san marino's story is so fun tho, this dude climbs a mountain and declares it his country, and the pope is just like ''ok sure, why not''

'The president of Moldova thinks covid is bad' I trust Toycat to keep me informed on the real issues.

Belgium exists for chocolate, obviously

"Why did no one ever invade Portugal?" Portugal: They tried

Fun fact: Liechenstein was formed by the union of two even smaller countries

Some random dude: "Why does Portugal exists" Portugal: "Bro I was a major powerhouse rich nation back in the 1500's!"

Fun fact about Andorra: there is a legend/historic story of a man who, when visiting Japan, had a legitimately made passport with the country name "Taured" on it (a non-existent nation). When Japanese officials asked him to point out the country on the map, he pointed to where Andorra was. After being held in a room with no windows for the purpose of later questioning, guards entered only to find him missing, which lead to the theory that the man was in fact from an alternate universe version of Andorra.

"Why does Belgium exist?" Hitler asked calmly.

Reasons why Portugal exists: -it was a powerful empire -it was a country before Spain was a thing -they did try conquering us but failed all of them -different culture and language

Spain tried multiple times, they just simply failed and couldn't. Portugal exists since 1139 while Spain only exists since 1479, it is just nearly 350 years in between.

6:05 "How does a country exist when it doesn't have a language?" Austria: Oh no, it's Anschluss time again

“Why does Portugal exist?” Portugal being a powerful empire in history: 🙃

Belgium exists simply because of its famous beers, chocolates and waffles.

Ghana is a country but it has 27 languages. Moroccans claim every street has its own language. China has 52 languages. So one language isn't really require one language.

Why does Belgium exist? Don't know, and I'm from the Flanders region (about 5km from the Wallonia border). I've got no problems with the French speaking part of the country, but it does seem to make more sense to me to just call it a day and divide the regions between France, the Netherlands and Germany. Not that I am actively pursuing this goal myself. The truth is that Belgium has too many governments and money is being squandered left and right. There are people who advocate for an independent Flanders, but for me that's the least desirable outcome

,,How does belgium exist, surrownded by so many other mayor powers and not get taken up by one of them“ Well me as a german can say u atleast, we tried it, and that not only once lol

Actually, the really fun fact re San Marino is that it's continued existence is based on the fact that Garibaldi (the guy who united Italy) and fought for the different Italian states to join had to flee anti-unification forces and hid in San Marino. As thanks, he told them they could remain independent.

Toycat: "This is why Belgium and indeed also Luxembourg split from the Kingdom of the Netherlands." Subtitles: "This is why Belgium and indeed also Luxembourg split from the Kingdom of Belevolence." Me, a Dutch person: YES

Belgium is held together by the incredibly tangled political mess it is and can’t be untangled.

Belgium exists because England didn't want France to annex it (cause let's be honest, they make a very poor job at being a buffer state.)

As a supporter of this channel, I am quite upset to see my money going to pay for professional editing instead of for "a strange drink that will probably taste bad."

Honestly, I’m surprised Hungary still exists after all the punishment it’s been through.

“Why does a country exist when it doesn’t have its own language” *Me sitting here like* Americans speak English Canadians speak English. Like all of Central America and most of South America speak Spanish. Bunch of countries in Africa speak French… all the countries in the Middle East speak Arabic (sure different dialects but still technically all Arabic)

Not simply cultural consistence. But also consistence of time. Portugal has been a unified and official country much longer than Spain. Indeed, even the language and its precursors came before Spain's. Among its reasons for existing, well. It just always has existed, put simply.

So are we going to ignore the fact that the picture literally states why does France speak French?

I´m portuguese and the Spanish tryed to conquer us lots of times during History, but we always managed to maintain our independence. There was even a time when Spain controled Portugal because our king died without having descendants but we recovered our independence after 60 years.

Another reason Belarus exists is because Lukashenko is one of the only people Putin can rely on as aconsistent yesman

Keep up these great geography videos man. I absolutely heckin love them. Your format is simple and easy to digest. no cuts or anything. Great work!

