by Tansel Ali
Je préfère du fromage blanc. I prefer fresh cheese.
Je suis perdu. Pouvez-vous m’aider, s’il vous plaît? I am lost. Can you help me, please?
Où sont les taxis, s’il vous plaît? Where are the taxis, please?
Combien je vous dois? How much do I owe you?
Combien ça coûte? How much does that cost?
Fais de beaux reves. Sweet dreams.
Quoi de neuf? What’s new?
Ça n’est pas grave! No problem!
Pas grand chose. Nothing much.
Un moment s’il vous plaît. One moment, please.
Viens avec moi!/ Venez avec moi! (polite) Come with me!
Countries and their capital cities
A
Afghanistan: Kabul Albania: Tirana Algeria: Algiers
Andorra: Andorra la Vella Angola: Luanda Antigua and Barbuda: Saint John’s
Argentina: Buenos Aires Armenia: Yerevan Australia: Canberra
Austria: Vienna Azerbaijan: Baku
B
Bahamas: Nassau Bahrain: Manama Bangladesh: Dhaka
Barbados: Bridgetown Belarus: Minsk Belgium: Brussels
Belize: Belmopan Benin: Porto-Novo Bhutan: Thimphu
Bolivia: Sucre Bosnia and Herzegovina: Sarajevo Botswana: Gaborone
Brazil: Brasilia Brunei: Bandar Seri Begawan Bulgaria: Sofia
Burkina Faso: Ouagadougou Burundi: Bujumbura
C
Cambodia: Phnom Penh Cameroon: Yaoundé Canada: Ottawa
Cape Verde: Praia Central African Republic: Bangui Chad: N’Djamena
Chile: Santiago China: Beijing Colombia: Bogotá
Côsta Rica: San José Côte d’Ivoire: Yamoussoukro Croatia: Zagreb
Cuba: Havana Cyprus: Nicosia Czech Republic: Prague
D
Democratic Republic of the Congo: Kinshasa Denmark: Copenhagen Djibouti: Djibouti
Dominica: Roseau Dominican Republic: Santo Domingo
E
Ecuador: Quito Egypt: Cairo El Salvador: San Salvador
Equatorial Guinea: Malabo Eritrea: Asmara Estonia: Tallinn
Ethiopia: Addis Ababa
F
Federated States of Micronesia: Palikir Fiji: Suva Finland: Helsinki
France: Paris
G
Gabon: Libreville Gambia: Banjul Georgia: Tbilisi
Germany: Berlin Ghana: Accra Greece: Athens
Grenada: Saint George’s Guatemala: Guatemala City Guinea: Conakry
Guinea-Bissau: Bissau Guyana: Georgetown
H
Haiti: Port-au-Prince Honduras: Tegucigalpa Hungary: Budapest
I
Iceland: Reykjavik India: New Delhi Indonesia: Jakarta
Iran: Tehran Iraq: Baghdad Ireland: Dublin
Israel: Jerusalem Italy: Rome
J
Jamaica: Kingston Japan: Tokyo Jordan: Amman
K
Kazakhstan: Astana Kenya: Nairobi Kiribati: South Tarawa
Kuwait: Kuwait City Kyrgyzstan: Bishkek
L
Laos: Vientiane Latvia: Riga Lebanon: Beirut
Lesotho: Maseru Liberia: Monrovia Libya: Tripoli
Liechtenstein: Vaduz Lithuania: Vilnius Luxembourg:
Luxembourg City
M
Macedonia: Skopje Madagascar: Antananarivo Malawi: Lilongwe
Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur Maldives: Malé Mali: Bamako
Malta: Valletta Marshall Islands: Majuro Mauritania: Nouakchott
Mauritius: Port Louis Mexico: Mexico City Moldova: Chisinau
Monaco: Monaco Mongolia: Ulaanbaatar Montenegro: Podgorica
Morocco: Rabat Mozambique: Maputo Myanmar: Naypyidaw
N
Namibia: Windhoek Nauru: Yaren District Nepal: Kathmandu
Netherlands: Amsterdam New Zealand: Wellington Nicaragua: Managua
Niger: Niamey Nigeria: Abuja North Korea: Pyongyang
Norway: Oslo
O
Oman: Muscat
P
Pakistan: Islamabad Palau: Ngerulmud Panama: Panama City
Papua New Guinea: Port Moresby Paraguay: Asunción
Peru: Lima Philippines: Manila Poland: Warsaw
Portugal: Lisbon
Q
Qatar: Doha
R
Republic of the Congo: Brazzaville Romania: Bucharest Russia: Moscow
Rwanda: Kigali
S
Saint Kitts and Nevis: Basseterre Saint Lucia: Castries Saint Vincent and the Grenadines: Kingstown
Samoa: Apia San Marino: San Marino São Tomé and Principe: São Tomé
Saudi Arabia: Riyadh Senegal: Dakar Serbia: Belgrade
