| Archive for langcafe2.myfreeforum.org Come in and have your daily cup of languages! |
| Elaine |
Test your geography knowledgeSince a lot of you new members seem to have a thing for maps , I thought it would be a good idea to rehash this thread.
Let's see how well you do with these geography games. USA Canada Mexico Central & South America Europe Asia Africa Oceania Middle East Caribbean EDIT: I changed the Oceania game (or puzzle, if you will) to one more topical since the previous "Oceania" game was entirely on Australian topography. I also added a Caribbean game. |
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| fab |
sFunny game Elaine, but closer to puzzle than really geography quizz !USA 45/50 Canada 13/13 Mexico 26/32 (pure puzzle, I almost didn't know any name!) South America 24/24 Europe 45/45 Asia 30/32 Africa 48/53 Australia 4/13 Middle east 17/17 |
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| Porthos |
I almost aced every one, with the exception of Africa. With Africa, I knew the general locations of most of the countries, but I couldn't always pinpoint exactly where on the map they were. | ||||||
| Fredrik |
The funniest was to see the average error:
USA - 65 miles (Boy, must I brush up my Southern geography!) Canada - 87 miles Mexico: 947 miles ( I had no idea!!!) South and Central America - 36 miles Europe - 22 miles Asia - 15 miles (but those new stans are nasty) Africa - 195 miles Middle East - 0 miles (the maps are always in the news) |
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| fab |
If some of you have a scanner (and a bit of time too), I'll propose a game : trying to draw and handmade map of Europe without looking on a map.
The objective would not be to give the "good answer", but to see that is the conception of Europe do you have, ginving the maximum of countries you are able to draw. How do you see places close to each other... exemple : 
1 Switzerland 2 Austria 3 Slovenia 4 Croatia 5 Montenegro 6 Albania 7 Bosnia 8 Croatia 9 Lithunia 10 Latvia 11 estonia 12 monaco 13 Andorra 14 Vatican 15 Lietchenstein 16 Belgium 17 Luxembourg |
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| Harrenys Targaryen |
I'm a record-freak, so here's how I did for each first try:
USA: 49/50, 3 miles, 248 seconds (I'm disappointed.) Canada: 13/13, 0 miles, 70 seconds (It's the least I could do for one of my favorite countries.) Mexico: 29/32, 23 miles, 233 seconds (I got Morelos, Tlaxcala, and Distrito Federal early on.) Central and South America: 22/24, 22 miles, 103 seconds (Paraguay was the first question.) Europe: 45/45, 0 miles, 202 seconds (I lucked out since I didn't get the the Balkans until towards the end.) Asia: 32/32, 0 miles, 164 seconds (Hey, it's my ancestral continent.) Africa: 47/53, 44 miles, 259 seconds (The north and the eastern coast are easy, but everything else is challenging.) Middle East: 15/17, 26 miles, 99 seconds (I didn't know that Golan Heights was considered a separate territory.) |
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| David |
I got 43/50 for the U.S. Haven't tried the other games yet. | ||||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
Fab, in what language did you intend to write 'Tczek'? 
USA — 48/50; average error 12 miles Canada — 13/13; average error 0 miles Central & South America — 24/24; average error 0 miles Asia — 27/32; average error 68 miles Africa — 41/53; average error 252 miles Europe — 44/45; average error 5 miles Australia — 8/13 Middle East — 13/15; average error 21 miles |
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
Oddly enough, you mentioned Wales, England and Scotland but forgot San Marino. Je blague.
PSSST : where is Russia's Kaliningrad area ? 
 
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| Elaine |
 Umm... I don't think I'll try this one for fear of embarrassment.
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| Pauline |
USA 35/50 error 270 miles
Canada 11/13 error 370 miles Europe 39/45 error 62 miles I will make the other tests on another day. |
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| Porthos |
Nice to see you back Pauline! | ||||||
| Pauline |
Thanks
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| patriccke |
And one of the EU members: Malta 
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| fab |
dites donc Greg et Patrikke, c'est facile de critiquer quand on ne joue pas le jeu !! 
