Apart from the large ethnic groups, the multi-ethnic Kingdom of Hungary also included several less numerous historic autochthonous and alochthonous ethnic groups. We can describe the initially nomadic Romany group as relatively late arrivals. Thanks to their ethnic difference they were symbolically and often also really excluded from the majority society of the Central European region. As a result of some degree of isolation from the main social developmental currents, the Romany still retained various specific characteristics in late 19th century Hungary, in spite of more or less intensive efforts to achieve their complete integration. One of the important instruments for monitoring the success of individual measures and preparing evidence for their formulation was various types of census. From the point of view of content and methodology, the most important is the census of Romany in Hungary at the end of January 1893. It is a unique source of information on the character of the Romany population in Hungary at the end of the 19th century. The aim of the paper is to consider the background to the census of Romany in 1893, its causes, preparation and implementation, as well as to analyse the main and some specific characteristics of the Romany population of Hungary in 1893 on the basis of the available published data.
Drawing on the English National Curriculum for primary and secondary schools as well as articles and books, the author examines three aspects of teaching English as mother tongue. Their order — grammar, language, literacy — is not accidental, for it reflects developmental tendencies. In the 1980s and 1990s, the debate on mother tongue teaching and learning was dominated by grammar, which was reflected in the slogan ‘return to grammar;’ in the 1990s language was considered the most important part of the National Curriculum (language across the curriculum), while in the 2000s literacy came to the fore. Literacy also underwent its own development: from literacy hour, through literacy across the curriculum to the National Literacy Strategy. Literacy in English schools is a broad concept, encompassing reading and writing as well as speaking and listening skills. While the emphasis on teaching grammar did not bring the expected results — for, as Andrews and others (2004, 2005) have shown, grammar has little impact on the development of writing skills — the great emphasis by teachers and the public at large on reading and writing has led to a definite improvement in those skills. This is confirmed by tests carried out among eleven-year-olds: the reading level expected for the age rose from 78% in 1999 to 86% in 2009; the expected writing level rose from 54% in 1999 to 67% in 2006 and has remained on this level since.
This article examines the ways in which the Psalter was read and contemplated by rulers in medieval Latinitas. From Merovingian and Carolingian Times onwards until the Early Modern period, this book of the Bible served as a textual framework for royal piety as expressed, among other ways, in prayer. The Psalter travelled with the rulers, accompanying them to their chapels and bedrooms. This book, and no other, turned medieval rulers into cultivated readers - at least at one level of literacy. Investigating the 'private' use of the Psalter by royal owners gives us an opportunity to approach practices of private devotional reading (silent and semi-silent, meditative and polysemic). At the same time, the popularity of reading aloud before the king directs our attention to the ways communities were formed at royal courts through aurality and collective prayer. It also sheds light on the various uses of Psalter manuscripts, which were treated as physical objects of great value: these artefacts were produced on individual demand, were offered as precious gifts, and passed from one generation to another through provisions in last wills and testaments. The study of the uses of the Psalter by medieval lay elites is also relevant for the social history of language, as almost everywhere in Europe the Psalter was among the first books of the Bible to be translated into the local vernacular. These translations were made very often under the patronage of kings and queens. The comparative history of the Psalter as a book in all royal hands also provides clues on narratives regarding the practice of devotional reading. Medieval authors usually express their astonishment at the ruler reading, emphasising his effort breaking through both the barrier of the Latin language and of technical semi-literacy or illiteracy. This kind of description appears so often that one may assume the existence of an elaborated narrative strategy to stress the unusual character of royal literacy.
This study focuses on question of literacy on the court of the aristocratic Drugeth family. Originated in the Kingdom of Naples, Drugeths were collaborators and adherents of Hungarian king Charles Robert of Anjou. For a longer period of time they were palatines of Hungarian kingdom (1323-1341) and one of the most powerful aristocratic families of the era - they were foremen of the new Angevin nobility. The paper focuses not only on the question of literacy within the framework of the chancellery and public service of the Drugeth family, but as well on the literacy, that was a part of the culture and ereryday life or this family. The author particularly resolves whether the palatine William Drugeth was literate and whether he researched in the Scepus law.
The aim of the article is to approach the formation of epigraphic culture in Tekov until 1650 on the basis of field and archival research. The article focuses on cultural and economic changes that have affected written culture in general, especially the inscription culture, discusses the development of writing, clients and authors of historical inscriptions. Readers will get acquainted with the historical specifics of the Tekov region and the most important monuments in the epigraphic context.
The study examines the official literacy of a characteristic region of medieval Hungary. This territory is the Hegyalja, which located in the north-eastern part of the Medieval Hungarian Kingdom, and where some important viticulturist market-towns located from the time of the Middle Ages. These settlements owned developed official written culture. They had the right to write vineyard sale contracts and to corroborate them with their own seals. From the 14th to the 16th centuries these documents were written exclusively in Latin, but from the mid-16th century, Hungarian language also started to spread in the region. The main aim of this study is to present this development between the 14th and the 17th centuries.
