美国英文简介

Officially, its name is the United States of America. But people often call it the United States, the USA, or America.

The United States is a vast and beautiful land. It’s home to rich farmland, towering mountains, huge stands of timber, mighty rivers, and valuable mineral deposits.

Colonists from Europe founded the United States more than 200 years ago. They created a new kind of society based on the ideals of freedom and opportunity. The American people, through their ambitiousness and hard work, built o ne of the world’s richest and most powerful nations.

Facts About the United States

Official name United States of America

Capital Washington, D.C.

Population 304,000,000 people

Rank among countries in

population

3rd

Major cities New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia

Area 3,790,000 square miles

9,830,000 square kilometers

Rank among countries in area 3rd

Highest point Mt. McKinley

20,320 feet/6,194 meters

Currency United States dollar

FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA

The United States is the third largest country in area in the world, after Russia and Canada. It covers the width of North America between Canada and Mexico. That gives the United States long coastlines facing both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

A broad coastal plain lines the East Coast of the United States. To the west, the land climbs to the rugged Appalachian Mountains. The Appalachians are a chain of thickly wooded mountains that stretch from Maine to Alabama. They contain rich veins of coal.

West of the Appalachians, the land drops to the greatest river in America, the mighty Mississippi. West of the Mississippi is a vast open

area called the Great Plains. The Mississippi rolls along the eastern edge of the Plains.

West of the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains rise to peaks of more than 14,000 feet (4,260 meters). They span the country from north to south. Farther west, along the coast, stands another great system of mountains, the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges.

In the northwestern corner of North America lies Alaska, still mostly a rugged wilderness. About 2,400 miles (3,680 kilometers) across the Pacific Ocean is Hawaii, a group of tropical islands. Alaska and Hawaii were the last two states to join the Union. They were admitted in 1959.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

The United States is a democracy. This means that American citizens choose their government, rather than having one forced on them. Americans choose their government by voting.

The capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. That’s where the federal(national) government is based. The United States is made up of 50 individual states. Each state has its own separate, democratically elected government.

The foundation of American democracy is the U.S. Constitution. This document, written in 1787, created the American system of government. It opens with these three words: “We, the people ….”

The Constitution defines the powers of the U.S. Congress, president, and federal courts. Just as important, the Constitution lays out the rights and freedoms of all American citizens in the Bill of Rights.

LAND OF IMMIGRANTS

Today, the United States is home to about 304 million people. That makes it the world’s third most populated country, after China and India. The motto of the United States is E Pluribus Unum. You can read it on all the nation’s coins and paper money. But what does it mean?

E Pluribus Unum is a Latin phrase that means “from many, one.” It was first used to unify the 13 English colonies in North America during the American Revolution (1775-1783). But the phrase took on new meaning when wave after wave of immigrants came to settle in the United States.