Spain

Coordinates: 40°N 4°W / 40°N 4°W / 40; -4

Spain (ⁱ/ˈspeɪn/; Spanish: España [esˈpaɲa]), officially the Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España), is a sovereign state largely located on the Iberian Peninsula in southwestern Europe, with archipelagos in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, and several small territories on and near the north African coast. Its mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar; to the north and northeast by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west and northwest by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean. Along with France and Morocco, it is one of only three countries to have both Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines. Extending to 1,214 km (754 mi), the Portugal–Spain border is the longest uninterrupted border within the European Union.

Spanish territory includes two archipelagos: the Balearic Islands, in the Mediterranean Sea, and the Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean off the African coast. It also includes two major exclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, in continental North Africa; and the islands and peñones (rocks) of Alborán, Alhucemas, Chafarinas and Vélez de la Gomera. With an area of 505,990 km² (195,360 sq mi), Spain is the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union, and the fourth largest country in Europe. By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union.

Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization created in 2006 by educator Salman Khan with the aim of providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. The organization produces short lectures in the form of YouTube videos. In addition to micro lectures, the organization's website features practice exercises and tools for educators. All resources are available for free to anyone around the world. The main language of the website is English, but the content is also available in other languages.

History

The founder of the organization, Salman Khan, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States to immigrant parents from Bangladesh and India. After earning three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (a BS in mathematics, a BS in electrical engineering and computer science, and an MEng in electrical engineering and computer science), he pursued an MBA from Harvard Business School.

In late 2004, Khan began tutoring his cousin Nadia who needed help with math using Yahoo!'s Doodle notepad.When other relatives and friends sought similar help, he decided that it would be more practical to distribute the tutorials on YouTube. The videos' popularity and the testimonials of appreciative students prompted Khan to quit his job in finance as a hedge fund analyst at Connective Capital Management in 2009, and focus on the tutorials (then released under the moniker "Khan Academy") full-time.

Peninsular Spain

Peninsular Spain refers to that part of Spanish territory located within the Iberian peninsula, thus excluding other parts of Spain: the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands, Ceuta, Melilla, and a number of islets and crags off the coast of Morocco known collectively as plazas de soberanía (places of sovereignty). In Spain it is mostly known simply as "the Peninsula". It has land frontiers with France and Andorra to the north; Portugal to the west; and the British territory of Gibraltar to the south.

Many inhabitants of peninsular Spain tend to conflate that region with Spain as a whole, disregarding the other territories mentioned above.

Characteristics

Peninsular Spain is the largest part of the country in area - 492,175 km² - and in population - 43,731,572. It contains 15 of the autonomous communities of Spain.

Occupying the central part of Spain, it possesses much greater resources and better interior and exterior communications than other parts of the country. To redress this imbalance, Spanish residents outside the peninsula receive a State subsidy for transport to and from the peninsula.

Peninsular War

The Peninsular War (1807–1814) was a military conflict between Napoleon's empire and the allied powers of Spain, Britain and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war started when French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807, and escalated in 1808 when France turned on Spain, its ally until then. The war on the peninsula lasted until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814, and is regarded as one of the first wars of national liberation, significant for the emergence of large-scale guerrilla warfare.

The Peninsular War overlaps with what the Spanish-speaking world calls the Guerra de la Independencia Española (Spanish War of Independence), which began with the Dos de Mayo Uprising on 2 May 1808 and ended on 17 April 1814. The French occupation destroyed the Spanish administration, which fragmented into quarrelling provincial juntas. In 1810, a reconstituted national government, the Cádiz Cortes—effectively a government-in-exile—fortified itself in Cádiz but could not raise effective armies because it was besieged by 70,000 French troops. British and Portuguese forces eventually secured Portugal, using it as a safe position from which to launch campaigns against the French army and to provide whatever supplies they could get to the Spanish, while the Spanish armies and guerrillas tied down vast numbers of Napoleon's troops. These combined regular and irregular allied forces prevented Napoleon's marshals from subduing the rebellious Spanish provinces by restricting French control of territory, and the war continued through years of stalemate.

Peninsular Spanish

Peninsular Spanish, also known as European Spanish and Iberian Spanish, refers to the varieties of the Spanish language spoken in the Iberian Peninsula, as opposed to the Spanish spoken in the Americas and in the Canary Islands. The related term Castilian Spanish is often applied to formal varieties of Spanish as spoken in Spain.

In phonology, the most prominent distinguishing element of Peninsular Spanish varieties, except for the southernmost ones, is the preservation of a distinction between the phonemes /s/ and /θ/, represented respectively with the letters ⟨s⟩ on one hand and ⟨z⟩, or ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e / i⟩, on the other. This is usually called distinción in Spanish, while the merger of both phonemes is called seseo. While in the Spanish of the Americas and in parts of southern Spain ⟨z⟩, ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e / i⟩, and ⟨s⟩, are typically read roughly like the English /s/, in the Peninsular dialects with distinción, ⟨z⟩, and ⟨c⟩ before ⟨e / i⟩, are read aloud as [θ], that is, the initial sound of the English word think. However, many Andalusian dialects and the Spanish spoken in the Canary Islands do not use distinción as a general rule, but rather use either seseo or ceceo.