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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
There also isn’t a strict definition of when a pond becomes a lake
I try to explain this to people who don’t believe south americans call themselves americans.
The USA isn’t the only America nor the only United States. Maybe when the government collapses we can come up with a better name.
North America isn’t even the first place to be called America
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.
Antarctica is severely underrepresented in the Olympics. Not a single medal.
There is a useful way to do it: By looking at Tectonic Plates and their boundaries.
I mean, it useful to geologists. Not so much to economists or sociologists.
And then India is no longer in Eurasia. Or you could say that Los Angeles is not in North America.
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.
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.
In elementary school we were taught that as well, then in middle school we were taught Central America is part of South America, but in high school we were taught Central America is part of North America.
That’s not confusing at all.
