In her 1961 book The United States and the Southwest Pacific, American author Clinton Hartley Grattan commented that, "the use of the word Oceania to cover Australia, New Zealand, and the [Pacific] islands now has a slightly old-fashioned flavor."
When people use things like this I try to catch it. This isn't a reasoned argument. It's meant to have the reader or hearer feel a certain way to change minds.
> Prior to the 1950s, before the popularization of the theory of plate tectonics, Antarctica, Australia and Greenland were sometimes described as island continents, but none were usually taught as one of the world's continents in English-speaking countries.[42][43][44] In her 1961 book The United States and the Southwest Pacific, American author Clinton Hartley Grattan commented that, "the use of the word Oceania to cover Australia, New Zealand, and the [Pacific] islands now has a slightly old-fashioned flavor."
The author is describing it as having an "old-fashioned flavor" because the understanding of the world had changed during the author's lifetime. I guess the irony is, you're doing the thing you tried to call out! By highlighting a sentence, out of context, you're trying to shape how people understand the argument.
Maybe I can't define why it is old fashioned, but if it is old fashioned it is wrong. I would hope that people who better understand the details have a better definition of the terms in use and could apply it, but all I know is your usage is old fashioned. (Note, the above doesn't preclude the idea that I'm wrong and the language is current, merely that we both need to do more research and should be more careful in this area until/unless we do!)
Is it possible to agree on a common meaning for language using the language for which we are attempting to agree on the common meaning? On a logical level, I think I reject such an idea, although I would be fascinated in an argument that suggests such a thing would be possible.
> all agree
Information theory suggests that commonly used symbols should be short and rare symbols should be long. Any subgrouping of people will encounter scenarios requiring different ideas to be discussed at different frequencies. Jargon differing amongst people is to be expected and is what at least I have observed. I also reject 'all agree' on an information theory level.
> Language is only useful
And finally on a personal note. I generally misunderstand what most people are talking about most of the time. I think of it in terms of being weakly immune to peer pressure, but the other side of the coin is that I have a hard time keeping up with whatever group I'm a part of. And vice versa, I often say things that others quite obviously misunderstand.
However, I still find language useful. Even when there is no agreement on common meaning. Even when jargon necessarily forms differently between groups (and often even between individuals). Even when we try imperfectly to define language basing it upon itself. Using old fashioned language (or simply uncommonly agreed upon language) isn't 'still wrong' even if recognized. It is, I assert, the only way language can even be.
It seems that parts of the world refer to regions as continents.
That is both vague and by no means the only definition of a continent. A continent is basically defined culturally - different places say there are 4,5,6 or 7 continents.
The closest to a good scientific definition is 'the largest landmass of a continental plate' (which would include Australia but not greenland, but then arguably India, east Africa, Arabia and Central America are really also on their own plates)
If you want science, you want plate tectonics and geography focused around the boundaries of plates and volcanic science. If you want to know what a continent is, whatever model you were taught in school is good enough for government work. The important thing is to know what that land over yonder is if you’re on a boat.
My solution would have been:
Planet = any standalone body in space, formed around a star or brown dwarf, large enough for gravity to mold it into a sphere, but not massive enough to enable any fusion. (i.e. exclude stars and brown dwarfs).
Then:
Major planet: Planet that has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. We have 8 of these.
Minor planet: Planet that has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit. This would include Pluto, Ceres, and many extra-Pluto bodies.
The current scientific definition is tortured. I.e. a "dwarf planet" is not a "planet", which is just unintuitive nomenclature grammatically, as well as violating the regular use of the word "planet".
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Plate_te...
I think continent, in the general usage, is really more of a cultural/political definition than an an objective standalone concept.
Wikipedia actually contradicts you in the first two sentences in the "Continent" entry [0]:
> A continent is any of several large geographical regions. Continents are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria.
Sez who (and why)?
> generally regarded as seven in number, _including their related islands_, continental shelves etc.
Or for the NA readers: the bulk of NA&SA form a single continent, not two, Russia and continental Europe sometimes join it, Hawaii is a continent, ...?
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4rldsdelar_och_kontinent...
So - in Swedish, "kontenent" is a "continuous expanse of land". But a "världsdel" (which translates to "part of the world" roughly) is I guess "region". So - if you look at the table, "Europe" and "Asia" are both individual "världsdel", but they are one "kontinent" Eurasia. This certainly flies in the face of what I was taught in school - Europe was definitely a continent, as was Asia. Also notice, Oceana is a "världsdel", Australia is a "kontinent". But Google translates both words to "continent" in English, but the words are different.. kontinent is "geographical", but världsdel is "cultural".