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| Elaine |
Turkey and Cyprus show up on both the European game and the Middle Eastern game. Do you Europeans consider these countries "European"? | ||||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
Ooouh-err.... Cyprus, yes. Turkey, well... that's rather more controversial! |
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| Porthos |
I'm going to come out and say it. Turkey, although geographically part of Europe (only part of it though), is an eastern country, populated by people of non-European origin, with strong cultural ties to the middle east, and Islam. So, it's not European. | ||||||
| fab |
I agree with Benjamin, I see Cyprus as a European country (due to its (even partly) Greek side), while the position of Turquey is more ambiguous.
Turquey is not (exepted a small part of it) in the European continent, but on the other side Europe is not really a continent, and it has not clear geographical borders. Culturally, Turquey is majoritary muslim, but not Arab. being muslim is not a turquish specificity in Europe, Albania or Bosnia are majoritary muslim. I tend to think that Turkey have been building its cultural identity on the herency of the eastern Roman empire more than on the Arabo-muslim culture from the arabian peninsula. After all, turquish biggest city was Byzance and Constantinople and has always been part of the cultural (and geographical) concept of Europe. On the other side all the balkans (even to Vienna in some points) have recieved a lot of turquish influences. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
That definitely applies to a part of the population. However, Turkey is officially a secular state with rules regarding religions signs quite similar to those of France. The relatively few Turkish people I've met have been essentially Westerners and seemed pretty indistinguishable from Europeans from traditionally Christian countries. |
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| patriccke |
En effet! J'aime la facilité 
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| Porthos |
They're not Arabs, as they originate from Central Asia, but they are still Muslims. They have a middle eastern culture, and not a European one, at least in my book. | ||||||
| fab |
Christian and muslim civilisation have never been completly put appart from each other. The mediterranean bassin has always been the area of exchange of those "civilisations" (to which we could also add the jewish). Basically the cultural roots of the middle eastern cultures has alot to do with the greek (and roman also) civilisations, as the western countries did. Today, there are still christians in the middle east, arabs but christians (Lebanon was majoritary christian not so long time ago), 10% of the population of the Egypt, the most populous middle eastern country are christians - and on the other side you have muslim countries in Europe, and muslim minorities in others (10% of the french are muslim). |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Now here's a question for Josh: is New Zealand a European country? | ||||||
| Porthos |
If by that, you mean a "western" country, then yes, it is a western country. The majority of the population is from the British Isles, the main language and religion is English and Christianity, and the culture is an Anglo one. Perhaps the Maori population, which is now a minority has a distinct, non-western culture of their own, but the image which New Zealand projects to the world is one of an Anglophone, western country. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
So now we can illustrate the difficulty with the word 'European'. On the one hand, New Zealand can be considered 'European' in many ways, but on the other hand, it's located virtually as far away from 'Europe' as is physically possible. | ||||||
| fab |
Yes, and also we often define the "west" to be the lands that have their roots in anciant Greece. From this point of view, anciant Greeks were not Muslims or Christians, and Turquey is much more rooted to the ancient Greece (geographically and culturally) than the USA are... | ||||||
| Porthos |
Well our civilization is in its most ancient roots, a derivative of classical Greek civilization, but to say that we have a Greek culture or a culture rooted in Greek culture would be really stretching it. Modern western European culture/civilization was layed down by the Romans and the conquering Barbarians. | ||||||
| fab |
That's in not really the case for every country. modern greece for exemple has not been conquered by the "babarians" as you call them, and it was annexed in the roman empire but it kept its Greek culture. Said that, Greece was always considered as part of Europe, and spread the word "europe". On the other side almost all the northern half of Europe has never been conquered by the romans. I think it is very difficult to define a unique "european civilisation", and claim that Turquey is surely not part of it is a very quick statement. Turquey is clearly very different from a north European point of view, but very close to south-eastern European cultures (who, on the other hand would find "anglo' culture very exotic, and so not very European if they apply the term with themselves as the reference). It would be considering that the eastern roman empire never or was of a different civilisation than European... And so that Greece is not European either. Is it just the religion ? If Spain has still be muslim, will it be not European (even if the muslim Spain had kept the influences of the previous people, celts, Romans, Germanic, as much as the christian Spain did... What about Albania or Bosnia ? are they not European because muslims ? Or are chistian lebanese not middle eastern ? |
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| Pauline |
Asia 28/32 error 149 miles
Mexico 21/32 error 436 miles Central America 18/24 error 401 miles |
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| Fredrik |
Ah, yes, that transcendental European home.....hard to define.
