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From: jcp@osiris.UUCP (Jody Patilla)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.nlang
Subject: Re: One for our side
Message-ID: <591@osiris.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 5-Nov-85 06:28:40 EST
Article-I.D.: osiris.591
Posted: Tue Nov  5 06:28:40 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 8-Nov-85 07:10:36 EST
References: <973@decwrl.UUCP> <12580@rochester.UUCP> <1587@uwmacc.UUCP> <1385@ihlpg.UUCP> <348@ubvax.UUCP>
Organization: Johns Hopkins Hospital
Lines: 20
Xref: linus net.politics:11179 net.nlang:3389

> In article <1385@ihlpg.UUCP> tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum) writes:
> >there is no word in the English language for inhabitant of the United States
> >other than American.  I can understand how Latin Americans and Canadians
> >might not like this, but it is a fact.  I'll be damned if I'm going to
> >call myself a Unitedstatesian (ugh!).  It is unfortunate that the same
> >word, American, has more than one meaning, but it takes someone like jeff m.
> >to convert this into a sign of US hegemony over the West.  Spare us.
> 
> That there's "no other word than American" in English (I dunno, just use
> more than one word, maybe) for an inhabitant of the US means that
> there's very little rhetorical defense against people who use "American"
> as a buzz word for national destiny, etc..  Again, no surprise that
> the language is built so that anti-nationalistic sentiments can't
> be expressed in simple language.  Languages in most countries are
> social constructions codified by national official agencies.
> 

	Everywhere else in the world, they call us "yanks".
-- 
jcpatilla