Pretty great song, but the names are not all for "nations" and the data and maps are quite old. (It was probably produced in the early 1990s, soon after Germany was united in Oct 1990. "soon" because you still see the USSR map. However, the author probably failed to notice that Yemens were united in May 1990) So these notes are needed if you are teaching the kids
- Carribean is a sea
- Puerto Rico, Guam are US territories; Tibet, HK, Taiwan are parts of China (HK probably was still a British colony at the time it was produced, Taiwan is officially a province of the Republic of China)
- San Juan is a city (capital of Puerto Rico)
- Czech and Slovakia split
- Middle East is not Europe (except if you buy a round-the-world ticket with the oneworld alliance), Scotland and England are not nations, UK is, Greenland is part of Denmark
- Instead of Yemens, there is only one Yemen now
- Kampuchea calls itself Cambodia again now
- Asia is a continent
- New Guinea has a full name, PNG
- Sumatra is an island of Indonesia
- Borneo hosts 3 countries, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia
- Algier is a city, capital of Algeria in the previous line
- Dahomey is the same as Benin in the previous line (name changed in 1975, before Cambodia was called Kampuchea)
- Zaire is now another Democratic Republic of Congo (But there is still a smaller Congo to its west - with a capital called Brazzaville, opposite to the other capital Kinshasa across the Congo river.
- I have no idea what Mahore is
- Cayman is a British Colony, so is Bermuda
- Abu Dhabi is an emirate within UAE
- We all know what happened to Yugoslavia now. There was a lesser Yugoslavia even after the Bosnia and Kosovo wars. But Montenegro declared independence, Serbia followed suit as there was no point in a Yugoslavia with only Serbia itself. So long to the imperialist winners of WWI
- Crete maybe a nation in 2500 years ago, it is just an island of Greece
- Transylvania is part of Romania (home of vampire)
- Palestine, unfortunately, is not a fully independent nation yet
- Finally, don't be offended if your nation has not been included
- There are also a number of irregularities in the map. e.g. Bhutan and Nepal were not shown. But I will leave this to our readers to explore
Despite all these faults, still an impressive task in puting them into an intersting song.
If you like it, there is also a flag version.
...and the solar system, american state capitals.
4 comments:
Update: see wiki for lyrics and geographic notes.
Haha I LOVE the line "Spanish Sahara is gone!" That, and "Dahomey", gives it a really hilarious anachronistic feel.
Hahaha! "Scotland" is the UK flag, and North Korean doesn't even get a mention. OK, OK, noone is to take this seriously, right?
Great stuff - I can't believe there are that many videos on this topic on Youtube
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