10 ms·

In school in Belgium, we learned that Oceania is the continent and not Australia. So for us, would Australia then be the largest island after all? https://en.w

In school in Belgium, we learned that Oceania is the continent and not Australia. So for us, would Australia then be the largest island after all? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceania

juliangamble 3y ago
Quoting from that page: 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."
- mfer 3y ago
  > 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.
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    I mean there are expressions that seem archaic and she remarked on it.
  - atonse 3y ago
    Agreed, anyway what is old-fashioned about it? And is that even a valid argument to not use it anymore?
    - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
      Why do you interpret her reporting that the term is "old-fashioned" as an argument that it shouldn't be used? She's not making an argument, just remarking on the term.
  - pmarreck 3y ago
    You’re right. But it may still have that flavor.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Language is only useful if we all agree on a common meaning for it. If you use old fashioned language I may still recognize it, but it is still wrong: you need to update your language to whatever is current (this does change!) so that we continue to understand each other. 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!)
    - Verdex 3y ago
      > Language is only useful if we all agree on a common meaning for it. 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.
  - yamtaddle 3y ago
    Rather than reasoned, such a tip may be useful—if one wishes to speak or write about what one has read without giving an odd or unintended impression.
- jefftk 3y ago
  Whether it was an "old-fashioned" term in 1961 doesn't have much bearing on whether we should use it now, though.
  - CRConrad 3y ago
    Yeah, from all I can see it has come back into fashion, because I see it used quite often nowadays.
lexandstuff 3y ago
The definition of a continent is a continuous expanse of land. So technically, Australia is a continent, and Oceania is a region [1]. It seems that parts of the world refer to regions as continents. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Region https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Region
- twelvechairs 3y ago
  > The definition of a continent is a continuous expanse of land. 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)
  - bluGill 3y ago
    I wish science would come up with a better definition. Just like we no longer have Pluto as a planet (there were other definitions they considered with different results - the important thing is a useful definition)
    - SllX 3y ago
      That won’t happen, largely because continents are BS scientifically but useful colloquially and in geography. Politics also uses them too, but the usefulness of that I’ll leave as an exercise for others. 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.
  - manojlds 3y ago
    Yeah then Pluto is a planet as well. We defined it more precisely and demoted Pluto. Continents are just not defined in detail.
e-v 3y ago
I don't know if you went to a French-speaking school in Belgium, but I was told the same thing in a French school. The French "continent" certainly refers to a large mass of land and its surrounding islands [1]. Hence, the continent is Oceania rather than Australia. [1] https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/continent/18603 https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/continent/186...
- ghostDancer 3y ago
  Spain, at least at my time was the same. The Continents were Asia, Africa, America (North and South as one) , Europe, Oceania.
  - ComputerGuru 3y ago
    Funny. One America but no Eurasia ;)
    - ghostDancer 3y ago
      I'm talking how we learned 40 years ago in Spain, don't know if it has changed. Antarctica wasn't even included then.
  - dorfsmay 3y ago
    Then, by that definition, how is Europe, as opposed to Eurasia, a continent?
    - panxyh 3y ago
      The continents are defined geologically and not by amount of blue around them on a map.
      - 0xffff2 3y ago
        North and South America are on different tectonic plates, while Europe and most of Asia are on a single plate. If anything, the geological definition of continents seems to support separate Americas and a unified Eurasia.
sebastialonso 3y ago
We learned this in Chile as well, Oceania is as Asia is as America. Also that no country is at the same time a continent. Are Aussies taught that their country is the actual continent?
- throwaway894345 3y ago
  > Also that no country is at the same time a continent Can a continent have the same name as a country?
  - frosted-flakes 3y ago
    Sure, Australia the continent and country have the same name.
  - coutego 3y ago
    Yes. America. 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.
    - mixmastamyk 3y ago
      Synecdoche is relatively common: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche
    - throwaway894345 3y ago
      This comment seems confused. In English, "the Americas" isn't a continent nor are North America and South America "sub-continents"; rather, North America is a continent, South America is a continent, "the Americas" refers unambiguously to the collection of both continents, and "America" refers unambiguously to the United States of America (and "American" refers unambiguously to a US citizen). The only chauvinism occurs when speakers of other languages insist that the English language adopt their model of continents and the corresponding toponyms and demonyms (for example, many Spanish speakers use "Americano" to refer to inhabitants of the Americas, and since that word looks like "American" in English, many of these Spanish speakers believe English speakers should modify the meaning of "American" to mirror their "Americano"). 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.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> In school in Belgium, we learned that Oceania is the continent and not Australia. So for us, would Australia then be the largest island after all? 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.)
- elvis70 3y ago
  Oceania is not Australia. After the Wikipedia article: "Oceania is a geographical region which includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia".
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - martincmartin 3y ago
    Yes, but Australia is " the land mass that makes up the entirety of the mainland" of Oceania.
    - SllX 3y ago
      In English, Australia is just Australia. The Australian continent includes the Australian mainland, New Guinea and several islands within Australian or Indonesian jurisdiction. 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.
lhorie 3y ago
Tasmania and Frasier are islands, which would make Australia more of an archipelago, I think.
marcosdumay 3y ago
All continents include islands, but that doesn't make their main land body an island. Anyway, all of that is completely arbitrary, so don't expect it to make sense.
FabHK 3y ago
There are schools of thought with 4, 5, 6, or 7 continents, but all of them consider Australia a continent, and Oceania a region, at least according to Wikipedia; though "some geographers group the Australian continental landmass with other islands in the Pacific Ocean into one 'quasi-continent' called Oceania." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Definitions_and_application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Definitions_and_appl...
fwlr 3y ago
Yes, if you grew up being told that the continent is Oceania, and all the people around you were also told the continent is Oceania, then Australia is indeed the biggest island. Language is fun like that.
JoeAltmaier 3y ago
Surely that would be Antarctica?
krzyk 3y ago
In my case (school in Poland) it was: Australia and Oceania

