Re: OT: Notice of Revocation of Independence
| From: | Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, December 12, 2004, 21:24 |
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Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:
> On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 12:16:37AM -0500, # 1 wrote:
> > I'm sorry...
> >
> > I never wanted to start such a discution
> >
> > About America, the word America Is the continent including North and
> > South-America...
>
> Except that's really two continents. (They may be physically connected
> (or at least were pre-Panama-Canal), but that doesn't stop Europe and
> Asia from being considered separately.) When someone wishes to refer to
> both continents together, one usually says "The Americas", not
> "America".
Well, if your considering Asia and Europe to be two different continents, you're
operating on a definition so divorced from geological realities that no
non-arbitrary answer can be given to the question whether the Americas consist
of one continent or two.
As usual when this discussion pops up, I'll refer to the Swedish distinction
between _kontinent_ "geological continent" (eg, Eurasia) and _världsdel_
"traditional division of the Earth" (eg, Europe). Searching the archives for
either word should turn up several posts of mine on the subject. I really wish
you anglophones would suffer a similar attack of common sense on this point.
For the record, the most obnoxious country-name in the world is "The Central
African Republic".
Andreas
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