Posted by EngliPatrick · May 28, 2008 · 5 replies
I'm from the states. When I was living there, I always said either 'the states' or the 'US'. I NEVER referred to my country as 'America' because there are two of them, much like Korea and Africa.
In Japan, the United States is always referred to as 'America' in the English textbooks at school. Personally, I think this sounds strange.
What do you think?
There's a pretty good discussion about it here America as a synonym for the United States
However, I agree with you, I generally don't use 'America' and definitely not as much as my non-US counterparts. However, it seems like in the news these days, they use 'America' a lot.
I always bounce back and forth but I used the term 'America' to tell the doctor where I was from while in Canada and he corrected me...
Eric wrote:he corrected me...
The real question is why did he correct you? Was there a communication error? Did he not understand what place you spoke of? Does he want Canada to be called Canada of America?
Does he have a problem with the use of 'the States'? or 'the United States' for that matter?
Other countries have states, but no other country has the word America in their name (that I know of.)
To complain about someone refering to the USA as America really just sounds like sounds like a person who wants to say something else ...
see my explanation for the use of America as a synonym for the United States in the link above.
He is from a country in South America.
He asked where I was from.
I said America.
He said he was from America too and muttered, 'don't be pretentious' under his breath...
Sounds like your doctor has other issues, Eric!
For what it's worth, I'm English and say 'America' when I mean The USA. Otherwise I use South America, Central America or Canada to refer to the other parts of 'America'. If you look at the BBC, on the other hand, they use US most of the time - the US election race, the US soccer team, the US economy etc.
By the way, the USA motto (and I hope I've got this right!) 'God Bless America' refers to what exactly?
