Geography Tips For Those With a Bad Memory for Names

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I admit, I’ve committed my share of geographical malapropisms. I offer the following in an effort to spare you the embarrassments that I’ve suffered. Feel free to contribute.

[ul]
[li]The Baltic countries are completely distinct from the Balkan countries. Neither of those regions have anything at all to do with Baltistan.[/li][li]Slovenia and Slovakia are not the same place.[/li][li]Bessarabia is not in the Middle East. It has nothing to do with Saudi Arabia.[/li][li]Turkmenistan is not part of Turkey. The natives of Turkmenistan are referred to as “Turkmens”, not “Turks”.[/li][li]Nobody seems to be able to keep the names of the two Congos straight. Just refer to them as Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa.[/li][li]Guyana, French Guiana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equitorial Guinea and Ghana are all separate countries.[/li][li]When making vacation plans, do not confuse Mauritius with Mauritania![/li][/ul]

2

Chad is not some guy from Florida.

3

Bad Memory? I’m impressed with your list. Please forgive me for ‘dumbing it down’ a little with my offerings–

semi-useful tips for most people:

Tibet is not a country;
World maps and atlases more than a few years old are pretty useless;
the Mercator projection only makes it appear that Greenland is bigger than South America;
And, dumbing it down even further . . .
tips for the approximate 1/3 of U.S. high school students who did not know that:

the country to the immediate south of the U.S. is Mexico;
Maine is not a peninsula;
you can’t really see the equator;
people living in the southern hemisphere can’t tell that they’re really standing upside down;

4

Greenland isn’t very green and Iceland doesn’t have an icecap like Greenland has.

5

Vermont is on the left, Colorado and Washington are on top.

I have NO idea why I couldn’t get those through my head when I was a kid :stuck_out_tongue: