Re: Afrasian?

Tim May wrote:
>  > >  > No. In "Eurasia" the two components are more or less equally
>  > >  > represented.
>  > >
>  > >Let's not forget, also, that Europe is a lot smaller.  If we were only
>  > >now to name the continents for the first time, no-one would create
>  > >Asia and Europe.
>  >
>  > For the very good reason that Asia and Europe aren't continents.
>  >
>
>From any objective geographical viewpoint, I agree with you, but that
>is how they are defined, at least in English. The terms come from a
>time when Europeans had no real idea of the scale of Asia and Africa.
This one of those points where my native language (Swedish) is so much more
sensible than English; _kontinent_ is "continent" in the
geographical/-logical sense, _världsdel_, lit "world part", is one of the
traditional divisions of the earth, eg Europe, Asia or Oceania. Africa and
Antarctica are obviously both _kontinenter_ and _världsdelar_;  North and
South America are clearly two separate _kontinenter_, but variously one or
two _världsdelar_, called simply _Amerika_ in the later case.

A non-sensible exception is the use of _Kontinenten_ "The Continent" to
refer to the western part of continental Europe, not including Scandinavia.

>  > >You might give Europe a name, as a cultural
>  > >grouping, but only if you divided Asia up into several spheres of
>  > >influence, and you probably wouldn't consider them to be
>  > >continents. I'm not denying Europe deserves a mention: it's
>  > >historically important; these terms are basically for use in European
>  > >languages; and the alternative term for Eurasia would be "Asia", which
>  > >would clearly invite confusion.  But giving it one less letter than
>  > >Asia and the initial position is hardly unfair on Europe.
>  >
>  > See my other mail for why don't think "Eurasia" don't equally represent
>Asia
>  > and Europe. I note again that I don't think this kind of "fairness" is
>very
>  > important.
>  >
>
>Well, as it's been pointed out, Asia's a very short word.  "-ia" is a
>fairly generic ending, too - one other continent and various countries
>and regions end with it.  Even more end in "-a".  Therefore, it would
>be possible to analyse "Eurasia" as Eur-as-ia or Eur-asi-a.  Given the
>relative uniqueness of the syllable "eur" and the fact that it
>occupies word-initial-position, I think Europe's well represented
>(plus, as I said before, it doesn't necessarily deserve equal
representation).

You've got point there. I'll retreat to Swedish again and point out that
_Eurasien_ don't share a single syllable with _Europa_, but three with
_Asien_! :-)

                                                        Andreas

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