Gigi informs me that there are six continents on this planet. She swears this is what she learned in geography this past year. "What?!," I say. "Don't the French consider Antarctica a continent?"
I tell my French friends Béatrice and H-O that in the US, we learn that there are seven continents. "Comment?!," they say. "Do the Americans consider the Arctic a continent?"
It turns out the French consider the Americas to be one continent. I find this shocking, but no less shocking than Béatrice and H-O find it that we consider North America and South America to be separate continents. They correctly point out that the Americas are connected by the ithsmus of Central America -- an argument I rebut by pointing out that Europe and Asia are one enormous landmass arbitrarily divided at the Ural Mountains.
Their rebuttal of my rebuttal -- one that is very à propos at the moment -- is that the Olympic symbol is five rings representing all five of the inhabited continents: Africa, Europe, Australia/Oceania, Asia, and the Americas. However, my rebuttal to their rebuttal of my rebuttal is that the Olympic symbol was conceived by....a Frenchman. Baron Pierre de Coubertin was the father of the modern Olympic movement and designed the symbol based on what he had learned at school.
English-language map of the world:
map from: http://www.wpmap.org/tag/world-map-continents/
French-language map of the world:
map from: http://anglesqueville-eco.spip.ac-rouen.fr/spip.php?article186
The three things we all agree on: the Antarctic is a continent, the Arctic is not, and we don't want to live in either one of them.
I tell my French friends Béatrice and H-O that in the US, we learn that there are seven continents. "Comment?!," they say. "Do the Americans consider the Arctic a continent?"
It turns out the French consider the Americas to be one continent. I find this shocking, but no less shocking than Béatrice and H-O find it that we consider North America and South America to be separate continents. They correctly point out that the Americas are connected by the ithsmus of Central America -- an argument I rebut by pointing out that Europe and Asia are one enormous landmass arbitrarily divided at the Ural Mountains.
Their rebuttal of my rebuttal -- one that is very à propos at the moment -- is that the Olympic symbol is five rings representing all five of the inhabited continents: Africa, Europe, Australia/Oceania, Asia, and the Americas. However, my rebuttal to their rebuttal of my rebuttal is that the Olympic symbol was conceived by....a Frenchman. Baron Pierre de Coubertin was the father of the modern Olympic movement and designed the symbol based on what he had learned at school.
English-language map of the world:
French-language map of the world:
The three things we all agree on: the Antarctic is a continent, the Arctic is not, and we don't want to live in either one of them.
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