Seychelles: Victoria Sierra Leone: Freetown Singapore: Singapore
Slovakia: Bratislava Slovenia: Ljubljana Solomon Islands: Honiara
Somalia: Mogadishu South Africa: Bloemfontain, Cape Town and Pretoria South Korea: Seoul
Spain: Madrid Sri Lanka: Colombo and Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte Sudan: Khartoum
Suriname: Paramaribo Swaziland: Mbabane Sweden: Stockholm
Switzerland: Bern Syria: Damascus
T
Taiwan: Taipei Tajikistan: Dushanbe Tanzania: Dar es Salaam and Dodoma
Thailand: Bangkok Timor-Leste: Dili Togo: Lomé
Tonga: Nuku’alofa Trinidad and Tobago: Port-of-Spain Tunisia: Tunis
Turkey: Ankara Turkmenistan: Ashgabat Tuvalu: Funafuti
U
Uganda: Kampala Ukraine: Kiev United Arab Emirates: Abu Dhabi
United Kingdom: London United States of America: Washington DC Uruguay: Montevideo
Uzbekistan: Tashkent
V
Vanuatu: Port Vila Vatican City: Vatican City Venezuela: Caracas
Vietnam: Hanoi
Y
Yemen: Sana’a
Z
Zambia: Lusaka Zimbabwe: Harare
General knowledge questions (see answers)
1. Who was the legendary Benedictine monk who invented champagne?
2. Name the largest freshwater lake in the world?
3. Where would you find the Sea of Tranquility?
4. What is someone who shoes horses called?
5. What item of outer clothing was named after its Scottish inventor?
6. What type of weapon is a falchion?
7. Which word goes before vest, beans and quartet?
8. What is another word for lexicon?
9. Name the seventh planet from the sun.
10. Who invented the rabies vaccination?
11. Ringo Starr narrates which children’s TV series?
12. The hardest substance on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness is diamond. What’s the softest?
13. What martial arts name means ‘gentle way’?
14. What digit does not exist in Roman numerals?
15. Camellia sinensis is an evergreen shrub better known as what?
16. Where did George II die?
17. Humans are 10,000 times more sexually active than what other animal?
18. Which animal has the collective noun of smack?
19. Citius Altius Fortius is the motto for what?
20. What animal produces its own suntan lotion?
Questions about countries (see answers)
1. Which is the only American state to begin with the letter ‘p’?
2. Name the world’s biggest island that’s not Australia.
3. What is the world’s longest river?
4. Name the world’s largest ocean.
5. What is the diameter of Earth?
6. Where would you find the world’s most ancient remnant forest?
7. Which four British cities have underground rail systems?
8. Name the famous Spanish capital of Catalonia?
9. Which city was once the imperial capital of Russia?
10. In which country is the port of Fray Bentos?
11. TAP is the national airline of which country?
12. In which country did the turnip originate?<
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13. Calico cloth was invented in which country?
14. Where was the first penal colony in Australia?
15. Speed skating started in which country?
Questions about films (see answers)
1. Name the actor who starred in 142 films including The Quiet Man, The Searchers and Stage Coach.
2. What is the oldest film in existence, and when was it made?
3. Which actress has won the most Oscars?
4. Which actress said, ‘Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night’ in All about Eve?
5. Name the director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
6. Who played Neo in The Matrix?
7. Name the actress whose career began at the age of three, and who went on to star in films such as Taxi Driver, Contact and The Silence of the Lambs?
