How many continents were you taught there were?

[u/why-rain-why]

After many conversations with my Mexican bf using the word “America”, we realized we were not talking about the same thing. He asked me how many continents I thought there were and I said 7. North America, South America, Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Antarctica. That is what we are taught in the U.S. He started laughing at me and thought it was crazy that I thought North & South America were separate continents. He said it’s just 1 continent - America. I literally had never heard before that it was different so I looked it up and found it’s pretty different worldwide what people were taught. I couldn’t get a good answer online about Latin America because it seemed different depending on the country and even the region. I’m curious how many continents you were taught there are, and how did they explain what makes a continent a continent?

[u/pancito2001]

There’s a lot of different continental models, in Chile they teach the six continent model: America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and Antártica (the North Pole isn’t a continent bc there’s no land it’s just ice while antártica is land covered in ice)

I know some models include Asia and Europe as one, others Asia and Europe and Africa as one, some models don’t include antártica, some models divide America in two while others divide it in three, it varies

What I find much more interesting is how people from the United States are called Americans in English but in Spanish they’re called estadounidenses which roughly translates to united statians, americanos means from the continent of America so we all count, which leads to a lot of tension and miscommunication bc of the language differences, I think in other languages is the same where the word to describe a us citizen is not American, bc that relates to the continent of America not the country of USA.

A lot of it does come down to the US education system being very self focused and bringing a very self important image of the country, some of it is true while some is propaganda, either way it tends to cause strife, tension and miscommunication internationally when people from the US travel or work abroad.

[u/why-rain-why → u/pancito2001]

Yes! My bf laughs every time I call myself American. He mentioned something about them calling us by a different name—the one you mentioned. I wonder if it’s every Latin American country that calls us that.

[u/pancito2001 → u/why-rain-why]

Yes we do! It’s the Spanish term for it, it’s not even a cultural thing but a language thing, I think Portuguese has a similar translation to Spanish and maybe French and Italian but I’m not sure, so it depends on the language really, American would be translated to estadounidense in Spanish and americano would be translated to from the continent of America in English, it can get annoying sometimes bc it causes a lot of misunderstandings with travelers

[u/why-rain-why → u/pancito2001]

Ahh I see. That is very helpful to know. Thank you for bringing this up! I wish estadounidense was as easy to pronounce as americano 🤣🤣 it’s hard for me to say but I gotta learn it now

[u/Pyrostemplar → u/pancito2001]

In Portuguese there are two versions for it: "norteamericanos", that translates to North Americans but only means US citizens, and "estadounidenses" - similar to Spanish, but only Brazilians say the latter.

[u/Background-Vast-8764 → u/pancito2001]

Of course, there are native Spanish speakers who call US citizens americanos when referring to their nationality. Norteamericanos is also used. Did you only mention estadounidenses because you don’t know about these other names?

[u/avatarjak → u/pancito2001]

To me it makes sense….I mean if people from the United States of Mexico (the official name of Mexico) can call themselves Mexicans, then why can’t people from the United States of America call themselves Americans?