Saturday, July 7, 2018

America – Continent or Country?


A posting recently showed up on my Facebook feed which exclaimed that “America is a continent, not a country!” This posting then claimed that the continent of America was further subdivided into North (Canada, US, Mexico), Central, and South America, and that one could also define Latin America as “where romance languages are spoken”.

Before I get to the main question, let me address a few problems with this particular posting. First, all the pictures excluded Greenland and all the islands in the Caribbean, but left in all the islands in northern Canada. Second, there are portions of “Latin America” where languages other than romance languages are spoken, such as Suriname where Dutch is spoken. The author was being a bit sloppy in his presentation.


The Continent Question

The answer to what would seem to be a simple question of “how many continents are there?” is actually quite complicated. There is an excellent summary of this in Wikipedia (*1). I’m not going to try and replicate all that article here but recommend that you read it if you are interested.

In summary, the answer depends on (1) where you live and what you have been taught, and (2) whether you have a geological view of the world or a geopolitical one. Thus, four, five, six, or seven are all valid answers depending on your context. Most English-speaking countries as well as China, India, and several other countries teach a 7-continent model with North American and South America being separate as well as Europe and Asia being separate. Most other western Europeans and Latin Americans have a 6-continent model with North America and South America being combined. Those in eastern Europe, Russia and Japan have a different 6-continent model with Europe and Asia combined but North America and South America separated.

The Olympic flag has five rings because the Olympics started in non-English-speaking western Europe (a 6-continent model) but then they dropped Antarctica since it was not populated.

For most in the USA (I’ll get to the country issue below), when we use the term “The Americas” we are referring to both North America and South America (note that the term “Americas” is plural!). And since the USA was settled primarily by individuals from English-speaking countries of Europe who hold to the 7-continent model, most in the USA still generally think of North America and South America as two separate continents and they do not use the word “America” to refer to a continent.


The Country Question

There are several components to the question, “What is the name of a country?” We need to consider what the people in that country call their county (which is in the native language of that country), and then what the English translation of that name is. As an example, the official name of what we generally know as “Egypt” is “Junhuriyah Misr al-Arabiyah” (this is the rough transliteration of the words in Arabic). In English, this translates to “Arab Republic of Egypt”. But by convention we drop off the portion before the “of” and simply call the country, “Egypt”. There are a surprising number of countries whose full official name follows a similar convention. Here are some which I looked up (if you want to look up others, see (*2):

Commonwealth of Australia
Federative Republic of Brazil
People’s Republic of China
The People’s Republic of Bangla-Desh
Kingdom of Belgium
Republic of Cyprus
Kingdom of Denmark
French Republic
Federal Republic of Germany
Hellenic Republic [Greece]
Republic of India
The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
United Mexican States
Russian Federation
Republic of Suriname
Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Note that in most cases we simply drop everything before the “of”, but for some where that word does not appear, the shortened version of the name appears earlier in the full official name (such as Russian Federation = Russia, and United Mexican States = Mexico). Words such as “Republic”, Federation”, “Kingdom”, or “Federal” are generally descriptive of the nature of the country’s political system and, as you can see from the above examples, can be found in multiple country names.

So, if we follow this same sort of naming convention what should we call the USA? First, we need to determine the official name, i.e. what does the country call itself. Here the simple answer is “United States of America”. This term occurs in the preamble of the Constitution and is what we have used ever since. Like all the other examples above, the terms before the “of” are descriptive of the name of the country’s political system and we should drop them to get the shortened version, i.e. “America”.


Areas of Possible Confusion

The root cause of any confusion is primarily with those individuals who hold to a view of the continents that “America” is the name of a single continent, i.e. those individuals from non-English-speaking western Europe, Latin America, or those who may have their heritage from countries in those areas.

While the individual who made the original Facebook posting (and there have been many others like it that I have seen over the years) is showing particular concern about the use of the word “America” for a country, there are actually two continents (of the 4/5/6/7) where there could be confusion. The other one is “Australia”. Is this the name of a continent or a country (short for “Commonwealth of Australia”? And if someone says, “I’m Australian,” can that be misinterpreted?

The continent of Australia can be interpreted in a number of ways. If you are referring to only the landmass, i.e. following the coastline just like the person who uses the term “America” to refer to a continent, then you are leaving out the island of Tasmania, which is one of the states in the Commonwealth of Australia. But if you then state that you need to include the islands that are on the same tectonic plate, then you need to include New Guinea as well. So no matter which definition you use for the continent of Australia, you have an inconsistency with the country of [the Commonwealth of] Australia. And yet I’ve never seen anyone who gets upset about the use of the word “Australia” or “Australian” to apply to the country or citizens of that country.

And yet in the totally parallel case of using the word “America” to refer to the “United States of America”, some people get quite upset. I even ran across one video (*3) where the individual proposed that we need to change the name of the USA to “Midnorthamerica”, which is a totally geographic name. But interestingly the individual did not propose that Canada should be “Northnorthamerica”.


My Personal View

I’ve recognized for a long time that there are different views of how many continents there are and that there are many individuals, especially from other countries, who view “America” as the name of a continent and thus can be confused when encountering individuals who use the word “America” as the name of a country. When I am in the company of individuals who have these alternate (and totally valid) views, I am careful to choose my words so as not to cause confusion.

As an example, I volunteered for many years for AFS (American Field Service) and had considerable contact with exchange students from other countries who were here in the United States. When in their company I was careful to not use the word “Americans” as a term to refer to individuals from the [United States of] America, but to substitute “US Americans” so as not to cause confusion.

I am also careful in these same types of circumstances to not use complicated words (which an individual who has English as a second/third language may not know how to translate), figures of speech (which may not translate very well, such as “the red zone” which is a term from US football), or jokes which make use of homonyms in many puns (which when translated to another language are no longer homophones, such as “you can tune a piano but you can’t tuna fish”). When speaking to individuals from other language backgrounds, I also deliberately speak in simple sentences and speak slower than when speaking to totally US audiences. I need to consider the listener(s).

I do not see this as something to get upset about or to denigrate others who may hold alternate views. We should also be aware that things that we take for granted may cause confusion for others and to take into account the background that others may have.


Notes:



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