Anthems for Non-Existent Nations Word Game

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

My name is Grant Barrett.

And my name is Martha Barnette.

And stepping off his hovercraft full of eels is our quiz guide, John Chaneski.

Welcome, John.

Well, you know, the only way to power, correctly power a hovercraft is eel power, by the way.

So here I am, unfortunately, on an, now I smell like eels, but that’s fine.

You guys can’t tell anyway.

My latest side gig is writing anthems.

I was delighted to find it’s a pretty wide open field.

Not a lot of people out there writing anthems.

And I happened across a whole bunch of nations that don’t have anthems.

For example, I wrote this one.

In mathematics, it’s an arrangement of elements into various groups without regard to their order in the group.

Or in chess, it’s a relatively long sequence of moves.

That’s one I wrote for the Combi Nation.

Comba Nation.

Yeah, the nation of Comba.

Okay, Comba.

You got it now, huh?

Yeah.

Okay.

Now, you will have to listen to me sing several anthems.

Here we go.

Let’s hear a few more.

Oh, boy.

The act or process of testing pupils, candidates, etc.

As by questions or a doctor’s look at your medical history and your body examination.

The exama.

Examination.

The nation of exama.

These end in nation.

Okay, I get it now.

They do? I guess they do.

Nicely spotted.

Okay.

The intensity of light falling at a given place on a lighted surface or the deliberate use of light to achieve practical or aesthetic effects.

It includes the use of artificial sources like lamps or natural sources like the sun.

It’s no wonder that the country of a luma doesn’t sing that very often.

They love it in the luma.

Illumination.

Illumination, indeed.

Syllables, oh syllables, what would we do without this?

The line would go on longer and longer and longer and longer were it not for this useful process of punctuation.

It adds just a little dash to your writing.

Terma? The termination?

How about the Haifa?

Haifa, yes! I just got back from Haifa.

The nation of Haifa, the Haifa nation.

That is very good.

Right. Not the coastal city of Haifa, but the nation.

No, no, no. This is the whole nation of Haifa, yeah.

Finally.

Welcome to our kingdom where everyone’s a king.

Like once a day we celebrate by putting on a ring.

And picking up a scepter and putting on a crown.

Now you’re the queen, now I’m the queen.

We take turns bowing down.

Yes, queen.

It’s the nation of coronation.

Coro, coronation, yes.

Everybody gets to be king or queen or something else, whatever they want to be in coronation.

Nicely done, everybody.

Coronation.

Well, you’re royalty to us, John.

Thank you for another lovely quiz.

And tell the family hello, all right?

You too, guys.

I’ll see you next week.

Yep, see you next week.

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