Where's West Africa?

[Chris Waigl]

On 23 Oct 2011, at 07:03, Damien Hall wrote:

> By this reasoning ["Africains" in French as spoken in France excluding North African people with part Arab - or Berber, in fact - heritage, who would be referred to as "Maghrébins"], Michele Bachmann would have been right to say that Libya was not in Africa:  it is in the Maghreb.  I'm not suggesting or denying that that was what she meant, but this conception of Africa is one thing that could make you say something like that.

I don't completely agree. My experience with French usage of the adjectives "africain" vs. "maghrébin", referring to people originating from these parts of the worlds (the derived nouns are capitalized) agrees with Damian's, but nonetheless as far as I am aware French speakers would still count Lybia as "en Afrique". BTW, I also don't find more than two Google hits for "la Libye est au Maghreb" (which would be the canonical parallel to "la Libye est en Afrique". More commonly: "la Libye fait partie du Maghreb". This is not a contradiction.

Beyond that, I agree with Victor that regarding Bachman, it doesn't matter. If this was all that's objectionable about her, it wouldn't be much.

Chris Waigl

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Chris Waigl -- http://chryss.eu -- http://eggcorns.lascribe.net
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