| Marcelo E. Magallon 2004-09-06, 8:47 pm |
| On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 10:40:38PM -0700, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
>
> This may be what people in Chile say, but it isn't what I've ever
> heard in Mexico.
JFTR: I'm a citizen of Costa Rica, and I'm currently living there.
And like I said before, "americano" and "norteamericano" used to refer
to people from the USA is the influence of TV mostly. Shows produced
in the USA use the word "american", which when translated becomes
"americano". Historically mexicans have called the people of the USA
"americanos", that's right, and that's more usual if you are talking
about people in the north of Mexico. But that's far from the case in
the rest of Latin America. Spaniards, in "formal" contexts use the
word "estadounidense", too, but in the street it's normal to hear
"americano".
You mentioned the continental division which states that there are two
continents: North and South America, and that this is taught in
schools. Well, that's true for schools in the USA. Schools in Latin
America teach something different: there's one continent, America.
AFAIUI, european schools tend to agree with the later form. From a
purely geographical point of view, there's no reason to divide the
continent in north and south. That's a political division. From a
geomorphological point of view there are _three_ regions: north,
central and south (and their borders don't match country borders).
And even further, the only language that I know and which does not have
something else than "american" to designate people from the USA is
German: it's called "Amerikaner" (but then again, they have "Ami", so
they are forgiven ;-). In French there's the word "etatsuniens"[0],
Italian has "statunidense" ("statunitense"?), Portuguese has
"estadounidense".
Can we just call you yankees, and be done with it? :-)
Marcelo
[0] With my apologies to the French if I got the spelling wrong, which
I'm almost certain that I did. I don't actually speak French, even
if I'd very much like to.
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