CORRECT ENGLISH GRAMMAR Country Names SHORTS

Somehow we ended up in my bathroom again
for another English lesson. So several

country names have the word ‘the’ with them.
We have The United Kingdom, which which is

short for ‘The United Kingdom on Great Britain
and Northern Ireland’ but we usually have the ‘The UK’.

We have ‘The United States’.
We also have ‘The Netherlands’.

We have ‘The Bahamas’ and finally we
have ‘The Gambia’ all the way over here.

Now those are all the country names that
officially have ‘the’. But there are a

few more countries where we often add
‘the’. For example, ‘The Philippines’

and ‘The Maldives’.
Maldives

Philippines
Now, why do we say ‘the’ with those countries?

It’s probably related to the fact that it’s
a collection of islands. Having said that, we

don’t say ‘The Indoonesia’, even though Indonesia
is also a country made up of a bunch of islands.