Latin

Latin (ⁱ/ˈlætᵻn/; Latin: lingua latīna, IPA: [ˈlɪŋɡʷa laˈtiːna]) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets.

Latin was originally spoken in Latium, Italy. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, initially in Italy and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Romanian. Latin and French have contributed many words to the English language. Latin – along with Greek – roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine.

By the late Roman Republic (75 BC), Old Latin had been standardized into Classical Latin. Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence.Late Latin is the written language beginning in the 3rd century AD and Medieval Latin the language used from the ninth century until the Renaissance which used Renaissance Latin. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved. Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the official language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church.

Latins (Italic tribe)

The Latins (Latin: Latini), sometimes known as the Latians, were an Italic tribe which included the early inhabitants of the city of Rome. From about 1000 BC, the Latins inhabited the small region known to the Romans as Old Latium (Latium Vetus), that is, the area between the river Tiber and the promontory of Mount Circeo 100 kilometres (62 mi) SE of Rome.

The Latins were an Indo-European people who probably migrated into the Italian peninsula during the late Bronze Age (1200–900 BC). Their language, Latin, belonged to the Italic branch of Indo-European. Their material culture, known as the Latial culture, was a distinctive subset of the Iron Age Villanovan culture that appeared in parts of the Italian peninsula after 1000 BC. Although divided from an early stage into communities which mutated into several independent, and often warring, city-states, the Latins maintained close culturo-religious relations until they were definitively united politically under Rome in 338 BC, and for centuries beyond. These included common festivals and religious sanctuaries.

Rhythm

Rhythm (from Greek ῥυθμός, rhythmos, "any regular recurring motion, symmetry" (Liddell and Scott 1996)) generally means a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions" (Anon. 1971, 2537). This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time can apply to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or frequency of anything from microseconds to millions of years.

In the performance arts rhythm is the timing of events on a human scale; of musical sounds and silences, of the steps of a dance, or the meter of spoken language and poetry. Rhythm may also refer to visual presentation, as "timed movement through space" (Jirousek 1995, ) and a common language of pattern unites rhythm with geometry. In recent years, rhythm and meter have become an important area of research among music scholars. Recent work in these areas includes books by Maury Yeston (Yeston 1976), Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, Jonathan Kramer, Christopher Hasty (Hasty 1997), Godfried Toussaint (Toussaint 2005), William Rothstein, and Joel Lester (Lester 1986).

Isochrony

Isochrony is the postulated rhythmic division of time into equal portions by a language. Rhythm is an aspect of prosody, others being intonation, stress and tempo of speech.

Three alternative ways in which a language can divide time are postulated:

The idea as such was first expressed by Kenneth L. Pike in 1945, though the concept of language naturally occurring in chronologically and rhythmically equal measures is found at least as early as 1775 (in Prosodia Rationalis). This has implications for language typology: D. Abercrombie claimed "As far as is known, every language in the world is spoken with one kind of rhythm or with the other ... French, Telugu and Yoruba ... are syllable-timed languages, ... English, Russian and Arabic ... are stress-timed languages'. While many linguists find the idea of different rhythm types appealing, empirical studies have not been able to find acoustic correlates of the postulated types, calling into question the validity of these types.

Rhythm (Wildbirds & Peacedrums album)

Rhythm is the fourth full-length album by Swedish husband and wife duo Wildbirds & Peacedrums, released on The Leaf Label on 3rd November 2014.

Background

Rhythm was written, recorded and produced by Mariam Wallentin and Andreas Werliin in their Stockholm studio and focuses almost exclusively on Wallentin's vocals and Werliin's percussion. “Sound-wise we wanted it to feel like a live experience,” Werliin explained in an interview. “Almost every song is one take. We recorded standing in the same room, no screens or isolation, looking each other in the eyes." The band described how after several busy years of touring they wanted to make a "going back to our roots" album, recorded in their own space with no time limits or external pressures.

Critical reception

On the Metacritic website, which aggregates reviews from critics and assigns a normalised rating out of 100, Rhythm received a score of 81, based on 2 mixed and 9 positive reviews.All About Jazz wrote that "Rhythm has rhythm, but it's also brimming over with melody, harmony and drama" and also praised Wallentin and Werliin's production, saying that it "gives the sound such richness and strength that its energy is almost palpable".