Started an argument with my much smarter wife because she said North and South America are not two separate continents. She was right, because continents are only defined by convention.
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.
You’re wife is right because they are the same landmass. We separate Europe and Africa from Asia due to racism.
We separate Europe, Asia, and Africa because the Ancient Greeks invented the boundaries and terms, and the Romans kept them up.
They lived in the area, so for them, these boundaries were just names given to land on either side of major bodies of water: the Nile, the Black Sea and Rioni river, and the Mediterranean.
They considered Egypt part of Asia for a while, and anything south of the Med as the landmass “Libya.” The Romans kept up the same definitions as maps expanded, and just extrapolated from there.
Personally a great fan of the CGP Grey videos. Continents in this case: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3uBcq1x7P34
Love their videos
“>afroeurasia”
Yeah. They’d like that wouldn’t they?Eat shit globalist scum.
It’s all one connected landmass (at least, until man-made channels), so it fits
There also isn’t a strict definition of when a pond becomes a lake
Some states do indeed codify this in law, but the definition varies by state. Michigan and Minnesota for two if I’m remembering correctly.
If Minnesota ever went down to 9,999 lakes, they’d redefine it.
These are BODIES OF WATER, dammit!!! Not something as easily-reclassified like what qualifies as a craft brewery!
You don’t need reclassification to lose a lake; you just need a drought.
Edit: I may have misunderstood you. It’s pretty late, and I should be sleeping…
Huh. In my language the difference is that a pond is artificial (generally for farming fish), but apparently that’s a fishpond in English and pond can be natural. TIL.
When your mom gets in it
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.
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).
Paimpont est réputée pour son école de pompiers.
I hope that’s really the gibberish my browser’s translate function tells me it is
It’s very logical.
There’s north chocolatine (basically hillbilly way to say pain au chocolat) and south chocolatine, which according to the above commenter of extremely high IQ, means there as 6 continents instead of five.
Maybe some of it is literal word for word translation vs accounting for grammatical differences but …
Anything, there’s northern chocolate and southern chocolate, it’s 6, go back to your school in Paimpont (I have nothing against Paimpont, it’s very pimpant).
commenter of extremely high IQ
WTF did you just call me?? Imma shank you
What seven, America is two and Europe/Asia is counted twice also? I’m from elsewhere and also learned 5
American here.
- North America
- South America
- Europe
- Asia
- Africa
- Australia (and Oceania)
- Antarctica
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.
Nobody tell her about trees, then.
I once tried to find a definition of “subcontinent”, but all I found was that its almost solely used for India and sometimes for dividing North and South America into to two American subcontinents.
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.
The borders between Europe and Asia are absolutely arbitrary and the border between Asia and Africa is the Suez Canal
I remember always questioning that one as a kid. The answer I always got was something about mountains. For some reason, I think the true history, like a lot of arbitrary divisions is probably ✨racism✨
It’s not entirely arbitrary, it’s just based on racism.
Oceania is the best continent
Always at war with Eastasia.
Eh, they’re all just big and bigger islands, because every land mass is surrounded by water.
Eurasia and Oceania sure, quibble all you like that makes sense to me. But combining the Americas and pushing Africa in with Asia makes no sense to me.
Same. I think having a tiny land bridge shouldn’t be enough when the idea of a continent is to identify the largest masses of land separated by oceans, especially when disconnected land can still be a part of a contenent.
My list would be:
- North America
- South America
- Eurasia
- Africa
- Oceania
- Antarctica
I can see the combined Americas and Africa combined with Eurasia if the idea is land masses that separate oceans, but oceans are as arbitrary as continents so I don’t think that is a useful definition.