I think this is what causes the issue - the definition of the 7 traditional continents in English is not universal. This page seems to imply it is very dependent on where you live (sorry, in Swedish again): https://www.geoguessr.com/seterra/sv/p/hur-manga-varldsdelar (this is google translates version: https://www-geoguessr-com.translate.goog/seterra/sv/p/hur-ma... )
Panama and Suez are divided by a canal, but those are artificial with a floor higher than sea level. If you stopped maintenance on the canals for a geologic blink of an eye and it would return to a land bridge, but it's narrow...I can see arguments both ways.
However, the only argument for calling Europe one continent and Asia a different continent is that Eurasia would be too big if it were a continent. Afro-Eurasia is right out!
The floor of the canal is definitely below sea level. There's a 1.2 m difference in sea level between the two ends, and the canal is 24 m deep.
That said, without maintenance it would indeed revert to a land bridge.
I think all those things are quite cultural: after all Europe and Asia are connected, arguably with Africa too. Same for both Americas which could be counted as one big thing. On a side note does: Panama canal work as a real divide between both Ameican continents? Similar question for Suez Canal
Why would it have to? Oceania is a region that consists of one continent and a bunch of islands, done, problem solved. There's nothing that says "a region" can only consist of continents or islands, is there?
[1] https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/continent/186...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent points out how they "are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria" and lists "several ways of distinguishing the continents", with the 7-continent model, two different 6-continent models. It also mentions the "four-continent model consisting of Afro-Eurasia, America, Antarctica, and Australia", as well as how there were only three discrete landmasses present during the Pleistocene ice ages, when the Bering Strait was instead land.
You can see the cultural influence in:
> In the English-speaking countries, geographers often use the term Oceania to denote a geographical region which includes most of the island countries and territories in the Pacific Ocean, as well as the continent of Australia.
> In some non-English-speaking countries, such as China, Poland, and Russia, Oceania is considered a proper continent because their equivalent word for "continent" has a rather different meaning which can be interpreted as "a major division of land including islands" (leaning towards a region) rather than "land associated with a large landmass" (leaning towards a landmass).
They are not defined by geology nor continental plates. For one, the word and current use is far older than our first glimmers of understanding plate tectonics. https://www.etymonline.com/word/continent says the meaning in the 1550s was "continuous tract of land" and by the 1610s became "one of the large land masses of the globe".
FWIW, the North American plate includes some of the continent of Asia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Plate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...
(OK, once, many years ago, but the point stands.)
Oh wrong site.
Hence, I was providing a counter-example to your dubious claim that "Americans know of islands and continents". Come to think of it... what do you even mean by that? What does it mean to "know of islands and continents"?
Can a continent have the same name as a country?
I know, I know. English speaking countries refer to the continent as "the Americas" rather than America, as the rest of the planet does but, then, the rest of the planet refers to the "United States of America" as the "US" and (normally) not as "America" .
Now seriously, America is a given name for the whole continent (with Noth America and South America as its two subcontinents) and was never meant to be used as the name of any one of its 35 countries.
Many in the EU are often doing the same chauvinistic thing, refering to themselves as "Europe" forgetting that there are 23 European countries that are not part of the EU. That case is slightly (just slightly) less annoying because at least is 27 EU European countries vs 23 non EU European countries, so at least they can claim to be the majority of countries. US case is one country vs. 34, so objectively even more absurd.
Using "Europe" to refer to the EU member states in English is different because "Europe" in English traditionally refers to the entire continent and referring to the EU as "Europe" introduces ambiguity. I don't think this ambiguity is a significant problem and I wouldn't call it "chauvinism" but perhaps I could be convinced otherwise.
When people say "Columbus discovered America", it most certainly is referring to the entire landmass and surrounding islands (he technically landed in the Bahamas).
My two cents is US people are the ones who have an unusual take on the word "America". Outside the US, it's not very idiomatic to call the country "America", or even "USA". "US" is more common (and in both Spanish and Portuguese, it's almost always called "Estados Unidos").
The term "american" is mainstream both in Canada and elsewhere. I imagine that's probably at least partly a function of "unitedstatesman" being too much of a mouthful. (BTW, if you think that's a ridiculous word, in portuguese "estadounidense" is an actual word, albeit with a connotation of being something a "woke" person might say).
