We do use the metric system. An inch is 2.54cm. Exactly.
Hm. Unitedstatesian sounds ok by me. Long but as long as New Caledonian (yeah I know the original inhabitants are kanak) or not much longer than New Zealander, and I could go on.
In magyar nyelv, you could easily say Usai. (oo-shah-ee). Shorter than Amerikai and more precise. In Mandarin Chinese, my third language, they distinguish between meizhou (the continent) and meiguo (the country). In Finnish, my fourth language, they say yhdysvallat for United States and of course they say Amerikalainen for American even though the long form is Amerikan yhdysvallat. They could say yhdysvaltalainen or even invent something like yhvaltalainen.
As a linguist, languages are not lazy, the speakers are, and there is no least resistance, there is just energy used to get words out. The shortest path is usually chosen if it’s the least amount of energy required. That is why emoji (or logograms) are increasingly used in online communications.
1 Like
The situation of many of those Oversea territories is passable at best.
The kanak have been treaded like less than nothing for as long as anyone can remember, even recently (see this film)
All these islands could be independent and have a much better situation. Guyane française has the European Space Agency and they could still be independent and lease the land to the ESA and develop space industry in situ. The nephew of a friend has to study outside his homeland to become aerospace engineer.
That was wonderful. Thank you so much.
Ah, give them an inch, and they’ll take a foot.
I’d send a foot of snow in exchange, but, you know, climate change. Thanks for that, United Sinkholes of America. At least you tried… Who knows, maybe you’ll grow up eventually. Just don’t try to imitate that weird relative on the other side of the pond.
I can’t shake hands, tho, with the Covd19 and all.
I too was wondering why phonomo has expressed (sort of reasonable) opinions on 49 states, including Alaska, and territories from Guam to Puerto Rico, leaving off Hawaii.
2 Likes
(And that’s a signal for us Brits keep our heads down, most of our overseas territories are tax-havens, or leased to the US as military bases)
2 Likes
Hawaii was not integrated into the United States through democratic means, but rather by Congress, for militaristic reasons. Most of the population did not vote on the matters; until not even more than half a century Hawaii had a status similar to Guam or Puerto Rico : “outland” where weapons and war professionals were stationed and the culture was almost obliterated. This one case is even more enraging and I refrained from comment. At least now Hawaiians are trying to revive their language.
6 Likes
You would think so, but no - you couldn’t. It’s just not how the language works, “usai” just doesn’t parse as a valid word to my native ears, definitely not as something that has anything to do with “USA”. (If anything it sounds vaguely like a plural possessive form of a hypothetical word “us”/oosh. As in, “His/her/their uses.”) “USA” is an abbreviation, and while Hungarian pronunciation rules make it easy to say it as if it was a regular word, it’s not. As such, the natural and correct “from the USA” form would be “USA-beli”, which is actually used in writing sometimes to save space (I don’t think I’ve ever heard it spoken out loud), but very rarely because it looks unappealing, and it’s just superfluous when “amerikai” is already there, flows much easier, and is more understandable.
Well yes, but speakers make a language, and as with most of these things, languages, especially colloquial registers, also tend not to be about precision and clarity, more like “how to get an idea across in the most convenient way”. If a lot of people make an effort large-scale changes can happen but generally overcomplicating something for which an easy shorthand already exists tends not to be successful. (Hungarian is actually a fairly good example of this, since much of the language as it currently exists is the result of a large-scale but not very well-organized language reform in the 19th century, where Very Smart Men kind of threw ideas at the wall and some stuck, some didn’t. It’s very interesting to see the kind of suggestions and attempted changes that didn’t stick.)
1 Like
As a Canadian, I can confirm ‘The States’ is commonplace here, funny they reference Europe in the OP.
1 Like
There’s obviously too much disagreement on this. Let’s all settle on a compromise that will make everybody happy.
2 Likes
I’ve sat with this a day so I didn’t go completely off.
Here’s the thing. The United States was originally colonized by four countries - England, Spain, Russia (Alaska), and… France.
The USA doesn’t really have a history of going into a country, causing a genocide, destroying the effective local government, destroying a centuries old culture, and enslaving the people who they didn’t kill while they pull all the natural and agricultural resources from an area. You’re thinking of the European powers, like France.
Other than Hawaii and American Samoa, all the US territories were taken from European powers by war in order to free their inhabitants. Including the US mainland. We didn’t steal the West from the Native Americans like so many people think; we didn’t do the genocides which wiped out the population and destroyed the culture- Spain did, and we stole the west from Spain.
(Hawaii was less than honorable; and the US government has apologized. However, the referendum for statehood versus independence was settled finally and forever in 1961 with a 93% vote to become a state. It is now forever and completely a part of the United States; as integral to our union as Virginia.
If American Samoa would not have become a US Territory in 1900, it would have become a German territory like the western half of the island chain; which suffered a genocide under the Germans; was transferred with no regard to the wishes of the occupants to New Zeeland, had an independence movement crushed by firing a machine gun into a crowd, and was dumped by NZ in 1962 and has been struggling economically ever since.)
And dude, you may want to check a history book. Most territories that become completely independent states don’t do so well. Most of France’s former colonies have had really, really poor outcomes in terms of political stability and economic development.
As it turns out, being a somewhat self-governing territory under US military and economic protection isn’t nearly as bad as being cut loose after having all your resources drained, leadership killed, and population decimated, uneducated, and used as a slave labor force for centuries by a European power (like France) When US territories are ready to stand on their own, they do. But I suspect that Guam and Puerto Rico will eventually become states.
Oh, and for the record - I am writing this as a citizen of the USA sitting in a former Territory; granted statehood in the early 1800’s; which you forgot to even think about, named “Ohio”.
The United States did not start colonialism and slavery and genocide against native peoples by any stretch, but anyone with even a basic overview of history ought to realize that those things continued apace LONG after the United States won its independence.
Or are you living in some parallel universe in which the United States is confined to the thirteen original colonies?
11 Likes
So many people like, say, historians, who have documented many cases of Americans massacring the natives and shutting them up in reservations and forcing them to starve and taking their children away? Trying to put all the blame on Spain is cool and all, but they didn’t exactly own everything west of the Mississippi, and there are lots of things that happened to natives after they lost things like California and Texas.
For heaven’s sake, Ken Burns presents: The West is available for free from PBS. If you can’t even be bothered to do a popular mini-series worth of research on what went down, you should shut up about how other people don’t know what they’re talking about.
11 Likes
10 Likes
8 Likes
And Mexico (see Texas, California, New Mexico and others) In the case of Texas, it was done in order to enslave some of its inhabitants.
Yep!
7 Likes
Drawing a map with lines on it, and writing "This belongs to [ England | France | Spain ]" on the paper, is not at all the same thing as actually sending troops there, killing all the uppity young men, and marching everybody else off to permanent detention camps called “reservations,” is it?
Good thing no Americans ever did THAT
8 Likes
The “Indian Boarding School System”—a tool of cultural genocide by which the United States government attempted to strip native peoples of their language and culture through forced assimilation—persisted until 1978.
9 Likes
that’s flat out wrong. Most certainly, European powers were responsible for acts of genocide, but so is the USA. We were literally taking away Native children and sterilizing Native women IN OUR LIFETIMES. Part of the reason why the colonists revolted against the British government, was because of treaties that they had with Native American tribes about the western frontier. Do you think the trail of tears was Europeans? Or the century long Indian wars was Britain, carrying out genocide on American soil? No, that was all the USA, not European powers.
You really need to read up on this history. It’s not Americans taming an empty land out west. It was the US government committing violent acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide all along the way.
14 Likes
