On Apr 7, 2010, at 10:34 AM, Ricardo Aráoz wrote:
> North America, Central America and South America are SUBCONTINENTS of
> the American continent.
That is not correct under any geologic interpretation. NA and SA formed
completely separately (SA was originally joined with Africa), and have drifted
together over time. The Central America/Carribean area is simply where the two
masses have butted against each other and pushed enough material upwards to
form dry land. This joint between the land masses is what caused the recent
earthquake in Haiti.
> America is a continent.
Again, no geologic basis for this.
> There is NO country named America, there is a
> country named United States of America (notice the "of") that belongs to
> the North American subcontinent of the American continent.
There is no single place named 'America', period. The name 'United
States of America' is an unfortunate "by committee" artifact that we're
unfortunately stuck with.
Now while the geologic definition is one thing, common parlance is
another. People in the USA routinely refer to themselves as "American", and
this convention has been adopted throughout the world (usually in a negative
sense, such as the term "American aggression").
You should be sympathetic to the evolution of words to adopt common
meanings rather than their original precise meanings. The term 'Yankee' (or
'yanqui') is used throughout the world to mean people from the USA, but you
might be surprised to find that the southern half of the the USA would strongly
object to the term, as it originally referred to people in the northeastern US
(New England) who were of English descent. During the US Civil War, the South
referred to their northern enemies as 'Yanks' or 'Yankees'.
IOW, don't be so pedantic about a word having drifted from its original
meaning to something different.
-- Ed Leafe
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