Daily chart

good grief! Where did you learn geography? In the USA? Where do you think the "America" part of "North America" comes from? A crackerjack box?

Actually, America is not a continent. There are two continents which use the word "America" within them: North America and South America. While in the Spanish language, "América" is generally used to refer to both the North and South American continents, "America" in English is almost always understood to refer to the United States of America. The fact that "América" and "America" look and sound similar does not mean that you can equate their meanings across languages, any more than the French word "préservatif" (condom) means the same thing as the English term "preservative."

Umm, the US has the best education in the Americas, so.... What is your point?

What a boring argument to make.

Who gave the Ozone Secretariat the power to decide what a continent is? My globe says differently. And a far higher authority than the Ozone Secretariat agrees.

"A continent is one of several very large landmasses on Earth. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, with seven regions commonly regarded as continents—they are (from largest in size to smallest): Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent

Thanks for the definition I do appreciate it...in it you can yourself find the answer...
I quote it: ..."A continent is one of several very large landmasses on Earth. They are generally IDENTIFIED BY CONVENTION RATHER THAN ANY STRICT CRITERIA...".
On the other hand I remind you that our diatribe was around to see America as the name of a country or not...and undoubtedly the USA and America are not synomyms...the USA is one country located in America, just as Suriname, Brazil, Colombia or Canada. In USA English is the official language, in Suriname Dutch, in Brazil Portuguese, in Colombia Spanish and in Canada English and French. This is the diversity of America.

In the paragraph on top, yes, the word is "America." Look at the chart, however, and you see that it says "United States." It appears that the author really meant "United States" in that paragraph, and if you make that switch, it solves the ambiguity.

There's really no ambiguity to it. In the English language, America refers to the United States of America, and is synonymous with it. Spanish speakers disagree, because they attempt to import the referent of the term "América" into English. Unfortunately, that doesn't work.

America and América are the same thing, you are just using grammar here not the context, taking things out of context. If you make a translation America in English translates into América in spanish. The reason why Spanish uses the accent is so that the pronunciation sounds like America, because if it didn't have the accent it would sound awkward. Plus everything with maps is subjective because of politics, In Latin America Back in the day Mexico was considered part of Central America, now it is highly viewed as a North American entity, maybe because of NAFTA? Who knows, but History has shown that The Americas where once recognized as an entire Continent and part of the so called "New World." I will agree that the matter of America or América depends to what nation you are talking to and what world view they may hold.

I disagree with your argument. If we accept a descriptivist view of language, in which definitions of words are accepted to be a reflection of common usage and understanding, then "America" and "América" are far from synonymous. If you ask a native Spanish speaker from South America to define "América," s/he is most likely to define it as the union of North and South America. If you ask a native English speaker to define "America," s/he is almost certain to define it as "the United States." You correctly note that in English, to be clearly understood as referring simultaneously to South and North America, we must use the term "The Americas," not "America."

Well you are being prescriptive by being emotive, like I said if you want to go by the world view of the ethno-centrism of most within the USA then yes, culturally the meanings are not the same, but just remember that America came as a Latin version of the Sailor Amerigo Vespucci, thus the Landmass from North to South called America.

Well you are being prescriptive by being emotive, like I said if you want to go by the world view of the ethno-centrism of most within the USA then yes, culturally the meanings are not the same, but just remember that America came as a Latin version of the Sailor Amerigo Vespucci, thus the Landmass from North to South called America.

I'm not sure on what basis you state that my argument is "emotive," much less prescriptive. Language is defined by its users; that's hardly ethnocentrism. Frankly, native Spanish speakers are the exception in defining the phonemes "America" as the combined territory of North and South America. The press and the public in Germany, France, Italy, the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Russia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, Israel, and Palestine uniformly refer to the United States as "America" or a close variant on those phonemes. It's extremely likely that other countries do so as well, but I'm only speaking based on my personal travel, living, and work experiences abroad. Native Spanish speakers from South America are misinformed if they believe that most people in the world share their definition of "America" as "North and South America." Is it possible that 500 years ago, residents of those same countries would have had an alternative definition for "America" closer to the one you are proposing? Certainly. But all languages change, and the common meaning for "America" has clearly changed, not just in the United States, but in the vast majority of the world, excluding South America. We are not beholden to the language of the past.

