What is the difference between Tunis and Tunisia?
Tunis is the capital of Tunisia, a country in North Africa. It is a small country situated between Libya and Algeria. I will be visiting Tunis in June. It will be my first trip to the continent of Africa.
A few countries have a name ending with "sia", e.g. Malaysia, Indonesia, Tunisia, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Polynesia.
there are only other three countries whose name ends with 'sia': micronesia, polynesia, russia.
ReplyDeleteif we include non-countries: andalusia, eurasia, australasia, asia, melanesia, nicosia, prussia, persia.
(taken from my spellchecker database)
Sidetrack a bit... Cambodia was once also known as Kampuchea
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that "nesia" as in Indonesia, Polynesia and Mironesia means a group of islands. So Indonesia means a group of islands in the Indian Ocean, Polynesia means a group of many islands and Micronesia means a group of small islands.
ReplyDelete"Sia" as in Rhodesia, Prussia and Russia means land. But interesting, "sia" as in Malaysia was actually made up with "si" for Singapura inserted into Malaya during the merger.