207-468: Oceania ( UK : / ˌ oʊ s i ˈ ɑː n i ə , ˌ oʊ ʃ i -, - ˈ eɪ n -/ OH -s(h)ee- AH -nee-ə, - AY - , US : / ˌ oʊ ʃ i ˈ æ n i ə , - ˈ ɑː n -/ OH -shee- A(H)N -ee-ə ) is a geographical region including Australasia , Melanesia , Micronesia , and Polynesia . Outside of the English-speaking world , Oceania is generally considered
414-501: A continent , while Mainland Australia is regarded as its continental landmass . Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, at the centre of the water hemisphere , Oceania is estimated to have a land area of about 9,000,000 square kilometres (3,500,000 sq mi) and a population of around 44.4 million as of 2022. Oceania is the smallest continent in land area and the second-least populated after Antarctica . Oceania has
621-408: A sea level rise of hundreds of meters following the last ice age. Both routes may have been taken, although the genetic evidences suggests a single founding population. The micro-satellite diversity and distributions specific to South American Indigenous peoples indicates that certain populations have been isolated since the initial colonization of the region. A second migration occurred after
828-821: A Spanish language segment of Oceania, and included the Desventuradas Islands, Easter Island, the Galápagos Islands, Guadalupe Island, the Juan Fernández Islands, the Revillagigedo Islands and Salas y Gómez. Cocos Island and Malpelo Island were not explicitly referenced in the book, despite being areas which would fall within this range. All other islands associated with Latin American countries were excluded, as they are continental in nature, unlike Guadalupe Island and
1035-701: A U.S. state in 1947, and as such was part of the original UN definition of Oceania. The island states of Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore and Taiwan, all located within the bounds of the Pacific or associated marginal seas, are excluded from the UN definition. The states of Hong Kong and Malaysia , located in both mainland Asia and marginal seas of the Pacific, are also excluded, as are Brunei , East Timor and Indonesian New Guinea/Western New Guinea . The CIA World Factbook also categorizes Oceania as one of
1242-559: A century as Received Pronunciation (RP). However, due to language evolution and changing social trends, some linguists argue that RP is losing prestige or has been replaced by another accent, one that the linguist Geoff Lindsey for instance calls Standard Southern British English. Others suggest that more regionally-oriented standard accents are emerging in England. Even in Scotland and Northern Ireland, RP exerts little influence in
1449-415: A chief Hotu Matuꞌa discovered the island in one or two large canoes with his wife and extended family. They are believed to have been Polynesian . Around 1200, Tahitian explorers discovered and began settling the area. This date range is based on glottochronological calculations and on three radiocarbon dates from charcoal that appears to have been produced during forest clearance activities. Moreover,
1656-507: A continent like Africa, Asia and America." Scottish geographer John Bartholomew wrote in 1873 that, "the New World consists of North America , and the peninsula of South America attached to it. These divisions [are] generally themselves spoken as continents, and to them has been added another, embracing the large island of Australia and numerous others in the [Pacific] Ocean, under the name of Oceania. There are thus six great divisions of
1863-475: A diverse mix of economies from the highly developed and globally competitive financial markets of Australia , French Polynesia , Hawaii , New Caledonia , and New Zealand , which rank high in quality of life and Human Development Index , to the much less developed economies of Kiribati , Papua New Guinea , Tuvalu , Vanuatu , and Western New Guinea . The largest and most populous country in Oceania
2070-573: A few hidden documents remain today, leaving modern historians with glimpses of ancient culture and knowledge. The first inhabitants migrated into the Americas from Asia. Habitation sites are known in Alaska and Yukon from at least 20,000 years ago, with suggested ages of up to 40,000 years. Beyond that, the specifics of the Paleo-Indian migration to and throughout the Americas, including
2277-747: A fifth grand division of the world." He also viewed Oceania as covering Australia, New Zealand, the Malay Archipelago and the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. In 1887, the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland referred to Australia as the area's westernmost land, while in 1870, British Reverend Alexander Mackay identified the Bonin Islands as its northernmost point, and Macquarie Island as its southernmost point. The Bonin Islands at that time were
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#17327660368802484-508: A greater movement, normally [əʊ], [əʉ] or [əɨ]. Dropping a morphological grammatical number , in collective nouns , is stronger in British English than North American English. This is to treat them as plural when once grammatically singular, a perceived natural number prevails, especially when applying to institutional nouns and groups of people. The noun 'police', for example, undergoes this treatment: Police are investigating
2691-521: A landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America . When viewed as a single continent, the Americas or America is the 2nd largest continent right after Asia, and is the 3rd largest continent by population. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth 's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World . Along with their associated islands , the Americas cover 8% of Earth's total surface area and 28.4% of its land area. The topography
2898-406: A lesser class or social status and often discounted or considered of a low intelligence. Another contribution to the standardisation of British English was the introduction of the printing press to England in the mid-15th century. In doing so, William Caxton enabled a common language and spelling to be dispersed among the entirety of England at a much faster rate. Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of
3105-427: A million years, with the total spread of South American genera into North America far more limited in scope than the spread of North American genera into South America. There are 35 sovereign states in the Americas, as well as an autonomous country of Denmark , three overseas departments of France , three overseas collectivities of France, and one uninhabited territory of France, eight overseas territories of
3312-485: A number of islands. The gaps in the archipelago of Central America filled in with material eroded off North America and South America, plus new land created by continued volcanism. By three million years ago, the continents of North America and South America were linked by the Isthmus of Panama , thereby forming the single landmass of the Americas. The Great American Interchange resulted in many species being spread across
3519-505: A population of 70,000,000, and commented that, "brown and yellow races constitute the vast majority" and that the minority of whites were mainly "owners and rulers". Hutton Webster's 1919 book Medieval and Modern History also considered Oceania to encompass all islands in the Pacific, stating that, "the term Oceania, or Oceanica, in its widest sense applies to all the Pacific Islands." Webster broke Oceania up into two subdivisions;
3726-641: A possession of Britain; Macquarie Island, to the south of Tasmania , is a subantarctic island in the Pacific. It was politically associated with Australia and Tasmania by 1870. Alfred Russel Wallace believed in 1879 that Oceania extended to the Aleutian Islands , which are among the northernmost islands of the Pacific. The islands, now politically associated with Alaska , have historically had inhabitants that were related to Indigenous Americans , in addition to having non-tropical biogeography similar to that of Alaska and Siberia . Wallace insisted while
3933-659: A process called T-glottalisation . National media, being based in London, have seen the glottal stop spreading more widely than it once was in word endings, not being heard as "no [ʔ] " and bottle of water being heard as "bo [ʔ] le of wa [ʔ] er". It is still stigmatised when used at the beginning and central positions, such as later , while often has all but regained /t/ . Other consonants subject to this usage in Cockney English are p , as in pa [ʔ] er and k as in ba [ʔ] er. In most areas of England and Wales, outside
4140-578: A province of New Guinea) in the west to Galápagos Islands (Equador) and Easter Island (Chile) in the east." In a 1980 report on venereal diseases in the South Pacific, the British Journal of Venereal Diseases categorized the Desventuradas Islands, Easter Island, the Galápagos Islands and the Juan Fernández Islands as being in an eastern region of the South Pacific, along with areas such as Pitcairn Islands and French Polynesia, but noted that
4347-484: A range of blurring and ambiguity". Variations exist in formal (both written and spoken) English in the United Kingdom. For example, the adjective wee is almost exclusively used in parts of Scotland, north-east England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and occasionally Yorkshire , whereas the adjective little is predominant elsewhere. Nevertheless, there is a meaningful degree of uniformity in written English within
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#17327660368804554-547: A recent study which included radiocarbon dates from what is thought to be very early material suggests that the island was discovered and settled as recently as 1200. Oceania was first explored by Europeans from the 16th century onwards. Portuguese navigators, between 1512 and 1526, reached the Maluku Islands (by António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão in 1512), Timor , the Aru Islands (Martim A. Melo Coutinho),
4761-520: A regional accent or dialect. However, about 2% of Britons speak with an accent called Received Pronunciation (also called "the King's English", "Oxford English" and " BBC English" ), that is essentially region-less. It derives from a mixture of the Midlands and Southern dialects spoken in London in the early modern period. It is frequently used as a model for teaching English to foreign learners. In
4968-571: A result, much evidence is based on linguistic analysis. The earliest archaeological traces of civilization have been found on the island of Saipan , dated to 1500 BCE or slightly before. The ancestors of the Micronesians settled there over 4,000 years ago. A decentralized chieftain-based system eventually evolved into a more centralized economic and religious culture centred on Yap and Pohnpei . The prehistories of many Micronesian islands such as Yap are not known very well. The first people of
5175-722: A series of rivers and streams that flow east with their terminus in the Atlantic Ocean, such as the Hudson River , Saint John River , and Savannah River . A similar instance arises with central Canadian rivers that drain into Hudson Bay ; the largest being the Churchill River . On the west coast of North America, the main rivers are the Colorado River , Columbia River , Yukon River , Fraser River , and Sacramento River . The Colorado River drains much of
5382-541: A shared population of flora and fauna around 2.5 million years ago, when continental drift brought the two continents into contact via the Isthmus of Panama . Initially, the exchange of biota was roughly equal, with North American genera migrating into South America in about the same proportions as South American genera migrated into North America. This exchange is known as the Great American Interchange . The exchange became lopsided after roughly
