Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.
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Somehow we ended up in my bathroom again
for another English lesson. So several
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country names have the word 'the' with them.
We have The United Kingdom, which which is
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short for 'The United Kingdom on Great Britain
and Northern Ireland' but we usually have the 'The UK'.
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We have 'The United States'.
We also have 'The Netherlands'.
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We have 'The Bahamas' and finally we
have 'The Gambia' all the way over here.
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Now those are all the country names that
officially have 'the'. But there are a
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few more countries where we often add
'the'. For example, 'The Philippines'
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and 'The Maldives'.
Maldives
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Philippines
Now, why do we say 'the' with those countries?
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It's probably related to the fact that it's
a collection of islands. Having said that, we
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don't say 'The Indoonesia', even though Indonesia
is also a country made up of a bunch of islands.
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