Good old Metternich was of the opinion that Asia starts in Vienna's eastern suburbs...
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| Porthos |
This is why I say Western Europe's civilization is a mix of Roman and Germanic influences. The culture of places like Norway or Holland are obviously not "Roman" ones in the sense that they don't speak a Latin language, and are not mediterranean culture. But, consider all of the influence which Rome had on shaping their civilization. They are of a Christian based culture, which had its roots with the state religion or Rome, which was adopted by Germanic invaders, and then spread to non-Roman territories like modern Germany, and eventually to places like Scandanavia. A lot of our architecture has roots in Rome. Our justice system, the alphabet which we use to write everything that is important in our society. The Germanic conquerors played a big role in reshaping Europe. Modern European civilization is very different from classical Europe. The dark ages brought about a new, and very different civilization and society, which progressed to form our modern civilization and culture, even in former Roman provinces. |
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
Moi aussi. Mais le test est trop fastoche !!! 
Or 10 % of the French are (wrongly) *THOUGHT* to be muslims. According to some estimates, 70 % of the French whose descent could be of muslim background are *THOUGHT* *NOT* to be muslims... |
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| fab |
Tu as raison, on devrait dire "10% de gens ayant été élevé dans des familles à tradition d'origine mulsulmane"... Bien entendu, nombre d'entre eux ne pratiquent pas du tout ou pas vraiment la religion musulmane.
Mais il esn est de même de dire que 90% de la population Française est catholique. C'est peut être vrai concernant l'origine culturelle des traditions familiales, mais pas du point de vue de la pratique religieuse, qui est considérablement inférieure. |
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| fab |
I'm sorry, but the roman influence in Norway was very little. Only when speaking about christianity, it could be a link. said that, it is good to remember that Christianity was not coming from Roman civilisation but from Palestine. Rome has just been a "relay". Also most of the places of Europe that have been christianized after the fall of the roman empire took their distance with the religious power of Rome (to which they never see why they would have to follow it, and preferd to invent its own conception of chistianity, different from the Roman catholic) with the birth of the reforme. |
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| Fredrik |
Direct Roman influence was very small, mostly limited to Roman merchandise brought home by Norwegians who probably were mercenaries in the Roman army. (For example, a Roman bronze vessel from 4th century Capua has been found high up in the almost uninhabited mountains of my home province.) But indirectly, we are also influenced by the Greco-Roman culture, and not just religiously, but also juridically, scientifically, linguistically, philosophically etc. (Although a lot of the classical heritage that Europe re-discovered during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, reached us for the first time during those periods! )
When I look at my cultural roots, I will say they are: - Nordic-Norwegian - Judeo-Christian - Greco-Roman A nice trinity! |
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| Porthos |
Exactly Fredrik. That's what I'm saying Fab. All of western civilization, including northern Europe's, has a great deal of its roots in the Greco-Roman model. | ||||||
| Deborah |
I tried levels 4, 5 and 6 of the US states games:
http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/web_games.htm I thought Levels 4 and 5 were easier than level 3. In Level 4 you're given the name of the state and you have to click somewhere within the boundaries of that state. (I got 50 out of 50.) In Level 5 you're shown a state and you have to type the first 3 letters of the state and hit Enter. That one was really easy, as far as knowing the names goes, but right at the end I got careless and made a typo in "Maine". Level 6 was a good one, though. You have to drag each state into it's proper place, as in Level 3, but then the state disappears. However, if you make a mistake, that state stays visible. I got 46 out of 50. Unfortunately, the ones that stayed visible were no help in locating the remaining ones. (My average error was 20 miles.) |
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| David |
Canada: 13/13 - 100% | ||||||
| David |
Europe: 42/45 - Avg. error: 20 miles | ||||||
| fab |
Yes, but it is also the case of most parts of the world. And, it was the subject, of Turquey, who has recieved not only an inderect Greco-Roman influence like northern Europe, but of very direct one, since all the eastern mediterranean area has been for centureies under the direct Greek sphere of influence, and Byzance, Constantinople (now Istambul, the biggest turquish city) have been the center of the eastern Roman empire for centuries. The whole Arabo-muslim civilisation has recevied much more direct Greco-Roman influences than northern European cultures. arab architecture, baths, astronomy, philosophy, mathematics, urbanism, etc. was a very direct offspring of anciant Greek culture. |
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| Fredrik |
lol, that could be a rather interesting comparison:
Which has the most profound Greoc-Roman heritage - the Middle East or Scandinavia! |
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| Porthos |
Architecture, Latin alphabet, Christianity (state religion and political instrument of the Roman Empire), common law, and origins of Renaissance. I think Northern Europe wins. | ||||||
| fab |
