I'm just curious i've always heard the terms..... west, western, far east, middle east..

but what is Africa considered?  West?  If you look at it geographically the western part of Africa is more west then Europe.

What do you think ?

When ever people speak of the West - Romania, Poland, Russia - doesn't really spring to mind and Especially neither does Africa. The west I believe is UK - Germany - France - Switz - Spain (maybe Italy) Central Europe - from Greece up to Poland and then Estern Europe is anything east of Poland / Hungary.

The middle east is just a term to describe an area of al the arab nations - middle of Everything, East of Western Europe ^^

Africa is just Africa - so if one is to talk about west africa - they would do so specifically.

Although the term "West" is rather vague. West? West of where? if talking about the Western World - countries from all over the world fit into that catagory. America, Australia - Western Europe (i think the other term for it 1st World)

        what are you talking about, Denis?

Cetral Europe is the area which - as someone else said, in the west is considered as east and in the east as west. And more or less it is Finland, Poland, Czech republic and Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, all the states which in the past were part of the former Yugoslavia, Greece and in the past also eastern Germany (and Albania, a country which seems to be forgotten by God and people).

I would also count as central Europe - even if there are so many people who consider it as eastern Europe (i guess mostly because of ignorance and lack of education) Baltic Countries, because this division is rather more historical/cultural/linguistic than geographical. In fact i belive that even turkey can be in some sence of this word called "eastern european country" because such claim has its historical background.

Central european countries got its completelly unique culture and history which was influenced by both western and eastern european cultures and traditions, what often was leading to the birth of completelly new cultures and traditions of new and completelly unique quality.

This cultures were often not able to evoluate independently because of the preassure of east or west (eg. being occupied by Russia like Finland, Baltic states, eastern Poland or being occupied by Austria or Germany (Hungary, western and southern Poland, Bohemia etc) but during moments when were independent were creating somthing completelly new (eg. political system, poetry, music, literature) very different from both east and west.

Multinational and multi religious structure of central european countries which was often their main political weakneess was also often the reason of its cultural strenght.

According to the argument advanced in Samuel Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations" the "West" basically constitutes all of Western Christendom, which has generally historically been characterized by the rule of law, separation of Church and State, social pluralism, representative bodies and most importantly individualism to an extent not seen in other world civilizations. The Central European countries (including Baltic states), or the Visegrad countries, are in it.

When thinking of Africa as a continent, I associate it with "South" rather than "West", because of its sheer poverty. Although, other people do associate bits of it with "West". The Maghreb, i.e. Morocco and Algeria, is Arabic for "West" (because they lie to the extreme west of the Arabic and Islamic world), and the world "maghrébin(e)" in French means a North African (in France, almost always Algerians or Morrocan) immigrant.