What was there in the beginning?

Creation of the World

In the begining there was only chaos. Then out of the void appeared Erebus, the unknowable place
where death dwells, and Night. All else was empty, silent, endless, darkness. Then somehow Love
was born bringing a start of order. From Love came Light and Day. Once there was Light and
Day, Gaea, the earth appeared.

Then Erebus slept with Night, who gave birth to Ether, the heavenly light, and to Day the earthly
light. Then Night alone produced Doom, Fate, Death, Sleep, Dreams, Nemesis, and others that come
to man out of darkness.

Meanwhile Gaea alone gave birth to Uranus, the heavens. Uranus became Gaea's mate covering her
on all sides. Together they produced the three Cyclopes, the three Hecatoncheires, and
twelve Titans.

However, Uranus was a bad father and husband. He hated the Hecatoncheires. He imprisoned them
by pushing them into the hidden places of the earth, Gaea's womb. This angered Gaea and she
ploted against Uranus. She made a flint sickle and tried to get her children to attack Uranus. All
were too afraid except, the youngest Titan, Cronus.

Gaea and Cronus set up an ambush of Uranus as he lay with Gaea at night. Cronus grabed his father
and castrated him, with the stone sickle, throwing the severed genitales into the ocean. The fate of
Uranus is not clear. He either died, withdrew from the earth, or exiled himself to Italy. As he
departed he promised that Cronus and the Titans would be punished. From his spilt blood came
the Giants, the Ash Tree Nymphs, and the Erinnyes. From the sea foam where his genitales fell
came Aphrodite.

Cronus became the next ruler. He imprisoned the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires in Tartarus. He
married his sister Rhea, under his rule the Titans had many offspring. He ruled for many ages.
However, Gaea and Uranus both had prophesied that he would be overthrown by a son. To avoid
this Cronus swallowed each of his children as they were born. Rhea was angry at the treatment of
the children and ploted against Cronus. When it came time to give birth to her sixth child, Rhea hid
herself, then she left the child to be raised by nymphs. To concel her act she wrapped a stone in
swaddling cloths and passed it off as the baby to Cronus, who swallowed it.

This child was Zeus. He grew into a handsome youth on Crete. He consulted Metis on how to defeat
Cronus. She prepaired a drink for Cronus design to make him vomit up the other children. Rhea
convinced Cronus to accept his son and Zeus was allowed to return to Mount Olympus as Cronus's
cupbearer. This gave Zeus the opertunity to slip Cronus the specially prepaired drink. This worked
as planned and the other five children were vomitted up. Being gods they were unharmed. They
were thankful to Zeus and made him their leader.

Cronus was yet to be defeated. He and the Titans, except Prometheus, Epimetheus, and Oceanus,
fought to retain their power. Atlas became their leader in battle and it looked for some time as
though they would win and put the young gods down. However, Zeus was cunning. He went down
to Tartarus and freed the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires. Prometheus joined Zeus as well. He
returned to battle with his new allies. The Cyclopes provided Zeus with lighting bolts for weapons.
The Hecatoncheires he set in ambush armed with boulders. With the time right, Zeus retreated
drawing the Titans into the Hecatoncheires's ambush. The Hecatoncheires rained down hundreds of
boulders with such a fury the Titans thought the mountains were falling on them. They broke and
ran giving Zeus victory.

Zeus exiled the Titans who had fought against him into Tartarus. Except for Atlas, who was singled
out for the special punishment of holding the world on his shoulders.

However, even after this victory Zeus was not safe. Gaea angry that her children had been
imprisoned gave birth to a last offspring,Typhoeus. Typhoeus was so fearsome that most of the gods
fled. However, Zeus faced the monster and flinging his lighting bolts was able to kill it. Typhoeus
was burried under Mount Etna in Sicily.

Much later a final challenge to Zeus rule was made by the Giants. They went so far as to attempt to
invade Mount Olympus, piling mountain upon mountain in an effort to reach the top. But, the gods
had grown strong and with the help of Heracles the Giants were subdued or killed.
I am an African child
Born with a skin the colour of chocolate
Bright, brilliant and articulate
Strong and bold; I’m gifted
Talented enough to be the best
I am an African child

Often the target of pity

My future is not confined to charity
Give me the gift of a lifetime;
Give me a dream, a door of opportunity;
I will thrive
I am an African child

Do not hide my fault

show me my wrong
I am like any other;
Teach me to dream
And I will become
I am an African child

I am the son, daughter of the soil

Rich in texture and content
Full of potential for a better tomorrow
Teach me discipline, teach me character, teach me hard work
Teach me to think like the star within me
I am an African child

