This one was harder! Maybe change it so that it accepts just 'Baltic' instead of 'Baltic sea'. I assumed I was wrong and spent ages trying to think what else it could be.
I believe Al-Jaza'ir is actually Algeria and not Algiers. Algiers would be Al-Jaza'er. They're spelled the same in Arabic, but there's a slight difference in pronunciation.
Also, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Morocco (ant Maghreb) is transcribed "al Maghrib". The -"iyah" at the end (not sure what the H is doing there btw) is the nationality.
Yes, Maghribiyah is the nationality but it's the feminine form (for a woman or a feminine noun like kindgom, city or custom). If you speak about a man or a masculine noun like dish, constitution or book, you should just add an "i" and say Maghribi
The final "h" is an English "h", as in "home" or "enhance". It appears very often at the end of feminine nouns but it's often omitted in transliteration. Fatima or Khadija are more common than Fatimah or Khadijah, even if the latter forms are more correct.
No, your correction is totally wrong. No offense, but you obviously don't speak Arabic. Both are الجَزَائِر Al-Jaza'ir in Standard Arabic and Algerians usually pronounce them دْزَاير Dzayr in colloquial speech (that's why the country code is DZ).
Algeria and Tunisia are countries that didn't exist before the colonial period, hence they were simply named after their capitals.
Now I might me a bit bias being from Sweden, but considering we have the biggest coastline to the baltic sea it would make sense for it to be in Swedish, which is Östersjön.
Yes. There are several names for most of these, given that more than one country, represented by more than one language, is local to some of these clue names. We don't claim that Ostsee is any more "correct" than the names that apply in the Baltic Sea's other adjacent countries.
How come so many people got Vladivostok and Belarus? Anyway a major trivial point, i got thrown a little by Dùn Èideann because it is actually the name of a city in New Zealand named after Edinburgh. Though Dunedin (anglicised form of Dùn Èideann) was known as Otepoti before the europeans took over.
I was happy to get that one ! (thought surprised in englsih it wasnt written with a c as it is usually done in similar words with k sound. valdivostock)
I saw the stok at the end, that is how i got it. And when I saw the "B" in front i thought ow yea, could very well be that that was pronounce as v. Didnt get belarus though
You are using the turkish name for Cyprus. Most of the island belongs to the republic of Cyprus and they speak greek, so the actual native name is Kipros.
Both Greek and Turkish are official languages of Cyprus, and we agree that Kipros would be an equally valid clue here. We chose one of them (the harder one, we thought!) as the clue prompt.
So am I the only one that tried "Dunedain" more than once when they saw Edinburgh?... (Inwardly going, "FICTIONAL GEOGRAPHY COUNTS!" Oh Tolkien. Simultaneous love and hate for your being a linguist.)
Good quiz, and I know you're being consistent with the first one, but I still think it makes no sense to use Cyrillic for Russian language places when you don't use Arabic, etc for other place names. I'm not complaining because the answers were hard to get for me. I learned how to read Cyrillic this summer when I was living in Moscow. It's just inconsistent. This is place names in their native language, not native alphabet.
Vladivostok, for example, would be super easy to guess if you just put it in the Roman alphabet. Then it would be the same name. I can read it easily. Most can't.
Then again, if you spelled al-Jaza'er as الجزائر I bet not many people would get that one.
1.) Köln is a repeat from #2. 2.) Baltic Sea has no inherent "native language." Swedish, Finnish, Russian, German, Danish, Estonian, Polish, Latvian, and Lithuanian could all thus claim "native language" status. Choosing one is spurious. 3.) Same principle with the Danube River, which flows through 10 countries. Between 7-9 languages (whether or not you combine Moldovan and Romanian, and/or Serbian and Croatian, and/or neither) could claim "native language" status. Choosing one is spurious. 4.) Given that New Zealand as a nation-state is fundamentally a former colony and not a successor state of a native polity of any sort, the Maori name for the country isn't really New Zealand in its native language any more whatever word the Seminole used for the land that we call Florida is the name of the state in its putative "native language." New Zealand's "native tongue" as the country New Zealand is English. So, the hint and the answer are both "New Zealand."
1.) True; 2.) True except for the final sentence; 3.) See 2.); 4:) Your talk of polities leaves us suggesting that you that you should study up a bit on New Zealand history, in particular the Treaty of Waitangi. Maori is an official language of New Zealand, and English is not! Maori were here in NZ for centuries before whites showed up, uninvited, so it should be bleeding obvious to anyone that the Dutch (not English) name that was imported to this country by Abel Tasman in 1642 has less claim to be "native" than the one that has applied to this country for far longer.
I loved the quiz! Thanks! :)
The final "h" is an English "h", as in "home" or "enhance". It appears very often at the end of feminine nouns but it's often omitted in transliteration. Fatima or Khadija are more common than Fatimah or Khadijah, even if the latter forms are more correct.
Algeria and Tunisia are countries that didn't exist before the colonial period, hence they were simply named after their capitals.
Now I might me a bit bias being from Sweden, but considering we have the biggest coastline to the baltic sea it would make sense for it to be in Swedish, which is Östersjön.
I saw the stok at the end, that is how i got it. And when I saw the "B" in front i thought ow yea, could very well be that that was pronounce as v. Didnt get belarus though
Then again, if you spelled al-Jaza'er as الجزائر I bet not many people would get that one.