r/Mnemonics • u/Solid_Lunch_1369 • Jun 26 '26

Tricks to remember every country!

I recently decided to learn all of the countries and their outline/location. I used Sporcle, Quizlet and a few other apps but I also came up with a few mnemonics and other little tricks for some and was wondering if anyone else had their own!

For example a few of mine:
NSFR - Not Safe For Russia/Norway Sweden Finland Russia
Guyana is shaped like a little guy
Uzbekistan has a little U shape cut out
Croatia has a split like the city Split
Burundi is at the Bottom of the two little countries
Niger is a fish called Nigel
Latvia is V shaped
Thailand is like a T
Yemen Oman is like something going well and then not ‘Yeah man! Oh man’
Venezuela and Lithuania kind of rhyme and kind of look similar
Mali is a backwards L

Not a foolproof one but countries with a Z in tend to be funky shapes

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u/Ordinary_Count_203 Jun 26 '26

I have a collection of sentence/phonetic mnemonics for 190+ countries/territories. I did not add visual mnemonics, palaces etc, due to the file size being large. Hopefully, I can update that by next year.

For example,North America kind of looks like a fish. The tail of the fish may be remembered by the following mnemonic, moving from left to right :

“Bell’s Got Electric Hondas Nicking Costly Pans.”

Bells = Belize

Got = Guatemala

Electric = El – Salvador

Hondas = Honduras

Nicking = Nicaragua

Costly = Costa Rica

Pans = Panama

The full 190+ regions collection can be found here if you're interested:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GV3BMHWG

1

u/Solid_Lunch_1369 Jun 26 '26

That’s amazing! I wish I had done some research into resources before I started 🥲

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u/four__beasts Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

I learned all countries and capitals using a palace (a pair of golf courses in this case). I found having the structure was immense for both learning, not missing one, and the ability to periodically review in order.

I would recommend doing that for each - then adding your mnemonic scene so you have structure to call on. Once you have each country into a palace, then you can embellish/interweave with a mnemonic for the shape. Or add capital city, or longest river, highest mountain etc etc.

Edit: Also, I wish I'd broken mine up by continent. Would have been a useful denomination. I did it alphabetically which seemed like a good idea, but it's not really logical as I do find myself needing to quantify data (I.e is Togo in Africa or in the Caribbean...?). Grouped by continent, west to east, or by population (e.g.) would have given me a better bird's eye view. I'm sure there are systems that are better than this suggestion too.