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by saranagati
5507 days ago
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well at least we're claiming to be the "united states of" america. those damned australians aren't even trying to be polite about it, claiming the entire continent themselves. those poor new zealanders can't even use the name of their continent to describe where they're from for fear people thinking they're from the country australia. instead they have to resort to being called the sheep fuckers of australia because that sounds better than being australian. |
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Before doing my (minimal) research, I would have assumed they were part of Asia, if for no other reason than that I considered Australia the continent and Australia the country to be essentially one and the same (i.e. a continent consisting of just one country), but that doesn't seem to be the case.
According to Wikipedia's article on the continent of Australia [1], "New Zealand is not on the same continental shelf and so is not part of the continent of Australia but is part of the submerged continent Zealandia. Zealandia and Australia together are part of the wider region known as Oceania or Australasia."
Similarly, Wikipedia's "list of sovereign states and dependent territories by continent" page [2], does not use "Australia" as a continental group, and instead uses "Oceania" to encapsulate states in that region.
So I guess New Zealanders don't really have any right to complain about not being able to call themselves Australian, since they're not even technically part of the Australian continent. They could refer to themselves as Oceanians, Australasians, or even Polynesians [3], but not as Australians.
[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_%28continent%29
[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de...
[3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oceanias_Regions.png