Nuts and Bolts: country code quiz.

I bought a garden hose the other day. It was made in Poland, as it happens, but, presumably to prevent anyone's being at a loss as to the purpose of the twenty five metres of coiled plastic tube, it had the words garden hose on the label in twenty eight languages.

Beside each description was a code. It wasn't, as it happens, the ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) 639.2 code, which tells you which particular language it was, but the ISO country code, to tell you in which country the featured language is spoken. Thus, EN was English (GARDEN HOSE) and FR was French (TUYAU D'ARROSAGE).

Some countries weren't so easy to identify, so here's a quick quiz. 

Which countries do these ISO codes describe?

(The first seven are from my garden hose label and are more or less European (though one isn't what most people would count as a country). The last five range wider (and, again, one isn't what many people would count as a country). None of them is obscure.)

I. NL
2. CZ
3.EE
4.HR
5.RU
6.SQ
7.EU
8.ZH
9.ZU
10.MY

And, lastly, the most unlucky of countries in this respect, how about BO?

Answers below!

Word To Use Today: standard. The Old French estandart means gathering place or flag to mark such a place, Before that it was probably a Germanic word.

Answers (country's name in native language in square brackets [ ] where the local name varies widely from the English): 1. The Netherlands 2.Czech Republic 3. Estonia [Eesti] 4. Croatia [Hrvatska] 5. Russia 6. Albania [Shqipēri] 7. Basque [Euskadi] 8. China [Zhōngguó] 9. Zulu 10. Burma [Myanmar].

BO is Tibet [Bod].

How did you do?