Comment by spauldo
Comment by spauldo 4 days ago
In English, there is no continent named "America." It's unambiguously used to refer to the United States.
Comment by spauldo 4 days ago
In English, there is no continent named "America." It's unambiguously used to refer to the United States.
Continents are a social construct. In North American English, we typically divide the Americas into a North and South America. The collective noun for North and South America is the Americas. (Though this remains ambiguous in respect of the Caribbean and Pacific Islands.)
Getting pedantic about calling America America is sort of like insisting on referring to China as Zhonghua. Like, sure. Whatever. But you’re clearly insisting on substituting a substantial discussion with a semantic one.
I thought continents are a geographical term divided by tectonic plates and such. Still seams to be weird to single out a single country to assign the name of a continent.
> thought continents are a geographical term divided by tectonic plates and such
Common misconception, but incorrect. Here is a map of major tectonic plates [1]. They sort of map to our continents. But only loosely. European countries often fissure Eurasia, same way many Spanish-language countries unify the North American, South American, Caribbean, Cocos, Nazca, Scotia and Juan de Fuca plates into an Americas. (Or include the Arabias and India in Asia, et cetera.)
> seams to be weird to single out a single country to assign the name of a continent
New Zealand doesn’t like the Australian plate, Trump doesn’t like the Gulf of Mexico, Riyadh the Persian Gulf, et cetera. At the end of the day, you have to decide if you’re having a substantive or semantic discussion. I personally tend to find the latter boring and repetitive unless actually digging into the meat of the issue (versus the usual “I like to say it this way QED”.)
I'm speaking as someone who has done a bit of research into this topic.
I'm not aware of a single example of an English-speaking country that teaches that there's a continent named "America." It's taught as two continents: North America and South America. "America" is just short for the "United States of America," and in English it's entirely unambiguous.
I would not say "unambiguously" when it comes to natural languages.
And no, "America" may have referred to the US when I was a kid and here in Central Europe we had Back to the Future type of shoes with the American flag, yeah, and I would not say unambiguously so.
If someone says "America" to refer to a place, they really ought to specify if they want you to understand them.
But America isn't a place. There's the Americas, as in plural, referring to the continents of North America and South America.
So America is unassigned, hence why we assigned it to the USA colloquially.
Just for the sake of it I checked Wikipedia.
> The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America. When viewed as a single continent, the Americas are the 2nd largest continent by area after Asia, and is the 3rd largest continent by population. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and constitute the New World.
Yeah, OK, not sure "America" refers to The Oh-So-Great United of America according to this. Guess what? You can find 10 in each direction. Specify. If you disagree with "one should specify", why down-vote? Baffling, baffling indeed.
This wikipedia excerpt aligns exactly with what I said.
There's North and South America. These, together, are the Americas.
America is not that typically. Which makes sense, America is singular. But the Americas are two. So which one are we referring to?
Because if we say both, then the correct term is Americas. If we say just one, then it's North America or South America.
> why down-vote? Baffling
It’s a silly side discussion in which nothing new is being said. Complaining that America generally refers to the country is a hobby for some folks, and that’s fine, but it’s only entertaining for them.
If someone needs the America you’re talking about specified, i.e. they can’t figure it out from context, the discussion is sort of moot. (Same way one can use the word Europe despite it being incredibly ambiguous. Overspecificity comes at the cost of conciseness.)
> Overspecificity comes at the cost of conciseness.
And this is why we have (programming) language wars. Ada or Forth?! :P
I keep getting down-voted, but I have never been against being specific, in fact, I was advocating to be specific[1], i.e. North American, Latin American, South America, etc.
[1] "If someone says "America" to refer to a place, they really ought to specify if they want you to understand them.".
Additionally, natural languages are inherently ambiguous.
So ugh, I do not think we disagree.
If someone can’t figure out what America I’m referring to when comparing America and China, I’m not sure how much useful conversation is left in them on the topic.