Re: Strategic Reserve.

[Tom Box <tbox@igs.net>]

"Roger L. Traviss" <rogertra@islandnet.com> writes:
> Henning Makholm wrote:

>> America is that part of the world which lies west of the Atlantic
>> Ocean and east of the Pacific ditto.
 
> "America" is a country,

In your idiolect, Roger, but not in mine. This very much strikes me as
a British usage, as in "Alistair Cooke's Letter from America." Are you
perchance an immigrant from the UK?

I would never say "I visited America last weekend," or "Washington is
the capital of America." The country to the south of us is the United 
States, or the USA, or informally "the States" in my usage and in that
of my family, friends, and acquaintances.

To me, "America" is a vague expression which might mean North and South
America taken together, or might mean the USA. The meaning needs to be
determined from context. Given the potential for confusion, I think
it's better avoided: I prefer to use "the Americas" for Henning's
meaning of "America" and "the United States" for Roger's.

> "North America" is where Canada, America, Mexico and the Caribbean
> Islands live.

I would say "where Canada, the United States, and Mexico live" (not
wanting to get sidetracked onto the question of how to deal with
offshore islands). It would simply never occur to me to say "Canada,
America, and Mexico". I strongly doubt that many other native speakers
of Canadian English would do so, either. I'd understand it if I heard
it, of course, but it sounds very odd.

> It really bugs me when people from Europe tell me and the 27 million
> other Canadians where we live.

No more than it bugs me when you presume to speak for me and the other
26,999,999, Roger.

> If we say we live in "North America" then we are correct

Yes.

> and everyone else is wrong.

That depends what everyone else is saying. If they're denying that
Canada is in North America, they're certainly wrong. If they're saying
we live in America, they're using a word whose meaning is equivocal,
and therefore is best avoided, but I don't think they're wrong.
They're neither more nor less wrong than you when you say,
"'America' is a country."

> Canadians do not like to be called "Americans".

Quite right, but now you're changing the topic. The usage of
"American" in Canadian English does not parallel the usage of
"America." One can argue that it should, logically, but the
reality is that it does not.

It is perfectly true that "American" is commonly used in Canada to
mean "citizen of the United States," and nothing else. Using it to
mean "resident of the Americas" is very rare. Canadians are not
Americans, in the common Canadian usage of the word "American."

Canadians are not insulted by exclusion from this definition of
Americans. On the contrary, we're more likely to be insulted by
attempts to redefine us as Americans, since this is apt to be
interpreted as a failure to recognize that we are different from
U.S. citizens.

At the time rec.railroad was split up, one of the new newsgroups
was to be called misc.transport.rail.america, where 'america'
was a continental reference, not a national one. The name was
changed to misc.transport.rail.americas precisely to avoid the
potential confusion illustrated by this thread.

Tom Box  <tbox@igs.net> or <cz610@freenet.carleton.ca>
Ottawa, ON, Canada