On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 3:09 AM, Daniel Carrera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> Rod Engelsman wrote:
>
>> Logically you may be right. Ain't never going to happen though. Historical
>> accident arising from the fact that the name of our country consists of
>> three common words ("united", "states", and "of") and one proper noun
>> ("America"). If you want to blame anybody, consider the foreign (to us)
>> press. It's not like folks generally get to choose their own nicknames!
>>
>
>
> Did you know that in the UK when someone says "Asian" they actually mean
> India and Pakistan? Some people in the UK will strongly oppose calling
> people from China and Japan "Asian".
I'm sure that hearkens back to the colonial days.
>
>
> I don't have a problem with referring to people from India as Asian. It
> surprises me a bit, but I can't say it's wrong. India is in Asia after all.
> But when someone says that you cannot call Chinese people Asian... I just
> didn't know how to react.
>
> Back to Americans, in Spanish we call them "Estadounidenses" from "Estados
> Unidos". So there's no ambiguity. In English that would be something like
> "Unitedstaterian".
>
Have you noticed how some languages like to construct new words from base
words like your example? German seems to do that too. Not so many bases but
big long words. US English tends more to shorter words but more of them,
often borrowed from other tongues (immigrant culture?).
