Re: OT: Notice of Revocation of Independence

A similar attack of common sense might also be useful regarding the fact
that a people, state and language don't always overlap: ie the faulty
reasoning you sometimes find that since for example someone from france
is french and speaks french, someone from germany is german and speaks
german etc, that someone from kenya is kenyan and speaks kenyan (rather
than Swahili or a few other languages), someone from China is Chinese
and speaks Chinese (rather than Cantonese or Mandarin), someone from
Czechoslovakia (when it existed) is Czechoslovakian (rather than Czech
or Slovak) and speak Czechoslovakian.... states, languages, and people
often don't overlap, just as "traditional divisions" and continents
don't overlap.

>
>
>>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
>
>
>
>