IS
The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or Da'esh, is a transnational Salafi-jihadist terrorist organization and former proto-state that adheres to a fundamentalist, apocalyptic interpretation of Sunni Islam and seeks to establish a global caliphate through violence.[1][2] Originating from al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), which formed amid the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 as a response to the power vacuum and sectarian tensions, the group rebranded as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) in 2006 under leaders including Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri.[3] After a period of dormancy following leadership losses and U.S. surges, ISI revived under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi around 2010, exploiting instability from the Arab Spring, the Syrian civil war, and the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.[3] In 2013, the group expanded into Syria, breaking with al-Qaeda due to strategic disputes, and on June 29, 2014, declared a caliphate across captured territories in Iraq and Syria, with al-Baghdadi proclaimed as caliph in a sermon from Mosul's al-Nuri Mosque.[2] At its territorial peak in 2014–2015, IS controlled approximately 100,000 square kilometers—comparable to the size of the United Kingdom—encompassing major cities like Raqqa and Mosul, from which it extracted revenues through oil sales, taxation, and extortion to fund operations estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The organization distinguished itself through sophisticated propaganda, attracting tens of thousands of foreign fighters, and governance marked by extreme brutality, including mass executions, sexual enslavement of Yazidi women, and targeted killings of Shia Muslims, Christians, and other minorities deemed apostates.[4] Facing a U.S.-led international coalition, local forces, and Russian-backed Syrian operations, IS progressively lost territory, culminating in the fall of Baghouz in March 2019, the symbolic end of its caliphate, though it persists as an insurgent network conducting guerrilla attacks and inspiring global affiliates.[4] Al-Baghdadi was killed in a U.S. raid in October 2019, yet successors have maintained decentralized operations across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.[2]Grammar and Language
Verb Form
"Is" is the third-person singular present indicative form of the irregular verb "to be," which functions primarily as a copula to link subjects with predicates expressing identity, location, or attributes, as in "The earth is round."[5] This form pairs with singular subjects including pronouns like "he," "she," or "it," and nouns such as "the dog" or "Paris," distinguishing it from "am" for first-person singular and "are" for second-person or plural subjects in the present tense.[6] The full present conjugation of "to be" thus includes: I am, you are, he/she/it is, we/they are.[7] In addition to its copular role, "is" serves as an auxiliary verb to form continuous aspects, as in "She is studying now," where it combines with the present participle of the main verb, or passive voice constructions like "The report is being reviewed," marking ongoing or completed actions relative to the present.[8][9] Unlike regular verbs, "to be" exhibits suppletive forms across tenses—shifting to "was" for first- and third-person singular past indicative—reflecting its deep Indo-European roots rather than deriving from a single stem via standard inflectional patterns.[10] Etymologically, "is" originates from Old English is, inherited from Proto-West Germanic is and Proto-Germanic iz, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European h₁ésti, a root denoting existence or presence akin to forms in other ancient languages like Sanskrit ásti or Latin est.[11] This evolution preserved the verb's high-frequency utility in English, where it accounts for a significant portion of auxiliary usage, enabling nuanced tense and mood distinctions without reliance on additional morphology.[12]Language Codes
The ISO 639-1 standard assigns the two-letter code is to Icelandic (native name: Íslenska), a North Germanic language primarily spoken in Iceland.[13][14] This code facilitates language identification in computing, internationalization protocols, and metadata standards, such as the HTMLlang attribute for web content. ISO 639-1, published in 2002 and maintained by the International Organization for Standardization, covers 184 principal languages with such abbreviated codes to promote interoperability across systems.
For broader nomenclature, Icelandic corresponds to the three-letter codes isl (preferred for terminology) and ice (bibliographic variant) under ISO 639-2, which extends coverage to additional languages and dialects.[15] These codes align with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code IS for Iceland, where Icelandic serves as the sole official language, spoken natively by over 99% of the nation's approximately 387,000 residents as of 2024. The language's conservative phonology and grammar, preserving features from Old Norse, distinguish it among modern Indo-European tongues, with limited mutual intelligibility to other Scandinavian languages. Usage of the is code ensures precise tagging in digital corpora, translation tools, and linguistic databases, supporting applications from machine translation to cultural preservation efforts.