5589-542: A significant non-indigenous European population, numbering around 71,000. Conversely, New Caledonia has still had a similar history to the rest of Melanesia, and their French -speaking Europeans make up only 27% of the total population. As such, it is not also culturally considered a part of the predominantly English-speaking Australasia. Some cultural and political definitions of Australasia include most or all of Melanesia, due to its geographical proximity to Australia and New Zealand, but these are rare. Australia, New Zealand and
5796-707: A synonym). Latin America is typically contrasted with Anglo-America , where English, a Germanic language , is prevalent, and which comprises Canada (with the exception of Francophone Canada rooted in Latin Europe [France]—see Quebec and Acadia ) and the United States. Both countries are located in North America, with cultures deriving predominantly from British and other Germanic roots. The transatlantic slave trade brought millions of Africans to
6003-453: A wide variety of indigenous religions, many of which can be categorized as animistic ; new age religions and many African and African-derived religions. Syncretic faiths can also be found throughout the Americas. Various languages are spoken in the Americas. Some are of European origin, others are spoken by indigenous peoples or are the mixture of various languages like the different creoles. The most widely spoken first language in
6210-542: Is Australia, and the largest city is Sydney . Puncak Jaya in Indonesia is the highest peak in Oceania at 4,884 m (16,024 ft). The first settlers of Australia, New Guinea, and the large islands just to the east arrived more than 60,000 years ago. Oceania was first explored by Europeans from the 16th century onward. Portuguese explorers, between 1512 and 1526, reached the Tanimbar Islands , some of
6417-725: Is also due to London-centric influences. Examples of R-dropping are car and sugar , where the R is not pronounced. British dialects differ on the extent of diphthongisation of long vowels, with southern varieties extensively turning them into diphthongs, and with northern dialects normally preserving many of them. As a comparison, North American varieties could be said to be in-between. Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are usually preserved, and in several areas also /oː/ and /eː/, as in go and say (unlike other varieties of English, that change them to [oʊ] and [eɪ] respectively). Some areas go as far as not diphthongising medieval /iː/ and /uː/, that give rise to modern /aɪ/ and /aʊ/; that is, for example, in
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6624-419: Is based on British English, but has more influence from American English , often grouped together due to their close proximity. British English, for example, is the closest English to Indian English, but Indian English has extra vocabulary and some English words are assigned different meanings. Americas The Americas , sometimes collectively called America , known initially as India Nova , are
6831-524: Is certainly not necessary to consider the Hawaiian Islands and Australia as being in the same part of the world, it is however permissible to unite in one group all the islands which are scattered over the great ocean. It should be remarked that if we take the Malay Archipelago away from Oceania, as do generally the German geographers, the insular world contained in the great ocean is cut in two, and
7038-523: Is dominated by the American Cordillera , a long chain of mountains that runs the length of the west coast. The flatter eastern side of the Americas is dominated by large river basins, such as the Amazon , St. Lawrence River – Great Lakes , Mississippi , and La Plata basins. Since the Americas extend 14,000 km (8,700 mi) from north to south, the climate and ecology vary widely, from
7245-671: Is estimated that 4% to 6% of the genome in Melanesians (e.g. Papua New Guinean and Bougainville Islander) derives from the Denisova hominin , an ancient human species discovered in 2010, while no Eurasians or Africans displayed contributions of the Denisovan genes. The original inhabitants of the group of islands now named Melanesia were likely the ancestors of the present-day Papuan -speaking people. Migrating from Southeast Asia, they appear to have occupied these islands as far east as
7452-495: Is evidence of genetic and linguistic interchange between Australians in the far north and the Austronesian peoples of modern-day New Guinea and the islands, but this may be the result of recent trade and intermarriage . They reached Tasmania c. 40,000 years ago by migrating across a land bridge from the mainland that existed during the last ice age . It is believed that the first early human migration to Australia
7659-470: Is generally quite flat. Similarly, the north-east of South America is covered by the flat Amazon basin . The Brazilian Highlands on the east coast are fairly smooth but show some variations in landform, while farther south the Gran Chaco and Pampas are broad lowlands . The climate of the Americas varies significantly from region to region. Tropical rainforest climate occurs in the latitudes of
7866-840: Is geologically a partially submerged volcanic extension of the Aleutian Range on the Alaskan mainland. He did not include the volcanic Kuril Islands and Ryukyu Islands, which similarly border both the Eurasian Plate and the Pacific Plate, nor did he include the neighbouring Kodiak archipelago in the North Pacific Ocean, which is firmly situated on the North American Plate. The Stockholm Journal of East Asian Studies stated in 1996 that Oceania
8073-577: Is geologically part of the Japanese Archipelago , but that has been administered by Russia since World War II . Hong Kong, partly located in another marginal sea of the Pacific (the South China Sea ) was also included in his definition. Australia and New Zealand were grouped together by Flick as Australasia, and categorized as being in the same area of the world as the islands of Oceania. Flick estimated this definition of Oceania had
8280-632: Is in spite of the geographical distance separating these areas from Hawaiʻi, which technically lies in the North Pacific. The 1985 edition of the South Pacific Handbook also groups the Galápagos Islands as being in Polynesia, while noting that they are not culturally a part of the subregion. The islands are typically grouped with others in the southeastern Pacific that were never inhabited by Polynesians. The Bonin Islands are in
8487-795: Is included in style guides issued by various publishers including The Times newspaper, the Oxford University Press and the Cambridge University Press . The Oxford University Press guidelines were originally drafted as a single broadsheet page by Horace Henry Hart, and were at the time (1893) the first guide of their type in English; they were gradually expanded and eventually published, first as Hart's Rules , and in 2002 as part of The Oxford Manual of Style . Comparable in authority and stature to The Chicago Manual of Style for published American English ,
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8694-571: Is largely continental in character, New Zealand's are clearly insular; and neither Commonwealth realm has close ties with Asia." In his 2002 book Oceania: An Introduction to the Cultures and Identities of Pacific Islanders , Andrew Strathern excluded Okinawa and the rest of the Ryukyu Islands from his definition of Oceania, but noted that the islands and their indigenous inhabitants "show many parallels with Pacific island societies." In
8901-520: Is now northwest Germany and the northern Netherlands. The resident population at this time was generally speaking Common Brittonic —the insular variety of Continental Celtic , which was influenced by the Roman occupation. This group of languages ( Welsh , Cornish , Cumbric ) cohabited alongside English into the modern period, but due to their remoteness from the Germanic languages , influence on English
9108-691: Is that of the Mississippi , covering the second largest watershed on the planet. The Mississippi-Missouri river system drains most of 31 states of the United States, most of the Great Plains , and large areas between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. This river is the fourth longest in the world and tenth most powerful in the world . In North America, to the east of the Appalachian Mountains , there are no major rivers but rather
9315-463: Is the case for English used by European Union institutions. In China, both British English and American English are taught. The UK government actively teaches and promotes English around the world and operates in over 200 countries . English is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic settlers from various parts of what
9522-481: Is the word often used by continental geographers to describe the great world of islands we are now entering upon" and that "Australia forms its central and most important feature." He did not explicitly label Oceania a continent in the book, but did note that it was one of the six major divisions of the world. The Oxford Handbook of World History (2011) describes the areas encompassed in Oceania as being "afterthoughts in world history texts, lumped together and included at
9729-547: The Chambers Dictionary , and the Collins Dictionary record actual usage rather than attempting to prescribe it. In addition, vocabulary and usage change with time; words are freely borrowed from other languages and other varieties of English, and neologisms are frequent. For historical reasons dating back to the rise of London in the ninth century, the form of language spoken in London and
9936-481: The Amazon , American cloud forests , southeastern Florida and Darién Gap . In the Rocky Mountains and Andes , dry and continental climates are observed. Often the higher altitudes of these mountains are snow-capped. Southeastern North America is well known for its occurrence of tornadoes and hurricanes , of which the vast majority of tornadoes occur in the United States' Tornado Alley , as well as in
10143-715: The Arctic small tool tradition , a broad cultural entity that developed along the Alaska Peninsula , around Bristol Bay , and on the eastern shores of the Bering Strait c. 2500 BCE moved into North America. The Arctic small tool tradition, a Paleo-Eskimo culture branched off into two cultural variants, including the Pre-Dorset , and the Independence traditions of Greenland. The descendants of
10350-653: The Boothia Peninsula in northern Canada and Cape Froward in Chilean Patagonia , is roughly 14,000 km (8,700 mi). The mainland's most westerly point is the end of the Seward Peninsula in Alaska; Attu Island , further off the Alaskan coast to the west, is considered the westernmost point of the Americas. Ponta do Seixas in northeastern Brazil forms the easternmost extremity of
10557-470: The Caroline Islands and west New Guinea . Spanish and Dutch explorers followed, then British and French. On his first voyage in the 18th century, James Cook , who later arrived at the highly developed Hawaiian Islands , went to Tahiti and followed the east coast of Australia for the first time. The arrival of European settlers in subsequent centuries resulted in a significant alteration in
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#173276603688010764-646: The Columbian exchange and inaugurated a period of exploration , conquest, and colonization whose effects and consequences persist to the present. The Spanish presence involved the enslavement of large numbers of the indigenous population of America. Diseases introduced from Europe and West Africa devastated the indigenous peoples , and the European powers colonized the Americas . Mass emigration from Europe , including large numbers of indentured servants , and importation of African slaves largely replaced
