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Re: OT Caution!! IRA funding (was: English word order and bumper stickers)

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Saturday, September 18, 2004, 5:25
Roger Mills wrote:
> > The word "America", in this context, was almost universally taken > > by Americans to mean "the American government", whereas it was > > almost universally taken by non-Americans to mean "the American > > populace". > > Well, as you see, I fall into the first category; I'm truly > surprised at the second-- everything one hears, even from the Arab > world nowadays, certainly suggests to me that non-Americans are > quite capable of distinguishing the two, indeed eager to do so.
In my personal experience, I cannot agree with this second claim. I mentioned recently my experience in Germany of being blamed for the firebombings during WWII. I was walking through central Frankfurt with some people from the conference, and one German mentioned that he thought downtown Frankfurt was rather ugly. I responded that that's because of the bombing (which is true, since extremely little survived it). And he retorted (quoting): "Yes, *you* did that". Clearly, he was not eager to distinguish between the American people and government. This problem is so bad now in Europe (by which is mostly meant the Continent) that American papers are filled with reports of travellers being instantly cornered to be used as sounding boards for everything the locals don't like about America and Americans. It's simply not true for many people that they care about such subtleties, or want to understand complex situations, and sometimes, this can be truly obscene. When some people were dancing and singing in the West Bank after they heard about the Sept. 11 attacks, it didn't seem to matter to them too much that most of the victims were civilians not taking part in any government activities. ========================================================================= Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637

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