this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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So is America one or two continents? Our US schools call them North America and South America despite being connected as a single land mass.
The other fun one to spring on we United States of America citizens if that the full and proper name of Mexico is "The United Mexican States". Having Mexico have a name and a similar idea of states forming a union, but not bring the USA doing it really bugs people here.
America is indeed two continents, North and South. Continents aren't just connected land masses, they are the major tectonic plates that the earths crust is divided into. North America is on the North American plate, South America on the South American plate.
There ARE some interesting facts on this though. Unlike NA and SA, which ARE distinct continents, Europe and Asia genuinely are NOT separate continents; both are contained on the absolutely massive Eurasian tectonic plate(NA plate is technically bigger, but a lot of it's in the ocean). Another fun fact is that the absolute most north-eastern part of Siberia is technically part of North America.
there are various thoughts on this matter
Well, they're separated by the Panama canal, so by the same token that Africa and Asia aren't the same land mass, neither are the Americas.
The more important part of what defines continents is tectonic plates and plate movement, though the definitions used are fairly arbitrary. It's also interesting how different regions in the world define continent in different ways.
The following bit is entirely in humor:
Before the Suez and Panama canals were dug they should have been treated as a single continents? Europe and Asia need to figure out how to dig from the Black Sea to the North Sea so they get some clarity too.
Oh! And while the Evergreen ship was stuck sideways in the Suez, did that make Asia and Africa a single continent for a bit?
I was taught that North and South America formed one large continent called the Americas.
This makes complete sense. But let’s not act like Europe isn’t just a peninsula of Asia.
If we go by plate tectonics, NA and SA are distinct continents, as they are on different plates. Europe and Asia are definitely one Eurasian continent though, as they are on the same plate.
Whether it's one continent or two, the point is that it's bigger than the United States. At least I've always studied that Americans are people who live in America, either from Canada, United States, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Argentina... Then you can divide them between North Americans and South Americans.
I mean, that's fine, but no one world-wide is going to hear "American" and think anything but "a citizen of The United States of America". So, what's the point of trying to push it as such? For all the hate American citizens get, you'd think you'd want to separate yourself as much as possible from the title. Canadians certainly won't like being called Americans, that's for sure.
Yes, it is much bigger than the United States, though not for our lack of trying. We had quite a century or so where we tried to conquer, buy, or steal every bit of land we could.
Today, American is still much bigger then the United States, but we US Citizens don't even really have good vocabulary for just US vs the rest of the Americas.
But English, being a de facto universal language, has good creativity to invent new words, either from native speakers or from foreign influences. For example, the word "D'oh" didn't exist until Homer Simpson (Dan Castellaneta) popularized it. And I think the word "meme" didn't exist either 40 or 50 years ago.
I think a good way to know that is to read newspapers from 100 years ago or older, and see how people from US were called.