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Comment by dghughes | Hacker News Reader

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dghughes·

North Americans? The people in the 23 countries that make up the North American continent.

Why not western nations in general?

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> 23 countries

Canada, USA, Mexico, what are the other 20?

Greenland, Caribbean, most of Central America...

Most of Central America is part of North America?

...what else would it be a part of?

Wow, TIL. I did not realize it was a subset.

We call distinct bodies of land part of the continent? Ok...

USA Canada Mexico Guatemala Belize Honduras El Salvador Nicaragua Costa Rica Panama Bahamas Cuba Jamaica Haiti Dominican Rep. St. Kits and Nevis Antigua and Barbuda Dominica Saint Lucia Barbados St. Vincent and the Grenadines Grenada Trinidad and Tobago

I think some of those countries are usually referred to as Central America.

From Wikipedia's article on Central America:

"Central America consists of seven countries: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama."

There are 7 continents: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. Central America and the Caribbean are regions of North America.

Central America isn't a continent. It's a political designation that simply exists for Americans to "other" neighbors. (When not meddling in their politics.)

Greenland is also part of NA.

There's no consistent definition of continent; if there were, Europe damn well wouldn't qualify as one.

So, is Asia only a distinct continent so Europeans can other Asians?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...

Technically I think north-western Iceland should be included too since it's on the western side of the mid-Atlantic ridge.

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