From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.0 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,700e3c547aedfa54 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-03-22 06:54:27 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: dennison@telepath.com (Ted Dennison) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Waay OT - America (was: Ada?) Date: 22 Mar 2002 06:54:27 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <4519e058.0203220654.5cb49002@posting.google.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.115.221.98 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1016808867 16613 127.0.0.1 (22 Mar 2002 14:54:27 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 22 Mar 2002 14:54:27 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:21538 Date: 2002-03-22T14:54:27+00:00 List-Id: Christoph Grein wrote in message news:... > 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. :-) -- T.E.D. Home - mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison) Homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html