James' World 2

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A virtual guide to Swaziland, the small landlocked kingdom in southern Africa is bordered by South Africa and Mozambique.

The country covers an area of 17,364 km², it is one of Africa’s smallest countries, slightly larger than half the size of Belgium, or slightly smaller than the U.S. state of New Jersey.

The country is known for its game reserves, the Mlawula Nature Reserve, and the Hlane Royal National Park with diverse wildlife including lions, hippos, and elephants.

Swaziland has a population of 1.4 million people (est. 2015), national capitals are Mbabane and Lobamba.

Autonomy for the Swazis of southern Africa was guaranteed by the British in the late 19th century; independence was granted 1968.

Student and labor unrest during the 1990s have pressured the monarchy (one of the oldest on the continent) to grudgingly allow political reform and greater democracy.  Nationsonline.org

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An image from Swaziland Capital City

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Loch is the Scottish Gaelic, Scots, and Irish word for a lake or sea inlet. It is cognate with the Manx lough, Cornish logh, and one of the Welsh words for lake, llwch.

In English English and Hiberno-English, the anglicized spelling lough is commonly found in place-names; in Lowland Scots and Scottish English, the spelling “loch” is always used. Many loughs are connected to stories of lake bursts, signifying their mythical origin.

Sea-inlet lochs are often called sea lochs or sea loughs. Some such bodies of water could also be called firths, fjords, estuaries, straits or bays.

This name for a body of water is Insular Celtic in origin and is applied to most lakes in Scotland and to many sea inlets in the west and north of Scotland. The word comes from Proto-Indo-European *lókus (“lake, pool”) and is related to Latin lacus (“lake, pond”) and English lay (“lake”).

Lowland Scots orthography, like Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Irish, represents /x/ with ch, so the word was borrowed with identical spelling.

English borrowed the word separately from a number of loughs in the previous Cumbric language areas of Northumbria and Cumbria. Earlier forms of English included the sound /x/ as gh (compare Scots bricht with English bright). However, by the time Scotland and England joined under a single parliament, English had lost the /x/ sound. This form was therefore used when the English settled Ireland. The Scots convention of using ch remained, hence the modern Scottish English loch.

In Welsh, what corresponds to lo is lu in Old Welsh and llw in Middle Welsh such as in today’s Welsh placenames Llanllwchaiarn, Llwchwr, Llyn Cwm Llwch, Amlwch, Maesllwch, the Goidelic lo being taken into Scottish Gaelic by the gradual replacement of much Brittonic orthography with Goidelic orthography in Scotland.

Many of the loughs in Northern England have also previously been called “meres” (a Northern English dialect word for “lake” and an archaic Standard English word meaning “a lake that is broad in relation to its depth”) such as the Black Lough in Northumberland.^[2] However, reference to the latter as loughs (lower case initial), rather than as lakes, inlets, and so on, is unusual.

Some lochs in Southern Scotland have a Brythonic rather than Goidelic etymology, such as Loch Ryan where the Gaelic loch has replaced a Cumbric equivalent of Welsh llwch. The same is perhaps the case for water bodies in Northern England named with ‘Low’ or ‘Lough’ or otherwise, it represents a borrowing of the Brythonic word into the Northumbrian dialect of Old English.

Although there is no strict size definition, a small loch is often known as a lochan (so spelled also in Scottish Gaelic; in Irish it is spelled lochán).

Perhaps the most famous Scottish loch is Loch Ness, although there are other large examples such as Loch Awe, Loch Lomond, and Loch Tay.

Examples of sea lochs in Scotland include Loch Long, Loch Fyne, Loch Linnhe, and Loch Eriboll. Elsewhere in Britain, places like the Afon Dyfi can be considered sea lochs. Wikipedia

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An image from Loch Images

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Shenzhen, also historically known as Sham Chun, is a major sub-provincial city and one of the special economic zones of China. The city is located on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern province of Guangdong, bordering Hong Kong to the south, Dongguan to the north, and Huizhou to the northeast. With a population of 17.56 million as of 2020, Shenzhen is the fourth most populous city proper in China. Shenzhen is a global center in technology, research, manufacturing, business and economics, finance, tourism, and transportation, and the Port of Shenzhen is the world’s fourth busiest container port.

Shenzhen roughly follows the administrative boundaries of Bao’an County, which was established since imperial times. The southern portion of Bao’an County was seized by the British after the Opium Wars and became Hong Kong, while the village of Shenzhen was situated on the border. Due to the completion of a train station that was the last stop on the Mainland Chinese section of the railway between Guangzhou and Kowloon, Shenzhen’s economy grew and became a market town and later a city by 1979, absorbing Bao’an County for the next decade.

In the early 1980s, economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping resulted in the city becoming the first special economic zone of China due to its close proximity to Hong Kong, attracting foreign direct investment and migrants searching for opportunities. In thirty years, the city’s economy and population boomed and has since emerged as a hub for technology, international trade, and finance. It is the home to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, one of the largest stock exchanges in the world by market capitalization, and the Guangdong Free-Trade Zone. Shenzhen is ranked as an Alpha- (global first-tier) city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Its nominal GDP has surpassed neighboring cities of Guangzhou and Hong Kong and is now among the top ten cities with the largest economies in the world. Shenzhen also has the eighth-most competitive and largest financial center in the world, fifth-highest number of billionaires of any city in the world, the second-largest number of skyscrapers of any city in the world, the 28th largest scientific research output of any city in the world, and several notable educational institutions, such as Shenzhen University, Southern University of Science and Technology, and Shenzhen Technology University.

Due to the city being a leading global technology hub, Shenzhen has been dubbed by media China’s Silicon Valley. The city’s entrepreneurial, innovative, and competitive-based culture has resulted in the city being home to numerous small-time manufacturers or software companies. Several of these firms became large technology corporations such as phone manufacturer Huawei, holding company Tencent, and drone-maker DJI. As an important international city, Shenzhen hosts numerous national and international events every year, such as the 2011 Summer Universiade and the China Hi-Tech Fair [zh]. Shenzhen’s rapid success has resulted in the Chinese government turning Shenzhen into a model city for other cities in China and the world to follow. Wikipedia

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An image from Shenzhen, China

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