Sunday, August 11, 2013

Landlocked?

There was a program on TV that was talking about different landlocked countries and it made me think - is a country truly "landlocked" if it shares a river or lake border with another country? To me, a landlocked country is a country that has only land borders. Even if a river, sea or lake is closed (meaning it doesn't lead to an ocean) it is still a body of water and thus a country can not be considered "landlocked." Some examples of countries that are internationally considered "landlocked" and share a lake, river or sea border with another country are: Azerbaijan, Burundi, Kazakhstan, Malawi, Paraguay, Rwanda, Swaziland, Switzerland, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Whether a country is "landlocked" or shares a water border with another country may not seem that important, but language (especially English) is very precise and we should call things what they truly are.

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