I can be extra-ordinary
call me William Kamkwamba the Inventor;
Give me a library with books
Give me a scrap yard and discarded electronics
Give me a broken bicycle;
Plus the freedom to be me
And I will build you a wind mill
I am an African child

We are the new generation

Not afraid to be us
Uniquely gifted, black and talented
Shining like the stars we are
We are the children of Africa
Making the best of us
Yes! I am an African child

- See more at: http://www.sierraexpressmedia.com/archives/11296#sthash.GMPaL63y.dpuf

 In linguistics, an adjective is a "describing word", the main syntactic role of which
is to qualify a nounor noun phrase, giving more information about the object
signified.[1]

Adjectives are one of the traditional eight Englishparts of speech,

although linguists today distinguish adjectives from words such
as determiners that formerly were considered to be adjectives. In the immediately
previous sentence, "traditional" is an adjective and "eight", while known
traditionally as an adjective, is now classified as a determiner; and in the
preceding paragraph, both "main" and "syntactic" are traditional adjectives.
Contents
[hide]

 1 Distribution
 2 Adjectives and adverbs
 3 Determiners
 4 Types of use
 5 Adjectival phrases
 6 Other noun modifiers
 7 Adjective order
 8 Comparison of adjectives
 9 Restrictiveness
 10 Agreement
 11 See also
 12 References
 13 Bibliography
 14 External links
Distribution[edit]

Most, but not all, languages have adjectives. Those that lack them typically use
words of another part of speech, often verbs, to serve the samesemantic function;
an example, such a language might have a verb that means "to be big", and
would use as attributive verb construction analogous to "big-being house" to
express what English expresses as "big house". Even in languages that do have
adjectives, one language's adjective might not be another's; for example, whereas
English uses "to be hungry" (hungry being an adjective), Dutch and French use
"honger hebben" and "avoir faim," respectively (literally "to have
hunger", hunger being a noun), and whereas Hebrew uses the adjective "‫"זקוק‬
(zaqūq, roughly "in need of"), English uses the verb "to need".

Adjectives form an open class of words in most languages that have them; that is,
it is relatively common for new adjectives to be formed via such processes
as derivation. Bantu languages are well known for having only a small closed
class of adjectives, however, and new adjectives are not easily derived. Similarly,
native Japanese adjectives (i-adjectives) are a closed class (as are native verbs),
although nouns (which are open class) may be used in the genitive and there is
the separate class of adjectival nouns (na-adjectives), which is also open, and
functions similarly to noun adjuncts in English.
Adjectives and adverbs[edit]

Many languages, including English, distinguish between adjectives, which qualify

nouns and pronouns, and adverbs, which modify verbs, adjectives, and other
adverbs. Not all languages have exactly this distinction and many languages,
including English, have words that can function as both. For example, in
English fast is an adjective in "a fast car" (where it qualifies the noun car), but an
adverb in "he drove fast" (where it modifies the verb drove).

In Dutch and German, adjectives and adverbs are usually identical in form and
many grammarians do not make the distinction, but patterns of inflection can
suggest a difference:
Eine kluge neue Idee.
A clever new idea.
Eine klug ausgereifte Idee.
A cleverly developed idea.

Whether these are distinct parts of speech or distinct usages of the same
part of speech is a question of analysis. It is worth noting that while German
linguistic terminology distinguishes adverbiale fromadjektivische Formen,
school German refers to both as Eigenschaftswörter ("property words").
Determiners[edit]

Main article: Determiner

Linguists today distinguish determiners from adjectives, considering them to

be two separate parts of speech (or lexical categories), but formerly
determiners were considered to be adjectives in some of their uses. In
English dictionaries, which typically still do not treat determiners as their
own part of speech, determiners are often recognizable by being listed both
as adjectives and as pronouns. Determiners are words that are neither
nouns nor pronouns, yet reference a thing already in context. Determiners
generally do this by indicating definiteness (as in a vs. the), quantity (as
in one vs. some vs. many), or another such property.
Types of use[edit]

A given occurrence of an adjective can generally be classified into one of

four kinds of uses:

