--- title: The United States — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The United States», a lesson of the geography course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: But the game's "empty" colonial land was never empty: millions of Native Americans lived there, and disease, wars and forced removals took their lands --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/) [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/) / The United States # The United States Lesson 9 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 14 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/9-the-united-states/). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/1/) — But the game's "empty" colonial land was never empty: millions of Native Americans lived there, and disease, wars and forced removals took their lands and many lives. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/2/) — The young country grew by buying land, like the Louisiana Purchase from France and Alaska from Russia, by wars and by settlers pushing west, until it stretched from ocean to ocean. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/3/) — Its shape is easy to remember: old, worn Appalachians in the east, the flat Great Plains in the middle and the high, young Rockies in the west. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/6/) — The United States has about 340 million people, the third largest population after India and China, and covers about 9.8 million square kilometres. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/7/) — The United States began as 13 British colonies along the Atlantic coast, which declared independence on 4 July 1776 and were recognised as independent in 1783. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/8/) — Millions of Native Americans lived in North America before Europeans came, and diseases such as smallpox (new to them, so their bodies had no defences), wars and forced removals such as the Trail of Tears in the 1830s took their lands and many lives. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/9/) — Around 400,000 enslaved Africans were shipped directly to the land that became the United States, and bringing in new captives was banned in 1808, but children of enslaved mothers were enslaved too, so by 1860 about 4 million enslaved people lived there, until slavery was abolished in 1865. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/10/) — The Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803 roughly doubled the size of the United States, and Alaska was bought from Russia in 1867 for 7.2 million dollars. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/11/) — The United States has the old, worn Appalachian Mountains in the east, the flat Great Plains in the middle and the high, young Rocky Mountains in the west. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/12/) — Alaska is the largest state by area, though cold and remote, so few people live there, and Rhode Island the smallest, while California has the most people, about 39 million, followed by Texas. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/13/) — New York City is the largest city in the United States, with about 8.5 million people, and began as the Dutch town of New Amsterdam, taken by the English in 1664. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/15/) — Since a presidential order in 2025, English has been the official language of the United States, after more than 200 years with none, because English was used everywhere anyway while many other languages were spoken too, though no law of Congress makes it so, and many states set their own rules. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/16/) — Yellowstone, created in 1872, was the world's first national park, and it sits on top of a huge volcanic hotspot that feeds its geysers. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/9-the-united-states/17/) — D.C. stands for District of Columbia, and the capital was put outside every state so that no single state would control the national government. - ← previous: [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/) - next →: [Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the rest of the English-speaking world](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/10-canada-australia-new-zealand-ireland-and-the-english-speaking-world/) - ↑ back to [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/)