Actually 60% op Belgian population speaks Dutch (Flemish) as their first language. And as you can see Flemish people speak way more French as a second language than Walloons speak Dutch as a second language, while Dutch is clearly the biggest language in Belgium. This is one of the reasons there are frustrations in Belgium.

Belguim exists for waffles and without belguim there would be no waffles. And people say we live in the darkest timeline

As a Belgian, some extra (political) insights. The top part wants to split from the bottom (french side) because they differ massively politicaly. Flanders is mainly right leaning while Wallonia is basically entirely left. The percentage of people on welfare benefits in Wallonia is also massive compared to Flanders so they feel like they are paying for Wallonian people 'not working' and are angry about it. While a lot of Wallonian people feel like the Flemish are antisocial. Politicaly each part already has its own government with the Belgian government overseeing the major stuff. To illustrate how different each part is in opinions, the Flemish government is usually formed within days as well as the Wallonian. The Belgian government needs a majority to 'be formed' this has set records every election of being the longest formation ever, basically every time we vote it takes 1-2 years before an actual government is formed. As for seeing us split, I do think politically we will get rid of the Belgian overarching government and basically stay a country with each part governing themselves. So we will basically be a country but only in name. The reason we will never split entirely is because Wallonia just doesn't want to and you need a 2/3 majority to have a political chance at doing this. More than half of Flemish would be open to splitting up entirely but considering our entire population that's still nowhere near enough. Only scenario is if the biggest flemish national party gets a Flemish majority (which is near impossible in our political system) there's no chance of this ever happening, and even then, rules will need to be bent a lot. Me personally, I am for splitting politically as the gap in opinions between the two sides is just to enormous and this would solve most of the tention so we can stay 'together' in name only. Keeping close economical bonds.

8:42 They always talk about the Congo when it comes to belgian imperialism, but everyone always leaves out Rwanda and (especially) Burundi.

As a latin american, I have never heard someone here asking why Portugal isn't part of Spain, only north americans and europeans ask that, and that is as ignorant as say "why Caucasian people don't create just one unified country", "why the Central America don't unify with Mexico" or "why the -stans aren't united".

Without going off-topic, blaming the Congo 'Free' State on just the king is kind of like blaming the fuhrer of Germany for WWII and absconding from regret. You can't orchestrate both without the participation of soldiers, envoys and tradesmen - and both resulted in not just deaths/atrocities but also a syphoning of resources, which made it's way to Belgium's society. You don't have to take responsibility but to not acknowledge it as an error in your country's shared history is kind of a cop-out tbh.

"Sweden is filled with Swedish people." Damn what year did you record this in?

why do i enjoy this channel more than his main channel

Living where I live really makes me feel European - and I love that. I am a Frenchman, originally from Western France, who lives in Eastern Belgium, close to the borders with Luxembourg (20 minutes drive) and Germany (30 minutes drive). I live in a French-speaking town but our neighbors in the next town speak German though still in Belgium, and many of them are actually bilingual German-French. And of course the Luxemburgers have their own language which is basically a Germanic idiom with some French influence; in practice they are trilingual Luxemburgish-French-German, and these actually are the three official languages of the country. And I'm personally fluent in French (mother tongue) and English, I get along pretty well in German, and I'm at least able to read basic Luxemburgish and Dutch, plus notions of Spanish and Italian. Let's not forget to mention the tourists who come visit us from Flanders and the Netherlands, these ones speak Dutch (though Flemish Dutch and Dutch Dutch are kind of different) so that's a fourth language and a fourth country commonly in the area. So, for me normal life is about three/four countries and three/four languages, not to mention English and my native country, France. When I go visit my family in France, hundreds of kilometers away from the closest border, and for some time live in a French-only environment, that is weird to me.

I love how niche this channel is and it's always a must click

Great topic toycat, Belgium grinds my gears and doesn't make sense at all!! I love your content!