The name "America", though, was given to the whole "New World", which is what we now call "America", the continent. British started using the name just for what is now the US, so in English speaking countries, the usage is different nowdays. In other countries "America" continues to be used for the whole continent (it is still considered one conti nent, not two).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerigo_Vespucci https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent
Spanish speakers, or, rather, the Crown of Castille created the word "America" and "americanos" to refer to the new continent and their people. English speakers adopted the same word, but with a different meaning.
Not saying that it's wrong for US people to refer to their country by anh word that they chose. They are free to do so. But it is useful, I think, to understand that people for other countries of America, who call themselves "americanos" because that's what they are, can be surprised to be told they are not "Americans", even though they are "americanos". I guess it's confusing for them, at the very least.
Just imagine that Colombians started to call their country "America" and when you went there they would insist that you are not American ("americano"). I guess you would not be amused. I don't know.
I'm not "americano", but European, so it doesn't really affect me. Just trying to give some context to better understand others. Peace! :-)
Weird. Why not?
> Are Aussies taught that their country is the actual continent?
Why shouldn't they be, when it obviously is? I think most of the world, not just Aussies, learn that in school.
No, whether you call the continent “Australia” or “Oceania”, the land mass that makes up the entirety of the mainland of it is, ipso facto, not an island, and neither is the country occupying the entirety of that landmass and some adjacent islands (though, of course, it contains several islands.)
Oceania is this designation of convenience that excludes islands that are non-Continental and would otherwise be lumped in with Asia, and in addition to Australia there are three groupings of island territories which are ethnically classified as Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.
Melanesia includes New Guinea (remember, part of the Australian continent, separated from the country by a strait), and running east goes to Nauru, southeast to Fiji, and then west to New Caledonia which is essentially one of the highest altitude masses of the mostly submerged continent of Zealandia (the other land masses being New Zealand and a few islands belonging to the country of Australia). Melanesia also includes the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
Micronesia is a region that from Palau runs east through the Federated States or Micronesia to Kiribati, northwest to the Mariana Islands (including Guam) and back down to Palau and is mostly in the Northern Pacific.
Polynesia forms a near-triangle often referred to as the Polynesian Triangle with New Zealand in the Southern corner, Hawai’i in the Northern corner and Easter Island in the Eastern corner. There are too many island groups here for me to want to list them all, but this is essentially where Polynesian peoples settled.
Which brings us back to Oceania. There’s all these islands people live that if you squint your eyes a little look like they’re close enough to Australia. Why not just group them all together and call them a continent? And from what I’ve gathered that’s exactly what a lot of countries have done for a while or started to do. Continents are basically arbitrary BS anyway, good BS that serves a useful purpose colloquially but still BS; and it looks like to me like it’s just a way of keeping the list of “major regions” shorter than it otherwise would be because between Australia also being a country and all of these archipelagos spread out across the Pacific being both low population and underdeveloped, nobody wants to append them to a list of supposed “continents” as separate entities, so Oceania it is.
And if you did that, what about India? Arabia? Madagascar? The western portion of North America basically divided by the Rockies? This would start to get political after a while.
So eh, Australia is a continent in English, but Oceania is a region that includes Australia. Whether the continent of “Australia” includes the obvious portions like New Guinea, well, not when I was in school, but I don’t think that matters.
How weird. (So it's not only Chilean schools that are idiosyncratic in this regard.) To the rest of us, the actual continent -- you know, the biggest contiguous landmass in the region -- is called Australia. Maybe you're just translating Erdteil (Ger; whatever the corresponding concept is in French or Flemish) to the English "continent", and mistranslating too literally? In English "continent" is the land mass, which is definitely Australia. Oceania, as a whole "Erdteil", is more than a continent; it's the sum of the continent of Australia and a whole bunch of islands. (Possibly most of them situated on the same continental shelf? Or not, Idunno.)
French:
> On retrouve ainsi certains systèmes de continents qui considèrent l'Europe et l'Asie comme deux continents, alors que l'Eurasie ne forme qu'une étendue de terre. -- https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent
If stuff that is just one actual literal continent can be called two "Erdteile" since forever, another "Erdteil" can consist of a continent plus some other stuff.
West Flemish:
> De meiste eiland'n in de Stiln Oceoan vormn t'hope mè 't continent Australië e weirelddeil die Oceanië wordt genoemd. -- https://vls.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent
Not the same thing.
