Removing the word China/Chinese from phrases/labels

You cannot call it lunar New Year. That is because my calendar, the Jewish calendar also has a lunar new year. My Muslim buddy also has a different lunar New Year. There are quite a few different cultures that have calendars based on that of the Moon.
Most of the rituals we have here in Taiwan are Chinese rituals. Should we remove the word English from the language spoken in America? I mean American English corrected a lot of spelling errors but still it’s english…

Haha, not in Taiwan! If I had a cent for every time I heard some call English 美語…

no. Human decided what lands are continents, and what are islands.

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What is an island?

Please define for me what an island is. What is a continent? Please define it for me.

Yeah…but not really. I see your point of course, but there’s definitely a (loose) distinction between islands and much larger continental landmasses. It’s of course possible to argue pedantically than anything surrounded by water is an “island”, irrespective of size, but that’s simply not how the term is usually used (with the entire planet consisting of several main “islands” of the Americas, Eurasia (+/- Africa), Australia, etc., depending how you want to break things up).

Now it’s my turn to do the same: all terms are made up by humans, including “China” and “Chinese”. These are also arbitrary and political, and mean a country in some contexts and an ethnicity/history/culture in others.

I think what you just said is actually an oxymoron but i am too drunk and lost too many card games to make sesne of it. This is a reminder for later…

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Anything smaller than australia (or in other words any subcontinental land mass)

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But unlike islands and continents, of which we have not defined,

We have defined what a mainland is.

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Yeah, but that’s what I’m saying - different meanings in different contexts. Isn’t that what this thread is about? :thinking:

Do you have a peer reviewed source for that?

Do you really want me to find you a peer reviewed source :joy: Smallest continent is Australia, largest island is Greenland. Greenland is about 3x smaller than Australia. No peer-review needed.

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islands are any pieces of subcontinental land surrounded by water. Iirc, it should not go underwater by tide.

What are Continents?
Fyi

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I don’t think he/she needs one? Come on, stop being difficult. :sweat_smile: You know exactly what an island is. There’s nothing to peer review here, as any strict definition would be arbitrary.

We could also just call everything an island as you’re suggesting, but then the word would lose any meaning and we could just dispense with it entirely. (And we’d then come up with another word, meaning something along the lines of “a relatively small bit of land”.)

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This is just the right level of ADHD we need. A very serious and fun question, islands and that. Draw the line in the sand and be done with. But any definition does not excuse taiwan calling china the mainland. Unless of course japan and the philippines do as well.

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Yeah I actually agree with scrapping “mainland”

You haven’t provided any sources. Do you have any scientific definition?

Think about it. It’s arbitrary. There’s no definition. Even so, Nobody has said ‘OK, at this many km², this is an island and this many km² is a continent.’

I’m not being difficult, I’m challenging your meanings because we can’t be matter-of-factly here and not there. It’s fine, we don’t have an actual definition of it. It’s all relative. 70% of the world is ocean, that makes every landmass an island. What is a continent? If we used the definition of large landmasses separated by bodies of water, then we need to combine Europe, Asia, Africa into one, combine North and South America into one, and then define a size limit as to what classifies as an island and as a continent.

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If you read the article, it admits that there really is no agreement on what a continent actually is.

And Taiwan does not go under the tides cause if so, we’d be dead.

Australia amount of km2 or larger is a continent. Anything smaller is an island. Source - my brain :grinning: I don’t disagree with your point about terminology but i dont think it has anything to do with this pointless island/continent debate

That’s your opinion. Australia also changes size every day.

No it’s still English it’s just a more beautiful version of it.
(Actually my parents were PBS Anglophiles. I grew watching BBC shows and reading Sherlock Holmes and Peter Wimsey in the original English.
I was one confused elementary school student.
Hell, I wondered what Inspector Lestrade was doing with his rubber when they were all on a stake out together and afraid to ask.
I think British English Looks nicer)