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Countries and territories where English is an official language

  • TanzaniaTanzania does not have an official language by law, yet over 100 languages are spoken inside its borders, more than any other country in East Africa.
  • United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland sits off the northwestern coast of continental Europe, home to over 69 million people in 2024.
  • The BahamasThe Bahamas sits at an unusual crossroads of geography and identity. Officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, it comprises 700 islands and more than 2,500…
  • Marshall IslandsThe Marshall Islands is 98.62 percent water. No other sovereign state on Earth carries so much ocean against so little land.
  • TuvaluTuvalu sits roughly midway between Hawaii and Australia, a scattering of nine islands so flat that the highest point anywhere in the country rises just 4.6…
  • Channel IslandsThe Channel Islands sit just off the coast of Normandy, close enough to France that you can see the mainland on a clear day, yet they have never been part of…
  • GrenadaGrenada is the smallest of the eastern Caribbean's spice nations, and yet its national flag carries a nutmeg. That single image hints at how much one tree…
  • Saint LuciaSaint Lucia holds a distinction unlike almost any other place on earth. This small island, covering just 617 square kilometres in the eastern Caribbean, has…
  • DominicaDominica is the only eastern Caribbean island that still has a population of pre-Columbian native Kalinago, the people who once called the island Wai'tu…
  • Saint Kitts and NevisSaint Kitts and Nevis holds a distinction that most people never think to wonder about: at just 261 square kilometres and roughly 48,000 inhabitants, it is…
  • MauritiusMauritius sits roughly 1100 nautical miles off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar, an island country in the Indian Ocean.
  • American SamoaAmerican Samoa sits 2,200 miles southwest of Hawaii, making it the southernmost territory the United States holds. It straddles one of the most remote…
  • BermudaBermuda sits alone in the North Atlantic, the nearest land more than a thousand kilometres away on the coast of North Carolina.
  • Federated States of MicronesiaThe Federated States of Micronesia spreads across the western Pacific just north of the equator, its 607 islands strung over almost 2700 km.
  • GuamGuam's de facto motto is "Where America's Day Begins," a phrase that points to the island's place against the International Date Line.
  • Isle of ManThe Isle of Man sits in the Irish Sea, almost equidistant from England, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, with Wales to the south.
  • United States Virgin IslandsThe United States Virgin Islands sit about 40 miles east of Puerto Rico, a Caribbean territory that is simultaneously American soil and a place unlike…
  • KenyaIn 1984, at Lake Turkana, the palaeoanthropologist Richard Leakey was assisted by Kamoya Kimeu when they uncovered the Turkana Boy, a 1.6-million-year-old…
  • Cook IslandsThe Cook Islands sits in the South Pacific Ocean, 15 specks of land whose total area barely reaches 236.7 square kilometres, yet whose ocean territory, the…
  • MaltaMalta sits in the Mediterranean Sea between Sicily and North Africa, an archipelago 80 km south of Italy, 284 km east of Tunisia, and 333 km north of Libya.
  • Puerto RicoPuerto Rico sits about 1,000 miles southeast of Miami, a Caribbean archipelago that is neither a U.S. state nor an independent nation. Its people have held U.
  • AustraliaAustralia is the world's flattest and driest inhabited continent, a land area of 7,688,287 square kilometres that ranks sixth-largest among all countries.
  • GuyanaGuyana sits on the northern coast of South America, the only country on the mainland that holds English as its official language.
  • Saint HelenaSaint Helena is a volcanic island sitting roughly 1,950 kilometres west of Angola in the South Atlantic Ocean, one of the most remote inhabited places on…
  • SudanAround 11500 BC, near Jebel Sahaba, people fought what scholars call the earliest known war in the world. That ground now sits inside Sudan, a country in…
  • CanadaCanada is the second-largest country in the world by total area, yet most of its people cluster in a thin band near a single neighbour.
  • JamaicaThe Ciboney people who first lived here called the island Xaymaca, a word meaning the Land of Wood and Water, or the Land of Springs.
  • Hong KongHong Kong fits 7.5 million residents into a 1114 square kilometre strip of land on China's southern coast, just south of Shenzhen.
  • PakistanPakistan takes its name from an acronym a student activist coined in a pamphlet. In January 1933, Choudhry Rahmat Ali published the word, first spelling it…
  • Solomon IslandsSolomon Islands sits at one of the most contested crossroads on Earth, a scatter of more than a thousand islands in Melanesia where some of the bloodiest…
  • New ZealandNew Zealand sits alone in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, a pair of islands so remote that they were the last large habitable land on Earth to be settled by…
  • Commonwealth of NationsThe Commonwealth of Nations began, in a sense, with a single offhand phrase. On the 18th of January 1884, Lord Rosebery stood in Adelaide, South Australia…
  • SingaporeSingapore sits about one degree of latitude north of the equator, roughly 137 kilometres of sea between it and the line that divides the globe.
  • EnglandEngland covers roughly 62% of the island of Great Britain, yet its reach across history stretches far beyond those shores.
  • WalesWales, known in its own language as Cymru, sits on the western edge of the island of Great Britain, bounded by the Irish Sea, the Bristol Channel, and the…
  • United StatesThe United States of America first received its name in a letter dated the 2nd of January, 1776. Stephen Moylan, an aide to General George Washington, wrote…
  • ScotlandScotland occupies nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, yet it holds a history so distinct from its southern neighbor that for centuries the…
  • PhilippinesThe Philippines spreads across roughly 7,641 islands in the western Pacific Ocean, a country with a population of over 114 million.
  • South AfricaA temperature of -20.1 degrees Celsius was recorded at Buffelsfontein in the Eastern Cape in 2013. Far to the north, near Upington in the Kalahari, the…
  • NigeriaNigeria is the most populous country in Africa, with more than 242 million people, making it the sixth-most populous country in the world.
  • IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India, holds a distinction that no other country on earth can claim: it is simultaneously the world's most populous nation…
  • Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland sits in the north-east corner of the island of Ireland, and it has never been easy to agree on what to call it.