Re: CHAT: silly names, prepositions

Aidan Grey wrote:
>  David (who knows which one?) wrote:
No David wrote this. Andreas wrote this.
>
> > I'm dead with you on this. I also dislike seeing
> > "Europe" being used for the
> > EU. Most Americans don't live in the USA and most
> > Europeans don't live in
> > the EU!
>
>      Just to clarify, people from South America are
>almost always, IME, called South Americans. And people
>from Canada are almost always called Canadians. VERY
>VERY few people call anyone from the North American
>continent an American. In my travels (all over
>Australia, Australia) I've never met anyone who meant
>a Canadian when they said "American".
I'm aware of this. In actual usuage, "anyone from the Americas" is a unusual
secondary meaning of the noun "American". However, that doesn't stop me from
feeling that the adj "American" refers not to the USA but to the Americas,
and that an "American" therefore must be someone from the Americas.

If you want to see "Americans" used of anyone form the continents, your best
bet is to look somewhere where the continents are compared to eachother.

                                                 Andreas
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