Dear "Martan" (kiel Amelia diras), > Really? I always thought that North America only > consisted of Canada, the US and Mexico and that > all the Caribean islands were part of Central > America.
Well, yes. I thought of that when I wrote both notes - especially the second one. It seems that "North America" means different things to different people. We Americans are content to think that "America" means simply the USA. In the Spanish course I'm working through right now, "norde america" (*) seems to mean the USA (soy nordeamericano). Canadians, on the other hand seem to use the expression "North American" as a way of being included in statistics gathered for the US - as in "93.2% of North Americans are fat and can't dance." (**) When dividing the world into seven continents (***), Mexico finds itself on North America (as does Cuba) - even if the Canadians and Mexicans don't think so. Before I remembered Cuba, I was able to avoid the problem by virtue of the fact that I couldn't think of anybody in the parts of Latin/Central America which are on the North American continent who fit my initial description. At any rate, regardless of what we call it, the island doesn't move and neither do the travel restrictions. (*) The course is audio only, I'm willing to bet that my spelling is horrible in Spanish. (**) The Canadians do this either because statistics for Canada don't exist, or because it would hurt their national pride to talk about themselves as fat and clumbsy without saying the same thing about the Usonians. (***) That's "SEVEN continents" not "INcontinence". Amike salutas, Thomas/Tomaso ALEXANDER. www.NightinGael.Net ---Anything below this line is not from Thomas --- __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/multilingualmunchkin/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
