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.
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
There isn’t really a natural barrier between North and South America, though. Asia has the Urals.
North and South America have the Darién Mountains/Darién Gap
The Urals don’t even stretch all the way across the continental boundary
Again: inconsistent.
Hmmm… You’re right. It does feel a lot more arbitrary when you put it that way.
Shall we make California its own continent because of the Rockies?
You know what? You actually do have a point.
They’d have to post a sign at the border warning that continents and mountains may cause cancer…
Okay, that was actually pretty funny
There also isn’t a strict definition of when a pond becomes a lake
When your mom gets in it
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.
Or when a lake becomes a sea. The Alboran Sea is smaller than Lake Superior. The Caspian Sea is a lake. Everything is made up and nothing is real.
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…
The borders between Europe and Asia are absolutely arbitrary and the border between Asia and Africa is the Suez Canal
It’s not entirely arbitrary, it’s just based on racism.
Iirc its actually based on some guy assuming a river was a cannal and using it as a geographical border and no one really checking until the border had stuck.
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✨
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’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.
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.
Yeah, I’m just being pedantic.
Technically correct. Which is best kind of correct.
Make cents
I don’t accept the grouping of Africa and Eurasia as one
And New Zealand is its own continent! I like that definition
I’m not sure New Zealand is real. It’s not on my maps.
Oh, it’s real. I’ve been there. Beautiful place.
Maybe you need newer maps?
Whoosh :(
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.
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.
Italy is a part of Africa. At least, geologically.
Removed by mod
It’s all one connected landmass (at least, until man-made channels), so it fits
Eh, they’re all just big and bigger islands, because every land mass is surrounded by water.
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.
Yeah. People in the US learn about 7 continents at school. In France, we learn about the 5 continents.
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
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
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.
commenter of extremely high IQ
WTF did you just call me?? Imma shank you
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).
Paimpont est réputée pour son école de pompiers.
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.
A friend of mine went from a school in the US to a French school, and when she said there were 7 continents, everyone including the teacher made fun of her.
Dogmatism goes both ways.
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
North America is entirely defined by the NAFTA. Geography is mostly political.
AFAIK, Cuba is on the North American tectonic plate as well…
Yes, but they technically count as “the Caribbean”
Geology doesn’t care about your feelings.
Or anything else, really.
But it does care where we draw the line!
