Language notes from the slopes of E-15.

[Paul Frank]

On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 4:52 PM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2. A sixtyish American physician who scorned the designation "American" as
> misleading and exclusionary and consistently used "you-esser" instead.

You-esser.  Or u-esser. Another word I'd never heard before. In
Spanish (my native language) people often say estadounidense or
norteamericano to avoid "americano" in the sense of a citizen of the
United States. Other possibilities are gringo and yanqui (which
includes Southerners). Chileans and Colombians are also "americanos,"
or at least they used to be to my mother (a native speaker of Spanish)
in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. But in English I've never avoided the
word American (meaning you-esser).

Paul


Paul Frank
Translator
German, French, Italian > English
Rue du Midi 1, Aigle, Switzerland
paulfrank at post.harvard.edu

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