1. Attributive adjectives are part of the noun phrase headed by the noun
they modify; for example,happy is an attributive adjective in "happy
people". In some languages, attributive adjectives precede their
nouns; in others, they follow their nouns; and in yet others, it depends
on the adjective, or on the exact relationship of the adjective to the
noun. In English, attributive adjectives usually precede their nouns in
simple phrases, but often follow their nouns when the adjective is
modified or qualified by a phrase acting as an adverb. For example: "I
saw three happy kids", and "I saw three kids happy enough to jump up
and down with glee." See also Postpositive adjective.
2. Predicative adjectives are linked via a copula or other linking
mechanism to the noun or pronoun they modify; for example, happy is
 a predicate adjective in "they are happy" and in "that made me
happy." (See also: Predicative expression, Subject complement.)
3. Absolute adjectives have meanings that are implicitly unable to be
used comparatively or superlatively; for example, dead is an absolute
adjective, as the words deader or deadest are not normally used to
describe states of death.
4. Nominal adjectives act almost as nouns. One way this can happen is
if a noun is elided and an attributive adjective is left behind. In the
sentence, "I read two books to them; he preferred the sad book, but
she preferred the happy", happy is a nominal adjective, short for
"happy one" or "happy book". Another way this can happen is in
phrases like "out with the old, in with the new", where "the old" means,
"that which is old" or "all that is old", and similarly with "the new". In
such cases, the adjective functions either as a mass noun (as in the
preceding example) or as a plural count noun, as in "The meek shall
inherit the Earth", where "the meek" means "those who are meek" or
"all who are meek".
Adjectival phrases[edit]

Main article: Adjectival phrase

An adjective acts as the head of an adjectival phrase. In the simplest case,

an adjectival phrase consists solely of the adjective; more complex
adjectival phrases may contain one or more adverbs modifying the adjective
("very strong"), or one or more complements (such as "worth several
dollars", "full of toys", or "eager to please"). In English, attributive adjectival
phrases that include complements typically follow their subject ("an
evildoer devoid of redeeming qualities").
Other noun modifiers[edit]

In many languages, including English, it is possible for nouns to modify

other nouns. Unlike adjectives, nouns acting as modifiers (called attributive
nouns or noun adjuncts) usually are not predicative; a beautiful park is
beautiful, but a car park is not "car". In plain English, the modifier often
indicates origin ("Virginia reel"), purpose ("work clothes"), or
semantic patient ("man eater"), however, it may generally indicate almost
any semantic relationship. It is also common for adjectives to
be derived from nouns, as
inboyish, birdlike, behavioral, famous, manly, angelic, and so on.

Many languages have special verbal forms called participles that can act as
noun modifiers. In many languages, including English, participles are
historically adjectives, and have retained most of their original function as
such. English examples of this include relieved (the past participle of the
verb relieve, used as an adjective in sentences such as "I am so relieved to
see you"), spoken (as in "the spoken word"), andgoing (the present
participle of the verb go, used as an adjective in sentences such as "Ten
dollars per hour is the going rate").

Other constructs that often modify nouns include prepositional phrases (as
in "a rebel without a cause"),relative clauses (as in "the man who wasn't
there"), other adjective clauses (as in "the bookstore where he worked"),
and infinitive phrases (as in "a cake to die for").

In relation, many nouns take complements such as content clauses (as in

"the idea that I would do that"); these are not commonly considered
modifiers, however.
Adjective order[edit]

In many languages, attributive adjectives usually occur in a specific order. In

general, the adjective order in English is:[2][3]
 1. Determiners — articles, adverbs, and other limiters.
2. Observation — postdeterminers and limiter adjectives (e.g., a real
hero, a perfect idiot) and adjectives subject to subjective measure
(e.g., beautiful, interesting), or objects with a value (e.g., best,
cheapest, costly)
3. Size and Shape — adjectives subject to objective measure (e.g.,
wealthy, large, round), and physical properties such as speed.
4. Age — adjectives denoting age (e.g., young, old, new, ancient, six-
year-old).
5. Color — adjectives denoting color (e.g., red, black, pale).
6. Origin — denominal adjectives denoting source of noun (e.g., French,
American, Canadian).
7. Material — denominal adjectives denoting what something is made of
(e.g., woolen, metallic, wooden).
8. Qualifier — final limiter, often regarded as part of the noun (e.g.,
rocking chair, hunting cabin, passenger car, book cover).

So, in English, adjectives pertaining to size precede adjectives pertaining to

age ("little old", not "old little"), which in turn generally precede adjectives
pertaining to color ("old white", not "white old"). So, we would say "One
(quantity) nice (opinion) little (size) round (shape) old (age) white (color)
brick (material) house."

This order may be more rigid in some languages than others; in some, like
Spanish, it may only be a default (unmarked) word order, with other orders
being permissible.

Due partially to borrowings from French, English has some adjectives that
follow the noun aspostmodifiers, called postpositive adjectives, such as time
immemorial and attorney general. Adjectives may even change meaning
depending on whether they precede or follow, as in proper: They live in a
proper town (a real town, not a village) vs. They live in the town proper (in
the town itself, not in the suburbs). All adjectives can follow nouns in certain
constructions, such as tell me something new.
Comparison of adjectives[edit]

Main articles: Comparison (grammar) and Comparative

In many languages, some adjectives are comparable. For example, a

person may be "polite", but another person may be "more polite", and a third
person may be the "most polite" of the three. The word "more" here modifies
the adjective "polite" to indicate a comparison is being made, and "most"
modifies the adjective to indicate an absolute comparison (a superlative).
Among languages that allow adjectives to be compared, different means are
used to indicate the comparison. Many languages do not distinguish
comparative from superlative forms.

