Are Cuba or Haiti part of North America? A lot of British people feel like their civilization is meaningfully distinct from “Europe”, even though they’re part of it in a technical geographical sense.
In general yes, but it depends on if you consider central america as its own continent and if you include them there and how you delineate north/south america. Groupings differ based on your education.
I think the thing that makes the UK different is that there is no other option besides them being a separate thing/continent. Are you suggesting that the UK is it's own continent? Would that be with the faroese and the Greenlanders?
The UK might feel different, but they are not separate. The french feel different from the bulgarians, but that does not mean they are on a separate continent, politically or geographically.
EDIT:
> A lot of British people feel like their civilization is meaningfully distinct
This is, to borrow a word, "balderdash". Looking at the influence vikings, romans and normans have had that is a rubbish argument. Just like other countries in europe the british culture is built on the stones of other cultures, and just like many other countries they subsumed other cultures because of kings or other political dominance.
But I'm guessing we can agree that any major landmass is generally belonging to a continent? Like we all agree that greenland, new zealand, japan, etc generally belong to a continent?
So to what continent do those british people think they belong?
New Zealand is not part of a continent (unless you consider Zealandia [1] one, which few do). It's a bunch of islands in the middle of the sea, far from other land. It is part of named regions which sometimes substitute for continents when people want to divide up the world for some purpose like sports or economics, including Oceania and Australasia.
Great Britain (the island) is very close to mainland Europe, and was directly part of it a few thousand years ago. The situation is totally different.
That's pretty much the definition of continent, right? The term continent is not scientifically based unless you want to argue that there are 16-ish continents and that South Georgia is it's own continent (and even tectonically its arbitrary since what we consider to be major, minor, micro are arbitrary).
If you asked someone directly “what continent is Britain part of”, they would surely say Europe, even if they would be unlikely to describe themselves as European. Language is funny that way.
I specifically asked what "those british people" think in response to a post saying "If British people don’t feel like they’re part of “the Continent”".
I was clearly asking what those specific british people think.
The point was that any closeby landmass besides europe is either in europe or in north america, and I have a hard time seeing the argument for UK being in North America or America at all.
