To Charlie from linus,
Yes, you're also correct, but unfortunelty (for you, I believe), the people from the U.S. of A. are called Americans. We have North America, Central America and South America but the only ones called Americans are "as you say it" the Unitedestadiuns". Come on, please don't invent vocabulary.
Hey again Linus,
I can’t say I follow this part “I've had people ask me if I was American and after I answered yes they say why do you call yourselves American. If you're from a different part of the American continent and call yourself American, I on my part have no problem accepting it. My problem is that if a pigeon craps on me in Spain (for example) I know that it's probalby an American, excuse me, (Unitestadium) pigeon. ” it appears to me that your thoughts were running faster than your fingers and there are parts missing there. I can’t try to figure it out as the possible ramifications of that thought process is immense.
I will address the first part though. Socially speaking there is one continent America, geologically speaking there are two; South America and North America. North America separated from Pangea millions of years before South America did, since it started drifting westwards long before South America did the same it was 1/3 of the way towards Asia by the time South America started is westwardly voyage. The North American continental plate ran into the Asian plate and that slowed it down considerably (it still does), the South American continental plate has and still does run amok in it’s westward route. Eventually South America caught up with North America and they collide, when that happened volcanic eruptions due to the pressure put on by the South American continental plate on the North American one created the chain of islands we know today as the Carribean, because the continents were still rather far apart a continental bridge was never formed. As South America kept rushing westwardly it eventually collided with North America again and the process repeated itself, being that they were much closer together Central America was formed. Central America thereby does not rest in either of the continental plates, it rests on the Pacific and Atlantic plates, in time because of the different speeds of travel South America moving at about one inch per year while North America at a very slow pace of only 1/4 as much South America will leave North America behind and move out into the Pacific by itself in another 100 million years or so. If by then if you still wish to call Unitedstadians Americans I’d have no problem with that, in the meantime however, as I stated before of the 800 million Americans in America most call the citizens of the United States Estadounidenses and have provided proof of it for you, just google the word you’ll get almost 5 million results, or you could do the same in Yahoo and you’ll get almost 10 million results. Clearly we call them Estadounidenses not Americans. Now, you should keep in mind that this is in Spanish and Spanish speaking people tend to speak in Spanish so the ‘issue’ didn’t arise before. Over the last couple hundred years Unitedstadians got away with calling themselves Americans because well it is a big world and people in Spanish speaking nations called Unitedstadians Estadounidenses, so, it never occurred to us that Unitedstadians may call themselves anything different. Let me give you an example; I went to the ‘American School of Lima’ and it was not until years after I had left school that I realized that in reality I had attended the ‘Unitedstadian School of Lima’ we (Spanish speaking people) do not associate American with Unitedstadian, if you want to learn how it’s pronounced go to
http://spanish.allinfo-about.com/vocabu ... uages.html now if you want to try the Portuguese version (the one you are referring to) try estadunidense when you search in Google or Yahoo you’ll get another million results. I’ll point you to an easy to access online version of impossible to fake published material, material published decades even centuries ago. If you go to the “Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes”
http://www.cervantesvirtual.com and search for Estadounidense you will get about 300 results if you search for Americano you will get over 2,500 results for authors ranging from Spain to the Philippines over hundreds of years, some dating to before the US existed (uhh ohh that can’t be good, there were Americans in the world before the US existed? How is that possible, if it means Unitedstadian?). As you can see anybody with two fingers of forehead can tell you that Americans don’t refer to Unitedstadians as Americans we never have and likely never will.
Now as for “Come on, please don't invent vocabulary.” inventing vocabulary is exactly what we are doing, it is bound to be a fruitless task asking people to stop referring to themselves as Americans when they mean citizens of a specific country (I know I’ve done it) without giving them an alternative, the usual ‘but what shall we call ourselves if not Americans?’ comes up and we stay the course. So, the only other way to address the issue is to add a new word into the vernacular, since the word Estadounidense has been in existence for hundreds of years in Spanish, converting it into English and using the term Unitedstadian when referring to citizens of the U. S. as such is the only alternative. So, yes, you are right, we are inventing vocabulary here, a way to distinguish Unitedstadians from Americans.
Hey Xose,
“In a shocking development, I agree with Manny on this.
You're an intelligent guy, Eli, and you know that when someone speaks of an American that they are talking about someone from the United States. That may run your European sensibilities the wrong way, but to pretend that other people refer to us (in English) as "UnitedStatians" is obviously untrue. The English, South Africans, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians...hell, even the Japanese and Chinese, for whom English is not the native language, refer to us as Americans.
In the English language, the word for citizens of the United States is "American." You don't have to like it, obviously, but that's the way it is. “
===
I guess you and Manny don’t see eye to eye on many things huh... well that’s what happens when you throw in another pebble in the mix. Ronald Reagan used to say “What would we do if Aliens attacked us? We'd find out how stupid our little war's are.” as soon as a third perspective is thrown into the mix you tend to find out what you have in common with those that you normally disagree with, as supposed to fixating on what you disagree.
You are correct Xose, I don’t disagree with you one bit. As you say in the ‘English language’ American is usually used to refer to citizens of the U. S. and as I’ve pointed out before that was OK for the last 200 years or so. However, this little medium ‘the net’ is creating a ‘flat’ world were people in one part of the world mingle with others that had it not been for the internet we would have never heard of i/e you and I, right here right now. This flat world has brought about the realization for millions that up until yesterday thought of themselves as Americans (much like myself) all of a sudden we have become nameless, soulless, non-descriptive individuals, we used to be Peruvians AND Americans, much like Spaniards think of themselves as Spaniards AND Europeans. What if tomorrow Spaniards were to find out that the term European is used to designate ONLY the French in English, sorry that is just the way it is done around here... clearly Spaniards would have a problem with that. We in America have a problem with Unitedstadians calling themselves Americans to denote nationality (no doubt about it, it pops up in Google Answers, in MSN communities, in Yahoo groups all over the place) but we are powerless to change that because there is no alternative. Now we have an alternative, clearly we can’t make YOU change the way in which you refer to yourself (been tried and failed miserably thousands of times) but we can change the way WE refer to citizens of the US by translating the Spanish word into English. Doing this also gets people used to the word and in time those that have a minimal amount of sensibility towards the other 600 million Americans will start using the words themselves and from there it will in time become politically incorrect to call Unitedstadians Americans to denote nationality because of the arrogance, the conceit, disdain and abuse the use of the word conveys on all of the other Americans.
“You don't have to like it, obviously, but that's the way it is. ” You are correct, for now.
By the way I’m not European, I was born in the American south west, in Lima, Peru.
And for “Oh, and one more thing. North America and South America are two, count 'em TWO seperate continents.”
Think this was covered in the first part of my post, you are right.
“If you disagree, then you'll have to agree that Europe and Asia are more properly named Eurasia, right?”
Once again you are correct, Europe and Asia ARE one continent. There is only one continental plate in the territories of Europe and Asia. They were given two names based on social constructs not on geological realities. The separation of the Urals as a separation is ‘geologically speaking’ nonsense. If anything the Urals were formed when the continent of Siberia collided with the supercontinent of Eurasia during the carboniferous, since then one rides on the other and because of that the Urals are now considered an extant mountain range.
Hey Bob,
“Now that there is the European Union, can we really talk about Spaniards, Italians, etc.? ” hmm the E.U. is still a faraway dream (for the most part), however when it happens (imo) nations will retain their uniqueness and so, the designations of Spaniard, French and so on will always exist much in the same way that we have Virginians and Texans... I think ...
Elí