6:38 "Belgium is Catholic, while the Netherlands is one of those other weird sects" - absolutely based ibxtoycat goes full on DEUS VULT! lol

"The quality of these videos won't get any better" I mean sure, but you kinda accidentally stumbled upon some great content here. I know it's sarcastic and it's obviously biased by the experience of someone living in the UK, but you're open and up front about it all and yet there's some quite specific facts about each place you still manage to pull that most of us don't know. I heard that bit about Andorra once but completely forgot it. I don't think I'm gonna forget this time lol In short, thank you I really appreciate this channel

Q: Why is Portugal so small A: The Portuguese king died without heir. The Spanish Crown got a personal union over Portugal, controlling Portugal to a certain extent, but still keeping Portugal as an independent country and not really part of Spain. Spain was having some trouble as well and took Portugal down the line, losing a lot of colonies and overseas territory.

Don't bully him he's trying his best :(

The Maginot Line memes were on point. Got a solid chuckle out of me.

As a national of one of those countries that "shouldn't exist," I find this a very creative video. Why do we exist? Impossible to answer. Most likely a combination of money, politics, strategic alliances, and frankly it would just be undiplomatic to come invade us now after all this time. And then Europe is still living with the memories of WW2, so peace is important.

Fun fact: Russia tried to sell Alaska to Liechtenstein before they sold it to USA.

i think i could listen to you for hours. This never happened to me with a youtuber. You have real talent, keep up the good work man!

1:01 It's simple we haven't been annexed by Spain yet. Wooden spoons, baker woman, somehow being more powerful than your enemy even though you're out numbered, Heróis do mar, nationalist Feeling (no clue what name is), and England

3 Essential reasons why Belgium exists: It is the country who invented "French" Fries , makes the best chocolate on the planet and brews best beer in the world bar none.

You forgot to include United Kingdom. Equally dumb to exist given the fact that it's a union of 4 kingdoms: Wales, Scotland, Ireland (north) and England. Each still has their own language and culture (although in decay). The people in Spain, Switzerland and Belgium are just better at keeping their identities ;)

As a Polish person, I very much don't want Belarus to be officially swallowed by Russia, it's bad enough as it is. Case an point: current Poland-Belarus border situation.

As a Belgian, we don't know

7:12 The man on the left was the chancellor-candidate for the CDU in Germany. He lost the election.

By the way, as far as European central figures go, given how Maia Sandu is also 48, she is impressively attractive. Just need to throw that out there so that toycat doesn't mention it.

0:54 “the Belgian person editing this video can confirm this” Me: Wait, this video is EDITED?!

To clear up the language situation a bit: most people do not speak Walloon in Belgium, they generally speak French that has been influenced by Walloon. It is somewhat just semantics but generally linguists would say it’s the Walloon dialect of Standard French. It‘s similar to how most Germans speak “dialects“ of standard German that have been heavily influenced by the local German ”idioms“, not the historic idioms themselves, but often laypeople don’t make a difference but for linguistics it is important. Particularly in the North, where Low German (a language closer to Dutch than Standard German) was traditionally the local language, only few people actually speak the historic idiom today, with others speaking a High German based dialect with Low German features (ich > ik, das > dit, kaufen > koofen) but when you compare this to historic Low German texts, you see a clear break from tradition, explained by a transition to High German, when it became the political, economic prestige language. This is quite different to, say, Swiss German or Austro-Bavarian, where a lot of people speak dialects that that may have been influenced by Standard German but they still show a clear unbroken tradition from the idioms spoken before the advent of Standard German. Of course a lot of this is debatable bc dialect / language is only loosely defined. However, one major difference I think you can see is a young child from Walloon will have no trouble understanding Standard French without training, whereas for example there are really villages in Austria where young children will struggle to understand Standard German until they are trained in it at school. Also I have never heard of somebody learning French and saying it is difficult to get by in Belgium, but many German learners will have a hard time in Austria and Switzerland, until they learn enough of the dialect bc it is that different and common enough to cause problems to those who don’t understand

As a Romanian, i see Moldova as a sibling stolen from us by Russia. It would be awesome if we were reunited

