World Country Study flags · languages · facts

About this app

A study tool for the flags, languages and facts of every country in the world. Each card comes back just before you would forget it, so a few minutes a day is enough to keep what you have learned. It runs in your browser and you can start straight away, without signing up for anything.

What is inside

  • 197 countries — the 193 UN member states, Vatican City and Palestine, plus Taiwan and Kosovo. Each one explains its flag, gives a handful of facts worth knowing, and lists the languages spoken there.
  • 143 languages with real written samples — 1,512 of them, so a card shows you a different sentence every time it comes back and you cannot pass by memorising one phrase.
  • How to tell lookalikes apart. 121 languages come with the tells that separate them: the letters only they use, the letters they never use, and which languages the advice is really about.
  • Earlier flags where a design has changed, so you learn the current one and still recognise the old.
  • A wiki you can browse and search without being quizzed — every country and language in detail, filterable by continent, script or language family.

About the flag images

Every flag was checked by eye against the current official design. Four things are worth knowing:

  • Square flags stay square. Switzerland and Vatican City are not stretched to fit, and Nepal — the only non-rectangular national flag — keeps its true pennant shape.
  • Widths are standardised. Every other flag is drawn in the same 4:3 frame so cards are comparable. Colours and layout are accurate, but the official proportions vary — 1:2 for the United Kingdom, 11:28 for Qatar — so the shape of the frame is not always the official one.
  • Some countries have two flags. Where a civil and a state version exist — Peru, Costa Rica, Argentina, Poland — the note under the flag says which one you are looking at.
  • Afghanistan is genuinely disputed. The tricolour of the Islamic Republic is shown, as it is still used at the UN; since 2021 the de facto authorities fly a white flag bearing the Shahada. Both are described on the Afghanistan page, because a learner should recognise either.

Where the data comes from

  • Flag artwork comes from the flag-icons project, used under the MIT licence and bundled into the app so it works offline.
  • Names, capitals, regions, areas, currencies, borders and codes come from the world-countries dataset, used under the ODbL.
  • Populations come from country-json, which publishes World Bank estimates for 2018. Every figure says “2018 est.” rather than pretending to be current. Taiwan, Kosovo and Palestine are missing from that dataset and use separately sourced figures of the same period.
  • Written samples are quoted word for word from UDHR in Unicode — the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the most translated document in the world, in the Unicode consortium’s proofread translations. Each sample is paired with the same passage of the English declaration, so neither the text nor its meaning is invented here.
  • The facts and the recognition tells are written for this app and checked by hand. Anything that could not be verified was left out rather than guessed at — 7 languages have no sample for that reason, and appear in the wiki without being quizzed.
  • The flag explanations have been checked claim by claim against published references — Britannica, Wikipedia, Flags of the World, and government or embassy pages where a state publishes its own flag law. 239 of the 239 essays have been through that pass as of 2026-08-21, and what was looked up, what it was checked against and what turned out to be wrong is recorded in the repository rather than summarised here. It corrected 40 of them.
  • World Heritage sites come from UNESCO’s own published list — 1,273 sites worldwide, as fetched on 2026-08-04. Names, years and categories are theirs; the list grows by roughly twenty a year, so a country’s count can lag a recent session.
  • National dishes are written by hand. Wikipedia’s list was used as a starting point and disagreed with often enough that it is a cross-check rather than a source; where a country has no single national dish, the card says so instead of picking one.
  • Map outlines come from Natural Earth, which is public domain. Eight places are drawn from elsewhere, because Natural Earth draws them with too few points to be coastlines — Nauru with nine, which is an octagon rather than an island once the map is zoomed in on it. Nauru, Kiribati and the Cook Islands come from geoBoundaries under CC BY 4.0; Bouvet Island, the Cocos Islands, Christmas Island, Norfolk Island and the United States Minor Outlying Islands, which geoBoundaries does not carry, come from OpenStreetMap under the ODbL — © OpenStreetMap contributors.

If you find a mistake it is worth reporting. The point of a learning app is that what you memorise is right.

Photographs

Each country card in the encyclopedia opens with a photograph of the place, taken from the Wikimedia Commons page banners used by Wikivoyage. All 197 are under free licences, and every author is named below.

Show all photograph credits

Anthem recordings

183 of the national anthems have a recording, streamed from Wikimedia Commons rather than stored here. Most are instrumental performances by military bands and are public domain; the rest are named below. Where no freely licensed recording exists, or the only one is an archive field recording rather than the performance you would hear at a ceremony, the card gives the anthem’s details without a player.

