America and American

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Tuesday, February 19, 2002 10:14 am +0100 Paul Frank
<paulfrank at WANADOO.FR> wrote:

> In Spanish many people say "americano" when they mean someone from the
> American continent. One of Pablo Neruda's poems, an ode to the potato,
> says "somos americanos." My question is this: when did the words America
> and American become synonymous with the United States of America? Have
> Canadians ever thought of themselves as being American (though not in the
> sense of being part of the United States)?

Don't know the answer to the question, but perhaps herein lies a solution
to the ambiguity of 'American' problem.  We could call people from the
continent 'Americanos' and people from the country 'Americans'.  It only
works for English, not Spanish, of course, but it's better than some of the
other coinages that have tried to involve "United States" in a one-word
epithet.

Lynne, the would-be linguistic engineer
(yes, I know the pointlessness of it all...)



Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
Acting Director, MA in Applied Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320