This is very hard fore one like me whose mother language is very different. Never would have guessed France and Greece. In my language (Finnish) words are pronounced exactly as they are written, so it would have been Fran-ce and Gree-ce. Nice quiz, thanks.
I got Chad and Laos easily. But it wasn't until the final seconds that I focused on the flag and came up with Spain and France. With more time I would've gotten Greece.
(for me it was a lightbulb moment when I got france, then I got greece and spain fairly easy. Before that I was kind of stuck, couldnt think of any other besides chad and laos. Guess I (un)consciously sort of disregarded europe initialy)
Same. Took a full 150 seconds for something in my brain to realize europe actually did have countries with only one syllable, including the one I live in
To all the comments about Laos (and Wales, though not one of the answers) being one or two syllables: it has to do with a thing called a dipthong, which is when a vowel has two "parts" but is only one syllable, technically. For example, "boils" ("boy-yulls") or even "I" ("ah-yee") both take two "sounds" to say, but are one syllable each. This is a common thing to have to deal with when singing, since you have to know where to put stress on which part of the word/vowel.
Thank you for this! People saying wales is two syllables because you say way-uls, made me ..well sort of speechless. It is like saying "boys" has two syllables because you say boy-us..house would be how-us etc... because some people stretch words or insert pauzes midword does make them (magically) have two (or more) syllables. I guess abive people would also consider "more" as two syllables mo-
I agree, but more so because it's ambiguous, not because of the specific pronunciations themselves. A lot of people do pronounce it as one syllable (myself included), even if there are more pronunciations out there with two syllables than one
Laos is borderline in English, but Chile is very distinctively two syllables. It's a homonym with "chilly", or if you like your spicy little peppers, "chili".
There seems to be a lot of confusion over the pronunciation of Laos. It rhymes with 'How'. I can only assume the two-syllable crowd are also thinking that Chairman Mao, far from being a brutal tyrant, was actually something to put on a sandwich.
How the hell do you guys pronounce laos if it is one syllable? I thought if it (cause was trying to think of all the short names) and immediately dismissed it. Didnt even consider it could be two syllables...
We pronounce it like this: Take the word "lass." Replace its vowel sound with the vowel sound from "how." L-ow-ss. Or, more succinctly, like it rhymes with "house."
This is for the English name of the country, as opposed to the endonym. We don't use Nihon for Japan or Italia for Italy. So when speaking in Lao, there is no 's', but included is the Lao word for country.
(for me it was a lightbulb moment when I got france, then I got greece and spain fairly easy. Before that I was kind of stuck, couldnt think of any other besides chad and laos. Guess I (un)consciously sort of disregarded europe initialy)
/ˈlaʊs/, /ˈlɑː.ɒs/, /ˈlɑː.oʊs/, or /ˈleɪ.ɒs/
ˈlau̇s, ˈlä-(ˌ)ōs, ˈlā-ˌäs is what I found. So some do pronounce it as one, but many don't. I would exclude it for that reason
france
greece
laos
spain
Kind regards,
Generali Geeks
AMAZING
finished in 10 seconds
Thanks anyway!
La-os?
How is this one syllable?
not "louse"