TEN LARGEST ISLANDS

This one was interesting to research, because first you have to figure out what the difference is between an island and a continent. By definition, an island is a land mass completely surrounded by water, and not larger than a continent. From there you need to figure out how big a continent is. By definition, a continent is one of the main landmasses of the globe. So, that was easier than I expected. Basically an island is a land mass completely surrounded by water that is not one of the seven continents (Africa, Asia, Antarctica, Australia, North America, South America, Europe). I have found arguments that Australia is the largest island, but I disagree. I think, because it is a continent, it cannot be the largest island also. Its area is more than 3 times that of the largest island.
Now I know when I think of your typical island I think of white sand beaches, turquoise water and lots of palm trees. Well, these are not your typical islands. In fact some of the things advertised for tourists on the largest island on this list are skiing, dog sledding and staying in an igloo. Who would have thought? Some of the other islands on this list are a little more typical, but dog sledding? Anyways, I guess you will want to look at this list, so here you have it! The ten largest islands!

I hope you have enjoyed this blog, because I have certainly had a fun time researching it. But now the school year is over, so it is not really required anymore, but maybe if I feel a certain urge this summer to find out what the ten countries with the most Starbucks are maybe I will put up a few posts. Well, that is all for now. So for all of us here at the Creech Academy, have a great summer!!!

Jenna

TEN (ELEVEN) COUNTRIES WITH THE MOST NEIGHBORS

I did not think that this was going to be a very controversial subject. A country only has so many neighboring countries, right? Wrong. There were some places that said Russia had 16 country borders, but others said it had 14. Some places said Brazil has 9 and others said 10. That is because French Guinea, which borders Brazil, is technically a part of France, not its own country. Who knew this could be such a debatable issue? I decided that this was the most accurate list around, even though they are not the top ten countries. So, here you have the top eleven countries with the most neighbors.

Oh, and by the way, Congo has 9 neighbors, not 2. I have no idea where I got that from, but you will have to forgive me for that typo.
That is all for now. Kind of a short blog this time, compared to the other ones recently. I will try and have a longer one next time.
Jenna

TEN MOST WIDELY SPOKEN LANGUAGES

This blog was slightly more difficult to decide about than I had anticipated. There are a couple different ways to measure how many people speak a language. You can measure it by the native speakers or the native and secondary speakers. Either way you measure it you come up with these same basic countries, but they may be a little varried in order. There were also some I did not expect. I expected Chinese, English, Arabic and French, but there were some others that I did not expect like Bengali and Malay-Indonesian. I would not have guessed that they were going to be in the top ten languages.
I think it is interesting that none of the ten are African. I guess because there are so many different dialects in all the countries in Africa none of them are very widely spoken. I read on the internet that Swahili is the most widely spoken African language, spoken by about 1,616,230 people. I also thought this was an interesting observation. The figure I got for the total population of the world is 6,461,306,513, so then roughly a sixth of the world's population speaks Chinese, roughly a twelfth of the world speaks English and just over half of the world's total population speaks one of the top ten languages.
Well, I guess you are wanting to know what these ten languages are, so here this weeks list of the ten most widely spoken languages (and how to say hello in each language)!


There you go, and that's all I have got for this week. I will be blogging again next week!

Jenna