8. Bray Studios, near Windsor in Berkshire, was once a home to which famous brand of horror films?
9. In which film did Humphrey Bogart say, ‘We’ll always have Paris?’
10. Who directed the film Picnic at Hanging Rock?
11. Which author wrote the screenplay to James Bond’s You Only Live Twice?
12. In which film adaptation of the novel does Jean Valjean appear?
13. James H. Pierce was the fourth and last silent film actor to play which famous character?
14. Which famous actor inspired the creation of Bugs Bunny?
15. What’s the name of the 2015 reboot of the Max Max films?
Questions about the garden (see answers)
1. By what name is English landscape architect Lancelot Brown more usually known?
2. Name the world-famous gardens sited sixteen kilometres outside of London, close to the River Thames.
3. Which garden is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?
4. What colour is a Welsh poppy?
5. What colour is a Himalayan poppy?
6. What flower is the symbol of culture?
7. What tree can be English, American or Eurasian?
8. Which common flower’s buds could also be used as capers?
9. Which kind of bulbs were once exchanged as a form of currency?
10. By which Latin name was Rosa gallica previously known?
11. ‘Moons of the faithful’ is the Chinese translation for which fruit?
12. What is the common name of Eucalyptus microtheca?
13. What plant has flowers but no leaves?
14. What vegetable gets its name from the word for milk?
15. Elizabeth I had anthophobia. What was she afraid of?
Questions about sport (see answers)
1. What colour jersey is worn by the winners of each stage of the Tour de France?
2. Name the only heavyweight boxing champion to finish his career of forty-nine fights without ever having been defeated?
3. Which sport does Constantino Rocca play?
4. Name the country where you would find the Cresta Run.
5. How many times was the Men’s Tennis Singles at Wimbledon won by Bjorn Borg?
6. In 2011, which country hosted a Formula 1 race for the first time?
7. Name the game played on a lawn called a crown green.
8. Which chess piece can only move diagonally?
9. Name the only footballer to have played for Liverpool, Everton, Manchester City and Manchester United.
10. In soccer, whose nickname was ‘The Divine Ponytail’?
11. What tennis player’s name meant ‘tall trees by still water’?
12. What was Sir Don Bradman’s batting average?
13. Which golfer has the most PGA golf tour wins?
14. What is the record for the highest attendance at an AFL/ VFL match?
15. Which famous Hawaiian is commonly regarded as the father of modern surfing?
16. In which sport are left-handed people banned from playing?
17. What is Usain Bolt’s fastest time for the 100 metres?
18. Which team has the highest goal-scoring AFL/VFL game?
19. Who are Australia’s most successful female and male Olympic athletes?
20. How long is a marathon?
Questions about the arts (see answers)
1. Name the three primary colours.
2. In needlework, what does UFO refer to?
3. Name the famous ballet Russian dancer who changed the face of modern ballet.
4. What is the painting La Gioconda more commonly known as?
5. What does the term ‘piano’ mean?
6. Name the Spanish artist and sculptor famous for co-founding the Cubist movement.
7. How many valves does a trumpet have?
8. Who painted How Sir Galahad, Sir Bors, and Sir Percival were fed with the Sang Grael; But Sir Percival’s Sister Died Along the Way?
9. If you were painting with tempera, what would you be using to bind together colour pigments?
10. What is John Leach famous for making?
11. Who said, ‘I like Beethoven, especially the poems’?
12. What arts movement was founded by Tristan Tzara?
13. Who was the first Australian to win a Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Solo?
14. John Cocteau was best known for writing which novel?
15. How big is Guernica?
Questions about history (see answers)
1. When was William Shakespeare born?
2. Who was Henry VIII’s first wife?
3. On what date did Germany invade Poland?
4. Which famous battle between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French and Spanish took place on 21 October 1805?
