Thank you very much. Very helpful!!!! I love this community.

The rule is simple :

for a country or a continent which name is féminin (La France, l'italie ...) we use the pronoun : EN

je vais EN France (i go to france)

for a country or a continent which name is masculin(Le brésil, le Japon...) we use the pronoun : Au

je vais au Japon (i go to japan)

For a continent a country or a city we don't need to use a defined article (LE, La)

we say :

je viens de France( i come from France) , je viens de New York

not : je viens de la France (i come from the France)

For a part of a continent a féminin country we add a defined article(LA) :

Je viens du sud de la France

Je viens de l'est de l'Amérique

For a part of a masculin country we don't add a defined article :

Je viens du sud du Japon

je viens du nord du brésil

I tried to simplify the answer, i hope it was helpful

Hello Dylan. Good question !

In French, to designate a country/region/place, there are two cases :

But the majority of places/countries need an article.

So if the place you designate is preceded by an article, you must use "de la" (for feminine places with "la") or "du" (for masculine places with "le") or "des" (for plural-named places with "les").

"Il va au nord DE LA Chine"

"Il va au nord DU Paraguay"

"Il va aux nord DES Pays-Bas"

Hope it helped you a little to understand.

I am a tutor here so if you need further help don't hesitate to write to me :)

Have a nice day !

Joanne

Je viens du nord de la France 🇫🇷 (correct)