Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Miles Bader]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 08:14:19PM +0200, nadim wrote:
> I didn't intend to use the USian word as a pejorative word and I didn't 
> even know it was. Columbia is in america so does Canada so I think it's 
> presumptuous for just the US citizens to be called americans. If other 
> feel the USian is pejorative, I'd gladely change the word.

For better for or worse, the term for U.S. citizen is "American".

Theoretically this could be confused with "citizen of north america or south
america" -- but in practice, this _doesn't matter_ since there's precious
little reason to actually _use_ such a term.  It's simply very rare to talk
about the inhabitants of the entire hemisphere like; stopping at the
continent level ("north american" or "south american" in this case) seems to
be the rule (after all, how often do you hear the term "eurasian" to describe
_people_?).

Perhaps in some cases "USian" isn't used as a pejorative, but there usually
seems to be a subtle sort of "Oooh that evil imperialist U.S. _stole_ that
term from the happy and innocent inhabitants of the rest of the Americas; how
_dare_ they!" vibe going on.  It's often associated with other snide digs at
Americans.  The result is that whether you mean it or not, the term sounds
pejorative.

To top it off, "USian" simply sounds clumsier than "American" (not to mention
having that stupid dot-com looking case usage!).  For this reason I would
suppose that if a new term ever does replace "American" in general usage, it
probably won't be "USian".

Thanks,

-Miles
-- 
Come now, if we were really planning to harm you, would we be waiting here, 
 beside the path, in the very darkest part of the forest?