America and Americans / Europeans

[Dennis R. Preston]

My regards to Don for bringing this question back to the only area of
interest (at least for this list) - namely, the empirical one of what
people think rather than "official" one (whatever that might be,
although the relations between the two are often interesting). Carmen
Fought (Pitzer College) has reported to me recently that she has had
no success in convincing some of her undergraduates that there is no
"real" answer to the question "Where is the Midwest?"

dInIs

>on 2/21/02 9:13 PM, Laurence Horn at laurence.horn at YALE.EDU wrote:
>
>>  At 7:29 PM -0500 2/21/02, David Bergdahl wrote:
>>>  "Are Finns Europeans?"
>>>
>>>  I'd say yes: the dividing line in the north is the Urals.
>>>  ___________________
>>  Whether or not they're Scandinavians is a bit trickier.  I'm told
>>  (that is, I was told by Finns when I was in Helsinki) that
>>  technically they aren't, although most non-Finns consider them to be.
>>  (It's a geographical, rather than cultural or linguistic, parameter
>>  that's crucial.)
>>
>>  larry
>>
>The intention of my question was "What would an American think or say?"  For
>many Americans, Mexico would be in Central America and England would be in
>Europe.
>DMLance

--
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736