Josh, I'm sorry but it is far to be the case. Architecture/urbanism : The traditional urbanism of middle eastern cities is directly coming from Anciant Greece, and Roman. dense cities, inside-centrered houses (the Arab Ryad and the Roman patio). Hammams (roman baths), types of flat roofs and low-inclined roof of roman tiles, adapted to the mediterranean climate, etc... Latin alphabet : Turkey uses the latin alphabet too. the latin and Greek alphabets were (and still) be used in the middle east since 2 or 3 000 years. Christianity : Christianilty IS FROM the middle east. Its historical center is Jerusalem. A lot of middle easterners are Christian. On the other side Christianity was not a Roman religion at the origin. Greco-Roman religion has never influenced northern Europe. Renaissance : ?? Renaissance was Roman ??!! Even if the purpose of the renaissance movement was to make the re-birth of Rome, but of course was not a direct roman movement. Anyway it has not been very strong in northern Europe compared to Italy. Most of the middle east have been part of hellenic or Roman empire for centuries (if not milleniums if we had both empires to the eastern Roman empire), which was not the case of most northern Europe. The "greco-roman" influence in northern European culture is an indirect one, contrary to the middle east. |
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| Porthos |
You're entitled to your opinion Fab, but no one really questions that Western civilization, which includes places like Germany or England has its roots in Greco-Roman civilization. | ||||||
| fab |
There can be a "western civilisation", but there is also a "mediterranean civilisation". That northern European countries had some influences of Greek and Roman, I don't refute it, but it doesn't help that this influence was indirect, while it was direct in the case of middle eastern countries. And I don't speak about an opinion, but about a fact. the start of the topic was Turquey. It is a fact that Turquey has been under direct Hellenic and Roman colonisation (among other mediterranean peoples). And, if the definition of "Western" is having a direct relation with Ancient Greece, Turquey would be "more western" than all northern Europe. What bother people to realize that middle eastern cultures have as much Greco-roman origins is that they are mostly muslim-based societies; Islam having been the great rival of christianity for centuries, it is hard to accept that both "civilisations" have Greco-roman herency and that both are based on religions originary from the middle east. |
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| Porthos |
The long term religious legacy of Rome was Christianity. The Catholic Church was the state religion of Rome, and if it hadn't been for the political influence of the Roman Empire, the small sect of Christianity would never have evolved into the global religion that it is today. The Middle East is an eastern region, of an eastern culture. All of Europe, and the western world for that matter, has a culture which is rooted in Judeo-Christian origins. The Middle East is a Muslim civilization. | ||||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
Fab — do you actually believe that France is more similar to, say, Egypt than to, say, Germany? | ||||||
| fab |
This is precisely the point on which I don't agree. "christian" and "muslim" civilisation are not two complete different worlds... For further reasons : 1- They both were originary from the middle east. (as well as Judaism). From a religious point of view, they contain a lot of common points; monotheism, and a lot of common personages. 2- muslim and christian civilisations both have developped themselves partly in the shores of the mediterranean. Phenicians, Greeks sailors and later the Roman empire have unificated the whole mediterranean regions. The history has made that one part of it has adopted Chistianism and the other part has adopted Islam (and Judaism also). Both build their cultural foundations on the pre-existant "mediterranean civilisations", and did not started to be "new civilisations" of starting from nothing. 3- in the mediterranean area, there have been a lot of exchanges, and people's movements and mixs of Jewish, Christians and Muslims. In a lot of regions such as southern Portugal and Spain or Sicily the societies were tri-religious. In southern France we had a lot of incursion of moors, some of them settled. In Montpellier, in southern France, was one of the oldest university of Europe and was giving education of medecine, philosophy and mathematics or astronomy in Arabic, because the muslims kept the Greek knowledge that European had already lost at that time. We re-discovered Greek herency in big part thanks to them. We often don't realise that the difference between "western" and " middle eastern" cultures is just due to the different path that both have taken from a similar base. We didn't kept that same things from the Greco-Romans. What we call "arabic music" was probably very similar to antic mediterranean music that the Romans or greeks would listen, because, before the musical reformation of the pope Gregoire, the Christian music was codified on similar ways than "arabic" music. In fact it is very probable that both have the same Ancient Greek origins (or maybe even older). |
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| fab |
No, at least not generally speaking. If you find a closer country and ask the question "do you feel closer to Norway or to Algeria" I would consider myself to be quite intermediary, and maybe a bit more closer to Algeria. With Norway we share a same continent, with Algeria we share a same sea (and a very close intricated history). |
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| fab |
The same way the whole concept of "western" is questionable, do you really think that a Greek has more common points with a Norwegian than with a Turk ? (even if he surely would strongly dislike to recognise it he would !) |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Probably not. But at the same time, I find it hard to imagine that France is really so similar to Egypt, compared to Germany. I'll be seeing my Egyptian friend tomorrow, so I'll ask him what he thinks about this. I can already guess what his view will be. |
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| fab |
Who said that ? !!! Do you read what I writed ?!! I guess not. 
