World Wide Words -- Mini Survey

[Michael Quinion]

WORLD WIDE WORDS       MINI SURVEY       Tuesday 21 September 1999
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Every now and then I like to find out something more about where
the subscribers to World Wide Words come from. As we've just hit
the magic number of 6,000, this seems a good time.

For most of you it's clear enough, as your countries of origin are
given by the last two letters of your e-mail addresses. So I know
World Wide Words has subscribers from these countries:

  Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium,
  Bermuda, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia,
  Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican
  Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Estonia, Faeroe Islands, Fiji,
  Finland, France, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Guyana,
  Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland,
  Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait,
  Kyrgyz Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta,
  Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Oman,
  Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar,
  Romania, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovak
  Republic, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri
  Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad &
  Tobago, Turkey, UK, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uruguay,
  USA, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia.

But if you have a .COM, .NET or .ORG address, it's not so obvious.
The odds are you're in the USA but you could be based in some other
country. That's conceivably true of .EDU, .GOV and .MIL addresses,
too. Someone with an .INT address could be anywhere. And sometimes
a country code doesn't tell the whole story.

I'd very much like to hear from you if you are currently based in a
country that is NOT in the list above. If you're not, I'd be very
grateful if you would e-mail me at wordsorigins at quinion.com with
the name of your country.

Many thanks.

-- Michael Quinion
Webmaster and Editor,
World Wide Words