riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (12/23/84)
> Now i'm curious; i guess that in S.America the common term for a citizen > of the USA is 'Yanqui.' But what is the 'dictionary' term? In addition to "yanqui," a common Latin American Spanish term for a U.S. citizen is "norteamericano." Of course, this is confusing, since Canadians are technically "norteamericanos" too. The dictionary term is "estadounidense." Germans, by the way, also tend to ignore the rest of the Americas in their terminology: a person from the U.S. is an "Amerikaner," and the adjective is "amerikanisch." This has been shortened to the slang and somewhat pejorative term "Ami." "Yankee go home" in German is "Amis raus." As a matter of fact, I suspect that most places outside of the Americas call the U.S. "America." I know that the Arabic "Alamriika" refers to the U.S., and something similar prevails in North Indian languages. Of course, that's no excuse for us in the U.S., who ought to know better, to do the same and ignore the fact that our neighbors to the North and the south are Americans, too. Esperanto, if anybody cares, solves the problem rather logically. A person from the U.S. is an "Usono" and the adjective is "Usona." (I'm not sure whether these should be capitalized in Esperanto.) --- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.") --- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle
urban@spp2.UUCP (01/07/85)
In article <536@ut-sally.UUCP> riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) writes: >Esperanto, if anybody cares, solves the problem rather logically. A person >from the U.S. is an "Usono" and the adjective is "Usona." (I'm not sure >whether these should be capitalized in Esperanto.) > Actually, "usono" is the name of the country (it's an acronym for US of North America, I'm told) and the inhabitants are "usonanoj". This differs from most other nations in which the name of the country is derived from the name of the people that inhabit it (e.g. franco, "Frenchperson", francujo "France"). However, cities work the same way as "usono". For example, "londono/londonano" for "London/Londoner". Logical, yes, but not entirely consistent, I fear. But foreign names are always a problem. For example, shouldn't Germany "logically" be called "doj^clando"? Would the residents be "doj^coj", "doj^clandanoj", or "doj^clanderoj" (from Deutschlander)? Multi^gantaj problemoj! Mike