Two. Americas and the Europe/Asia/Africa giant. Everything else is an island.
Does this mean that Hispaniola is a continent (as an example of an island divided into two countries)? Or what if the U.S. had continued expanding to cover all of North America; would North America then be a country? All of the continents are also islands of course because they are surrounded by water.
FWIW, the largest “official” island, Greenland, is less than a third of the size of Australia; Greenland is in turn about three times the size of the next largest island, so you could say it is between the extremes.
I’d go with along with that.
Hey, I still believe we have nine planets in the solar system. If it’s on a test, I’m not answering nine but I know what the answer really is. 
After reading this, I’d go with three.
Eurafricaustralasia
America
Antarctica
I see no problems here.
Eurafricaustralasia is pretty.
In fact, my next female offspring shall be named this.
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Yes, I have now doomed myself to bachelorhood until my death.
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No, but really Eurafricaustralasia just rolls off the tongue.
Doesn’t it?
:dubious:
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The debate as to which is a continent and which is an island reminds me somewhat of the debate about which is a boat and which is a ship.
At least the latter has some non-arbitrary line of demarcation.
Not so, continent vs island.
Perhaps it is more similar to the definitions of a mountain vs a hill.
It is as if Humanity created these linguistical distinctions before it had a complete understanding of the boundaries of the sets in question.
As if?
IT did. Europe is what lies north of the Mediterranean sea, Asia is east of it, and Africa is south of it. That was defined by the Mediterranean-centered civilizations of the antiquity. Obviously, America was added later.
I like where you are going with this but you didn’t take it far enough. North America and Asia aren’t nearly as separated as we tend to think of them. The Bering Strait is only 56 miles wide at one point and has islands in it. You can see Russian land from Alaskan land. You can even walk walk an unbroken path around most of the world from Chile to the U.S. to Russia into China and on to South Africa if you really want to if you don’t mind walking across ice for the Bering Strait part.
Therefore, I fight rampant continentalism in any form and say there is only one continent and just one ocean too
I like minimalism. I’m convinced. There’s one continent, and one ocean.
While you have an argument for North America and Asia (and ultimately the Americas and Afro-Eurasia) being one, I think you still have to count Antarctica and Australia as separate continents.
Why? They look like islands to me. They’re no where near as big as Afroeurasiamerica.
I was indoctrinated with the seven continent breakdown, but I never liked it. I never understood why Europe was separated from Asia other than because of convention. Even if we talk culture, it seems to me that Western Asia is as much different from East Asia culturally as Europe is, so the divide just doesn’t really make much sense. And if we go by landmass size, it’s fairly arbitrary as well, we just have to come up with a cut off, and while there is a decent drop off after Australia it leaves itself open to debate precisely because it could be drawn in any number of ways.
To compare to the planets, when they redefined planets recently, they chose characteristics that, even if people disagree about whether they’re good properties by which to judge a planet, are at least, when applied, objective. It also makes it easier to apply the term planet when looking at other systems rather than having it too tailored toward only our system. So, why not pick some sort of objective criteria for continents too?
To that end, I’d suggest choosing the major landmass, if there is one, on a tectonic plate. It removes any distinction about relative size and how connected or unconnected various continents may be. Going off of a map I googled, that would leave us with these continents: Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Australia, Arabia, India. If you really don’t like the last two because they’re too connected to other masses, I suppose you could add some sort of equivalent to “mostly spherical” and “cleared orbit” with planets so as to non-arbitrarily remove them for clearly having significant connection to other much larger continents, but then you end up back at the well known 6 continent set with Eurasia.
Personally, I’d be okay with either of those much more than the 7 continent version.