Show all recording credits
  • Afghanistan Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Albania Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Algeria Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Andorra Juan Benlloch i Vivó / Enric Marfany Bons · CC0 · file
  • Angola US navy band · Public domain · file
  • Antigua and Barbuda Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Argentina Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Armenia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Australia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Austria Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Azerbaijan USN Band · Public domain · file
  • Bahamas Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Bahrain Bahrain Orchestra on behalf of the Government of Bahrain · Public domain · file
  • Bangladesh Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Barbados Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Belarus Belarus Armed Forces Band · Public domain · file
  • Belgium Howardcorn33 · CC BY 4.0 · file
  • Belize United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Benin Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Bhutan Keith Terrett · CC BY 4.0 · file
  • Bolivia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Botswana United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Brazil Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Brunei Performed by the United States Navy Band (part of the US Federal Government). · Public domain · file
  • Bulgaria Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Burkina Faso Thomas Sankara · Public domain · file
  • Burundi Marc Barengayabo · CC BY-SA 4.0 · file
  • Cambodia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Canada Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Cape Verde Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Central African Republic Herbert Pepper · Public domain · file
  • Chad Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Chile Performed by the United States Navy Band, written by Ramón Carnicer (1789-1855) · Public domain · file
  • China Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Colombia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Comoros Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Costa Rica José María Zeledón Brenes / Manuel María Gutiérrez / United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Côte d'Ivoire United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Croatia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Cuba Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Cyprus Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Czechia Alton C. Morris, Works Progress Administration · Public domain · file
  • Denmark Performed by the United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Djibouti Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Dominica United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Dominican Republic José Rufino Reyes Siancas (lyrics by Emilio Prud'Homme) · Public domain · file
  • Ecuador Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Egypt Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • El Salvador Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Equatorial Guinea Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Eritrea Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Estonia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Eswatini Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Ethiopia United States Navy Band, uploaded to Wikimedia by Arbegne · Public domain · file
  • Fiji Charles Austin Miles · Public domain · file
  • Finland Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • France Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Gabon Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Gambia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Georgia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Germany Composition: Josef Haydn Performance: U.S. Army 1st Armored Division Band · Public domain · file
  • Ghana Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Greece Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Grenada Zuanzuanfuwa · Public domain · file
  • Guatemala Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Guinea Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Guyana Robert Cyril Gladstone Potter · Public domain · file
  • Haiti Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Honduras Yumina Shalom Wood · CC BY-SA 4.0 · file
  • Hungary Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Iceland Lyrics: Matthías Jochumsson; Music: Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson. · Public domain · file
  • India Rabindranath Tagore · Public domain · file
  • Iran Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Iraq Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Ireland Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Israel Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Italy Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Jamaica Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Japan Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Jordan United States Navy Band, uploaded to Wikimedia by Bart133 · Public domain · file
  • Kazakhstan Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Kenya Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Kosovo Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Kuwait Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Kyrgyzstan Government of Kyrgyzstan (shortened by Bai Tin Wayne) · Public domain · file
  • Laos Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Latvia NBS Štāba orķestris - Latvian Army Orchestra · Public domain · file
  • Lebanon Rashid Nakhle / Wadia Sabra / United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Lesotho Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Liberia Olmstead Luca (lyrics by Daniel Bashiel Warner not included) · Public domain · file
  • Libya Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Liechtenstein Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Lithuania Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Luxembourg Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Madagascar Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Malawi Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Malaysia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Maldives Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Mali Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Malta Manoel Theatre on behalf of the Government of Malta · Public domain · file
  • Marshall Islands Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Mauritania Lyrics Unknown Music Rageh Daoud · Public domain · file
  • Mauritius United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Mexico Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Micronesia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Moldova George George · Public domain · file
  • Monaco Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Montenegro Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Morocco Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Mozambique Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Myanmar Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Namibia For the anthem who made this: Axali Doëseb (1954 – 27 October 2023) · Public domain · file
  • Nauru Laurence Henry Hicks · CC BY-SA 3.0 · file
  • Nepal Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Netherlands Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • New Zealand Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Nicaragua Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Niger Unknown authorUnknown author · CC BY 4.0 · file
  • Nigeria Composição: Frances Benda Performance: Banda do Batalhão da Guarda Presidencial · Public domain · file
  • North Macedonia Todor Skalovski (composition), United States Navy Band (performance) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · file
  • Norway Speaker: Glorfindel Goldscheitel Authors of the article · CC BY-SA 3.0 · file
  • Oman Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Pakistan Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Palau Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Palestine Sounds Monarch · CC BY 3.0 · file
  • Panama Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Papua New Guinea Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Paraguay Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Peru United States Navy Band (performer) José de la Torre Ugarte (lyrics) José Bernardo Alcedo (music) Encoded in OGG by Linfocito B · Public domain · file
  • Philippines Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Poland Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain · file
  • Qatar United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Republic of the Congo Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Romania Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Russia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Rwanda United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Saint Kitts and Nevis Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Saint Lucia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Samoa Sauni Iiga Kuresa · CC BY-SA 3.0 · file
  • San Marino Government of San Marino · Public domain · file
  • São Tomé and Príncipe United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Saudi Arabia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Senegal Lyrics: Léopold Sédar Senghor Music: Herbert Pepper Performed by: United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Serbia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Seychelles United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Singapore Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Slovakia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Slovenia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Somalia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • South Africa Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • South Korea Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • South Sudan Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Spain Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Sri Lanka Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Sudan Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Suriname Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Sweden Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Switzerland Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Syria Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Taiwan 程懋筠 (Ch'eng Mao-yün), uploaded by Skrzeczu · Public domain · file
  • Tajikistan USN Band · Public domain · file
  • Tanzania Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Thailand Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Timor-Leste Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Tonga Lyricist: Prince Uelingatoni Ngū Tupoumalohi Composer: Karl Gustavus Schmitt · Public domain · file
  • Tunisia Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Türkiye Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Turkmenistan Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Tuvalu Afaese Manoa · CC BY-SA 4.0 · file
  • Uganda Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Ukraine Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • United Arab Emirates United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • United States Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Uruguay Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Uzbekistan Mutal Burkhonov & Abdulla Oripov · Public domain · file
  • Vanuatu Performed by the United States Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Vatican City Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Venezuela Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Vietnam Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Yemen Recording on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain · file
  • Zambia Royal Australian Navy Band · Public domain · file
  • Zimbabwe Royal Australian Navy Band, composed by Fred Changundega, 1993 · Public domain · file