10971-1037: The Cook Islands , Federated States of Micronesia , French Polynesia , Fiji, Guam , Kiribati , the Marshall Islands, Nauru , New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue , the Northern Mariana Islands , Palau , Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Islands , Samoa , the Solomon Islands, Tokelau , Tonga , Tuvalu , Vanuatu , Wallis and Futuna , and the United States Minor Outlying Islands ( Baker Island , Howland Island , Jarvis Island , Midway Atoll , Palmyra Atoll , and Wake Island ). The original UN definition of Oceania from 1947 included these same countries and semi-independent territories, which were mostly still colonies at that point. Hawaii had not yet become
11178-658: The East Midlands became standard English within the Court, and ultimately became the basis for generally accepted use in the law, government, literature and education in Britain. The standardisation of British English is thought to be from both dialect levelling and a thought of social superiority. Speaking in the Standard dialect created class distinctions; those who did not speak the standard English would be considered of
11385-422: The Farallones off California, and the Chinchas off Peru are—to all intents and purposes, only detached bits of the adjoining shores. But in the case of the Galápagos, at least, this is different." The Juan Fernández Islands and the neighbouring Desventuradas Islands are today seen as the easternmost extension of the Indo-West Pacific biogeographic region. The islands lie on the Nazca Plate with Easter Island and
11592-444: The Latin version of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci 's first name. The feminine form America was originally used to refer to the newly discovered continent, which is why it was accorded with the feminine names of the other continents: Asia , Africa , and Europa . Since the 1950s, however, North America and South America have generally been considered by English speakers as separate continents, and taken together are called
11799-406: The Latin word oceanus , and this from the Greek word ὠκεανός ( ōkeanós ), "ocean". The term Oceania is used because, unlike the other continental groupings, it is the ocean that links the parts of the region together. John Eperjesi's 2005 book The Imperialist Imaginary says that it has "been used by Western cartographers since the mid-19th century to give order to the complexities of
12006-439: The Malay Archipelago , north of Australia, mainly lie on the continental shelf of Asia, and their inhabitants had more exposure to mainland Asian culture as a result of this closer proximity. The geographer Conrad Malte-Brun coined the French expression Terres océaniques (Oceanic lands) c. 1804. In 1814 another French cartographer, Adrien-Hubert Brué, coined from this expression the shorter "Océanie", which derives from
12213-399: The Pacific area." In the 19th century, many geographers divided Oceania into mostly racially based subdivisions: Australasia , Malesia (encompassing the Malay Archipelago ), Melanesia , Micronesia and Polynesia . The 2011 book Maritime Adaptations of the Pacific , by Richard W. Casteel and Jean-Claude Passeron, states that, "for the purpose of anthropology , Oceania has long been
12420-403: The Quaternary glaciation . These people are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats , they migrated down the Pacific coast to South America. Evidence of the latter would since have been covered by
12627-421: The Royal Spanish Academy with Spanish. Standard British English differs notably in certain vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation features from standard American English and certain other standard English varieties around the world. British and American spelling also differ in minor ways. The accent, or pronunciation system, of standard British English, based in southeastern England, has been known for over
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#173276603688012834-439: The Scots language or Scottish Gaelic ). Each group includes a range of dialects, some markedly different from others. The various British dialects also differ in the words that they have borrowed from other languages. Around the middle of the 15th century, there were points where within the 5 major dialects there were almost 500 ways to spell the word though . Following its last major survey of English Dialects (1949–1950),
13041-423: The Southern Rockies and parts of the Basin and Range Province . The river flows approximately 1,450 miles (2,330 km) into the Gulf of California , during which over time it has carved out natural phenomena such as the Grand Canyon and created phenomena such as the Salton Sea . The Columbia is a large river, 1,243 miles (2,000 km) long, in central western North America and is the most powerful river on
13248-505: The Tanimbar Islands , some of the Caroline Islands (by Gomes de Sequeira in 1525), and west Papua New Guinea (by Jorge de Menezes in 1526). In 1519, a Spanish expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan sailed down the east coast of South America, found and sailed through the strait that bears his name and on 28 November 1520 entered the ocean which he named "Pacific". The three remaining ships, led by Magellan and his captains Duarte Barbosa and João Serrão , then sailed north and caught
13455-419: The U.S. military ). This is due to their location in the centre of the Pacific, their biogeography and their oceanic geology. Less isolated oceanic islands that were once uninhabited, such as the Bonin Islands, the Galápagos Islands and the Juan Fernández Islands, have since been sparsely populated by citizens of their political administrators. Archaeological evidence suggests that Micronesians may have lived on
13662-424: The United Kingdom , three constituent countries of the Netherlands , three public bodies of the Netherlands, two unincorporated territories of the United States , and one uninhabited territory of the United States. In 2021 the total population of the Americas was about 1.03 billion people, divided as follows: There are three urban centers that each hold titles for being the largest population area based on
13869-463: The United States ; Clipperton Island, a possession of France ; the Juan Fernández Islands , belonging to Chile; and Macquarie Island , belonging to Australia. The United Nations (UN) has used its own geopolitical definition of Oceania since its foundation in 1947, which utilizes four of the five subregions from the 19th century: Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. This definition consists of discrete political entities, and so excludes
14076-417: The University of Leeds has started work on a new project. In May 2007 the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded a grant to Leeds to study British regional dialects. The team are sifting through a large collection of examples of regional slang words and phrases turned up by the "Voices project" run by the BBC , in which they invited the public to send in examples of English still spoken throughout
14283-502: The West Country and other near-by counties of the UK, the consonant R is not pronounced if not followed by a vowel, lengthening the preceding vowel instead. This phenomenon is known as non-rhoticity . In these same areas, a tendency exists to insert an R between a word ending in a vowel and a next word beginning with a vowel. This is called the intrusive R . It could be understood as a merger, in that words that once ended in an R and words that did not are no longer treated differently. This
14490-499: The equator , such as Chiloé Island, Macquarie Island, Tasmania, and the southern portions of mainland Australia and New Zealand, were not included in this category. According to the 1998 book Encyclopedia of Earth and Physical Sciences , Oceania refers to Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and more than 10,000 islands scattered across the Pacific Ocean. It notes that, "the term [has] also come under scrutiny by many geographers. Some experts insist that Oceania encompasses even
14697-427: The trade winds which carried them across the Pacific to the Philippines where Magellan was killed. One surviving ship led by Juan Sebastián Elcano returned west across the Indian Ocean and the other went north in the hope of finding the westerlies and reaching Mexico. Unable to find the right winds, it was forced to return to the East Indies. The Magellan-Elcano expedition achieved the first circumnavigation of
14904-422: The 2006 book Extinction and Biogeography of Tropical Pacific Birds , American paleontologist David Steadman wrote, "no place on earth is as perplexing as the 25,000 islands that make Oceania." Steadman viewed Oceania as encompassing Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia (including Easter Island and Hawaii). He excluded from his definition the larger islands of New Guinea and New Zealand, and argued that Cocos Island,
15111-773: The 2013 book The Environments of the Poor in Southeast Asia, East Asia and the Pacific , Paul Bullen critiqued the definition of Oceania in Encyclopedia of Islands , and wrote that since Koppers included areas such as Vancouver Island, it is "not clear what the referents of 'Pacific Region', 'Oceania' or 'Pacific Islands' are." Bullen added that, "Asia, Europe and the Maritime Continent are not literal geographic continents. The ' Asia–Pacific region' would comprise two quasi-continents. 'The Pacific' would not refer to
15318-629: The 21st century. RP, while long established as the standard English accent around the globe due to the spread of the British Empire , is distinct from the standard English pronunciation in some parts of the world; most prominently, RP notably contrasts with standard North American accents. In the 21st century, dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary , the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English ,
15525-676: The Aleutian Islands, Japan's Izu Islands , the Kuril Islands, the Ryukyu Islands and most of the Solomon Islands, were also excluded from his definition. Unlike the United Nations, the World Factbook defines the still-uninhabited Clipperton Island as being a discrete political entity, and they categorize it as part of North America, presumably due to its relative proximity (situated 1,200 kilometres off Mexico on
15732-619: The Aleutian Islands, the Bonin Islands, the Japanese archipelago, the Juan Fernández Islands, the Kuril Islands, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, California 's Channel Islands and Farallon Islands , Canada 's Vancouver Island and Queen Charlotte Islands (now known as Haida Gwaii), Chile's Chiloé Island , Ecuador's Galápagos Islands, Mexico's Guadalupe Island , Revillagigedo Islands , San Benito Islands and Tres Marías Islands , and Peru's Chincha Islands . Islands in marginal seas of
15939-901: The American continents, spanning the time of the original settlement in the Upper Paleolithic to European colonization during the Early Modern period . The term Pre-Columbian is used especially often in the context of the great indigenous civilizations of the Americas , such as those of Mesoamerica ( Olmec , Toltec , Teotihuacano , Zapotec , Mixtec , Aztec , Maya ) and the Andean civilizations ( Inca , Moche , Chavín , Muisca , Cañari ). Many pre-Columbian civilizations established characteristics and hallmarks which included permanent or urban settlements, agriculture, civic and monumental architecture, and complex societal hierarchies . Some of these civilizations had long faded by
16146-502: The Americas , or more rarely America . When conceived as a unitary continent, the form is generally the continent of America in the singular. However, without a clarifying context, singular America in English commonly refers to the United States of America . The pre-Columbian era incorporates all period subdivisions in the history and prehistory of the Americas before the appearance of significant European influences on