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Sorry, I didn't see what you wrote in the post above. My fault, I'm sorry. |
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| Loic |
Fab: Do you feel a loose sense of connection with Algeria because of their past contributions to France in both the world wars? | ||||||
| fab |
Loic,
Actually France has historic connexions with Algeria, but also Morrocco and Tunisia due to the colonisation. Today the links still important, one one side 10% of the french population have roots there (not only muslim immigrees, but the "pied-noirs", the people of European origin who were born and lived in North Africa until 1962. A lot of French jews also have roots there. On the other side most people in north Africa today continue to speak French as a second language, and it has a presence in a lot of medias from Magreb, alongside with Arabic. |
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
Agree 100 %. Living in Algeria for a certain time wouldn't be too eccentric a consideration to me. Especially if the only option is Norway or Algeria. What I imagine Norwegian climate to be is a horrific cliché !
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| Fredrik |
Hehe, a lot of the clichées are true, but luckily a few of them are also nice. Here on the West Coast, in Norway's wettest city, it has been raining and storming endlessly for months and I am just longing to step into the clichée of the Eastern Norwegian winter: Dense spruce forests forests covered in snow and crisp, cold air....Eastern Norway, Finnland or Siberia....they all sound like paradise seen from this wet spot. | ||||||
| Lazar |
Here's how I did on the quizzes:
USA: 50/50, 0 miles, 123 seconds Canada: 13/13, 0 miles, 30 seconds Mexico: 24/32, 202 miles, 114 seconds (A lot of this was complete guesswork, unfortunately.) Central & South America: 23/24, 6 miles, 63 seconds (I had to place Paraguay without any references.) Europe: 45/45, 0 miles, 100 seconds Asia: 32/32, 0 miles, 75 seconds Africa: 53/53, 0 miles, 125 seconds Middle East: 17/17, 0 miles, 37 seconds |
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| Lazar |
And I tried my hand at Fab's game:
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| Deborah |
Lazar, have you tried the higher levels in the US states section? I've tried them all. In the last one (level 9, I think), you're shown the shape of a an unidentified state,* rotated and mis-sized. You have to unrotate it, size it and drag it to its proper place. It then disappears (except when you get it wrong the first time), so unless you make a lot of mistakes, you don't get any help from seeing other states. I tried it three times, but the best I could do was 48/50. I didn't get Kansas close enough to it's proper place, and I didn't make South Dakota large enough.
I would try the more advanced tests in other parts of the world, but I didn't get high enough scores in the level Elaine linked to to make it worthwhile. * There were some exceptions. Delaware and Rhode Island, being very small, were identified and shown in their proper sizes and orientations, and Colorado and Wyoming, being rectangular, were identified. |
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| Elaine |
I tried that level and gave up. I did embarrassingly bad.
Here's the homepage for Sheppard Software. You should be able to access those levels directly from there. |
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| Deborah |
I should have added that I actually "studied", i.e., went through the previous levels a couple of times each.
Thanks. Maybe I'll try the higher levels in other parts of the world, just to balance out my good results in the US! |
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| Lazar |
I got 50/50 on the highest-level US map, and 43/45 on the highest-level European map.
For some reason I just really enjoy looking at maps, and drawing them. |
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| Deborah |
Congrats! |
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