Re: OT: Notice of Revocation of Independence

On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 12:16:37AM -0500, # 1 wrote:
>    I'm sorry...
>
>    I never wanted to start such a discution
>
>    About  America,  the word America Is the continent including North and
>    South-America...
Except that's really two continents.  (They may be physically connected
(or at least were pre-Panama-Canal), but that doesn't stop Europe and
Asia from being considered separately.)  When someone wishes to refer to
both continents together, one usually says "The Americas", not
"America".

The word "America" by itself doesn't technically refer to anything; it
can only be an abbreviation of some longer name.  Possible such longer
names include "North America", "South America", and "The United States
of America", of which the latter is the most common.  This is really no
different from referring to The United States of Mexico as just
"Mexico", other than the fact that there isn't anything else
for it to be confused with.

While on the subject of the USA's southern neighbor: it is customary in
English to write its name without the accent mark over the E.  This is
just a question of using the orthography of the surrounding language
rather than the source language.  I also write "Greece" rather than
"Ελλας".  Which is just the orthographic equivalent of saying
[,p_h&.r\Is'fr&nts] rather than [p&,Ri:'fRa~s], or [spei_^n] rather than
[e'spa.Ja], or, yes, [k_hw@'bEk] rather than [ke'bEk]. We also say that
Quebec is a "Canadian" province rather than a "Canadien" one (or
"Canadienne"; is "provence" masculine or feminine?), though I still
don't know where that |i| came from; it seems like it should be just
"Canadan".


-Marcos

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