Countries

A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while the country of Wales is a component of a multi-part sovereign state, the United Kingdom.

Países

The definition and usage of the word “country” is flexible and has changed over time. The Economist wrote in 2010 that “any attempt to find a clear definition of a country soon runs into a thicket of exceptions and anomalies.” A country may be a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division (such as Korea), a physical territory with a government (such as Senegal), or a geographic region associated with certain distinct political, ethnic, or cultural characteristics (such as the Basque Country).

Länder

بلدان

Ülkeler

Most countries have a long name and a short name. The long name is typically used in formal contexts and often describes the country’s form of government. The short name is the country’s common name by which it is typically identified. The names of most countries are derived from a feature of the land, the name of a historical tribe or person, or a directional description. The International Organization for Standardization maintains a list of country codes as part of ISO 3166 to designate each country with a two-letter country code. The name of a country can hold cultural and diplomatic significance. Upper Volta changed its name to Burkina Faso to reflect the end of French colonisation, and the name of North Macedonia was disputed for years due to a conflict with the similarly named Macedonia region in Greece.

Страны

Negara

There is no universal agreement on the number of “countries” in the world since a number of states have disputed sovereignty status. By one application of the declarative theory of statehood and constitutive theory of statehood, there are 206 sovereign states; of which 193 are members of the UN, two have observer status at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) (the Holy See and Palestine), and 11 others are neither a member nor observer at the UNGA.
When referring to a specific polity, the term “country” may refer to a sovereign state, a constituent country, or a dependent territory. A sovereign state is a country that operates under a single government. The United Nations consists of 193 sovereign states, and it recognizes the Holy See and the State of Palestine as observer states. Some countries, such as Taiwan and Sahrawi, have disputed sovereignty status. Some sovereign states are unions of separate polities, each of which may also be considered a country in its own right, called constituent countries. The Danish Realm consists of Denmark proper, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland. The Kingdom of the Netherlands consists of the Netherlands proper, the Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten. The United Kingdom consists of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.