juliangamble 3y ago

Quoting from that page: 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."

mfer 3y ago
> 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.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  I mean there are expressions that seem archaic and she remarked on it.
- atonse 3y ago
  Agreed, anyway what is old-fashioned about it? And is that even a valid argument to not use it anymore?
  - DiggyJohnson 3y ago
    Why do you interpret her reporting that the term is "old-fashioned" as an argument that it shouldn't be used? She's not making an argument, just remarking on the term.
- pmarreck 3y ago
  You’re right. But it may still have that flavor.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bluGill 3y ago
  Language is only useful if we all agree on a common meaning for it. If you use old fashioned language I may still recognize it, but it is still wrong: you need to update your language to whatever is current (this does change!) so that we continue to understand each other. 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!)
  - Verdex 3y ago
    > Language is only useful if we all agree on a common meaning for it. 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.
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  Rather than reasoned, such a tip may be useful—if one wishes to speak or write about what one has read without giving an odd or unintended impression.
jefftk 3y ago
Whether it was an "old-fashioned" term in 1961 doesn't have much bearing on whether we should use it now, though.
- CRConrad 3y ago
  Yeah, from all I can see it has come back into fashion, because I see it used quite often nowadays.

lexandstuff 3y ago

The definition of a continent is a continuous expanse of land. So technically, Australia is a continent, and Oceania is a region [1]. It seems that parts of the world refer to regions as continents. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Region https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Region

twelvechairs 3y ago
> The definition of a continent is a continuous expanse of land. 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)
- bluGill 3y ago
  I wish science would come up with a better definition. Just like we no longer have Pluto as a planet (there were other definitions they considered with different results - the important thing is a useful definition)
  - SllX 3y ago
    That won’t happen, largely because continents are BS scientifically but useful colloquially and in geography. Politics also uses them too, but the usefulness of that I’ll leave as an exercise for others. 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.
- manojlds 3y ago
  Yeah then Pluto is a planet as well. We defined it more precisely and demoted Pluto. Continents are just not defined in detail.