Before i become Emotive me self lol, and become an internet troll, janking this argumental chain a bit more, "Native Spanish speakers from South America are misinformed if they believe that most people in the world share their definition of "America" as "North and South America." I am putting it on a historical context, never talked on behalf for the world, like i said before it is political and subjective, The USA monopolized the term American, makes sense since a person from the Union cant call himself I am a United Statean, so in terms of the power of Politics the representatives of the good olde US of A exerted themselves in being identified as Americans, where people from Mexico can easily be identified as mexicans, Argentina: Argentino, ect... South Americans have a traditional way of looking at it, not a matter of being misinformed, like i said power of politics, the Americans after all have exerted themselves in being identified that way as they expanded geo-politically. Nothing more to say, cheers!

I do agree with you. You've been certainly clear....as americans use to say...( oh! should I have said southamericans or so? hahaha)....IF YOU WANT IT CLEARER POUR WATER ON IT !.

I would like to know what does " Native speakers from South America are misinformed..." mean. It sounds like if The Truth resides in your statements...unhappily that shows pretty well the way The United States and many of its citizens see themseves and act accordingly. It is sad but it reminds me of Goebbles famously saying: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it...”
By the way, just to prevent you not falling into the black hole of misinformation and its dissemination, which is very embarrasing....500 years ago there were no countries in South America. The whole America ( I mean from the current Alaska to Tierra del Fuego ), belonged to the Spanish and the Portuguese empires.
Regards,

It is an accepted principal of (non-pseudo)science that coincidence is not a demonstration of causation. It is a suggestion for a scientific study. It is unintended irony on your part that you would use an example of this fallacious argument to demonstrate that somebody else was "pseudo-scientific". The fact that such papers actually go through a peer review and then are published is a reflection on the quality of work being done in these fields.

We all accept the fact that knowledge of more than one language has benefits. No need to use the lame study published by a social scientist to prove the obvious.

Languages, of course, evolve over time. Our understanding of its role is obscured by urban legends, promoted by non-Sami speakers (or maybe non-Inuit speakers, depending on the version of the story) that there are some other exotic people that have 300 words for snow. People have checked on the story and found they have one word. Some languages also disappear. Those are not mutually exclusive events.

Languages exist to preserve cultural identity, nothing more. That is why those who make a profession from their culture (politicians, religious leaders, writers, performers) battle fiercely to preserve language differences. They realize that when children go to school and are taught in the language of another culture, that is the death of their culture. Those children will be freed from the confines of their culture. Almost every American has a story about this process and how their parents or grandparents became assimilated into the American culture. Grandchildren of Jewish immigrants know nothing of Yiddish, to their advantage. The losers? Yiddish newspaper publishers.

India has a special problem in that it is particularly difficult to impose a dominant language. Consequently India will continue to suffer from cultural conflicts, while Russia and China progress toward a monoculture.

The loss of a language is a tragedy. The fact that the world and human society can cope with tragedy, move on, and eventually forget does not make it any less a tragedy. It is tragic because it limits the scope of human understanding, it impoverishes our bank of ideas and emotions, it lessens the ways that we can (species-wide) readily and easily interface and interact with the world. One language close to death in the South Pacific doesn't have a generic word for anger, but two related words: one for anger which is justified by social norms, and the other for anger which is unjustifiable. The language forces the speaker to acknowledge whether an emotion is even permissible by social rules. It's such a different way of viewing anger than our own, where anger "just happens," and it may not be the most profound example, but it's an example all the same of the kinds of things we lose when we lose any language.

The loss of a single human being is a tragedy to a few that are close to him. But that is the nature of life. Humans die, millions of species of life have evolved and disappeared, perhaps hundreds of thousands of languages have done the same. Shouldn't we spend more time trying to understand how this process occurs, rather than attempting to artificially freeze it in place? Where I live we have so-called environmentalists, well-paid by the state, attempting to reintroduce wolves into areas where they have disappeared - to restore "the balance of nature". They die out, disappear, are killed by sheep herders. Yet they continue to repeat their experiments with these poor, dumb animals. What if they were humans, abroad. Would we tolerate that? Apparently so.
Your analysis of the significance of a few words in a distant language reminds me of the analysis of ink blots. The analysis provides little knowledge of ink blots, but perhaps some insights into the analyzer.

