Here’s the Order of Countries at the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony

(Bloomberg)—After the opening ceremony on the Tokyo Olympics final summer season, NBC, the official broadcaster of the occasion within the U.S., reported some viewers have been “confused” on the order by which the groups entered.

That’s as a result of the collaborating groups didn’t enter based on the English alphabetical order, however by the order set within the Japanese language. That meant Iceland entered second after Greece, which all the time comes first in what’s often known as the Parade of Nations because it’s the historic founding nation of the Olympics.

Issues get rather more difficult on the coming winter video games in China, nonetheless, because the Chinese language language doesn’t have an alphabet. As a substitute, indexing within the language for the opening ceremony is finished based on stroke order, which arranges phrases based mostly on what number of strokes the primary character of the phrase has, after which the order by which the strokes are written—the straight horizontal stroke comes earlier than the straight vertical stroke, for instance.
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Within the 2008 Beijing Olympics, that meant Guinea and Guinea Bissau entered after Greece, as the primary character of their simplified Chinese language (the system utilized in mainland China) names have simply two strokes. Turkey adopted in fourth place, as the primary character in its title in Chinese language has three strokes.

The host nation enters final, and is preceded by the host of the next video games. On the upcoming winter video games, meaning Italy will march within the penultimate spot. In the meantime, the Chinese language Taipei delegation, as Taiwan is thought on the Olympics, will likely be attending the occasion, reversing an earlier choice after the IOC mentioned it was required to take part, the island’s Olympic committee mentioned in an announcement Monday.

The alphabetical order isn’t set in stone, although. On the winter video games in Pyeongchang, South Korea in 2018, some groups entered out of the order dictated by the Korean alphabet, probably on account of political sensitivities. For instance, Iran and Israel have been separated by Italy within the opening ceremony in opposition to alphabetical order. A spokesperson for the Worldwide Olympic Committee mentioned in an announcement the choice to change the order “was taken on the time to mirror the suitable protocols,” with out elaborating.

On the upcoming winter video games, Israel, which marched earlier than Japan in 2008 in Beijing, will enter after Pakistan and earlier than Timor-Leste. The Russian Olympic Committee, which, by the identical Chinese language stroke order, ought to enter between Bulgaria and the U.S., is marching in earlier earlier than France.

Right here is the order by which 91 groups will march in on the Winter Olympics based on an inventory supplied by the IOC shortly earlier than the beginning of the occasion.