When to use 'THE' with country names

Hey, guys. I'm Alex. Thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on articles and

geography, continents, countries, and landmarks. This is the second part of a two-part series.

If you missed the first part on articles and geography, bodies of water, you can check

it out at the link attached to this video.

All right, so today, we're looking at continents, countries, and landmarks. First of all, we

have continents. For example, Asia, South America, Europe, whatever it is. What do you

think? Should we attach "the" or "the" to these continents? Do you say, for example,

"China is in Asia" or "China is in the Asia"? No? Okay. So, it's in Asia, right? With continents,

we do not use the article "the". We just say, "Asia, South America, Europe. I visited Europe

this past summer. I just came back from Antarctica," wherever you went. Okay?

Countries, now, we have -- countries are a little more complicated. Most countries, for

example, Sweden, Canada, Mexico, Spain, France, et cetera, we do not need an article, right?

We don't say, "The Sweden" or "The Canada" or "The Mexico". We say, "No, I live in Canada.

Hey, I'm from Mexico. I went to Sweden for vacation."

However, there are some countries, islands also, where you do need to use the article

"the". Now, an easy rule to remember is, if the country has a political title, okay? So,

if you see the word "Republic" or "The People's Democratic Republic" or anything like that

in the country's title, you will use "the". Okay?

Okay? So, if you have, like, "The Democratic Republic of North Korea" or if you have "The

People's Republic of China", anything like that, you always have "the". There are also

some islands such as "The Bahamas" or "The Philippines", but this rule is not consistent

with islands because then you also have Malaysia, which is a group of islands, but you don't

really say, "The Malaysia". So, unfortunately, it's not consistent. However, if you would

like to learn which ones do use "the", which ones don't use "the", unfortunately, it's

just practice and checking it out online.

Okay, in terms of landmarks, for example, if you have buildings, structures, statues,

things like that, like, for example, Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, you need to use

"the" in these situations. Okay?

So, again, to review, for continents, we do not use "the". For countries, most countries,

we do not use "the" unless they have a political title or there are certain islands which also

have "the". And for landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the London

Eye, generally, we use "the" with them.

Now, as I mentioned over here, you know, there are some countries, some islands that use

"the", some that don't use "the". And if you'd like to have the complete list, it would take

me a lot of board space to write the complete list here, so I won't be doing that in this

video. However, if you'd like to see the complete list, you can check out the resources section

on www.engvid.com and find it there.

All right, guys, if you want to test your knowledge of this information, you can check

out the quiz on www.engvid.com. Good luck.