Every Continent Ranked by Number of Countries (lemmy.nz)

submitted 7 months ago by Innerworld@lemmy.world to c/geography@mander.xyz

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[-] flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 2 points 7 months ago

Imo, South America has the best distribution of countries. No microstates or tiny countries, Brazil is somewhat outsized but not too much, borders are logical despite colonial origins.

[-] olof@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 months ago

Why the dislike of small countries? As a friend of microstates, I am in the opposite team here :)

[-] teslekova@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago

Guyana?

[-] Noodle07@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Which one ? 🤣

[-] teslekova@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago

Damnit, you got me! I can't remember. 😄

[-] ElBarto@piefed.social 2 points 7 months ago

Wait, isn't Central America its own continent???

But anyway. In Spanish, there is only one continent: América. Or so I was taught. Has this changed?

[-] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 points 7 months ago

It does depend on how you define a continent, and whether you're talking colloquially or in a specific formal system.

Then again, I suck at Spanish and never get a chance to use what little I have, so I'm going off of what I've been told by native Spanish speakers from the Americas.

[-] nathan@lemmy.permisuan.com 2 points 7 months ago

Central america is not it's own continent , there's only 7 continents.

[-] ElBarto@piefed.social 4 points 7 months ago

In Spanish you have: America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Antarctica and Oceania.

With North and South America, you have seven in English. Neat!

[-] HetareKing@piefed.social 2 points 7 months ago

Might be a cultural difference. Continents are mostly cultural constructs, which is why most people don't consider Afro-Eurasia a continent, even though it's a continuous landmass.

Given that Spain had a lot of colonies in South-America and that Columbus' voyage that led to the "discovery" of the Americas (more concretely, parts that are currently considered part of South or Central America) was funded by the Spanish crown, I can imagine that Spanish-speakers may have a different view on "America" compared to northern Europeans and their diaspora.

[-] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 2 points 7 months ago

When and where you grew up and how continent was defined will change this. It ranges from 4-7 IIRC based on where you grew up. There are some good YouTube videos on the subject that shows, however you want to measure it, there are issues with consistency.

[-] Lembot_0006@programming.dev 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Wow, that is the most meaningless categorization ever :)

But I can suggest even funnier and more useless type: rank the continents by the median length of countries names in 20% of the most widespread languages of the corresponding continents.

[-] HetareKing@piefed.social 1 points 7 months ago

It's kind of absurd how the second smallest continent has a similar number of countries as the two biggest ones.

this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026

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