IELTS Online: Course

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Place Names

Let’s now focus on how to spell countries, nationalities and cities.  Below you will see a table of country names, nationalities for each country, and one or two well-known cities in that country.

These are place names and nationalities of English-speaking countries that you will very likely hear and need to answer in Section 1 of the Listening test.

Example

Click on the buttons to hear how to pronounce these places.

Country

Nationality

Cities

England

English

London, Oxford, Cambridge

Scotland

Scottish

Edinburgh, Glasgow

Ireland

Irish

Dublin, Belfast

Wales

Welsh

Cardiff

Australia

Australian

Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra

New Zealand

New Zealander, Kiwi

Auckland, Wellington

Canada

Canadian

Vancouver, Toronto

The United States

American

Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C.,  New York

India

Indian

New Delhi, Calcutta

Singapore

Singaporean

Hong Kong

Hong Kong Chinese

When you learn country names and spellings in English, you should also learn the spelling of the nationality.  Nationalities in English often have the following endings:

-ese

(e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese)

-an (e.g.,  Korean, American, German, Australian, Austrian)
-ian / -ean (e.g., Canadian, Peruvian, Chilean)
-ish (e.g., British, Irish, Scottish)

You are going to do an activity on spelling place names. However, before you start, look at how Yumiko completed the activity.

Country

City

Nationality

Argentena

Bwanos Airies

Argentinian

You can see that Yumiko heard the country and city names correctly.  However, she has misspelt both names. Even though she has heard the answers correctly, the answers will probably be marked incorrect because she has misspelt them!

So what is the nationality of Argentina?  Is Yumiko correct? Take a guess before you click the Check button to see the correct answers. 

Sometimes in the IELTS Listening test, country or city names will be spelt by the speakers but not always.  Therefore, the following activity will encourage you to focus on the spelling of country and city names as well as nationalities.

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