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created: 30 july, 2026
HOW TO COUNTRY
a guide on learning about other nations and cultures and whatnot

OK FIRST. YOU. NEED. TO. KNOW. BOUT. OTHER. COUNTRIES!!! u cant just sit in your own lil bubble and not know sht bout literally ~200 other countries. YES, THERES ALMOST 200 OF THEM. and how much do YOU KNOW??? like.. 5? and what do you know about those 5 aside from stereotypes?? can you even point countries on a map? what about flags??? languages??? arn't you curious, AT ALL??? ABOUT THE REST 8 BILLION PEOPLE ON EARTH??? PEOPLE YOU SHARE THE PLANET WITH, PEOPLE FROM YOUR OWN SPECIES!!??

WHAT ABOUT HISTORY??? if your country's history is interesting for you, cant you imagine how the rest of the world would be?? ISNT ALL THIS FASCINATING?? MAPS?? look at that blob! arnt you curious how it got to that shape? how it ended up there???

"BUT BUTBUTBUT-- learning bout countries is hard and time consumingggg, it already took me entire school years to learn just about my own!" WELL, FEAR NOT! cuz i think i have found a... decent framework on connecting you back with the rest of the world!!

okeyyyyyy ill admit... yes, it MIGHT be time consuming depending on how deep you wanna go... but aside from time, its fun and effortless! especially if u just learn bout the surface level stuff and move on

SO HERE IT IS:

PART 1: GEORGRAPHY

FIRST, you gotta get the basic understanding on how the world looks, and where countries are at. the most fun way i have found to do this is SETERRA GEOGUESSR. riiiiiiiight here

oh and btw theres also a mobile version if u want that... just look it up on the playstore
also dont do the flags version its trash

if you already know some countries, just do it right away! pick a continent and guess the countries you already know. if you dont know a specific country, get it wrong intentionally so mr geoguessr can tell you and make you see where it actually is. keep doing this over... and over... and over... and over again until you get good

if you dont... know... anything... at all... theres a "learning" button before you start the quiz, just click on that, click on couple of countries, try to memorise like 2-5, and then do what i said above

and the point is to take it SLOW. do it on a break, randomly, spontantiously, if you DO want to lock in, LOCK THE HECK IN! do it couple of times and one CONTINENT at a time and you'll eventually get the hang of it. its OK to make mistakes, i... still kinda do sometimes when i do them carelessly, but at the end youll be able to atleast comprehend more than you believe you could

PART 2: THE RESEARCH

OK now that u have an understanding of the world, or a basic understanding, or heck you just want to learn about a specific country, how do you go about doing that?

well i think there are 3 main good sources that give a pretty good overview of countries

and they are: wikipedia, bbc country profiles, and polandball.

sayyyyyy u wanna learn bout... paraguay! weird south american country, with 2 dots connected with a line



the fastest, easiest and most basic way to do it is bcc country profiles, heres one for paraguay
(if u want country profile for another country, just search "x country bbc profile" and youll see it)

it tells you basic facts: map, flag neighbours, capitals, size, population, language, whos currently in charge, very basic history timeline, media even and done! you have a very basic comprehension of that country. if you want to learn more theres polandball

it does basically the same thing as bbc but funnier and somehow more in depth. it tells you its culture, likes and dislikes, whats it famous for (bork), food etc. it treats countries like people which is... ok??? i read my own country's entry (georgiaball) and id say its... pretty? NO. VERY ACCURATE IN FACT i love it!! (except for "მოიხსენი არაყი!" i have... literally never heard anyone say that, ever. maybe its an inside joke in countryballs or somethin?) reading this is a joy TRUST ME.

and finally wikipedia... just... wikipedia, any page involving the country. if you dont know where to start a good place is history of x country pages like
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Paraguay

it teaches you some nice lil history, not too broad, not too deep, just... normal. if you wanna dive deep, go to another page you like for example war of the triple alliance, its mentioned once briefly in wikipedia but you can go to its main page to go deeper:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War

or the chaco war for example:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_War

just do whatever you want, read whatever interests you dont be afraid to go DEEP. and READ A LOT about that country

but thats basic, boring (aside from polandball pls help i can stop) quick (if u didnt read a lotta wikipedia) country history. what if you want to go EVEN. DEEPER???

PART 3: A POINT OF NO RETU-- i mean... uh... DEEPER RESEARCH

lets start off by THE COUNTRY'S LANGUAGE. language is vital as you may know, and the best way to UNDERSTAND it is LINGUISTICS! on wikipedia

using paraguay as an example again, guarani is one of the spoken languages in paraguay aside from spanish. there on wikipedia you can hear someone speak it, its phonetic charts (vowels, consonants), grammar, history and more! now you understand a lot bout it without having to learn it!

if you think theyre intimidating, THEYRE NOT! once you get to know em theyre really chill, i think ai made everyone kinda scared to check out other sources lol ;w; DONT BE SCARED!! ITS NOT COMPLICATED (i think... i dunno man the only sample i have is my sister who said this is interesting)

and lets not forget EDUCATIONAL YOUTUBEEE.. or... tiktok.. i dont use tiktok so i dont know what its like there. BUT YOUTUBE is really fun to watch and u learn a buncha stuff, an easy win! the ones i recommend are

possible history, language simp, kklein, neon armenian cartographer, emperor tigerstar (and map videos in general), extra in exile, estoniaball/polishturtoise/icariaball/kaliningrad general and other countryball creators, ingen, western asian music, wikitongues and the other ones youll naturally find and learn about once your feed becomes DIVERSEEEEE >:3

ALSO MUSIC!! its SUPER IMPORTANTE-- the easiest one to find is their national anthems. and folk music, for example since we're so committed to having paraguay as example heres one

while we're still on the topic of social media, u need to engage with people online! youll naturally see them from time to time if the argorythm notices that youre into that kinda thing but best centralised place to see ppl is reddit r/country or something. and the BEST absolute BEST place is r/askcountry. search a question, and natives answer it... its really good! i think... yes another "i think" cuz this IS reddit after all... the only downside is that not all countries have it so...

and if youre REALLY COMMITED.. try learning their language to a limited extent! the best fun, casual and easy ones i found are duolingo (obviously) but duolingo doesnt have THAT many languages or dialects so a better one would be clozemaster, its quicker too. as we said in our paraguay example, they also speak guarani there, which is available to learn on clozemaster!

another good resource is colloquial language book series. they have free language cassettes on their website too!! :O

AND FINALLY. meet people... IN PERSON!! how? well its very simple, start renting your house in a tourist rich area AND FARM TAKING TO STRANGERS-- ok... too much???... yea...

PART 4: WOW U MADE IT THIS FAR

yea thats about it and if youre intimidated TRY IT FIRST PLEASEEEE-- and if youre like: ok this is fine but like... meh i dont really care?? ok fineeeee just... learn the basics atleast please JUST the basics im not asking u to go SUPER DEEP JUST... be... able... to... point... egypt... EGYPT. A WELL KNOWN COUNTRY... on... a... map... please.......................