I’m watching this video even tho I have school at 1 am lol love the content

aGood feels damnit less than 1:45 into the vid and I'm like thanks toycat ive never wondered why Ireland had no snakes but sure as heck now I'll be googling this. Lmao I love your other channels but I'm glad I found this one your a Bosshoss keep it up, as long as you enjoy it that is.

the best channel right before bed, it’s gonna be a good night

I’ve never considered using patreon to give money to anyone. Toycat tells me he will waste it and we shouldn’t give it to him Now I want to donate

Also, when we talk about Belarus, it's very important to separate the government and literally everyone else. Unification with Russia is the worst nightmare for everyone I know, and even the government only uses the unification as a THREAT to intimidate the society. Basically very few people want Russians to take over, (and we are also easily offended when called white Russians - it's the same as if Scottish people were called North English).

This video was 23 minutes and 4 seconds long, and I learned so much. I love when people are this fascinated about something.

Great vid and the ending fact is a BANGER!

Whenever toy cat tells me not to pay for his patreon the more I want to do it

You forgot to say that Portugal was “incorporated” for like 70 years in the 1400’s

Hello! I’m (not) toycat, and welcome back to (what is not) a second channel video! This is (probably not) everyone’s favourite series where we talk about geography and the WORLD **does hand-signal-movement-thingy** and stuff!

Portugal exists because during the reconquest, a knight stood out and the king of Spain gave him portugal. Then they wanted independence, and they fought for it, in a very important battle.

2:27 “Spain is the weirder country to exist rather than Portugal” ‘cause of them having been separate and having different languages. Meanwhile Italians: *have 20 different Regions due to the same (almost) reasons, 1 of which speaks French and another speaks German*

Religion isn't actually the main reason for the splitting of Belgium. King Willem van Oranje often neglected the people of the so-called Southern Netherlands, mainly for speaking French. After an opera, the Belgian people came on the streets, demanding Willem to go away. Belgium was allowed to be a country, as long as they stayed neutral. The irony is that for many years until a little after WWII, the Dutch-speaking people in Belgium got oppressed by the French-speaking people.

Of all the European countries whose existence could be questioned, you really left Kosovo out which would make the greatest discussion of them all. It's like talking about football and not mentioning Ronaldo or Messi. On one side, Serbia claims Kosovo to be its own territory although Kosovo declared independence after a referendum and a brutal war. On the other hand, the population consists of 90% Albanians of which some want to join the neighbouring Albania.

Calling European countries' existence dumb makes the most Anschluss statement ever

My favorite part of the “why does [country name] ...?” Is “why does France speak French?” Edit: maybe “why does Austria have a navy?”

10:50 Switzerland and Lichtenstein could theoretically merge but there really is no reason to do so. We share almost everything already and it Lichtenstein would have to give up some tax and banking shenanigans if they were to join Switzerland. Nobody, not even Switzerlands, really wants that though.

Fun fact, Belarus still has government in exile back from its 1919 incarnation, residing in Canada.

7:12 My 1st thought was "Why are the Germans included in that picture of the Benelux?" My 2nd thought was "Oh yeah... Germany loves meddling in Benelux affairs."

Luxemburg exists because of sexism/patriarchy. They were part of the Dutch Kingdom, but when the Netherlands got a queen (Wilhelmina) The Luxemburgers were like omg a woman that’s against our law and they split of and went on with the nephew or something something.

Mumbo once asked "Is belgium actually a real country"

As an American I can see France, Germany, Uk as real (if small) countries, but a place like Belgium doesn't feel substantial enough to be a country to me. I can never view it as a country so much as a space between the countries that is allowed to exist due to the relationship between the countries. It just isn't big enough to be more than a state/province equivalent to me. Of course I'm sure it's different if you are from such a place lol but when the US is your benchmark for what a country is a lot of countries just don't feel like a country.

Its a speedbump for Germany

Reminder that under their own guarantee of independence Belgium should be returned to the Netherlands Article 7 of the Treat of London 1839, never forget

14:12 map is innacurae bc yugoslavia didn't obey stalin, it's actualy a saying in the balkans when Tito told Stalin Niet

toycat its 6am why are you up so early?

