America and Americans

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:23 PM -0500 2/21/02, Michael Vezie wrote:
>Another anecdotal thought about "Americans".  When I was an exchange
>student in Denmark back in 1990, a fellow student (Canadian) got upset
>with me for introducing myself to the group as "an American".  He told
>me I should say I'm from "the states", not "America".
>
>Frankly, it seems silly to me.  For a Canadian to claim to be from America
>is just plain wrong.  There is no continent called "America".  It's "North
>America" (or "South America", or collectively, "the Americas").  So the
>only geographical region that can be called "America" is the United States
>of America.
>
Mebbe so, but it seems that this is just one more case of usurpation
of the generic, or categorial imperialism, like that of "man" to
refer to (adult) male humans or "gay" to refer specifically to gay
men.  But then we should really stop teaching kids that Columbus
discovered America, since he never made it to the States, and
Hispaniola is even farther from the current USA than (some parts of)
Canada.

larry