e-v 3y ago

I don't know if you went to a French-speaking school in Belgium, but I was told the same thing in a French school. The French "continent" certainly refers to a large mass of land and its surrounding islands [1]. Hence, the continent is Oceania rather than Australia. [1] https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/continent/18603 https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/continent/186...

ghostDancer 3y ago
Spain, at least at my time was the same. The Continents were Asia, Africa, America (North and South as one) , Europe, Oceania.
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  Funny. One America but no Eurasia ;)
  - ghostDancer 3y ago
    I'm talking how we learned 40 years ago in Spain, don't know if it has changed. Antarctica wasn't even included then.
- dorfsmay 3y ago
  Then, by that definition, how is Europe, as opposed to Eurasia, a continent?
  - panxyh 3y ago
    The continents are defined geologically and not by amount of blue around them on a map.
    - 0xffff2 3y ago
      North and South America are on different tectonic plates, while Europe and most of Asia are on a single plate. If anything, the geological definition of continents seems to support separate Americas and a unified Eurasia.

sebastialonso 3y ago

We learned this in Chile as well, Oceania is as Asia is as America. Also that no country is at the same time a continent. Are Aussies taught that their country is the actual continent?

throwaway894345 3y ago
> Also that no country is at the same time a continent Can a continent have the same name as a country?
- frosted-flakes 3y ago
  Sure, Australia the continent and country have the same name.
- coutego 3y ago
  Yes. America. 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.
  - mixmastamyk 3y ago
    Synecdoche is relatively common: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche
  - throwaway894345 3y ago
    This comment seems confused. In English, "the Americas" isn't a continent nor are North America and South America "sub-continents"; rather, North America is a continent, South America is a continent, "the Americas" refers unambiguously to the collection of both continents, and "America" refers unambiguously to the United States of America (and "American" refers unambiguously to a US citizen). The only chauvinism occurs when speakers of other languages insist that the English language adopt their model of continents and the corresponding toponyms and demonyms (for example, many Spanish speakers use "Americano" to refer to inhabitants of the Americas, and since that word looks like "American" in English, many of these Spanish speakers believe English speakers should modify the meaning of "American" to mirror their "Americano"). 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.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> In school in Belgium, we learned that Oceania is the continent and not Australia. So for us, would Australia then be the largest island after all? 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.)

elvis70 3y ago
Oceania is not Australia. After the Wikipedia article: "Oceania is a geographical region which includes Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia".
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- martincmartin 3y ago
  Yes, but Australia is " the land mass that makes up the entirety of the mainland" of Oceania.
  - SllX 3y ago
    In English, Australia is just Australia. The Australian continent includes the Australian mainland, New Guinea and several islands within Australian or Indonesian jurisdiction. 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.

lhorie 3y ago

Tasmania and Frasier are islands, which would make Australia more of an archipelago, I think.

marcosdumay 3y ago

All continents include islands, but that doesn't make their main land body an island. Anyway, all of that is completely arbitrary, so don't expect it to make sense.

FabHK 3y ago

There are schools of thought with 4, 5, 6, or 7 continents, but all of them consider Australia a continent, and Oceania a region, at least according to Wikipedia; though "some geographers group the Australian continental landmass with other islands in the Pacific Ocean into one 'quasi-continent' called Oceania." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Definitions_and_application https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Definitions_and_appl...

fwlr 3y ago

Yes, if you grew up being told that the continent is Oceania, and all the people around you were also told the continent is Oceania, then Australia is indeed the biggest island. Language is fun like that.

JoeAltmaier 3y ago

Surely that would be Antarctica?

krzyk 3y ago

In my case (school in Poland) it was: Australia and Oceania