It’s official. All you Americans out there can rest easy. The French language gods at Le Monde have decided that it is OK to call ourselves “Americans”. After exhaustive study and ponderings, they have systematically gone through many different variations of our possible moniker and finally decided on "Americans". “Cabrones hijos de puta” was ruled out early in the running as being too kind and not French enough.
I think I am going to have to change the name of this Blog to “LA-Paris Files” since so much good S--- comes out of France. I can relate this to Spain though because the same discussion does come up here. The first time I heard the term “Estadounidense” I thought, what? What is that? I guess it really is “United Statesian” but it sounds horrible (did he just call me dense?) – I just chalked it up to some language thing. Little did I know…
Of course the whole Bru-ha-ha comes about because some think we are arrogant S.O.B.’s for calling ourselves “Americans” and not “North Americans”, "USAnians" or something like that. The truth is, no thought went into this – it was just by default. Actually it was the Europeans who first called us “Americans”, just like the condescending article says. The only people thinking about this seems to be Europeans. We don’t give a rat's ass what we're called. Why their obsession with this?
The heart of the argument seems to be that there are other “Americans” with us on those two huge continents and that those people are resentful of the term only pertaining to us. Maybe I’m missing something but I don't think an Argentine is going to say he is “South American”, and he certainly isn’t going to call himself an American! Or a Mexican who says he is anything other than “Mexican”. Canadians – same. Maybe Central Americans might say “Central American”, but I really think it will be Guatamalteco, El Salvadoreno, etc., first.
Everyone knows who the Americans are. No one has to say “North American” or any other silly thing. Please, give it a rest! And no, we are not arrogant bastards because someone gave us a name and it stuck by default. Let's see... arrogant... exactly who is deciding what we can call ourselves? And by the way, that cartoon ..... where you are trying to be snotty with every lame American stereotype in the book? If they live in the U.S., all of those people are Americans!
2 comments:
Love your sense of outrage!! Keep it up! Agree with everything you wrote and that French cartoon is so laughably pathetic. Is that what passes for witty discourse in the salons of Paris these days? God help THEM! (hee,hee) But there is one thing that jumped out at me...the French knock Americans for being so culturally ignorant and uncouth. Then how is it that the cowgirl from Texas, the rapper from NYC and the Indian chief, can all speak flawless French?! :-)
I have never had a problem telling French people that, "Je suis americain." Usually it is a non-French or Hispanic (Swede, German, Italian, etc.) who has tried to correct me on this point. Try telling a Bolivian that you are estadounidense. All you'll get is a look of "What the Fuck?" until you clarify that with "americano." It is sort of like the whole debate over black or African-American. I don't care what anyone chooses to call themselves; just don't make it out like I am hurling a racial epithet for using a word that I was brought up believing was the proper term. Just like how offensive it is these days to call someone an “oriental” instead of an “Asian.” I don’t think most people think that “oriental” is a pejorative term and it is certainly more accurate that Asian.
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