Regardless of which definition you go with, someone saying North and South America are one continent but Europe and Asia are two separate continents are at the very least being inconsistent
this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2024
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Yeah. People in the US learn about 7 continents at school. In France, we learn about the 5 continents.
N'importe quoi, y a la chocolatine du nord et la chocolatine du sud, ça fait 6, retourne à ton école pourrave à Paimpont (j'ai rien contre Paimpont, c'est très pimpant).
I hope that’s really the gibberish my browser’s translate function tells me it is
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I remember many years ago I was playing WoW and the conversation in guild chat was about continents so I said that in my country America is a single continent. That moment an American in guild flipped the fuck out and got really mad at me even suggesting that his great country could be in the same continent as mine (Brazil) going as far as saying "that's so fucking dumb, next you will say Europe and Asia are the same continent?!" which is funny cause eurasia is a thing, what a dumbass.
Mexico is in North America, but try telling that the common trump supporting gringo.
I remember when central America was a thing.
Edit: Apparently even considering the existence of Central America Mexico is still North America
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AFAIK, Cuba is on the North American tectonic plate as well...
Yes, but they technically count as "the Caribbean"
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Personally a great fan of the CGP Grey videos. Continents in this case: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3uBcq1x7P34
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The borders between Europe and Asia are absolutely arbitrary and the border between Asia and Africa is the Suez Canal
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There's two definitions in my language. One for land mass continent (eurasia) and the other is more of a geopolitical continent if that makes sense (europe, asia)
I think English needs the same.
There also isn't a strict definition of when a pond becomes a lake
When your mom gets in it
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I'm of the unpopular opinion that India/Pakistan should be its own continent and New Zealand should be different continent then Australia. Both because they are different techtonic plates.
Yes, I personally love 4 continents. Americas, Afro-Eurasia, Oceania, Antarctica
If you're gonna group them like that, there's no Americas, it's America.
I think people write Americas because when just writing America too many people assume the US.
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Technically correct. Which is best kind of correct.
Make cents
I don't accept the grouping of Africa and Eurasia as one
There is a useful way to do it: By looking at Tectonic Plates and their boundaries.
According to the image on Wikipedia depicting the plates, there would then be 17 continents, although some of those 17 would be entirely ocean, or only small islands
Half of Japan would be North American? I didn't expect that.
Lots of island chains are actually mountain chains partially hidden underwater. And mountain chains usually appear where two tectonic plates ram into one another, causing one of them to bunch up.
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And then India is no longer in Eurasia. Or you could say that Los Angeles is not in North America.
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I try to explain this to people who don't believe south americans call themselves americans.
This becomes even more confusing with the way people commonly talk in English versus Spanish. In English, residents of the United States of America typically refer to themselves as Americans, and in English “American” typically only refers to someone from the USA. In Spanish, it seems residents of the USA are typically called the equivalent of “United Stateser” and “American” refers more generally to someone from the continent, at least in some parts of the Spanish-speaking world. I once had an apparent native Spanish-speaker online argue that was the correct form in English as well and insisted that the official name of the country is United States (Estados Unidos), not United States of America (Estados Unidos de América), and that America never refers to the country in English. They didn’t appreciate when I asked why in international sporting events the Americans’ shirts always say USA and why the supporters chant “U-S-A” all the time.
Languages are weird. If you’re learning a different language and try to insist that the new language behave the same as your native language, you’re going to have a hard time.
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Yep. In Spain and Latin America, there is no separation between North and South. Its just one continent: América
Most romance languages follow that. The 5 rings in the Olympics logo are meant to be continents.
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It's hard to have a strict definition when there are only 4-12 of them. We didn't have a strict definition of planets until less than 20 years ago.
there's also like 5 definitions of "species". Sometimes what seem like simple concepts are hard to pin down
Not always, I'm simple and easy to pin down.
You were right too, because continents are only defined by convention. And by the convention I was taught, there’s 3 Americas: South, Central, and North.
I just looked up my old geography textbook from 6th grade to double check if I was remembering correctly. And it's yes and no. It was indeed North America, Central America, and South America, but they all were regions of a single continent: America.
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Italy is a part of Africa. At least, geologically.
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