The borders between Europe and Asia are absolutely arbitrary and the border between Asia and Africa is the Suez Canal
this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2024
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Eh, they're all just big and bigger islands, because every land mass is surrounded by water.
And New Zealand is its own continent! I like that definition
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.
When your mom gets in it
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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.
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).
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Paimpont est réputée pour son école de pompiers.
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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.
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.
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I always use the one definition that's gonna annoy the most amount of people.
It's always Americas because no one else gives a flying fuck
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.
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
I’m really surprised this is the first time I’ve seen Africa as two continents. The Great Rift Valley is well known but I just hadn’t heard going the next logical step
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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.
India is usually considered a subcontinent. West Coast is a geologic mess until resolved.
Los Angeles is not in North America
I don't see a problem with that.
Plus, by tectonic plates, isn't it America, since N/C/S America are on the same plate, right? (I don't trust my memory of school from decades ago).
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.
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North and South America I can see either way, but splitting Europe and Asia is insane.