, Rowling was named a "core participant" in the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press, as one of dozens of celebrities who may have been the victim of phone hacking.^[182] On 24 November 2011, Rowling gave evidence before the inquiry; although she was not suspected to have been the victim of phone hacking (she "hardly used her phone in the 90s", she said),^[183] her testimony included accounts of photographers camping on her doorstep, her fiance being duped into giving his home address to a journalist masquerading as a tax official,^[183] a journalist leaving a note inside her then-five-year-old daughter's schoolbag, and an attempt by the Sun to "blackmail" her into a photo opportunity in exchange for the return of a stolen manuscript.^[184] Rowling claimed she had to leave her former home in Merchiston, Edinburgh because of press intrusion.^[184]

Awards and honours[link]

• 1997: Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, Gold Award for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
• 1998: Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, Gold Award for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• 1998: British Children's Book of the Year, winner Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
• 1999: Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, Gold Award for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• 1999: National Book Awards Children's Book of the Year, winner Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
• 1999: Whitbread Children's Book of the Year, winner Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• 2000: British Book Awards, Author of the Year
• 2000: Order of the British Empire, Officer
• 2000: Locus Award, winner Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
• 2001: Hugo Award for Best Novel, winner Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
• 2003: Premio Príncipe de Asturias, Concord
• 2003: Bram Stoker Award for Best Work for Young Readers, winner Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• 2006: British Book of the Year, winner for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
• 2007: Blue Peter Badge, Gold
• 2008: British Book Awards, Outstanding Achievement
• 2009: Légion d'honneur, Chevalier, presented by French President Nicolas Sarkozy
• 2010: Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award, inaugural award winner
• 2011: British Academy Film Awards, Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema for the Harry Potter film series, shared with David Heyman, cast and crew
• 2012: Freedom of the City of London
• Honorary degrees: St Andrews University, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University, University of Exeter, Harvard University

Publications[link]

[edit] Harry Potter series

1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (26 June 1997)
2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2 July 1998)
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (8 July 1999)
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (8 July 2000)
5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (21 June 2003)
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (16 July 2005)
7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (21 July 2007)

Other books[link]

• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (supplement to the Harry Potter series) (2001)
• Quidditch Through the Ages (supplement to the Harry Potter series) (2001)
• The Tales of Beedle the Bard (supplement to the Harry Potter series) (2008)

Adult books[link]

• The Casual Vacancy (27 September 2012)

Short story[link]

• Harry Potter prequel (July 2008)

Articles[link]

• Anelli, Melissa (2008). Foreword to Harry, A History: The True Story of a Boy Wizard, His Fans, and Life Inside the Harry Potter Phenomenon. Pocket Books.
• Brown, Gordon (2006). Introduction to "Ending Child Poverty" in Moving Britain Forward. Selected Speeches 1997–2006. Bloomsbury.
• McNeil, Gil and Brown, Sarah, editors (2002). Foreword to the anthology Magic. Bloomsbury.
• Rowling, J.K. (2008, 5 June). "The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination". Harvard Magazine.
• Rowling, J.K. (2009, 30 April). "Gordon Brown – The 2009 Time 100". Time Magazine.
• Rowling, J.K. (2010, 14 April). "The Single Mother's Manifesto". The Times.
• Sussman, Peter Y., editor (2006, 26 July). "The First It Girl: J.K. Rowling reviews Decca: the Letters of Jessica Mitford. The Daily Telegraph.

References[link]