4 ms·
I find it weird that nobody questions the use of the word 'american' in the article. Would the Machiguenga not also be (at least South-) Americans?
by _quasimodo 14y ago
I find it weird that nobody questions the use of the word 'american' in the article. Would the Machiguenga not also be (at least South-) Americans?
- robinh 14y agoAlso, American and Western culture are used practically interchangeably. I find this quite ironic.
- vacri 14y agoSorry, slipped on the mod. It is pretty funny myopia.
- Volpe 14y agoWhy is that ironic? (Sorry if I'm being really stupid here... :\ )
- hexagonc 14y agoThey aren't used interchangeably in the linked article. In the article, Americans are singled out as being particularly "weird" even compared to other "Western" nations.
- intopieces 14y agoThe use of "American" as a stand-alone term, for better or for worse, means a person from the United States. It persists largely because of the difficulty in producing an ajectival (demonym) from the term United States. Questioning it now, when there is clearly no real confusion (like, for example, Indian/American Indian/Native American/Indian American) is prescriptivist and hair-splitting.
- _quasimodo 14y ago> Questioning it now, when there is clearly no real confusion [...] is prescriptivist and hair-splitting. Probably. But it was the first thing that sprang to my mind while reading the article. In an article titled "We Aren't The World" i would have expected a bit more caution.
- Turing_Machine 14y agoThe United States of America is the only country that has America in its name. Thus, Americans for short. People who live in the United States of Mexico (Estados Unidos Mexicanos) are called Mexicans for the same reason.
- tokenadult 14y agoPeople from the United States of America are called (in English) "Americans" for about the same reason that people from Estados Unidos Mexicanos are called "Mexicans"--that is the most suitable general designation for those people that is distinctive from how people from other countries are designated. The usage in Spanish is a little bit more complicated, but there isn't much confusion about how to write English on this point.