America and Americans

ANNE V. GILBERT avgilbert at PRODIGY.NET
Thu Feb 21 19:50:52 UTC 2002


Michael:
>
> 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.

I think the Canadian who got upset with you was basically claiming, by
linguistic shorthand, to be from North America, and from that point of view,
he or she had just as much right as you to claim to be "American".  But I
also think this is not a particularly widespread usage.
Anne G



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