16353-476: The Americas began with the first voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492. The first Spanish settlement in the Americas was La Isabela in northern Hispaniola . This town was abandoned shortly after in favor of Santo Domingo de Guzmán , founded in 1496, the oldest American city of European foundation. This was the base from which the Spanish monarchy administered its new colonies and their expansion. Santo Domingo
16560-534: The Americas is Spanish , followed by English and Portuguese . The dominant language of Latin America is Spanish, though the most populous nation in Latin America, Brazil , speaks Portuguese . Small enclaves of French -, Dutch - and English-speaking regions also exist in Latin America, notably in French Guiana , Suriname , and Belize and Guyana respectively. Haitian Creole is dominant in
16767-597: The Americas is made up of the descendants of four large ethnic groups and their combinations. The majority of the population lives in Latin America , named for its predominant cultures, rooted in Latin Europe (including the two dominant languages, Spanish and Portuguese , both Romance languages ), more specifically in the Iberian nations of Portugal and Spain (hence the use of the term Ibero-America as
16974-489: The Americas, such as the cougar , porcupine , opossums , armadillos , and hummingbirds . The geography of the western Americas is dominated by the American Cordillera , with the Andes running along the west coast of South America and the Rocky Mountains and other North American Cordillera ranges running along the western side of North America. The 2,300-kilometer-long (1,400 mi) Appalachian Mountains run along
17181-576: The Americas. Migration continued as people moved to the Americas fleeing religious persecution or seeking economic opportunities. Millions of individuals were forcibly transported to the Americas as slaves , prisoners or indentured servants . Decolonization of the Americas began with the American Revolution and the Haitian Revolution in the late 1700s. This was followed by numerous Latin American wars of independence in
17388-552: The Asian continent. They are now often referred to as Maritime Southeast Asia , with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore being founding members of the ASEAN regional organization for Southeast Asia in 1967 (Brunei and East Timor did not exist as independent nations at that point). Brown also categorized Japan and Taiwan as being in the same part of the world as the islands of Oceania, and excluded them from The Countries of
17595-508: The Asian mainland, as well as the Aleutians and the small island groups situated near the Americas. Thus, Oceania most commonly refers to the land areas of the South and Central Pacific. Kennedy defined Oceania as including Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The U.S. Government Publishing Office 's Area Handbook for Oceania from 1971 states that Australia and New Zealand are
17802-603: The Atlantic Ocean. The Mackenzie River is the largest in Canada and drains 1,805,200 square kilometers (697,000 sq mi). The largest river basin in South America is that of the Amazon , which has the highest volume flow of any river on Earth. The second largest watershed of South America is that of the Paraná River , which covers about 2.5 million km . North America and South America began to develop
18009-467: The Australian Plate and have been geographically associated with Southeast Asia, due to their proximity to western Indonesia. Both were uninhabited when discovered by Europeans during the 17th century. Approximately half of the population on these islands are European Australian mainlanders (with smaller numbers being European New Zealanders ), while the other half are immigrants from China or
18216-500: The Bonin Islands c. 2,000 years ago, but they were uninhabited at the time of European discovery in the 16th century. Depending on the definition, New Zealand could be part of Polynesia, or part of Australasia with Australia. New Zealand was originally settled by the Polynesian Māori , and has long maintained a political influence over the subregion. Through immigration and high Māori birth rates, New Zealand has attained
18423-580: The Bonin Islands, Hawaii, Clipperton Island and the Juan Fernández Islands, along with Easter Island — which was annexed by Chile in 1888. It is used in statistical reports, by the International Olympic Committee , and by many atlases. The UN categorizes Oceania, and by extension the Pacific area, as one of the major continental divisions of the world, along with Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. Their definition includes American Samoa , Australia and their external territories ,
18630-727: The Caribbean began to achieve peaceful independence well after World War II . Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago became independent in 1962, and Guyana and Barbados both achieved independence in 1966. In the 1970s, the Bahamas , Grenada , Dominica , St. Lucia , and St. Vincent and the Grenadines all became independent of the United Kingdom, and Suriname became independent of the Netherlands. Belize , Antigua and Barbuda , and Saint Kitts and Nevis achieved independence from
18837-421: The Desventuradas Islands and the Juan Fernández Islands as being part of a region titled Insular Chile . They further include in this region Salas y Gómez, a small uninhabited island to the east of Easter Island. PLOS One describe Insular Chile as having "cultural and ecological connections to the broader insular Pacific." In her 1997 book Australia and Oceania , Australian historian Kate Darian-Smith defined
19044-836: The English Language (1755) was a large step in the English-language spelling reform , where the purification of language focused on standardising both speech and spelling. By the early 20th century, British authors had produced numerous books intended as guides to English grammar and usage, a few of which achieved sufficient acclaim to have remained in print for long periods and to have been reissued in new editions after some decades. These include, most notably of all, Fowler's Modern English Usage and The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers . Detailed guidance on many aspects of writing British English for publication
19251-725: The Galápagos Islands were not a member of the South Pacific Commission , like other islands in the South Pacific. The South Pacific Commission is a developmental organization formed in 1947 and is currently known as the Pacific Community; its members include Australia and other Pacific Islands Forum members. In a 1947 article on the formation of the South Pacific Commission for the Pacific Affairs journal, author Roy E. James stated
19458-483: The Galápagos Islands, and have a significant south central Pacific component to their marine fauna. According to scientific journal PLOS One , the Humboldt Current helps create a biogeographic barrier between the marine fauna of these islands and South America. Chile's government have occasionally considered them to be within Oceania along with Easter Island. Chile's government also categorize Easter Island,
19665-532: The Galápagos Islands, the Juan Fernández Islands, Costa Rica 's Cocos Island and Colombia 's Malpelo Island (all oceanic) as making up a Spanish language segment of Oceania. Cocos Island and Malpelo Island are the only landmasses located on the Cocos Plate , which is to the north of the Nazca Plate. The book observed that a native Polynesian language was still understood on Easter Island, unlike with
19872-445: The Galápagos Islands, the Revillagigedo Islands and other oceanic islands nearing the Americas were not part of Oceania, due to their biogeographical affinities with that area and lack of prehistoric indigenous populations. In his 2018 book Regionalism in South Pacific , Chinese author Yu Changsen wrote that some "stress a narrow vision of the Pacific as those Pacific Islands excluding Australia and even sometimes New Zealand", adding that
20079-666: The Germanic schwein ) is the animal in the field bred by the occupied Anglo-Saxons and pork (like the French porc ) is the animal at the table eaten by the occupying Normans. Another example is the Anglo-Saxon cu meaning cow, and the French bœuf meaning beef. Cohabitation with the Scandinavians resulted in a significant grammatical simplification and lexical enrichment of the Anglo-Frisian core of English;
20286-633: The Hawaiian and Galápagos ." In 1876, French geographer Élisée Reclus labelled Australia's flora as "one of the most characteristic on the globe", adding that "the Hawaiian archipelago also constitutes a separate vegetation zone; of all tropical insular groups it possesses the relatively largest number of endemic plants. In the Galápagos group also more than half of the species are of local origin." Rand McNally & Company , an American publisher of maps and atlases, claimed in 1892 that, "Oceania comprises
20493-534: The Hudson River Valley, and what later became New Jersey. The spread of new diseases brought by Europeans and African slaves killed many of the inhabitants of North America and South America, with a general population crash of Native Americans occurring in the mid-16th century, often well ahead of European contact. One of the most devastating diseases was smallpox . European immigrants were often part of state-sponsored attempts to found colonies in
20700-481: The Indonesian or non-tropical subdivisions. The Pacific Islands Handbook (1945), by Robert William Robson, stated that, "Pacific Islands generally are regarded as Pacific islands lying within the tropics. There are a considerable number of Pacific Islands outside the tropics. Most of them have little economic or political importance." He noted the political significance of the Aleutian Islands, which were invaded by
20907-498: The Japanese military in World War II, and categorized New Zealand's Antipodes Islands , Auckland Islands , Bounty Islands , Campbell Islands , Chatham Island and Kermadec Islands as being non-tropical islands of the South Pacific, along with Australia's Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island. The Kermadec Islands, Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island are also considered to be subtropical islands. Other non-tropical areas below
21114-563: The Malay Archipelago, not the modern country of Malaysia ) and Polynesia (which included both the Polynesian and Micronesian islands in her definition). Aside from mainland Australia, areas that she identified as of high importance were Borneo, Hawaii, Indonesia's Java and Sumatra , New Guinea, New Zealand, the Philippines, French Polynesia's Society Islands , Tasmania, and Tonga. American geographer Jesse Olney 's 1845 book A Practical System of Modern Geography stated that it "comprises
21321-760: The Marshall Islands during the 2nd millennium BC E, with inter-island navigation made possible using traditional stick charts . The Polynesian people are considered to be by linguistic, archaeological and human genetic ancestry a subset of the sea-migrating Austronesian people and tracing Polynesian languages places their prehistoric origins in the Malay Archipelago , and ultimately, in Taiwan . Between c. 3000 and 1000 BCE, speakers of Austronesian languages began spreading from Taiwan into Island Southeast Asia , as tribes whose natives were thought to have arrived through South China c. 8,000 years ago to
