--- title: Straits: Bosporus, Gibraltar, Malacca, Hormuz and the other narrow doors — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Straits: Bosporus, Gibraltar, Malacca, Hormuz and the other narrow doors», a lesson of the geography course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A strait is a narrow stretch of sea joining two larger bodies of water, like a door between two --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/) / Straits: Bosporus, Gibraltar, Malacca,… # Straits: Bosporus, Gibraltar, Malacca, Hormuz and the other narrow doors Lesson 19 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 19 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/0/) — A strait is a narrow stretch of sea joining two larger bodies of water, like a door between two rooms. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/1/) — Ships that want to go from one room to the other must squeeze through the door, so whoever holds its sides can watch, tax or block them. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/2/) — That is why straits made rulers rich and fought over: Constantinople guarded the Bosporus, Denmark charged every foreign ship a toll at the Øresund from 1429 to 1857, and Portugal seized Malacca in 1511 and Hormuz in 1515. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/3/) — In Europa Universalis 5, straits are places where armies can cross between lands and where forts and trade are valuable, and that is true. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/4/) — But real straits are not all alike: Gibraltar is about 14 km wide while the Drake Passage is about 800 km of some of the roughest sea on Earth. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/5/) — Today straits still matter: about a fifth of the oil the world uses normally passes through the Strait of Hormuz, so trouble there can make petrol dearer far away. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/6/) — Think of a school corridor with one narrow door at the end: when one person stops in it, the whole queue gets stuck behind. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/7/) — A strait is a narrow stretch of sea joining two larger bodies of water, and a few straits carry a large share of the world's shipping. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/8/) — The Bosporus joins the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, is less than 1 km wide at its narrowest, and divides Istanbul between Europe and Asia. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/9/) — The Dardanelles links the Sea of Marmara to the Aegean, a part of the Mediterranean, and with the Bosporus it forms the Turkish Straits, the only sea way from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, whose use by warships has been governed by the Montreux Convention since 1936. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/10/) — The Strait of Gibraltar is only about 14 km wide at its narrowest, separating Spain in Europe from Morocco in Africa, and it is the only natural entrance to the Mediterranean from the Atlantic. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/11/) — The Strait of Malacca, between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, is one of the busiest shipping routes in the world, linking the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/12/) — Portugal seized the port of Malacca in 1511 to control the busy sea road of the spice trade there, and the Dutch took it in 1641. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/13/) — The Strait of Hormuz, between Iran and Oman, is the only sea exit from the Persian Gulf, and normally about a fifth of the oil the world uses passes through it. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/14/) — The Strait of Dover between England and France is about 33 km wide, so on a clear day you can see France from Dover, and it is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/15/) — The Bab-el-Mandeb, between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, is about 30 km wide and links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean; ships between the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean pass through it, and if it is blocked they must go all the way round Africa. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/16/) — From 1429 to 1857 Denmark charged a toll, called the Sound Dues, on every foreign ship passing through the Øresund strait between Denmark and Sweden. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/17/) — The Bering Strait, about 82 km wide, separates Russia from Alaska, and during the Ice Age a land bridge there let the first people walk into the Americas. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/19-straits-the-narrow-doors/18/) — Magellan found the Strait of Magellan near the tip of South America in 1520, while the wide Drake Passage, about 800 km across between Cape Horn and Antarctica, is one of the roughest seas on Earth, because strong winds and currents race round the world there with no land to stop them. - ← previous: [Deserts](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/18-deserts/) - next →: [Canals: Suez, Panama and the shortcuts](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/20-canals-suez-panama-and-the-shortcuts/) - ↑ back to [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/)