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I found both 大州 and 大陸 in this sentence, I looked them up on Jisho and I see
they both mean "continent". Is there any difference between them? Are they
interchangeable?

> アフリカは六 **大州** の一つで、ヨーロッパの南方に位置する **大陸** です。
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2016-11-29T15:02:22.390
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words nuances
What's the difference between 大州 and 大陸?
六大州 is the name for "The Six Continents". The difference between 大州 and 大陸 is
maybe best illustrated by an example:

> 大州: （例） ヨーロッパ州 = 欧州 = Europe  
>  大陸: （例） ヨーロッパ大陸 = Continental Europe = mainland Europe

Strictly speaking (according to
[Wikipedia](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E5%B7%9E)), the difference
is that the 大州 includes surrounding islands, whereas 大陸 refers to the main
landmass of a continent.

This is consistent with the fact that the continents themselves are referred
to as 〇〇州 and their mainlands can be referred to as 〇〇大陸.

The sentence would appear to be more correct if it said

> アフリカは[六大州]{ろくだいしゅう}の一つで、ヨーロッパの南方に位置する大州【たいしゅう】です。

However, even monolingual dictionaries such as 大辞泉 or 大辞林 don't note this
difference, so it appears that 大州 is not really used as an individual word and
大陸 is used for "continent" in both senses. (The same is true in English, I
think.)
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The two words are conceptually very different (I'm surprised they share the
same word in English, honestly).

  * 大州: one of the geographic divisions where lands on the Earth belongs to any of them
  * 大陸: a relatively big continuous landmass (bigger than Greenland)

If you find the above not enough clear, try think about **Oceania**. Oceania
(オセアニア) is a 大州, but not a 大陸, because it mostly consists of reefs and
volcanic islands. What is 大陸 is only **Australia**.

You could refer to dictionaries for how we count five "continents" of each:

> **[五大州](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%94%E5%A4%A7%E5%B7%9E)**  
>  アジア州・ヨーロッパ州・アフリカ州・アメリカ州・オセアニア州
>
> **[五大陸](http://www.weblio.jp/content/%E4%BA%94%E5%A4%A7%E9%99%B8)**  
>  ユーラシア大陸・アフリカ大陸・南北アメリカ大陸・オーストラリア大陸・南極大陸
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