Yours is a false syllogism. The loss of knowledge - or a language - is preventable. The death of each person is inevitable. While it may not be realistic to save each and every spoken tongue, it's worthwhile to both understand the processes which have dramatically accelerated the extinction of languages in the last 100 years, and to take certain measures to mitigate those processes. Reintroducing wolves is another false equivalency: once something is lost, the terms of debate clearly change. That said, there is some precedent for reviving largely dead languages: the success of the (modernized) Hebrew languages.

Like the loss of a person, the loss of a language is a tragedy to a few. The people who no longer speak it are dead, or speak another language that functions as well. My grandmother spoke a local dialect of a European language that is no longer spoken. Who misses that dialect, except a few professional linguists? They imagine it to be important, of course. They are linguists.

To prevent a loss of a language you must interfere, somehow, in the process that leads to its loss, abroad. Will your interference be to the advantage or disadvantage of the subjects of your interference? At best, you do not know. An argument that you are helping those you are interfering with, or achieving some higher goal despite minor inconvenineces to your subjects, is suspiciously self-serving to somebody not involved.

I suggest that, as you said, observe the processes that have accelerated the loss of languages, and avoid screwing around with people's lives.

The revival of Hebrew is an example of the use of language to achieve a political goal - a unification of a diverse group of people with different cultures into a single culture. Many other countries have used this tool, and others are attempting to use it today, usually with considerable conflict. This process, in its many variations, is a major cause of the losses of languages - and always has been.

Jeez, pansitkanton, I took hhuda as simply extolling the benefits of a common language, which is of course open to debate. You got to "Nazi" pretty fast!

Not possible sorry. You would either have to have one world language with no others or no dominant language. If you have a 'main international language' (which you may suggest English is or is becoming) then it will be corrupted and changed by the locals, such as Pidgin. The influences of foreign languages means that if you want everyone to speak English in a way that can be understood by everyone, you will have to end all other languages and their input. But that is just not possible. People don't mix a common tongue with their mother tongue so that it won't die out, but because they lack the physiological compisition for sounds in other languages. It is easier for an Englishman to learn Mandarin (still not easy) than a Cantonese speaker (as told to me by a Cantonese speaker). Also, can you speak Russian? Generally speaking most non-Russians cannot speak decent Russian because of the throat related sounds which they can create differently but we cannot.

It's called the Reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy.

Undoubtedly English, nowadays, is the most useful language...because is the official language of nowadays' ruling empire...just as Spanish was until 1800 or latin was until the begining of the Middel Ages.
That is a fact, then, it's absolutely essential to learn English.
But, on the other hand, that can't happen at the expense of other languages...that is a false contradition. Unhappily it remind me how Adolf Hitler used to think about the existance of those ones who were not aryans...

Losing the status quo? In my artificial ethnocratic country, we've long been the oppressed. In fact we are promoting English as bridge language and a means to justify our oneness as a constitutionally-bound state despite differences in ethnicities, but your words clearly imply you'd want to wipe out all extant underrepresented languages to pave way for a single global speech which is detrimental.

My mother was raised in a community that spoke a completely different language than I speak. You claim that it was somehow determental to me that she was forced by an elite to learn English? That she, and then I should have been constrained by language and cultural barriers to live in that isolated community? Absurd!

I think that the ideal of a single language is an unattainable dream. There are too many political realities that prevent it. And, the incremental advantage is not worth the effort. Besides, I can communicate with my mother's relatives in their homeland perfectly well in English or even in their language (using Google).

A unifying language within a state that has several ethnicities would be a means for everyone to bridge economically, culturally, religiously, academically, politically. It does not mean we have to remove a language that would steer different peoples. Stop overgeneralizing. How could you share to the growth of a state if you cannot connect yourself from your own past? The same way goes to the question of how could you enrich your identity further given that you are all within a representation (government) that is not owned by one people? Again, unifying language AND indigenous language. Key word: Switzerland

Whether you like it or not, there will be one world language within the next 100 years. It might be English or it might be a mixture of a few different languages. Globalization exists, whether for good or bad. Being angry about it just means you haven't accepted the inevitable.