5. What year was the United Nations founded?
6. What year did Margaret Thatcher become prime minister of the United Kingdom?
7. When did the Berlin Wall come down?
8. Who is regarded as the founder of Medicare and what year was it introduced?
9. When did the Eurostar train service between Britain and France start running?
10. When was the euro introduced as legal currency on the world market?
11. How many prime ministers has Australia had?
12. In what year was the Magna Carta signed?
13. On what date did the Commonwealth of Australian become established?
14. What was the spacecraft’s name for the first manned Moon landing?
15. Australian bushranger Ned Kelly was of which national descent?
16. Who invented the first polio vaccine?
17. In which year was Nelson Mandela released from prison?
18. What date is France’s Bastille Day?
19. Which planet was discovered by William Herschel in 1781?
20. How many US presidents have been assassinated and when?
Questions about books (see answers)
1. What is the oldest surviving printed book?
2. In publishing, what does POD mean?
3. Who were Agatha Christie’s two most famous sleuths?
4. Which Shakespeare play features Shylock?
5. Who wrote the novel Death in Venice?
6. Who wrote Where the Wild Things Are?
7. What is an e-book?
8. How tall would a double elephant folio book be?
9. Whose autobiography is My Place?
10. How old is the world’s oldest dictionary?
11. Who chronicled the adventures of a famous fivesome?
12. Which travel writer comes from Des Moines, Iowa?
13. Which author had the middle names Ronald Reuel?
14. Which famous writer said, ‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed’?
15. Who is the Head of Hogwarts?
16. Which Nobel Prize–winning author wrote the book Dr Zhivago?
17. What is the second book of the Old Testament?
18. What was Dick Francis’s profession before he took up writing?
19. Who created the Mary Poppins books?
2
0. What is the name of Charles Dickens’s last book, left unfinished?
Questions about TV (see answers)
1. In Thunderbirds, what was Lady Penelope’s chauffeur called?
2. What was Skippy?
3. Name the BBC series about a shipping line set in Liverpool during the late 1800s.
4. In the TV series Dad’s Army, what was Captain Mainwaring’s first name?
5. Who was the original inventor of TV?
6. Phyllis Nan Sortain Pechey was as famous for her flamboyant character as for her cookery books and TV show from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s. By what name was she more usually known?
7. Which popular BBC series about old collectibles began in 1977, presented by Bruce Parker and Arthur Negus, and is still running to this day?
8. Which BBC music program was broadcast weekly between 1964 and 2006?
9. What was Barney and Betty’s son’s name in The Flintstones?
10. Which Australian actor was memorably killed off in season 4 of Game of Thrones?
11. In what year were the first Logie Awards presented?
12. Which British actor was the star of the HBO series Deadwood?
13. The car in the Knight Rider series was called KITT. What does this acronym stand for?
14. In what year did Neighbours start screening in Australia?
15. What’s the name of the cult Australian TV series featuring a dog that went on to be remade in the US?
Questions about food and drink (see answers)
1. If you had Lafite-Rothschild on your dinner table, what would it be?
2. What is sushi traditionally wrapped in?
3. May Queen, Wisley Crab, Foxwhelps and Lane’s Prince Albert are all species of what?
4. What is another name for allspice?
5. What colour is absinthe?
6. What flavour is Cointreau?
7. If you were to cut a hare into pieces, marinate it in wine and juniper berries then stew this slowly in a sealed dish, what would this recipe be called?
8. True or false? Fried tarantulas, eggs boiled just before they’re due to hatch and puffin hearts eaten raw when still warm are all traditional foods.
9. How many crocus flowers does it take to make 500 grams of saffron?
10. What food is found by sniffing pigs or dogs?
11. There are more than 1500 varieties of what food?
12. In ancient Egypt what food was reserved for the Pharaohs?
13. What type of fish is used in making Worcestershire sauce?
14. Which dessert is also known as ‘Tuscan trifle’?
15. Cavendish, orinoco and lady finger are all varieties of which fruit?
16. What is ceviche?
17. What is a coulis?
18. What is the national dish of Scotland?
