[Music] in a previous video of mine I talked about America which could refer to both a country or a continent in English it generally refers to the country the United States of America but in other languages Spanish for example it refers to the continent however in English these are two separate continents part of the seven continent model North America South America Europe Africa Asia Antarctica and the topic of this video Australia so is Australia a country or a continent well Australia is one of the 193 members of the United Nations although just because a country is a member of the UN doesn't necessarily mean that all other members agree that that country is a country for example North and South Korea don't recognize each other both believing themselves to be the legitimate government of all of Korea turkey doesn't recognize Cyprus because of the situation with Northern Cyprus even the most populated country in the world the People's Republic of China isn't recognized by 22 UN members who recognize the Republic of China as the legitimate government of China confined to the island of Taiwan and the least recognized UN member with 32 fellow members not recognizing them as a country Israel because of the minor issue of the Israel Palestine conflict but anyway this is no such issue with Australia ging independence from the British Empire in 1901 with a population of more than 23 million everyone agrees Australia is a country of course seeing Australia as a country is kind of stating the obvious this was never really in dispute the real issue is when it comes to the Australian continent like I said there are seven continents in the English-speaking world and well there disagreement in the Western Hemisphere about whether it's America or North and South America there's also disagreement down under as well for example the word Australia in the context of a continent has no official definition the border between Australia and Asia is not clearly defined East teore is sometimes considered part of the Australian continent although generally speaking it's usually considered part of Southeast Asia the most common of the Australian continent is mainland Australia Tasmania and the island of New Guinea which is comprised of the independent country of Papa New Guinea as well as two Indonesian provinces the reason for this is that all these islands lie on the same continental shelf but this s continent model is flawed because what continent is New Zealand part of and what about the other 11 independent countries in the South Pacific well technically they're not part of any continent so one of two things tends to happen either they're in directly included as part of Australia or there's countries that don't belong to any continent the problem is the word continent has no clear definition the continents of the world are by convention and not by any strict criteria in fact if you look up the word continent in the dictionary you'll usually just find some vague definition and the list of the seven continents so with this seven continent Model 12 countries are not counted as part of any continent now you might think this sounds logical I mean if a country is in the middle of an ocean it's really not part of any land mass right well this doesn't seem to be a problem for other continents Iceland for example is considered part of Europe despite being an island country hundreds of miles away from the rest of Europe and what about Madagascar it's considered part of Africa despite being on a totally different continental shelf and what about sea shells for that matter nowhere near any land mass yet also considered part of Africa so the definitions of the Australian continent are limited to the continental shelf yet other continents are much less strict about what countries are part of that continent for convenience the term Oceania refers to all countries and islands in the General South Pacific region Oceania is split into four different subregions australasia melanesia Micronesia and Polynesia the term australasia however is a bit redundant see while the other three sub regions are clearly defined australasia is not and even with its most limited definition causes overlapping between the sub regions australasia May simply refer to Australia and New Zealand in fact in the Years 1908 and 1912 Australia and New Zealand teamed up and competed in the Olympics together as austral Asia wider definitions may include the island of New Guinea and possibly even the whole of Melania but even if we take australasia to mean just Australia and New Zealand this still puts New Zealand as part of two different sub regions of Oceania Oceania though is not a continent it's instead classed as a geographic region well in English that is in other languages Oceania is one of the continents of the world which makes sense all countries are part of a continent and there's no name confusion between Australia the country and Australia the continent but in English Australia is both a country and a continent although they mean different things the United Nations GEOS scheme which divides the world into different regions uses Oceania and one of the sub regions is simply called Australia and New Zealand so to sum up there are seven continents of the world this is Australia the country this is Australia the continent both of which are part of the wider geographic region known as Oceania which is divided into four different sub regions australasia melanesia Micronesia and Polynesia thanks for watching