21528-602: The Norse colonies and Europe was maintained, as James Watson Curran states: From 985 to 1410, Greenland was in touch with the world. Then silence. In 1492 the Vatican noted that no news of that country "at the end of the world" had been received for 80 years, and the bishopric of the colony was offered to a certain ecclesiastic if he would go and "restore Christianity" there. He didn't go. Although there had been previous trans-oceanic contact , large-scale European colonization of
21735-627: The Northern Mariana Islands navigated to the islands and discovered it at some period between 4000 BCE to 2000 BCE from Southeast Asia . They became known as the Chamorros . Their language was named after them. The ancient Chamorro left a number of megalithic ruins, including Latte stone . The Refaluwasch or Carolinian people came to the Marianas in the 1800s from the Caroline Islands . Micronesian colonists gradually settled
21942-922: The Oxford Manual is a fairly exhaustive standard for published British English that writers can turn to in the absence of specific guidance from their publishing house. British English is the basis of, and very similar to, Commonwealth English . Commonwealth English is English as spoken and written in the Commonwealth countries , though often with some local variation. This includes English spoken in Australia , Malta , New Zealand , Nigeria , and South Africa . It also includes South Asian English used in South Asia, in English varieties in Southeast Asia , and in parts of Africa. Canadian English
22149-683: The Pacific Ocean and everything in it e.g., the Philippines." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names (2017), by John Everett-Heath, states that Oceania is "a collective name for more than 10,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean" and that "it is generally accepted that Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and the islands north of Japan (the Kurils and Aleutians) are excluded." In his 1993 book A New Oceania: Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands , New Guinea-born Fijian scholar Epeli Hauʻofa wrote that, "Pacific Ocean islands from Japan, through
22356-504: The Pacific Plate). Clipperton is not politically associated with the Americas, as is the case with other oceanic islands nearing the Americas, having had almost no interaction with the continent throughout its history. From the early 20th century to 2007, the island was administratively part of French Polynesia, which itself was known as French Oceania up until 1957. In terms of marine fauna, Clipperton shares similarities with areas of
22563-477: The Pacific such as those of Japan or the Channel Islands off the southern California coast are not typically considered Oceania as the indigenous populations of these places do not share a common ancestry with Oceanic groups, except for a time far before humans sailed Pacific waters." It has been theorized that the indigenous Jōmon people of the Japanese archipelago are related to Austronesians, along with
22770-696: The Pacific were also covered in the book, including Alaska's Pribilof Islands and China's Hainan . Tyler additionally profiled the Anson Archipelago , which during the 19th century was a designation for a widely scattered group of purported islands in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean between Japan and Hawaii. The Anson archipelago included phantom islands such as Ganges Island and Los Jardines which were proven to not exist, as well as real islands such as Marcus Island and Wake Island. Tyler described Australia as "the leviathan of
22977-500: The Pacific which are much farther removed from the Americas. Scottish author Robert Hope Moncrieff considered Clipperton to be the easternmost point of Oceania in 1907, while Ian Todd also included it in his definition of Oceania in Island Realm: A Pacific Panorama . Other uninhabited Pacific Ocean landmasses have been explicitly associated with Oceania, including the highly remote Baker Island and Wake Island (now administered by
23184-462: The Philippines and Indonesia, which are adjacent to the Asian mainland, do not have oceanic cultures, and are therefore not part of Oceania." The Oxford Handbook of Prehistoric Oceania (2018) defined Oceania as only covering Austronesian-speaking islands in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, with this definition including New Guinea and New Zealand. Other Austronesian areas such as Indonesia and
23391-501: The Philippines were not included, due to their closer cultural proximity to mainland Asia. Australia was also not included, as it was settled several thousands of years before the arrival of Austronesian-speaking peoples in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. The book stated, "this definition of Oceania might seem too restrictive: Why not include Australia, for example, or even too broad, for what does Highland New Guinea have to do with Hawai'i?", further noting that, "a few other islands in
23598-778: The Pre-Dorset cultural group, the Dorset culture was displaced by the final migrants from the Bering sea coast line, the Thule people (the ancestors of modern Inuit ), by 1000 CE . Around the same time as the Inuit migrated into Greenland, Viking settlers began arriving in Greenland in 982 and Vinland shortly thereafter, establishing a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows , near the northernmost tip of Newfoundland . Contact between
23805-557: The Revillagigedo Islands (both situated on the Pacific Plate) and the oceanic islands situated on the Cocos Plate and Nazca Plate. Todd defined the oceanic Bonin Islands as making up a Japanese language segment of Oceania, and excluded the main Japanese archipelago. Todd further included the Aleutian Islands in his definition of Oceania. The island chain borders both the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate , and
24012-618: The Ryukyu Islands. He added that, "besides the proceeding, the Pacific contains many other islands, of which the most important are Hainan and Formosa, on the coast of China, the Japan isles, the Kuriles, the Aleutian Islands (stretching from the New World to the Old), Vancouver Island, the Galápagos, Juan Fernández and Chiloé." Scottish academic John Merry Ross in 1879 considered Polynesia to cover
24219-415: The Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, and New Zealand and the oceanic islands of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia." He went on to write that his preferred definition of Oceania emphasis islands with oceanic geology, stating that oceanic islands are, "islands with no past connections to a continental landmass" and that, "these boundaries encompass the Hawaiian and Bonin Islands in the north and Easter Island in
24426-712: The South East, there are significantly different accents; the Cockney accent spoken by some East Londoners is strikingly different from Received Pronunciation (RP). Cockney rhyming slang can be (and was initially intended to be) difficult for outsiders to understand, although the extent of its use is often somewhat exaggerated. Londoners speak with a mixture of accents, depending on ethnicity, neighbourhood, class, age, upbringing, and sundry other factors. Estuary English has been gaining prominence in recent decades: it has some features of RP and some of Cockney. Immigrants to
24633-598: The UK in recent decades have brought many more languages to the country and particularly to London. Surveys started in 1979 by the Inner London Education Authority discovered over 125 languages being spoken domestically by the families of the inner city's schoolchildren. Notably Multicultural London English , a sociolect that emerged in the late 20th century spoken mainly by young, working-class people in multicultural parts of London . Since
24840-576: The United Kingdom , as well as within the countries themselves. The major divisions are normally classified as English English (or English as spoken in England (which is itself broadly grouped into Southern English , West Country , East and West Midlands English and Northern English ), Northern Irish English (in Northern Ireland), Welsh English (not to be confused with the Welsh language ), and Scottish English (not to be confused with
25047-548: The United Kingdom in the 1980s. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere . The northernmost point of the Americas is Kaffeklubben Island , which is the most northerly point of land on Earth. The southernmost point is the islands of Southern Thule , although they are sometimes considered part of Antarctica . The mainland of the Americas is the world's longest north-to-south landmass. The distance between its two polar extremities, Murchison Promontory on
25254-426: The United Kingdom, and this could be described by the term British English . The forms of spoken English, however, vary considerably more than in most other areas of the world where English is spoken and so a uniform concept of British English is more difficult to apply to the spoken language. Globally, countries that are former British colonies or members of the Commonwealth tend to follow British English, as
25461-635: The United Kingdom, starting with the Balfour Declaration of 1926 , Statute of Westminster 1931 , and ending with the patriation of the Canadian Constitution in 1982. The Dominion of Newfoundland similarly achieved independence under the Balfour Declaration and Statute of Westminster, but relinquished self-rule in 1934. It was subsequently confederated with Canada in 1949. The remaining European colonies in
25668-496: The United States, and more specifically in the US state of Colorado . The highest peaks of the Americas are located in the Andes , with Aconcagua of Argentina being the highest; in North America Denali (Mount McKinley) in the US state of Alaska is the tallest. Between its coastal mountain ranges, North America has vast flat areas. The Interior Plains spread over much of the continent, with low relief. The Canadian Shield covers almost 5 million km of North America and
25875-433: The West Coast of the Americas. In the far northwest of North America, the Yukon drains much of the Alaskan peninsula and flows 1,980 miles (3,190 km) from parts of Yukon and the Northwest Territory to the Pacific. Draining to the Arctic Ocean of Canada, the Mackenzie River drains waters from the Arctic Great Lakes of Arctic Canada, as opposed to the Saint-Lawrence River that drains the Great Lakes of Southern Canada into
26082-402: The West Scottish accent. Phonological features characteristic of British English revolve around the pronunciation of the letter R, as well as the dental plosive T and some diphthongs specific to this dialect. Once regarded as a Cockney feature, in a number of forms of spoken British English, /t/ has become commonly realised as a glottal stop [ʔ] when it is in the intervocalic position, in
26289-438: The World: Volume 5 , which covered mainland Asia and Hong Kong. However, Brown did not explicitly associate Japan or Taiwan with the term Oceania. He divided Oceania into two subregions: Eastern Oceania, which included the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, and Southwestern Oceania, which included Australia and New Zealand. The Galápagos Islands, the Juan Fernández Islands and the Revillagigedo Islands were identified as
26496-462: The [Malay] archipelago." In a 1972 article for the Music Educators Journal titled Musics of Oceania , author Raymond F. Kennedy wrote: many meanings have been given to the word Oceania. The most inclusive–but not always the most useful–embraces about 25,000 land areas between Asia and the Americas. A more popular and practical definition excludes Indonesia, East Malaysia (Borneo), the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan and other islands closely related to
26703-417: The arctic tundra of Northern Canada , Greenland , and Alaska , to the tropical rainforests in Central America and South America. Humans first settled the Americas from Asia between 20,000 and 16,000 years ago. A second migration of Na-Dene speakers followed later from Asia. The subsequent migration of the Inuit into the neoarctic c. 3500 BCE completed what is generally regarded as
