Re: So it is true...

Seán O'Leathlóbhair wrote:

> I think that few here in the UK are aware of that but that may improve
> since the countries have split. There is a very common naive view of a
> one to one relationship between country and language. You can even
> stump many people with questions such as: what language is spoken in
> Belgium or Switzerland? I would bet a fair amount that if you asked
> what was spoken in Czechoslovakia, you would get the single answer
> Czech. But I would also think it likely that if you asked about
> Slovakia, you may now get the answer Slovakian.

Belgium and Switzerland (and Iraq) are nations in the American sense,
but not really in the more widespread sense of the word. (We needed a
term for the "United States" in 1787 and took the word that previously
designated both an ethnic and a state unity, to designate a political
unity.)

Which also explains why Americans don't understand how Saddam could try
to eliminate the Kurds -- they kept calling them "his people," which
they weren't. They were drawn within his (and the others') borders by
Woodrow Wilson.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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