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Where I'm from, when you say "biggest" country, it's by default population unless specified otherwise. Area really isn't an important metric here (unless your c
by leononame 2y ago
Where I'm from, when you say "biggest" country, it's by default population unless specified otherwise. Area really isn't an important metric here (unless your country is tiny), because the ability of economic and industrial output scales with population more than with area. The most logical comparison would be by GDP here, because we're comparing economy.
But for population, which is what I think about when specifying country size without any explanation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...
Germany is #3 here. You'll see that Russia and Turkey are partly in Europe and bigger than Germany, but since they're mostly in Asia I think most people wouldn't consider them mainly European but rather mainly Asian. There's bound to be some discussion here since it really isn't very clear cut. I'll rephrase to "Germany is at least the third-biggest country in Europe".
- hawski 2y agoOr just the biggest in the EU.
- toenail 2y agoThanks, fwiw, Russia is still #1 by population if you only count population in Europe.
- leononame 2y agoThat's definitely fair. I just blurped it out that way because, at least in my experience, Russia isn't really considered a European country "colloquially". At least where I'm from, people would usually say it's Asian when asked what continent Russia belongs to (if they had to pick one). But I agree it doesn't really hold up to more detailed scrutiny.
- oblio 2y ago> At least where I'm from, people would usually say it's Asian when asked what continent Russia belongs to (if they had to pick one). Heh, that's quite funny, where are you from? :-)
- palata 2y ago> At least where I'm from, people would usually say it's Asian when asked what continent Russia belongs to (if they had to pick one). I believe you, but those people would then be wrong :-).
- infecto 2y agoWhen people speak about Europe, they are rarely including Russia and Turkey.
- ivan_gammel 2y agoMost of the population of Russia is in Europe and it was always considered European country, just like Britain, France, Spain or Portugal of the colonial period.
- kstenerud 2y agoAlso, colloquially Europeans consider Russia to be an uncivilized backwater, so they don't count. Turkey is considered more middle-east.
- LtVodka 2y ago>Also, colloquially Europeans consider Russia to be an uncivilized backwater, so they don't count. citation needed. Otherwise, your prejudice has no place here.
- kstenerud 2y agoChill... It's not like they're saying it publicly within earshot. Only the Finns, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Polish, Ukrainians and Moldovans do that.