"Amerika"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>The New York bombers identified themselves afterwards as "revoluntary
>force 9" in a message to "Amerika" (a current fad in radical literature
>is to spell it with a German "k" to denote facism).  -San Francisco
>Examiner and Chronicle, Datebook, page 18 (5 April 1970).
>
>They put us on trial; we denoucned "Amerika" with its teutonic look, or
>"Amerikkka."  Todd Gitline: The Sixties, page 288 (1987).

But IIRC along about the same time there was a tendency among some
activists toward the spelling "Afrika" too ... I don't think it was to
suggest African fascism, I think it was to reject the US spelling and
employ some other orthography, not German, maybe Swahili or something like
that. I had it explained to me by a student activist ca. 1970 but I can't
remember exactly what he said and I doubt it was linguistically
authoritative anyway.

"Afrika[n]" is still around. Google (e.g.) <<afrikan student>>.

-- Doug Wilson


--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.467 / Virus Database: 269.7.6/813 - Release Date: 5/20/2007 7:54 AM

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org