Name the second-largest cities of each country in Europe.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_national_capital,_largest_and_second-largest_cities
Thank you, this must have been a typo on my part, I can't see that it was ever called Homel. Or a typo on the old Wikipedia page - it appears that the data this quiz was based on no longer exists on Wikipedia.
This comes from a misunderstanding of Slavic languages and the best ways to transliterate Cyrillic into Latin.
The name of the city is written as "Гомел" - which, if you transliterate from (Russian) Cyrillic into Latin, gives you "Gomel."
However Belorussian is not Russian. In Belorussian (as well as Ukrainian and a few other Slavic languages), the letter "Г" is pronounced as an "H" not as a "G." Meaning that the name of the city is (locally) pronounced as "Homel."
Since the only authoritative spelling is the Cyrillic one, it becomes ambiguous as to how to spell it in Latin.
Personally I would recommend having "Gomel" as the answer but accepting both "Homel" and "Homiel" as type-ins.
I know that I always try both "Gomel" and "Homel" for this city in quizzes just in case one is accepted but the other isn't.
Honestly the data's kind of all over the place. Because some of these seem to be city proper populations, some of them seem to be urban area. And then there are also a few examples (the one that sticks out to me is Kópavogur in Iceland) where the accepted answer is actually inside the same metro area as the largest city.
(Which isn't to even begin addressing the case of Monaco - where both Monte Carlo and La Condamine are merely neighbourhoods inside the singular city of Monaco which is co-extensive with the country as a whole, and one could make an argument that this answer should appear as "N/A" the same way that Vatican City's does.)
But eh. It is what it is. I understand that the data was just taken from a Wikipedia page (yuck) and it's maybe best to not editorialize/mess with it.
It's a really complicated question. Defining populations of metro areas is not as straightforward as we might like. What is a metro area, what is a city....so I come from Dallas, and for sure Ft. Worth and its suburbs are considered part of the same metropolitan area, but I can assure you that plenty of people from Ft. Worth are none too happy to be lumped in with Dallas. Culturally they consider themselves very distinct, and there's a lot of truth to it.
As the world urbanizes more, and some urban areas stretch so far that they practically meld into others, it gets increasingly complicated. How long until Washington D.C. and Baltimore are a single metropolitan area? How much longer after that before you never leave urbanization taking I-95 up to Philadelphia? I'm sure there's also a lot of debate at the fringes of metro areas as to what communities are included.
City proper population is much easier, but also much less intuitive.
Given there's several where you can't just quickly write the "obvious" answer (due to the city / metro area type uncertainty discussed in other comments), it is tight on time even if you know your large cities.
The name of the city is written as "Гомел" - which, if you transliterate from (Russian) Cyrillic into Latin, gives you "Gomel."
However Belorussian is not Russian. In Belorussian (as well as Ukrainian and a few other Slavic languages), the letter "Г" is pronounced as an "H" not as a "G." Meaning that the name of the city is (locally) pronounced as "Homel."
Since the only authoritative spelling is the Cyrillic one, it becomes ambiguous as to how to spell it in Latin.
Personally I would recommend having "Gomel" as the answer but accepting both "Homel" and "Homiel" as type-ins.
I know that I always try both "Gomel" and "Homel" for this city in quizzes just in case one is accepted but the other isn't.
(Which isn't to even begin addressing the case of Monaco - where both Monte Carlo and La Condamine are merely neighbourhoods inside the singular city of Monaco which is co-extensive with the country as a whole, and one could make an argument that this answer should appear as "N/A" the same way that Vatican City's does.)
But eh. It is what it is. I understand that the data was just taken from a Wikipedia page (yuck) and it's maybe best to not editorialize/mess with it.
As the world urbanizes more, and some urban areas stretch so far that they practically meld into others, it gets increasingly complicated. How long until Washington D.C. and Baltimore are a single metropolitan area? How much longer after that before you never leave urbanization taking I-95 up to Philadelphia? I'm sure there's also a lot of debate at the fringes of metro areas as to what communities are included.
City proper population is much easier, but also much less intuitive.
If anyone has any specific changes, I'm all ears.
Esch is the main part of the name, and "sur Alzette" (on Alzette) is a qualifier.