26910-665: The area as covering Australia, New Zealand and the islands of the Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. She excluded Hawaii from her definition, but not Easter Island. The International Union for Conservation of Nature stated in a 1986 report that they include Easter Island in their definition of Oceania "on the basis of its Polynesian and biogeographic affinities even though it is politically apart", further noting that other oceanic islands administered by Latin American countries had been included in definitions of Oceania. In 1987, The Journal of Australasian Cave Research described Oceania as being "the region from Irian Jaya (Western New Guinea,
27117-426: The award of the grant in 2007, Leeds University stated: that they were "very pleased"—and indeed, "well chuffed"—at receiving their generous grant. He could, of course, have been "bostin" if he had come from the Black Country , or if he was a Scouser he would have been well "made up" over so many spondoolicks, because as a Geordie might say, £460,000 is a "canny load of chink". Most people in Britain speak with
27324-437: The book adds that Hawaii is still within Oceania, despite being politically integrated into the U.S., and that the Pacific Ocean "gives unity to the whole" since "all these varied lands emerge from or border upon the Pacific." The 1876 book The Countries of the World , by British scientist and explorer Robert Brown , labelled the Malay Archipelago as Northwestern Oceania, but Brown still noted that these islands belonged more to
27531-475: The book. Hainan, which neighbours Taiwan, also has Austronesian ethnolinguistic origins, although it was not included in the book. The book defined Oceania's major subregions as being Australia, Indonesia (which included all areas associated with the Malay Archipelago), Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. In 2010, Australian historian Bronwen Douglas claimed in The Journal of Pacific History that "a strong case could be made for extending Oceania to at least Taiwan,
27738-478: The cold Aleutian Islands and the islands of Japan. Disagreement also exists over whether or not Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan should be included in Oceania." The Japanese Archipelago, the Malay Archipelago and Taiwan and other islands near China are often deemed as a geological extension of Asia, since they do not have oceanic geology , instead being detached fragments of the Eurasian continent that were once physiologically connected. Certain Japanese islands off
27945-458: The collective dialects of English throughout the British Isles taken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English , Welsh English , and Northern Irish English . Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English acknowledges that British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions [with] the word 'British' and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within
28152-517: The continental group, which included Australia, the Japanese archipelago, the Malay Archipelago and Taiwan, and the oceanic group, which included New Zealand and the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. Charles Marion Tyler's 1885 book The Island World of the Pacific Ocean considered Oceania to ethnographically encompass Australia, New Zealand, the Malay Archipelago, and the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. However, Tyler included other Pacific islands in his book as well, such as
28359-514: The country. The BBC Voices project also collected hundreds of news articles about how the British speak English from swearing through to items on language schools. This information will also be collated and analysed by Johnson's team both for content and for where it was reported. "Perhaps the most remarkable finding in the Voices study is that the English language is as diverse as ever, despite our increased mobility and constant exposure to other accents and dialects through TV and radio". When discussing
28566-423: The dates and routes traveled, are subject to ongoing research and discussion. Widespread habitation of the Americas occurred after the Late Glacial Maximum , from 16,000 to 13,000 years ago. The traditional theory has been that these early migrants moved into the Beringia land bridge between eastern Siberia and present-day Alaska around 40,000–17,000 years ago, when sea levels were significantly lowered during
28773-473: The early 1800s. Between 1811 and 1825, Paraguay , Argentina , Chile , Gran Colombia , the United Provinces of Central America , Mexico , Brazil , Peru , and Bolivia gained independence from Spain and Portugal in armed revolutions. After the Dominican Republic won independence from Haiti , it was re-annexed by Spain in 1861, but reclaimed its independence in 1865 at the conclusion of the Dominican Restoration War . The last violent episode of decolonization
28980-531: The earth — Europe , Asia, Africa , North America, South America and Oceania." American author Samuel Griswold Goodrich wrote in his 1854 book History of All Nations that, "geographers have agreed to consider the island world of the Pacific Ocean as a third continent, under the name Oceania." In this book, the other two continents were categorized as being the New World (the Americas) and the Old World ( Afro-Eurasia ). In his 1879 book Australasia , British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace commented that, "Oceania
29187-414: The east coast of North America from Alabama to Newfoundland . North of the Appalachians, the Arctic Cordillera runs along the eastern coast of Canada. The largest mountain ranges are the Andes and Rocky Mountains . The Sierra Nevada and the Cascade Range reach similar altitudes as the Rocky Mountains , but are significantly smaller. In North America, the greatest number of fourteeners are in
29394-401: The easternmost areas of Oceania in the book. Brown wrote, "they lie nearest the American continent of all oceanic islands, and though rarely associated with Polynesia, and never appearing to have been inhabited by any aboriginal races, are, in many ways, remarkable and interesting." Brown went on to add, "the small islands lying off the continent, like the Queen Charlotte's in the North Pacific,
29601-404: The edges of western Micronesia and on into Melanesia. In the archaeological record there are well-defined traces of this expansion which allow the path it took to be followed and dated with some certainty. It is thought that by roughly 1400 BCE, " Lapita Peoples", so-named after their pottery tradition, appeared in the Bismarck Archipelago of north-west Melanesia. Easter Islanders claimed that
29808-401: The end of global surveys as areas largely marginal to the main events of world history". The new terms Near Oceania and Remote Oceania were proposed in 1973 by anthropologists Roger Green and Andrew Pawley . By their definition, Near Oceania consists of New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands, with the exception of the Santa Cruz Islands . They are designed to dispel
30015-433: The entire 25,000 islands of the Pacific Ocean. In this book, he included the Aleutian Islands, the Galápagos Islands, the Japanese archipelago, the Kuril Islands and continental islands off the coast of the Americas such as the Channel Islands, the Farallon Islands and Vancouver Island; all of these islands lie in or close to the Pacific Ring of Fire , as is the case with New Guinea and New Zealand, which were also included. In
30222-419: The entire South and Central Pacific area, not just islands ethnographically within Polynesia. He wrote in The Globe Encyclopedia of Universal Information that, "literally interpreted, the name would include all the groups from Sumatra to the Galápagos, together with Australia." Ross further wrote, "and to this vast region the term Oceania has been applied. It is more usual at the present time, however, to exclude
30429-518: The first half of the 16th century, Spanish colonists conducted raids throughout the Caribbean Basin , bringing captives from Central America, northern South America, and Florida back to Hispaniola and other Spanish settlements. France, led by Jacques Cartier and Giovanni da Verrazzano , focused primarily on North America. English explorations of the Americas were led by Giovanni Caboto and Sir Walter Raleigh . The Dutch in New Netherland confined their operations to Manhattan Island, Long Island,
30636-413: The great ocean itself." Conrad Malte-Brun in 1824 defined Oceania as covering Australia, New Zealand, the islands of Polynesia (which then included all the Pacific islands) and the Malay Archipelago. American lexicographer Joseph Emerson Worcester wrote in 1840 that Oceania is "a term applied to a vast number of islands which are widely dispersed in the Pacific Ocean [...] they are considered as forming
30843-403: The homeland of the Austronesian language family whose speakers colonized significant parts of the region about 6,000 years ago." For political reasons, Taiwan was a member of the Oceania Football Confederation during the 1970s and 1980s, rather than the Asian Football Confederation . Ian Todd's 1974 book Island Realm: A Pacific Panorama also defines oceanic Latin American islands as making up
31050-404: The idea of two different morphemes, one that causes the double negation, and one that is used for the point or the verb. Standard English in the United Kingdom, as in other English-speaking nations, is widely enforced in schools and by social norms for formal contexts but not by any singular authority; for instance, there is no institution equivalent to the Académie française with French or
31257-450: The indigenous inhabitants of the Ryukyu Islands. Some also theorize that Indigenous Australians are related to the Ainu people , who are the original inhabitants of Japan's Hokkaido , the Kuril Islands and the southern part of Sakhalin. In their 2019 book Women and Violence: Global Lives in Focus , Kathleen Nadeau and Sangita Rayamajhi wrote: the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and most of Indonesia are not usually considered to be part of
31464-447: The indigenous peoples in much of the Americas. Decolonization of the Americas began with the American Revolution in the 1770s and largely ended with the Spanish–American War in the late 1890s. Currently, almost all of the population of the Americas resides in independent countries; however, the legacy of the colonization and settlement by Europeans is that the Americas share many common cultural traits, most notably Christianity and
31671-402: The initial peopling of the Americas; Na Dene speakers found predominantly in North American groups at varying genetic rates with the highest frequency found among the Athabaskans at 42% derive from this second wave. Linguists and biologists have reached a similar conclusion based on analysis of Amerindian language groups and ABO blood group system distributions. Then the people of
31878-406: The island groups of the world". In his 1857 book A Treatise on Physical Geography , Francis B. Fogg commented that "the Pacific and its dependencies may be said to contain that portion of the globe termed Oceanica or 'the Maritime World', which is divided into Australasia, Malesia and Polynesia." Fogg defined Polynesia as covering the combined islands of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, as well as
32085-428: The islands in the [Malay] archipelago, to which certain writers have given the name of Malesia ." It added there was controversy over the exact limits of Oceania, saying that, "scarcely any two geographers appear to be quite agreed upon the subject". British physician and ethnologist James Cowles Prichard claimed in 1847 that the Aleutian Islands and the Kuril Islands form "the northern boundary of this fifth region of