Also. Make a geography tier list, that would be good content

A language is just a dialect with an army and a flag. That's so true

Slight correction on Montenegro, Serbia and Montenegro were always inhabited by Serbs but because of the constant wars in Balkans they couldn't really merge together until Yugoslavia. Ever before that Montenegro's most wanted wish was to unite with Serbia. It got seperated in 2006. by referendum after their dictator Djukanović (former pro-Serb) decided "Montenegrin" is a term and brainwashed people into thinking like that. Luckily, new president was elected last year and people are proud of their origin and wast majority of Montenegro people call themselves Serbs. If it was to the people, they would probably be united by now but we will se what comes of it.

ibx2cat, so low budget that there aren’t any apostrophes in the title.

> Why doesn't Belgium split? They speak diferent languages! > Why isn't Portugal and Spain one country? bruh

“I don’t know if we have historical examples of that.” Belgians: 😡 Germans: 😶

Actually Spain tried countless times to invade Portugal, but they always lost those wars!

Why does Belarus exist? During the Middle Ages, the Grand Duke of Lithuania was one of the most powerful monarchs in Europe, and after the Mongol invasion in the 13th and 14th century, managed to grab large swaths of the former Kievan Rus. He also managed to stop the expansion of the Teutonic Order along the Baltic sea, and went to be elected King of Poland, forming the union of Poland-Lithuania, which ran from the Baltic Sea to the borders of the Ottoman Empire. After some shifting of internal borders, the Kingdom of Poland consisted mainly of today's Poland and Ukraine, and Lithuania of today's Lithuania and Belarus, with Belarus being the slavonic speaking part of the country, and today's Lithuania speaking Lithuanian, a Baltic language. Due to several uprisings of the Cossacks, Poland-Lithuania lost control of the Ukraine, which joined Russia as autonomous territory. At the end of the 18th century, rivaling powers Prussia, Hapsburg and Russia managed to split the remaining Poland-Lithuania between them, and all of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania went to Russia, where Belarus was split off from Lithuania as its own province. In the aftermath of World War I., the Russian Revolutions of 1917 and the following civil war, Poland and Lithuania gained sovereignty, the Ukraine and Belarus remained with Russia, but being in a somewhat twilight status. They were separate states within the Soviet Union. Belarus and the Ukraine had their own soccer associations, and were playing in international tournaments under their own flag until the final break-up of the Soviet Union, where each former state within the union became its own country.

Why do i love watching these so much

If I use Google, it auto-fills to "Why does Belgium even exist". And "Why does The Netherlands have yellow license plates". I think both questions are equally important.

As a fellow moldavian, I'm not even mad ... I also ask my self this: "Why does Moldova exist?"😅

Denmark exists for the sole purpose of Lego and Windmills, also getting made fun of by the rest of Scandinavia for being flat

Yes the true questions of Belgium: Why do we exist? Why are fries called french fries? we have invented them!

Tbh I live in Belgium and I am not even offended. It would just be much better that the dutch part goes with the Netherlands the French with France and the german with Germany. And to make things not to complicated make Brussels a city state with all the EU and Nato buildings. And yhea Luxembourg should also go with France bcs 80 percent of the population can speak french

belgium, with a 99% literacy rate:

i patreoned.. i'm from vegas.. i love your love of the world... i sent my friend your vids and he likes you too.. you are about to be famous af

You are turning things around here: People don't live in the same country because they used to speak the same language, if they speak the same language, it's because they used to live in the same country for long enough and at some point either one of the languages spoken there became dominant or the language we know today is a mixture of the languages people used to speak before that language was formed. Countries where this is not the case are countries that don't exist long enough as a country or are filled with people that don't feel like being an integral part of that country and prefer to focus on how they differ from the rest of the country and may one day even want to separate from it again. In Switzerland there are still 4 official languages, but one of them is slowly dying out, so in several hundred years, there may be only 3 left.