[Freeciv-Dev] Re: "Americans" versus "United States"

[Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Apr 24, 2001 at 10:17:06PM -0400, Miguel Farah F. wrote:

>>[...]  Nobody uses the term American
> >to mean people from the continents of North or South America.
>
> Sorry to contradict you, but the term "american" meaning "person from
> the continent America" *IS* used.

If it is used at all, we're talking about maybe 1 out of 10000 cases.
The normal meaning of 'American' is '(person) from the United States'.
This is true in English and in Dutch (for 'Amerikaan(s)').

> All this is born from the (sad) fact that USA doesn't have a proper
> name.

The USA is just as 'proper' as 'the Netherlands'.  Most of us refer to
them by the more convenient, but historically inaccurate, names of
'America' and 'Holland', respectively.  We are the 'Dutch', despite
the fact that in 1 out of 10000 or maybe 1000000 cases, 'Dutch' is
sometimes used to mean 'German', and despite the fact that both in
Dutch and in German, the same word means 'German', not 'Dutch'.

But the meaning of words isn't determmined by technical argument,
it's determined by actual use.  Actual use is (almost perfectly)
unambiguous here.

So Freeciv is correct.

-- 
Reinier