32292-407: The islands of Melanesia are more commonly grouped together as part of the Australasian biogeographical realm . Papua New Guinea is geographically the closest country to Australia, and is often geologically associated with Australia as it was once physiologically connected. Australia's Indian Ocean external territories of Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands are situated within the bounds of
32499-469: The islands of the Malay Archipelago, while the non-tropical islands were categorized as being North Pacific islands such as Alaska's Kodiak archipelago , the Aleutian Islands, Japan, the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin. Japan's Bonin and Ryukyu Islands are also considered to be subtropical islands , with the main Japanese archipelago being non-tropical. The journal associated the term Oceania with the Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian subdivisions, but not with
32706-423: The large island of Australia and the innumerable islands of the Pacific Ocean" and also that the islands of the Malay Archipelago "should be grouped in with Asia." British linguist Robert Needham Cust argued in 1887 that the Malay Archipelago should be excluded since it had participated in Asian civilization. Cust considered Oceania's four subregions to be Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. New Zealand
32913-462: The largest population of Polynesians in the world, while Australia has the third largest Polynesian population (consisting entirely of immigrants). Modern-day Indigenous Australians are loosely related to Melanesians, and Australia maintains political influence over Melanesia, which is mostly located on the same tectonic plate. Despite this, Australia is rarely seen as a part of the subregion. As with Australia and New Zealand, Melanesia's New Caledonia has
33120-403: The last southern Midlands accent to use the broad "a" in words like bath or grass (i.e. barth or grarss ). Conversely crass or plastic use a slender "a". A few miles northwest in Leicestershire the slender "a" becomes more widespread generally. In the town of Corby , five miles (8 km) north, one can find Corbyite which, unlike the Kettering accent, is largely influenced by
33327-467: The late 20th century, some scholars theorized a long period of interaction, which resulted in many complex changes in genetics, languages, and culture among the peoples. Micronesia began to be settled several millennia ago, although there are competing theories about the origin and arrival of the first settlers. There are numerous difficulties with conducting archaeological excavations in the islands, due to their size, settlement patterns and storm damage. As
33534-408: The later Norman occupation led to the grafting onto that Germanic core of a more elaborate layer of words from the Romance branch of the European languages. This Norman influence entered English largely through the courts and government. Thus, English developed into a "borrowing" language of great flexibility and with a huge vocabulary . Dialects and accents vary amongst the four countries of
33741-402: The least populated of the five parts of the world is diminished in order to increase the number of inhabitants of the most densely populated continent. Regarding Australia and the Pacific, Chambers's New Handy Volume American Encyclopædia observed in 1885 that, "the whole region has sometimes been called Oceania, and sometimes Australasia—generally, however, in modern times, to the exclusion of
33948-460: The main archipelago are not geologically associated with Asia. The book The World and Its Peoples: Australia, New Zealand, Oceania (1966) asserts that, "Japan, Taiwan, the Aleutian Islands, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia [and] the Pacific archipelagos bordering upon the Far East Asian mainland are excluded from Oceania", and that "all the islands lying between Australia and the Americas, including Australia, are part of Oceania." Furthermore,
34155-406: The main islands in the Solomon Islands archipelago , including Makira and possibly the smaller islands farther to the east. Particularly along the north coast of New Guinea and in the islands north and east of New Guinea, the Austronesian people , who had migrated into the area somewhat more than 3,000 years ago, came into contact with these pre-existing populations of Papuan-speaking peoples. In
34362-421: The mainland, while Nordostrundingen , in Greenland, is the most easterly point of the continental shelf. South America broke off from the west of the supercontinent Gondwana around 135 million years ago, forming its own continent. Around 15 million years ago, the collision of the Caribbean Plate and the Pacific Plate resulted in the emergence of a series of volcanoes along the border that created
34569-544: The major continental divisions of the world, but the name "Australia and Oceania" is used. Their definition does not include all of Australia's external territories, but is otherwise the same as the UN's definition, and is also used for statistical purposes. The Pacific Islands Forum expanded during the early 2010s, and areas that were already included in the UN definition of Oceania, such as French Polynesia, gained membership. French writer Gustave d'Eichthal remarked in 1844 that, "the boundaries of Oceania are in reality those of
34776-524: The many islands between mainland Asia and the Americas . The island nation of Australia is the only piece of land in the area which is large enough to typically be considered a continent. The culture of the people who lived on these islands was often distinct from that of Asia and pre-Columbian America. Before Europeans arrived in the area, the sea shielded Australia and south central Pacific islands from cultural influences that spread through large continental landmasses and adjacent islands. The islands of
34983-401: The mass internal migration to Northamptonshire in the 1940s and given its position between several major accent regions, it has become a source of various accent developments. In Northampton the older accent has been influenced by overspill Londoners. There is an accent known locally as the Kettering accent, which is a transitional accent between the East Midlands and East Anglian . It is
35190-485: The nearby Malay Archipelago. Australia's Indian Ocean external territory Heard Island and McDonald Islands lie on the Antarctic Plate and are also thought of as being in Antarctica or no region at all, due to their extreme geographical isolation. The World Factbook define Heard Island and McDonald Islands as part of Antarctica, while placing Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands as the westernmost extent of Oceania. Norfolk Island , an external territory of Australia,
35397-622: The numerous isles of the Pacific, lying south east of Asia." Olney divided up Oceania into three groups; Australasia (which included Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand), Malesia and Polynesia (which included the combined islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia in his definition). Publication Missionary Review of the World claimed in 1895 that Oceania was divided up into five groups; Australasia, Malesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. It did not consider Hawaii to be part of Polynesia, due to its geographic isolation, commenting that Oceania also included, "isolated groups and islands, such as
35604-440: The organization's scope encompassed all non-self governing islands below the equator to the east of Papua New Guinea (which itself was included in the scope and then known as Dutch New Guinea ). Easter Island and the Galápagos Islands were defined by James as falling within the organization's geographical parameters. The 2007 book Asia in the Pacific Islands: Replacing the West , by New Zealand Pacific scholar Ron Crocombe , defined
35811-424: The other islands, which were uninhabited when discovered by Europeans and mostly being used as prisons for convicts. Additionally, the book includes Taiwan and the entire Malay Archipelago as part of Oceania. While not oceanic in nature, Taiwan and Malay Archipelago countries like Indonesia and the Philippines share Austronesian ethnolinguistic origins with Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, hence their inclusion in
36018-399: The outdated categories of Melanesia , Micronesia , and Polynesia ; many scholars now replace those categories with Green's terms since the early 1990s, but the old categories are still used in science, popular culture and general usage. Islands at the geographic extremes of Oceania are generally considered to be the Bonin Islands , a politically integral part of Japan; Hawaii , a state of
36225-403: The principal large sovereignties of the area. It further states: In its broadest definition Oceania embraces all islands and island groups of the Pacific Ocean that lie between Asia and the two American continents. In popular usage, however, the designation has a more restricted application. The islands of the North Pacific, such as the Aleutians and the Kuriles, usually are excluded. In addition,
36432-465: The region of Oceania as it is understood today. These regions are usually considered to be part of Maritime Southeast Asia. Although these regions, as well as the large East Asian islands of Taiwan, Hainan and the Japanese archipelago, have varying degrees of cultural connections. In Reptiles and Amphibians of the Pacific Islands: A Comprehensive Guide (2013), George R. Zug claimed that "a standard definition of Oceania includes Australia, Papua New Guinea,
36639-576: The same biogeographical realm as the geographically adjacent Micronesia, and are often grouped in with the subregion because of this. Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands who migrated from Africa to Asia c. 70,000 years ago and arrived in Australia c. 50,000 years ago. They are believed to be among the earliest human migrations out of Africa . Although they likely migrated to Australia through Southeast Asia they are not demonstrably related to any known Asian or Polynesian population. There
36846-417: The series of sovereign island nations fringing Asia (Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, East Malaysia, the Republic of Indonesia) are not ordinarily considered to be part of the area. In 1948, American military journal Armed Forces Talk broke the islands of the Pacific up into five major subdivisions; Indonesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and the non-tropical Islands. The Indonesia subdivision consisted of
37053-412: The settlement by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas . The first known European settlement in the Americas was by the Norse explorer Leif Erikson . However, the colonization never became permanent and was later abandoned. The Spanish voyages of Christopher Columbus from 1492 to 1504 resulted in permanent contact with European (and subsequently, other Old World ) powers, which eventually led to
37260-454: The social and political landscape of Oceania. The Pacific theatre saw major action during the First and Second World Wars . The rock art of Aboriginal Australians is the longest continuously practiced artistic tradition in the world. Most Oceanian countries are parliamentary democracies , with tourism serving as a large source of income for the Pacific island nations . Definitions of Oceania vary. The broadest definition encompasses
37467-432: The south, and the Palau Islands in the west to the Galápagos Islands in the east." Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand and New Caledonia (which is geologically associated with New Zealand) were all excluded, as these areas are descendants of the ancient Pangaea supercontinent, along with landmasses such as the Americas and Afro-Eurasia . Volcanic islands which are geologically associated with continental landmasses, such as
