Re: Waay OT - America (was: Ada?)

[dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison)]

Christoph Grein <christoph.grein@eurocopter.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.1016779803.31526.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...
> America, America ... not all of America is the USA. There are about 30 other 
> countries on this continent!
2 Continents, you mean.

> US citizens tend to see their country as encompassing the whole world. Even we 
> in Germany (or even whole of Europe?) are infected with this disease by feeling 
> forced to speak of US citizens as "Americans".

Don't read too much into that. "America" in this case is a very
natural shortening of "United States of America". You are right that
some variants on that form could also be taken as referring to the
entire western hemisphere ("The Americas"). But, as I'm sure you are
more aware than most native speakers, English is full of ambiguous
words. Listeners are expected to pick up which sense is meant from
context, and in this case that's rarely difficult. Its indicitive of
our English penchant for short synonyms, not of any ignorance about
our hemispheric neighbors.

Seing as a tremendous proportion of our immigrants come from this
hemisphere, it would be a tough ignorance to maintain. In Texas,
Califonia, and Florida the support of Latinos is crutial for winning
any statewide election. Those happen to also be 3 of our biggest 4
states. It would be exeedingly difficult to get elected president
without winning any of them.

Note that USA isn't a unique designator either. There is a city in
Japan by that name. :-)


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