In English, there are three different means to indicate comparison: most

simple adjectives take the suffixes "-er" and "-est", as
"big", "bigger", "biggest";

a very few adjectives are irregular:

"good", "better", "best",
"bad", "worse", "worst",
"old", "elder", "eldest" (in certain contexts only; the adjective is usually
regular)
"far", "farther/further", "farthest/furthest"
"many", "more", "most" (usually regarded as an adverb or determiner)
"little", "less", "least";

all others are compared by means of the words "more"

and "most". There is no simple rule to decide which
means is correct for any given adjective, however. The
general tendency is for simpler adjectives, and those
from Anglo-Saxon to take the suffixes, while longer
adjectives and those from French, Latin, Greekdo not—
but sometimes sound of the word is the deciding factor.

Many adjectives do not naturally lend themselves to

comparison. For example, some English speakers
would argue that it does not make sense to say that
one thing is "more ultimate" than another, or that
something is "most ultimate", since the word "ultimate"
is already absolute in its semantics. Such adjectives are
called non-comparable. Nevertheless, native speakers
will frequently play with the raised forms of adjectives of
this sort. Although "pregnant" is logically non-
comparable (either one is pregnant or not), it is not
uncommon to hear a sentence like "She looks more
and more pregnant each day", where a transference
has taken place: grammatically the adjective is
comparative but in fact it is the appearance that is being
compared. Likewise "extinct" and "equal" appear to be
non-comparable, but one might say that a language
about which nothing is known is "more extinct" than a
well-documented language with surviving literature but
no speakers, while George Orwell wrote "All animals
are equal, but some are more equal than others".
These cases may be viewed as implying that the base
form of the adjective is not as absolute in its semantics
as is usually thought.

Comparative and superlative forms are also

occasionally used for other purposes than comparison.
In English comparatives can be used to suggest that a
statement is only tentative or tendential: one might say
 "John is more the shy-and-retiring type," where the
comparative "more" is not really comparing him with
other people or with other impressions of him, but
rather, could be substituting for "on the whole". In
Italian, superlatives are frequently used to put strong
emphasis on an adjective: Bellissimo means "most
beautiful", but is in fact more commonly heard in the
sense "extremely beautiful".
Restrictiveness[edit]

Main article: Restrictiveness

Attributive adjectives, and other noun modifiers, may be

used either restrictively (helping to identify the noun's
referent, hence "restricting" its reference) or non-
restrictively (helping to describe an already-identified
noun). For example:
"He was a lazy sort, who would avoid a difficult task and fill his working
hours with easy ones."
"difficult" is restrictive - it tells us which tasks he avoids, distinguishing these
from the easy ones: "Only those tasks that are difficult".
"She had the job of sorting out the mess left by her predecessor, and she
performed this difficult taskwith great acumen."
"difficult" is non-restrictive - we already know which task it was, but the
adjective describes it more fully: "The aforementioned task, which (by the
way) is difficult"

In some languages, such as Spanish,

restrictiveness is consistently marked; for
example, in Spanish la tarea difícil means "the
difficult task" in the sense of "the task that is
difficult" (restrictive), whereas la difícil
 tarea means "the difficult task" in the sense of
"the task, which is difficult" (non-restrictive). In
English, restrictiveness is not marked on
adjectives, but is marked on relative clauses (the
difference between "the man who recognized
me was there" and "the man, who recognized me,
was there" being one of restrictiveness).
Agreement[edit]

In some languages, adjectives alter their form to

reflect the gender, case and number of the noun
that they describe. This is called agreement or
concord. Usually it takes the form of inflections at
the end of the word, as in Latin:
puella bona (good girl, feminine)

puellam bonam (good girl, feminine accusative/object case)

puer bonus (good boy, masculine)

pueri boni (good boys, masculine plural)

In the Celtic languages, however, initial

consonant lenition marks the adjective with a
feminine noun, as inIrish:
buachaill maith (good boy, masculine)

girseach mhaith (good girl, feminine)

Often a distinction is made here between

attributive and predicative usage. Whereas
English is an example of a language in
which adjectives never agree and French of
 a language in which they always agree, in
German they agree only when used
attributively, and in Hungarian only when
used predicatively.
The good (Ø) boys. The boys are good (Ø).

Les bons garçons. Les garçons sont bons.

Die braven Jungen. Die Jungen sind brav (Ø).

A jó (Ø) fiúk. A fiúk jók.