If that's the course of language, then so be it. It is the choice of the people and the future peoples of the world :)

However, what I do not accept are people who would force to stop the natural process of language evolution. If you hypothesize that all languages other than one would die out in 100 years, in the next 100 years or so, there would be emerging dialects until all those dialects divert again into different languages after the next century. Take Latin and Sanskrit for example.

Please be careful with your words. Variety is different from language. It would somehow be related to dialect.

I have been seeing you have ire towards language diversity and linguistics. Language contains human wisdom in different ways. It is part of culture and history and not all knowledge can be accessed in one language. I suppose you have to live in a real multiethnic society to see what preserving your past and identity means so you have a heart for the rest of the human population with regard to linguistic diversity. Its seems your desire to wipe out most languages is to preclude that we cannot avoid major and national languages to encroach into other people. In the first place, do you think the peoples of these "minor languages" so deserving to lose the very core of their humanness desired to be integrated in the respective states they are included in only to be oppressed economically, linguistically, culturally? The nation-state is a lie. The Jacobinist concept that sprung from France was the bane to Egalité, Liberté, Fraternité.

Have you, in your mother tongue, ever heard the saying, "A potato farmer believes that all of the world's problems can be solved by planting more potatoes"? Rice, maybe.

You are a potato farmer, pansikanton. You have a linguistic-centric view of the world. So, when somebody tells you that language diversity is not a good thing, you are as upset as a potato farmer would be if told that potatoes were bad for your health.

The very core of humaness has nothing to do with WHICH language you speak. I am just as human as my grandmother, who spoke a language I can only understand a few words of. Your claims are an artifice, created to justify cultural conflict. Those people you claim to be so concerned over are constrained by their inability to communicate with a wider group of people. Those constraints serve the interests of the guardians of that limited culture. They become the gatekeepers. It is their objective to keep the locals from leaving the cultural plantation.

I do not expect you to agree with my criticism, pansikanton. It is not in your self interest. But I am informing you that I am aware of your objectives.

Are you saying that I am a harbinger of oppression? I am subconsciously compelled to use linguistic diversity to undermine people?

I am nothing but any other human being who would like to celebrate the fact that we all came from salient origins, yet we are all human beings equal of rights in acknowledging our own and other peoples' identity. I am no gatekeeper. I am not forcing people to continue on speaking their own languages. It is their choice to or not to, BUT I would never tolerate anyone who would force someone else to obliterate his own language and identity for feign promises of "improved human connection" or breaking ethnocultural boundaries. People who instigate ethnic conflicts are those who do not know, respect or value the reality that is human existence.

Scientists may prove that we all have originated from a proto-people (although recent studies have shown that Asiatic peoples may have originated separately), but time lead each of us to separate due to geography or differences of views. Albeit, we would have to learn that we are all same humans, and there are always means for us to be comfortable of what we are exposed to, who we are and where we are through our indigenous cultures and languages, and to be comfortable of coexistence and human equality through a unifying language.

I believe what you are trying to tell is that human choice for affinity and establishing ethnic identity has been one of the mess we've created? You could have at least said that human emotion coming from the normal function of our brains should've been gone.

Humanness is related to human experience. Human experiences are never and will never be the same and each collective differences are stored within languages. Killing them all would lose so much knowledge. Ancient South American languages such as Mayan contain so much information about vast species of potato crops which no civilization in Europe could have reached until discovering that language. If you would say having varied potatoes are useless for humans, let's take for example Northern American languages have outstanding details about ancient astronomy. I think that helps.

I can't believe someone is suspecting I have treacherous intentions. I have no political or economic advantage as the rest. I couldn't help but chuckle.

No. It is a conscious effort. Protectors of culture fully realize if their culture disappears, they will have to go out and get a job.

Your florid rationalizations for protecting languages are based on speculation, like the knowledge that Mayans must have had buried in their language about potatoes. It is lost, but must have existed, like those 30 words for snow.

