Thread: Why are they called Americans?

Originally Posted by LX_Emergency

History was never a subject I majored in. I might just be misstaken. Besides you don't think I was very serious either do you?

Just a warning though....over here WW2 is not considered a joking matter.

No I didn't think you were being very serious, and I wasn't being serious either - past history and its players have affected my life very much, but their actions don't reflect on me personally. I don't joke about WW2 either - I thought Napoleon would be ok though.

On a separate but somewhat related note, how many years have to pass before it is generally acceptable to poke fun at a tragic historical event? Never? 10,000 years? 100 years? Always? Maybe there are too many factors to make such a broad rule. I guess it depends on the perceived intent

The humanitaries are not my strongest subject, but here's how I explain it to people. First of all, it's important to recognize that with direct translations, we are considered United Statians in other languages, such as in Spanish (estadounidense). English is considered to be one of the hardest languages to learn (hardest language to learn is Icelandish or whatever the language that is spoken in Iceland).

Anyway, the reason why English is considered to be one of the hardest langauges to learn may be attributed to its history. I learnt this five years ago, a day in English class, but English is composed of many different languages. It started out with German, and then the area now known as England was conquored and French was mixed in, and then somehow German got mixed back in... Basically the English language is a mess.

While there are rules governing how it is spoken---grammar---there are often several exceptions to these rules. Demonyms are no exceptions to this general rule of exceptions. When we use demonyms, we try to stick to the convention of using the area's name or language spoken + ian (oversimplified). But there are indeed exceptions to keep it not-so-awkward. For example citizens of Massachusetts don't call themselves Massachusettsians, that sounds too awkward, so instead we have Bay Staters because Massachusetts is considered the Bay State. Citizens of Connecticut are referred to as Nutmeggers; citizens of Indiana are referred to as Hoosiers. Another awkward demonym would be to say citizens from the United States are United Statians, at least in English. One way to get around this is to call US citizens US-Americans, but is somewhat rare to hear in the United States. In other countries, it may be more prevelent. Some Latin Americans call citizens of the US Yankees along with norte-americanos. American architect Frank Lloyd Webber proposed the term Usonian. Some people have adapted Statesider similar to how citizens of Sydney would call themselves Sydneysiders. Citizens of the US doesn't have an official demonym; there's actually quite a plethora of demonyms for people to use. For one reason or another, people just decide to use Americans as opposed to the other available monikers.

Also, it's not uncommon for areas to share demonyms. People's Republic of China and the Republic of China all united uner the demonym of Chinese; North and South Koreans referred to themselves as Koreans. Citizens from Canada, Central American, and South America are free to call themselves Americans as well. There are other irregular conjugations of demonyms as well for example you have one word for the mentioning of a singular citizen, while there exists a second for when you mention multiple citizens.

The name American is simple advertising savy. In any phone directory "Americans" will be closer to the top than either "North Americans" or "United Statians".

Tony

...because calling us Europeans would be just plain silly!


Kind of like this thread!!

Originally Posted by geoffreyt

Nothing like a tall Dutch woman! Holy mackerel!

Exactly I saw six foot average and there was only one thought that came to mind "MOTORBOAT"