How the decks fit together

Flags are split by continent, or take all 197 at once. Languages come three ways, and they overlap on purpose: by continent, mirroring the flag decks; by type, separating the major languages, the non-Latin scripts and the harder Latin-script set; and from flags you know, built from your own progress so every sample belongs to a country you can already place.

Overlap costs you nothing. Progress is stored against the country or language itself, so learning Swahili in the Africa deck counts everywhere Swahili appears.

How the review schedule works

After each card you say how well you actually knew it — not whether you happened to guess right. That answer decides when you see it again.

  • No — you did not know it. It comes back a few cards later in this same session.
  • Unsure — half-remembered, or you narrowed it to two or three. Also comes back this session.
  • Yes — you recalled it correctly. Days, not minutes.
  • Perfectly — instant and certain. The longest gap.

How far a card goes also depends on how you got there. Knowing something only after failing it is weaker evidence than knowing it straight away, so it does not earn the same gap:

How the card wentYesPerfectly
Knew it first time12 h5 d
Unsure, then knew it4 h8 h
No, then knew it1 h2 h
Struggled repeatedly30 min1 h

The buttons always show the gap you would actually get, so you can see the effect before you choose. Answer honestly — the schedule is only as useful as what you tell it.

Nothing you did not know gets lost. Inside a session the app does not wait on the clock: anything you marked No or Unsure goes back into the queue, so a session is not finished until you have seen all of them again. Leaving early asks first — the cards you have already graded are kept, only the rest of the queue is dropped.

Session length is chosen per session. Every deck offers three sizes — your default, about half and about double — so a quick run costs one click instead of a trip through settings and back.

Your progress

Everything you learn is saved in this browser as you go, which is also why clearing your browser data erases it. Use Export progress to keep a backup or move to another device.

English and Czech

Switch language in the header at any time, including in the middle of a card — nothing is lost. Both languages cover the whole app: the interface, every country and language name, and all the written cards.

The written samples are the one thing that stays in its own language, with an English translation underneath. Recognising them is the exercise, so translating them would defeat it.

Keyboard shortcuts

  • space / Enter — reveal the answer while studying flags
  • 1–4 — grade the card, or pick an answer in the quiz
  • ← → — move between the flag design, country and languages tabs

The number keys go by position on the keyboard, so they work the same on a Czech layout as on an English one.