37674-443: The southerly Dixie Alley in the North American late-winter and early spring seasons. Often parts of the Caribbean are exposed to the violent effects of hurricanes. These weather systems are formed by the collision of dry, cool air from Canada and wet, warm air from the Atlantic. With coastal mountains and interior plains, the Americas have several large river basins that drain the continents. The largest river basin in North America
37881-458: The surface area of this wide definition was greater than that of Asia and Europe combined, the land area was only a little greater than that of Europe. American geographer Sophia S. Cornell claimed that the Aleutian Islands were not part of Oceania in 1857. She stated that Oceania was divided up into three groups; Australasia (which included Australia, New Zealand, and the Melanesian islands), Malesia (which included all present-day countries within
38088-553: The term "Pacific Islands" as being islands in the South Pacific Commission, and stated that such a definition "does not include Galápagos and other [oceanic] islands off the Pacific coast of the Americas; these were uninhabited when Europeans arrived, then integrated with a South American country and have almost no contact with other Pacific Islands." He adds, "Easter Island still participates in some Pacific Island affairs because its people are Polynesian." Thomas Sebeok 's two volume 1971 book Linguistics in Oceania defines Easter Island,
38295-512: The term Oceania "promotes a broader concept that has room for Australia and New Zealand." American marine geologist Anthony A. P. Koppers wrote in the 2009 book Encyclopedia of Islands that, "as a whole, the islands of the Pacific Region are referred to as Oceania, the tenth continent on earth. Inherent to their remoteness and because of the wide variety of island types, the Pacific Islands have developed unique social, biological and geological characteristics." Koppers considered Oceania to encompass
38502-410: The territories of the Americas under the colonial rule of European powers. In South America, Portugal played a significant role in the trafficking of enslaved Africans, with estimates suggesting that around 40% of all Africans forcibly brought to the Americas were taken to Brazil alone, to work primarily in sugar cane plantations, mining, and agricultural endeavors. In North America, the British Empire
38709-433: The theft of work tools worth £500 from a van at the Sprucefield park and ride car park in Lisburn. A football team can be treated likewise: Arsenal have lost just one of 20 home Premier League matches against Manchester City. This tendency can be observed in texts produced already in the 19th century. For example, Jane Austen , a British author, writes in Chapter 4 of Pride and Prejudice , published in 1813: All
38916-424: The three main demographic concepts: In accordance with these definitions, the three largest population centers in the Americas are: Mexico City , anchor to the largest metropolitan area in the Americas; New York City, anchor to the largest urban area in the Americas; and São Paulo, the largest city proper in the Americas. All three cities maintain Alpha classification and large scale influence. The population of
39123-425: The time of the first permanent European arrivals ( c. late 15th –early 16th centuries), and are known only through archeological investigations. Others were contemporary with this period, and are also known from historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya, had their own written records. However, most Europeans of the time viewed such texts as pagan, and much was destroyed in Christian pyres. Only
39330-403: The traditional accent of Newcastle upon Tyne , 'out' will sound as 'oot', and in parts of Scotland and North-West England, 'my' will be pronounced as 'me'. Long vowels /iː/ and /uː/ are diphthongised to [ɪi] and [ʊu] respectively (or, more technically, [ʏʉ], with a raised tongue), so that ee and oo in feed and food are pronounced with a movement. The diphthong [oʊ] is also pronounced with
39537-663: The use of West European languages: primarily Spanish , English , Portuguese , French , and, to a lesser extent, Dutch . The Americas are home to more than a billion inhabitants, two-thirds of whom reside in the United States , Brazil , and Mexico . It is home to eight megacities ( metropolitan areas with 10 million inhabitants or more): Greater Mexico City (21.2 million), São Paulo (21.2 million), New York City (19.7 million), Los Angeles (18.8 million), Buenos Aires (15.6 million), Rio de Janeiro (13.0 million), Bogotá (10.4 million), and Lima (10.1 million). The name "America"
39744-405: The world and reached the Philippines , the Mariana Islands , and other islands of Oceania. British English British English (abbreviations: BrE , en-GB , and BE ) is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland . More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England , or, more broadly, to
39951-501: The world are good and agreeable in your eyes. However, in Chapter 16, the grammatical number is used. The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence. Some dialects of British English use negative concords, also known as double negatives . Rather than changing a word or using a positive, words like nobody, not, nothing, and never would be used in the same sentence. While this does not occur in Standard English, it does occur in non-standard dialects. The double negation follows
40158-408: The world, and with the coasts of Asia and America completing its literal termination." However, he wrote that these islands "are not usually reckoned as belonging to it, because they are known to be inhabited by races of people who came immediately from the adjacent continents and are unconnected with those tribes of the human race who peopled the remote islands of this great ocean." He added that Hawaii
40365-467: Was notably limited . However, the degree of influence remains debated, and it has recently been argued that its grammatical influence accounts for the substantial innovations noted between English and the other West Germanic languages. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England. One of these dialects, Late West Saxon , eventually came to dominate. The original Old English
40572-413: Was achieved when this landmass formed part of the Sahul continent , connected to the island of New Guinea via a land bridge. The Torres Strait Islanders are indigenous to the Torres Strait Islands, which are at the northernmost tip of Queensland near Papua New Guinea . The earliest definite human remains found in Australia are that of Mungo Man , which have been dated at c. 40,000 years old. It
40779-430: Was categorized by him as being in Polynesia; and the only country in his definition of Australasia was Australia. His definition of Polynesia included both Easter Island and Hawaii, which had not yet been annexed by either Chile or the United States. The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society stated in 1892 that Australia was a large island within Oceania rather than a small continent. It additionally commented: it
40986-501: Was defined as Australia and an ensemble of various Pacific Islands, "particularly those in the central and south Pacific [but] never those in the extreme north, for example the Aleutian chain." In the Pacific Ocean Handbook (1945), author Eliot Grinnell Mears claimed, "it is customary to exclude the Aleutians of the North Pacific, the American coastal islands and the Netherlands East Indies ", and that he included Australia and New Zealand in Oceania for "scientific reasons; Australia's fauna
41193-426: Was first recorded in 1507. A two-dimensional globe created by Martin Waldseemüller was the earliest recorded use of the term. The name was also used (together with the related term Amerigen ) in the Cosmographiae Introductio , apparently written by Matthias Ringmann , in reference to South America. It was applied to both North and South America by Gerardus Mercator in 1538. "America" derives from Americus ,
41400-440: Was heavily involved in the transatlantic slave trade, with the establishment of colonies such as Virginia, where enslaved Africans were primarily used as labor in tobacco plantations and later in other agricultural and domestic sectors. This system perpetuated for centuries, shaping the socio-economic landscape of all nations of the hemisphere. After the Haitian Revolution led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines , which started in 1791 and
41607-426: Was inhabited in prehistoric times by either Melanesians or Polynesians, and is geographically adjacent to the islands of Melanesia. The current inhabitants are mostly European Australians, and the UN categorize it as being in the Australasia subregion. The 1982 edition of the South Pacific Handbook , by David Stanley, groups Australia, New Zealand, Norfolk Island, and Hawaiʻi together under an "Anglonesia" category. This
41814-422: Was never a truly mixed language in the strictest sense of the word; mixed languages arise from the cohabitation of speakers of different languages, who develop a hybrid tongue for basic communication). The more idiomatic, concrete and descriptive English is, the more it is from Anglo-Saxon origins. The more intellectual and abstract English is, the more it contains Latin and French influences, e.g. swine (like
42021-445: Was subject to frequent raids by English and French pirates . On the continent, Panama City on the Pacific coast of Central America, founded on August 15, 1519, played an important role, being the base for the Spanish conquest of South America. Conquistador Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón established San Miguel de Guadalupe , the first European settlement in what is now the United States , on the Pee Dee River in South Carolina . During
42228-461: Was the Cuban War of Independence which became the Spanish–American War , which resulted in the independence of Cuba in 1898, and the transfer of sovereignty over Puerto Rico from Spain to the United States. Peaceful decolonization began with the United States's purchase of Louisiana from France in 1803, Florida from Spain in 1819, of Alaska from Russia in 1867, and the Danish West Indies from Denmark in 1916. Canada became independent of
42435-470: Was the most northerly area to be inhabited by races associated with Oceania. The 1926 book Modern World History, 1776–1926 , by Alexander Clarence Flick, considered Oceania to include all islands in the Pacific, and associated the term with the Malay Archipelago, the islands of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, the Aleutian Islands, Japan's Ryukyu Islands , Taiwan and the Kuril Islands. He further included in his definition Sakhalin , an island which
42642-449: Was the only successful slave revolt in history, the world's first black republic was established. It started with the massacre of the white population, between 3,000 and 5,000 white men and women of all ages were killed. Dessalines declared: — Dessalines, first president of the Republic of Haiti, 1804 The most prevalent faiths in the Americas are as follows: Other faiths include Buddhism ; Hinduism ; Sikhism ; Baháʼí Faith ;
42849-418: Was then influenced by two waves of invasion: the first was by speakers of the Scandinavian branch of the Germanic family, who settled in parts of Britain in the eighth and ninth centuries; the second was the Normans in the 11th century, who spoke Old Norman and ultimately developed an English variety of this called Anglo-Norman . These two invasions caused English to become "mixed" to some degree (though it
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