Portuguese language

Portuguese (português or, in full, língua portuguesa) is a Romance language and the sole official language of Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, and São Tomé and Príncipe. It also has co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau. As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese and Portuguese creole speakers are also found in Goa, Daman and Diu in India; in Batticaloa on the east coast of Sri Lanka; in the Indonesian island of Flores; and in Malacca in Malaysia.

Portuguese is a part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia. With approximately 215 to 220 million native speakers and 260 million total speakers, Portuguese is usually listed as the fifth most natively spoken language in the world, the third-most spoken European language in the world in terms of native speakers, and a major language of the Southern Hemisphere. It is also the most spoken language in South America and the second-most spoken in Latin America after Spanish, and is an official language of the European Union, Mercosul and the African Union.

Argentina

Coordinates: 34°S 64°W / 34°S 64°W / -34; -64

Argentina (ⁱ/ˌɑːrdʒənˈtiːnə/; Spanish: [aɾxenˈtina]), officially the Argentine Republic (Spanish: República Argentina), is a federal republic located in southeastern South America. Sharing the bulk of the Southern Cone with its neighbour Chile, it is bordered by Bolivia and Paraguay to the north; Brazil to the northeast; Uruguay and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east; Chile to the west and the Drake Passage to the south.

With a mainland area of 2,780,400 km² (1,073,500 sq mi), Argentina is the eighth-largest country in the world, the second-largest in Latin America, and the largest Spanish-speaking one. Argentina claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica, the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas), South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The country is subdivided into twenty-three provinces (Spanish: provincias, singular provincia) and one autonomous city (ciudad autónoma), Buenos Aires, which is the federal capital of the nation (Spanish: Capital Federal) as decided by Congress. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a federal system.

Chess notation

Chess notation is the term for several systems that have developed to record either the moves made in a game of chess or the position of pieces on a chessboard. The earliest systems of notation used lengthy narratives to describe each move; these gradually evolved into terser notation systems. Currently algebraic chess notation is the accepted standard and is widely used. Algebraic notation has several variations. Descriptive chess notation was used in English- and Spanish-language literature until the late 20th century, but is now obsolete. There are some special systems for international correspondence chess. Portable Game Notation is used when working with computer chess programs. Systems also exist for transmission using Morse code over telegraph or radio.

Recording moves

Some move-recording notations are designed mainly for use by human players; others are designed for use by computers.

Notation systems for humans

In recognized competitions, all players are required to record all the moves of both players in order to resolve disputes about whether a player has made an illegal move and what the position should now be. In addition, if there is a time limit rule that requires each player to complete a specified number of moves in a specified time, as there is in most serious competition, an accurate count of the moves must be kept. All chess coaches strongly recommend the recording of one's games so that one can look for improvements in one's play. The algebraic and descriptive notations are also used in books about chess.

Brazil

Coordinates: 10°S 52°W / 10°S 52°W / -10; -52

Brazil (ⁱ/brəˈzɪl/; Portuguese: Brasil [bɾaˈziw] ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil,  listen  ), is the largest sovereign state in both South America and the Latin American region. It is the world's fifth-largest country, both by geographical area and by population. It is the largest Portuguese-speaking country in the world, and the only one in the Americas.

Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coastline of 7,491 km (4,655 mi). It borders all other South American countries except Ecuador and Chile and occupies 47.3 percent of the continent of South America. Its Amazon River basin includes a vast tropical forest, home to diverse wildlife, a variety of ecological systems, and extensive natural resources spanning numerous protected habitats. This unique environmental heritage makes Brazil one of 17 megadiverse countries, and is the subject of significant global interest and debate regarding deforestation and environmental protection.

Gabriel Mercado

Gabriel Mercado (born 18 March 1987 in Puerto Madryn, Chubut) is an Argentine football defender. He currently plays for River Plate of the Argentine Primera División.

Career

Club

Mercado made his professional debut for Racing Club on 21 February 2007 in a 0-1 home defeat to San Lorenzo. He went to establish himself as a regular member of the Racing first team. In July 2010, Mercado joined Estudiantes de La Plata that paid 800,000 US dollars for 50% of his rights.

National team

Mercado represented the Argentina Under-20 team at the 2007 South American Youth Championship in Paraguay and at the 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Canada.

Mercado made his full international debut for the Argentina national team after being called up to join Diego Maradona's squad of Argentina based players who beat Jamaica 2-1 on 10 February 2010.

Honours

Club

River Plate