Talk:Alternative adjectives for U.S. citizens

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[edit] is there not some page

about naming conventions for different nationalities/groups that this could be merged into?

also, it is my opinion that the title of this article be changed to simply "United States" as one heading in this article i'm referring to, and if it doesn't should it exist?

[edit] Citation of 'Merkin'

In response to: Iceberg3k

According to a couple of folks I asked at Wikipedia: Verifiability, citations from a pay source, while not prefered are perfectly fine. There is considerable scope for verifiability as a large number of Unversities have access to the OED online. Equally possibly one could check a hard copy in a library, although I'm not sure if this definition would feature as yet, only having been made in 2002.

Can you suggest any free site of comparable entomological authority which could be referenced? As there is already a citation there is no reason to have a citation request. --Neo 12:31, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I verify that the OED's on-line edition gives the following etymology:
[Alteration of AMERICAN n. (prob. after U.S. pronunciation), perh. punningly after MERKIN n1]

and the following quotations: 1990 Re: Interesting Idioms in rec.sport.soccer (Usenet newsgroup) 1 Feb., Well, not always. Andy Roxburgh is Scotlands coach, we have no manager the noo. What's 'merkin for ‘booked’, or alternatively, ‘Right, sonwalk!’ 1992 Re: RFD: sci.cryonics in news.groups (Usenet newsgroup) 27 May, To me, cryonics means fridges etc (sorry ‘refrigerators’ to you 'merkins). 1993 Star Tribune (Minneapolis) 26 Sept. 24A, Computer software [in Portugal] is in ‘Merkin’ (American English), and so are a lot of the courses at the Institute of Technology at the University of Lisboa. 1994 Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.) 21 Aug. B3 Black related an anecdote about touring the South back in the 1960s when his group [sc. Jay and the Americans] was referred to as ‘Jay and the Merkins’. 1994 W. SAFIRE in N.Y. Times Mag. 11 Sept. 45/1 Americans have seized on this Britishism, which has become the most important contribution of the mother country to the lingo we call Merkin since not to worry and spot on. 1999 Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) (Nexis) 14 May 15 L.A. is only marginally American. It's a modern-day Babel, where it's the ‘real merkins’ who must feel linguistically and culturally alienated.

I believe it to be substantially older than 1990, possibly as old as Mencken; it has always been a spoof, usually in American English, of, I would suppose, General American pronunciationm akthough one of these suggests Southern (Alabamian?); I would spell it Murkin. Septentrionalis 04:37, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move?

Shouldn't this be Adjectives for U.S. residents? What about Dred Scott or Robert E. Lee? -Acjelen 05:47, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] npov

this page seems to be highly biased in favor of the probably small minority who complain about the term "American". it's also filled with weasel words ("some say that ..."). i tried to fix it up; e.g. its "other languages" section claimed that lots of other languages use terms other than "American", and then quoted a bunch of English slang words and terms from obscure artificial languages. Benwing 07:39, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Most people on Latin America complaing agains the term America, and Latin America population almost doubles the US population, it's biased in favor of the US minority

Considering that the predominant language of Latin America is Spanish (and in the case of Brazil, Portuguese), I don't see how they get a vote in what words English speakers are allowed to use or not use. No more than I as an English speaker would have any say in what Spanish or Portuguese words they might use to describe themselves. Nolefan32 01:03, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

This entire article smells of troll. I'd go as far as to nominate deletion. Silly pointless cruft poking fun at United States isn't encyclopedic at all. Sneakernets 04:32, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sub-Proposed Deletion

I do not think that this article is very encyclopedic, and should be deleted. This article could possibly be improved, in my opinion, if it had a major rewrite, and was moved to a more appropriate name. This article violates NPOV, and that's just the title. To find a consensus on whether this request should be moved to Proposed Deletion, please poll in the space below. GrooveDog 02:29, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

  • Support GrooveDog 02:29, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment - wasn't the article originaly at something like Alternative adjectives for U.S. citizens - this strikes me as a better title, there are some sources which attest to the use or proposed use of alternate terms, and should hopefuly help with POV issues (as it does not imply that the current adjective is inappropriate). --Neo 17:08, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep - article is actually informative and I found it useful. Jo9100 02:17, 15 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Keep (qualified) - article is useful, but needs a more sensical title (see below) — RVJ 11:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
  • Support has no place on the Wikipedia Sneakernets 04:35, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Alternative adjectives for U.S. citizens" sucks, too.

  • Non-U.S. vandals must not have found it yet…
  • Non-citizen nationals.
  • Wait. Isn't this article about nouns?

If it were up to me, I'd tighten it up and either merge it back into American (word) or move it to Alternative words for American: it would need a subtopic for Latin American usage, and some retrofitting in American (word), but it will make sense, and be pleasingly parallel to Alternative words for British. —RVJ 11:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)