Anyway, all of that is completely arbitrary, so don't expect it to make sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Definitions_and_appl...
I wonder if you could create some "relaxed" definitions of "convex" that would be able to capture shape properties only at certain scales. Something like "every polygon from points which are between x and y meters from the coastline and at least z meters from each other is convex".
1. Every point on the edge of the polygon is in water
2. Every point on the land in question is inside the polygon
And then sample some very large n points uniformly/randomly from inside the polygon, reporting whether you hit land or water. The closer to 100% land your sampling gets, the more “convex-like” the land in question is.
Basically, draw a convex bounding polygon around the land and ask how much of that bounding polygon does the land fill up.
Some definitions would include them as part of Oceania.
Some? All, AFAICS. (Or at the very least, most.)
So the reason greenland being an island is due to definition then? Which makes the concept of an island moot, as it's driven via definition, rather than criteria.
Isn't everything, including criteria?
Afro-Eurasia *
Americas *
Antarctica
Australia landmass
Greenland
* This of course depending on how rivers and man-made canals of Suez, Panama, and other canals like Kiel, or ones linking rivers, are treated, there could be arguments that Suez should be included (no locks), but Panama shouldn't be, or all should be, or none should be, or Suez and Panama should be, etc
That aside, there is actually a rather good criteria-based definition for continents vs. islands: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35568455
So all concepts that are "driven via definition, rather than criteria" are moot?
Isn't that... All of them?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_(continent)
This is a separate Australia to Australia the Mainland (which doesn't New Guinea), and separate from Australia the country (which includes Tasmania)
Therefore I'm not convinced that "Australia is a continent, so it cannot be an island by definition" rules out the Australia Mainland.
If we look at the wikipedia definition of Island
"subcontinental land completely surrounded by water"
And accept that "Australia the continent" comprises "Australia Mainland", New Guinea (both PNG and part of Indonesia), and nearby islands like Tasmania and Lord Howe (but not New Zealand), then Australia Mainland is surely subcontinental and completely surrounded by water.
Once you leave the English speaking world though, Oceania as a continent comes into play, which goes back to that "definition of continent"
There is a widely accepted difference between islands and continents in terms of geology. Continents are often considered to be the largest landmass of a particular continental plate; this holds true for Australia, which sits on its own continental lithosphere and tectonic plate (the Australian Plate).
By contrast, islands are usually seen as being extensions of the oceanic crust (e.g. volcanic islands), or as belonging to a continental plate containing a larger landmass (continental islands); the latter is the case of Greenland, which sits on the North American Plate.
There's no clear definition and there's far to much political and cultural meaning in the definition of a continent so any definition involving the term is going to be ambiguous.
Just curious, why perhaps? the second is much bigger
I find it funny that humans love facts like "the skin is the largest organ" but hate facts like "Afroeurasia is the largest island". I wonder why that is.
It's a kind of reductio based on what people will tell you when you ask them to define "island", to show that definitions they come up with tend to have outcomes they don't like—happily, we may just ignore all that and keep using the words in a useful and mutually-intelligible way, so that language remains tenable. In fact, the reductio isn't proving people wrong when they say "afroeurasia isn't an island". Nobody treats it that way, so it's not. If they did, we'd need a different word for "island".
In the end we don't have a good definition of continent though, so you can find plenty of weird things you can argue should be the definition and thus come up with a lot of contradictory answers.
Of course people will argue endlessly about what exactly a continent is (can’t just use geology because then Europeans don’t get to be special), but the truth of the matter is, capturing Australia gets you +2 troops in Risk so it must be a continent.
> It may seem like a silly technical objection at first
And of course, just gotta draw the line somewhere.
But that's not even close. For starters, the continents are ancient. The seabed, the crust between the continents, is in a constant process of renewal. The age of the seabed is measured in millions of years, not billions.
I don't understand. Why does considering a single continent to be an island also mean that you need to include groupings of multiple continents in that definition? Europe + Asia + Africa is 3 continents, not one.
I guess that gets into the question: "Can a river count as the border of an island?". What happens if the river dries up sometimes?
It seems people have already decided there are 7 continents, and will adjust the definition until it gives the result.
Isn't that the point though? North America is not an island. Asia is not an island. If NA and SA were one, they would be an island, but they are not.
