Here in France, there are a bunch of people called the Academie Francaise (link's in French), who care deeply about the French language and are trying to save it from the rotteness of foreign influence, like the English computer jargon that are seeping into the French language. Take email for example, see how unFrench that is? "Je vais faire un petit email ý mes potes" A proper French way to say this would be "courrier electronique", but that is way too long a word for such a speedy idea. So what do the Acamedie Francaise do? They propose "courrierelc". Get it? E-mail ý la francaise! Congratulations! Pat yourself on the back! Nice word! But hello? Have we overlooked something here? People talk the way they want to talk, and nobody, NOBODY actually walks around saying "courrierelc". Nope. Email email email. Anglicismes 1, Acadamie, 0. In others, what i'm saying is that i am 100% aware of the mental-wankerishness of what i am about to propose, but i still find it an amusing enough exercise and would like your help in furthering its progress.
Saying "American" drops us into the ambigiuity about whether we're referring to the American continent, or whether we're talking instead about the USA. For now, it's mostly the latter and in the cases that it's not, context solves the problem for us. But what happens in the future? What happens when South America becomes more and more important (not that i'm predicting anything) or the US less and less? I'm sure we can keep up with this "i'm an American" crap, but it's realy not very nice.
Only problem is that trying to get people to say something else isn't going to lead us anywhere. EVERYBODY says "American" for USians (except Kuro5hiners), the French say it, Ethipioans say it (there was a Lonely Planet Amarhaic guide i was looking at), Canadians say it... well, okay, the Chinese don't say it (mei\/ guo- ren/), but we can make an exception. "America" in refering to the "United States" is way too entrenched to go away. Remember "courrierelc?"
So why not solve the problem through the back door? America the country still gets to be America. The USA remains literally, the "United States of America", except now the last bit refers to the country as a whole as opposed to where those united states happen to be. So every US citizen still walks around happily saying "yep, i'm an American."
USA keeps its name, but the CONTINENT NAME CHANGES. Ah! Think about it. How many times do people say "America" when talking about the contintent anyway? This would be a far easier change to make because it doesn't step on anybody's linguistic habits. Now the only problem is that we need to find some sort of new name that isn't going to upset anybody (geez, you should see Euro bills, all bridges and windows). In addition to avoiding political uproar, i think we should also try to do minimal linguistic damage. For example, it should maybe rhyme with "America", or the very least, have the same number of syllables (for example, so we can pop it into songs/poems without making it hurt too much). The linguistic damage bit is rather difficult because it's not only English that uses the word.
Anyway, this is where y'all come in. What should we call our new contintents? Remember that it should be as smooth a transition as possible. I suggest "Terranova" as in "North Terranova" and "South Terranova" (Terraneuf du Nord?). But is there a better way? We should pay particular attention to what effects this new word has in Spanish and Porteguese
Also, it occured to me that this would have ramifications for the Native American people. We should see this as an opportunity. I mean come on, "Native American" is a far improvement over "Indian" (Indian dot, or Indian feather? Sorry! Sorry, every Indian [both sense] reading this), but it smacks so hard of political correctness (though it's really more innocent and simply correct) that nobody takes it seriously and you get Random White Southener making jokes like "well, I'M a Native American". Ha ha ha. Oh yeah. Dying laughing. But seriously, guys, here's your chance to extricate yourself from the mess. What i propose is we find a word that means "people" (> tribe) either in a dead tribal languange (neutral) or common to many tribal languages, and recycle that word in English et al so that it refers to what we now call Native Americans. That's the second part where y'all come in, espcially the NA among you, what word could we possibly use?
Anyway, i realise this is all completely pointless, but who knows, maybe this might actually start some new Kuro5hin conventions. So think about it: what can we rename these two continents, and while we're at, what can Native Americans rename themselves? If we solve this, we can walk away happily, patting ourselves on the back, watching NOBODY listen to us. Oh well.
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