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These way students could correctly identify “volcanoes” instead of just
“mountains”. A striking difference between the two groups is the frequency of
occurrence of mentioning craters: almost twice as many students noticed craters in
the Latin group than in the Hungarian one: craters had no descriptive term, so they
did notice them as landforms (as they probably concentrated on the visual informa-
tion in which layer they are abundant), while the students who got a map full of
understandable names, but without any names having a term “crater”, may have
seen these landforms not to be very important or they just overlooked craters
because they concentrated on features named and named with descriptor terms.
9.4.4 Hungarian Names
Many of those who got the Hungarian version (i.e. names that they understood),
described Mars using—simply listing—the descriptor terms used in the geographi-
cal names appearing on the map. This made the description easier, but required no
deeper consideration.
Some recognized the importance of craters and some also noticed volcanoes.
Many listed “uplands” (the translated word for Planum), and “basins” (Hellas and
Argyre Basins, using this term in Hungarian instead of Plains/Planitia). This is a
more sophisticated description than just “plains” as could have been “translated”
from the visual layer of the map. Troughs (trenches) were also listed by many
respondents—an equivalent of Fossae which have not at all been recognized from
their visual representation by the group which got the Latin names.
9.5 Discussion
Of the landscape types described before consulting the maps, some concepts have
disappeared completely from the later description: deserts, buttes, soil and dust,
rocky surface are not mentioned any more. Buttes are too small to appear on a map,
surface characterization is not the task of a topographic map. Arid and dry nature of
the surface can't be read from a topographic map. These very important concepts
which described the nature of Martian landscape correctly, have been exterminated
and overridden by the stronger effect of the nomenclature of the map. However, it is
very important that these factors remain in the horizon of the student's knowledge
on Mars: maps—especially computer generated automated maps which are not
suitable for showing features smaller than what is visible at a particular scale—
should have solution of communicating the surface texture and the existence of
smaller landforms in some way.
The language of nomenclature does change the perception of the surface
features of a planetary body for a general map reader. It changes preconceptions,
eliminating some—even important and true—concepts, and makes others even
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