If the point is Australia is a continent and hence not an island fine. But it's not because Americas will then become island because Americas is not a continent.
(One odd example is the five Olympic rings, which represent the "five inhabited continents": Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, and the Americas.)
And the ring represents Oceania and not Australia, and this makes Australia an island in Oceania.
The whole probelm here is that the English word "continent" actually means two different but closely related things, namely the older cultural-geographical concept "part of the world" (cf Ger. "Erdteil", lit. "part of the Earth") on the one hand, and the more narrowly geological idea of continental shelves &c. "Hello, so which part of the world are you from?" is a much older question than the idea of tectonic plates, so Europe and Asia being different things has been thoroughly cemented into the public conciousness although geologically, they're one and the same. Contrariwise, the Americas both got the same name even though they're (apparently, AFAIK) actually two different things. So, it would help immensely to keep these two different categorisations separate. "Erdteil" is often called "region" in English, but that word is also already overloaded with quite enough meanings, so this usage probably doesn't exactly bring any increased clarity on the whole.
Unfortunately, contemporary colloquial English uses the word "continent" for both concepts, so confusion like yours is only all too common. To come back to your specific points:
* The ring represents Oceania and not Australia
In modern politically correct parlance it represents a part of the world ("Erdteil"), not a single geological entity. Saying it represents only the actual continent of Australia would leave New Zealanders and Micronesians without any representation at all, so that would be rather un-PC. My guess is that back when the rings symbol was adopted, PC details like this just weren't on the agenda, so they simply said "Australia".
* and this makes Australia an island in Oceania.
No it doesn't. It makes Australia a geological-continent in the region-of-the-world Oceania; or, if you will: It makes Australia a continent-1 in continent-2 Oceania. (See how using the same word for different things kinda sucks?)
It's America. It's a continent. It was named after Amerigo Vespucci.
The fact that English speakers, led by the citizens of the United States of America, in practice claim the name America for themselves and want to push the point of North and South (never quite agreeing what north is depending on the political point being made), doesn't mean that there's objective validity to it. Just a egocentric convenience and the superpower influence.
I'm specific and right, but in the wrong place (HN is Reddit nowadays, preach to the choir or downvotes).
It's not preferred. It's historically accurate and I'm not the one with the burden of proof. He asserted the wrong thing, but that didn't make you question him.
https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=35569350
This is so funny (and trivial). It really shows how people in this site and in most of these Reddit like forums operate nowadays.
Hegemonic views can't be challenged and are the default and logic will not be used.
This is completely wrong, unless your argument is something like there being only two continents. Which is fine but pretty far from how continents are normally defined and you should probably use a different word.
By far the most egregious continent border is Europe vs. Asia, and Africa is connected to those two just as much as the Americas are connected.
> never quite agreeing what north is depending on the political point being made
You get the same political fussiness around every continent border. But the geographic boundary is pretty well decided to be Panama.
And I don't know what your point is about central america. Nobody calls central america a continent.
> En realidad no existe una única forma de fijar el número de continentes y depende de cada área cultural determinar si dos grandes masas de tierra unidas forman uno o dos continentes, y en concreto, decidir los límites entre Europa y Asia (Eurasia) por una parte y América del Norte y América del Sur (América) por otra.
It's just a great exercise of how these sites work. And that goes for more consequential stuff than this.
These technical definitions are pretty awful when we get down to it.
As someone who grew up next to the Great Salt Lake, this is not uncontroversial!
IMHO, saying that Australia is a continent comes with the problematic notion that its close-by neighbour New Zealand is not part of any continent, which would be weird given that even Bouvet island is assigned to a continent.
Or is it King of the Islands?
I humbly propose we open the consumption of Mai tais to everyone on earth without discrimination. If you object I welcome you to come to a conference I'm arranging on the island of Jylland.
So there will be Mai tais? OK, sign me up. (Phew, good to know Jutland isn't a mere islet. And thank you, diggers of the Kiel canal!)
Australia is a continent, so it cannot be an island by definition, as islands are defined as 1. completely surrounded by water, and 2. smaller than continents. It may seem like a silly technical objection at first, but it’s actually necessary to stipulate that continents cannot be islands, as otherwise the largest island would be the Americas, or perhaps mainland Asia + Africa + Europe.
Perhaps the other reason Australia seems like an island (while eg the Americas does not) is that it looks mostly convex on a global map. Unfortunately, we can’t make use of this intuition in a formal way because of the coastline paradox.