--- title: Europe: countries and capitals — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Europe: countries and capitals», a lesson of the geography course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Today's map is much simpler, about 44 to 50 countries, and even that number depends on whether you count Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan and K --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/) / Europe: countries and capitals # Europe: countries and capitals Lesson 7 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/1/) — Today's map is much simpler, about 44 to 50 countries, and even that number depends on whether you count Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Kosovo. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/2/) — Many countries you know are younger than you think: Italy became one state in 1861 and Germany in 1871, long after the game's Holy Roman Empire. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/3/) — Capitals move for reasons: Philip II put Spain's court in central Madrid, and Warsaw took over from Kraków when Poland was joined with Lithuania. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/4/) — Some countries are odd: the Netherlands' capital is Amsterdam but its government sits in The Hague, and Switzerland has no capital by law at all. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/5/) — Europe has about 44 to 50 countries, depending on whether partly European countries such as Russia, Turkey and Kazakhstan, and disputed places such as Kosovo, are counted. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/6/) — Russia, with its capital Moscow, is the largest country in Europe and the world, and although only about a quarter of its land is in Europe, most of its people live there. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/7/) — Vatican City, inside Rome, is the smallest country in the world at about 0.44 square kilometres, and it is ruled by the Pope; it is all that is left of the Pope's lands, the rest of which joined Italy by 1870. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/8/) — Germany, with its capital Berlin, has the most people of any country wholly in Europe, about 84 million. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/9/) — Spain's capital is Madrid, which Philip II made the permanent seat of the court in 1561 partly because it lies near the centre of the country. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/10/) — Italy's capital is Rome, though the country became one state only in 1861, with Rome joining in 1870. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/11/) — Poland's capital is Warsaw, which took over from Kraków around 1596, partly because it lay nearer the middle of Poland and Lithuania joined together. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/12/) — The capital of the Netherlands is Amsterdam, but the government, parliament and the king's working palace are in The Hague. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/13/) — Switzerland has no official capital by law, and Bern is called the federal city, where the government and parliament meet; the country is made of 26 cantons (regions), and having no capital keeps them all equal. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/14/) — Ukraine, with its capital Kyiv, is the largest country wholly in Europe, at about 600,000 square kilometres. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/15/) — The European Union has 27 member countries after the United Kingdom left in 2020, and 21 of them use the euro since Bulgaria joined it in 2026. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/16/) — Portugal's capital is Lisbon, and Portugal's land border with Spain has stayed almost unchanged since a treaty in 1297, among the oldest in Europe; its only land neighbour was the bigger kingdom of Castile, so Portugal grew by sea. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/7-europe-countries-and-capitals/18/) — In 1337 Spain did not exist yet: Castile, Aragon, Navarre and Muslim Granada were separate, and Castile and Aragon were joined by the marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand in 1469. - ← previous: [Islands, seas and lakes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/6-islands-seas-and-lakes/) - next →: [The British Isles and the United Kingdom](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/8-the-british-isles-and-the-united-kingdom/) - ↑ back to [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/)