The aim of this paper is to approach non-Catholic rural writers during Counter-Reformation period in Czech lands with the stress on the 18th century relating to the questions of literacy and education. The first half of the paper contains enumeration of the characteristics of the scribe archetype, acquired by analysis of popular publication of the church historian František Bednář “Jiskry v temnu”. The results of the work with such a type of a source material make a picture of a “second life“ of the literacy available, in such a form, as it was perceived by the protestant society of 19th and 20th centuries and partly remained actual till the present. Characteristic features attributed to the scribes – often idealised and actualised according to the actual “social demand” are in the second part of the presentation confronted with the actual state of research in the topic introduced on the aspects of the biographs of two writers from Bohemian-Moravian Highlands – Řehoř Jakubec (1726 - 1786) and Tomáš Juren (1750 - 1829).
Though present on the East African coast for nearly a thousand years, Islam only began its expansion into the interior in the nineteenth century. One of the most significant areas of Islamic penetration in East and Central Africa was the Kingdom of Buganda, where Islam predated the arrival of Christianity by several decades and secured a strong foothold. Buganda was won to Christianity amidst much turmoil and bitter struggle between the adherents of Islam and of two forms of Christianity, represented by Anglican Church Missionary Society and Roman Catholic White Fathers, for the dominant position in the kingdom. Despite severe defeats suffered in Buganda in the late 1880s and throughout the 1890s Islam recovered and survived as a minority religion. However, the latent fear of Islam influenced the language policy and ruined the prospects of Kiswahili in Uganda.
The sceptics argue that a border persists between the textual and the visual in the new hypertext art. This critical position results not only from the empirical experience of a perceptive user of hypertext, but also from the need to promptly and at least partially address the problem of interpretation of textual and visual segments of literary projects received in an electronic environment without the authority of the traditional dichotomy between the textual and the visual. It seems problematic to ask whether the reader/user perceives textual segments in the new digital medium according to the conventions received from the culture of printed text and the visual segments according to the tradition of visual art, or differently. We could ask whether there exists an assumption according to which a reflective user could achieve 'high focus' on perceived textual and visual segments. Our working explanation of 'high focus' is based on the idea that 'high focus' results from the cooperation of information received at the same time by verbal and visual information channels. The authoress demonstrates the phenomenon of 'high focus' in fine art in the context of 'ecphrasis' and 'subversive ecphrasis' in the work with 'semantic enclave' (Snezna sova by Purkyne) by building on the project Shredder by M. Napier. The analysis confirms the argument by Didi-Huberman that visuality is a phenomenon that complicates the epistemological status of an image.
Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew, which is not obvious to all present-day Christians, which is why they should be reminded of it. For some Jews, Jesus is becoming part of Jewish tradition these days, which is neither obvious to all, which is why the author draws attention to this dimension of contemporary Judaic faith. But both one and the other aspect are but an external manifestation of much more profound processes examined in this article. The ever broader scope of the findings of archaeological, linguistic, religious or mass media studies (which examine the impact of technological change on the methods of passing down tradition), as well as anthropological ones are responsible for the fact that its historical nature and an element of chance are nowadays widely accepted phenomena. The realization of this simple fact could significantly simplify mutual relations between the followers of Judaism and Christianity. Seen from this perspective, Jesus will be a uniting, not a divisive, factor.
Though the existence of script in some regions of Africa, in ancient Egypt, Kush, Nubia or the Ethiopian highlands led to the spread of literacy and of written knowledge, orality was the norm in many African societies in the past, and in much of Africa, historical and other knowledge remained to be constructed, maintained and conveyed by word of mouth, in poetic, musical and dramatic settings and graphic symbolism closely related to speech. Cultural contacts with Islam and later on with Christianity brought writing systems, Arabic and Latin scripts and literacy replaced orality and prompted the production of written knowledge. The arrival of Islam and somewhat later of Christianity into the kingdoms of Buganda and Bunyoro brought literacy in its train and led to the development of a rich tradition of historical writing.
The process of the up-country Islamic expansion, away from the Islamised towns situated on the long East African coast, began only in the nineteenth-century. Islam advanced slowly and gradually along a network of caravan routes through trading contacts with some African peoples, spread by ordinary adherents, Kiswahili-speaking merchants, who penetrated the interior of Eastern Africa in search for ivory and slaves. Economic and trading interests and activities played also a role in the spread of Islam at the southernmost tip of the African continent. Many slaves and political prisoners sent to the Cape during the period 1652 to 1795 were Muslims. Even though the idea of a comparison between Eastern and Southern Africa may arouse contradictory reactions among the Islam ś students, an attempt will be made at an appraisal of similarities and differences in the expansion of Islam, Islam's contribution to literacy, education and intellectual development.
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