ABSTRACT
A federal democratic republic, the United States is comprised of fifty states and the District of Columbia (where the capital, Washington, is located). All states except Hawaii are in the Nonh American land mass although the US has jurisdiction over islands in the Pacific Ocean and West Indies, as well as an association with the free commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The total area of all US states and jurisdiction is more than 9.4 million square kilometres (3.6 million square miles). Although the official language is English, almost every other language and dialect in the world is spoken somewhere in the US; Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language.