Indeed culture is part of our biology. We can't avoid it. It was put there by evolution to expand the domination of our genetic pool, in competition with others. Culture serves two purposes. It tells us who to associate with - those very much like ourselves - and, most importantly, who to procreate with. It also tells us who to disassociate with - those unlike us. I know nothing of the cultural groups that make up the Philippines, but I can make a guess that they spent a major fraction of their resources on killing each other not too long ago - a perfectly natural thing to do.

Today, our span of interaction far outreaches our cultural boundaries and conflict is increased. These natural tendencies have to be brought under control. They are a major source of the problems we encounter today.

In the USA we had one dominant culture and a large number of minor cultures. Most have been absorbed, to almost everybody's benefit - except for those Yiddish newspaper publishers and other protectors of culture. It was certainly to my benefit, no matter what you might believe. In countries such as yours, or India, I do not know what the solution is. It is impossible to impose a culture from the top down, no matter how desirable that might be. There are just too many people like yourself who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo and resist it. Try divide power up geographically, like Switzerland? More likely you end up like India and Pakistan. You are stuck with the problem, I guess. Make the best of it, but quit telling everybody what a great thing it is.

The status quo you are saying is maintaining a specific culture separate from others? I've been telling you this cycle will always exist even if it has to take a century. Latin is one example. The Roman Empire has imposed its lingua franca amongst different provinces it possessed to where much of Europe belonged to. In the end, Latin diverged into modern-day separate languages today to which you persistent claim are trivially different and variety is some degree only established by people because of certain motives.

Let's say everyone embraces English as the only or among the very few languages for use. It would require the world to establish very strict language regulation measures and institutions to prevent language change within an entire planet inhabited by different people in different settings. Even if you spread propaganda about language oneness and such, in years to come, people's creativity would emerge until they form new vareities of English into new languages. If variety is what you would like to prevent, culture differences have to die, religion must be disposed of, art must be unified, freedom of thinking must be purged. Culture is not only cuisine or clothing or wall paintings, it's philosophy.

The Indian setting is relatively more sound. They are slowly being able to include more indigenous languages as among its Scheduled Languages which are nationally and stately acknowledged. Indian languages have their respective media, academic, scientific strongholds. In the Philippines, the only identity the government widely knows is Filipino--a 103 year old farce that is a mirage of Tagalog.

I am starting to think that our fates to have been disconnected through languages, and then culture, must have been one of the biggest mistakes we've made as human beings towards one another. However, we cannot stop it because we are caught in the cycle that is our own nature. But I am always hopeful towards mankind that he will soon reach a level of thought that differences are in fact a boon for our ever expanding nexus of existence and civilization. We can actually embrace it as an evidence that we have the capability to produce and enrich something for the good.

I am not stuck with a problem. I am stuck in nowhere but awe at the greatness of humanity. The only problem that bothers me is how I am supposed to fully grasp this nature we have.

Based on your argument, the Cebuanos or any other non-Tagalog peoples who are fighting for equality are enemies of their own? Are you saying that it's their fault they were occupied and born in a country with an apathetic governing group? Are the 80 million Filipinos the enemies of their own and they can't do anything with the fact that they've been citizens of a country as that and the only thing they have to do is to cooperate and shut their mouths? That's the same as taking all of us as hostages of principle.

Nobody is at fault. It is our nature to be suspicious of those different from our kind. If Everybody could be convinced somehow to accept a common culture and language, what ever that might be, this source of conflict would be eliminated. But I don't see how you get to there from here.

But assimilation of small groups into larger ones has a benefit. The loss of that culture forever may be a sad event, but one that has happened many, many times before.

What people do not accept is encroachment. They can always have an assiminating identity for the spirit of the state, BUT at the end of the day, the questions would always be: Is this right or wrong? Should we stick with these people? Should we create boundaries? Am I still being respected? Am I still respecting them? Do I feel my fullness as a person? Do we feel fullness as a people?

pansitkanton and Rob S.

You guys are far too educated for your own good. Most of us are just trying to pay the bills each week. But, it was an interesting conversation.

Just another Chinese troll getting paid to make useless comments.