Americas
he Americas are the lands of the
Western hemisphere or
New World consisting of the
continents of
North America and
South America with their associated
islands and regions. The Americas cover 8.3% of the
Earth's total surface area and contain about 14% of the
human population.
The designation is a relatively recent and less ambiguous alternative to America, which may refer to either the entire landmass or the
United States of America. The original usage to describe what is sometimes considered a single continent or supercontinent is deprecated for clarity, for which
the Americas is used to collectively refer to the landmass and various regions of it.
Encyclopedia
The
Americas are the lands of the
Western hemisphere or
New World consisting of the
continents of
North America and
South America with their associated
islands and regions. The Americas cover 8.3% of the
Earth's total surface area and contain about 14% of the
human population.
The designation is a relatively recent and less ambiguous alternative to
America, which may refer to either the entire landmass or the
United States of America. The original usage to describe what is sometimes considered a single continent or supercontinent is deprecated for clarity, for which
the Americas is used to collectively refer to the landmass and various regions of it. When used to describe a single landmass, analogous terms to
America or
Americas are
Eurasia, which consists of
Europe and
Asia collectively, and
Eurafrasia, which is Eurasia and
Africa.
Naming of America
The earliest known use of the name
America for this particular landmass dates from 1507. It appears on a globe and a large map created by the
German cartographer
Martin Waldseemüller in
Saint-Dié-des-Vosges. An accompanying book,
Cosmographiae Introductio was a book published in 1507 to accompany Martin Waldseemller [i]'s map of ...
, explains that the name was derived from the
Latinized version of the explorer
Amerigo Vespucci's name,
Americus Vespucius, in its feminine form,
America, as the other continents all have Latin feminine names.
Vespucci's role in the naming issue, like his exploratory activity, is unclear and most probably a tale. Some sources say that he was unaware of the widespread use of his name to refer to the new landmass. Others hold that he promulgated a story that he had made a secret voyage westward and sighted land in 1491, a year before Columbus. If he did indeed make such claims, they backfired, and only served to prolong the ongoing debate on whether the "
Indies" were really a new land, or just an extension of
Asia.
However, as Dr. Basil Cottle points out, new countries or continents are never named after a person's first name, always after their second name . Thus, America should really have become
Vespucci Land or
Vespuccia if the Italian explorer really gave his name to the continent.
Christopher Columbus, who had first brought the region's existence to the attention of
Renaissance era voyagers, had died in 1506 and could not protest Waldseemüller's decision.
A few alternative theories regarding the landmass' naming have been proposed, but none of them has achieved any widespread acceptance.
One alternative, first advanced by Jules Marcou in 1875 and later recounted by novelist Jan Carew, is that the name
America derives from the district of
Amerrique in
Nicaragua. The gold-rich district of Amerrique was purportedly visited by both Vespucci and Columbus, for whom the name became synonymous with gold. According to Marcou, Vespucci later applied the name to the New World, and even changed the spelling of his own name from
Alberigo to
Amerigo to reflect the importance of the discovery.
Another theory, first proposed by a
Bristol antiquary and
naturalist, Alfred Hudd, in 1908 was that
America is derived from Richard Amerike, a merchant from Bristol, who is believed to have financed
John Cabot's voyage of discovery from
England to
Newfoundland in 1497 as found in some documents from
Westminster Abbey a few decades ago. Supposedly, Bristol fishermen had been visiting the coast of North America for at least a century before Columbus' voyage and Waldseemüller's maps are alleged to incorporate information from the early English journeys to North America. The theory holds that a variant of Amerike's name appeared on an early English map and that this was the true inspiration for Waldseemüller.
Usage
America/Americas
In many parts of the world,
America in the singular is commonly used as a name for the
United States of America; however,
Americas is not and is invariably used to refer to the lands and regions of the Western hemisphere. Usage of
America to also refer to this collectivity remains fairly common.
While many in the United States of America generally refer to the country as
America and themselves as
Americans, many people elsewhere in the Americas resent what they perceive as appropriation of the term in this context and, thus, this usage is frequently avoided. In
Canada, their southern neighbour is seldom referred to as "America" with "the United States", "the U.S.", or "the States" used instead.
English dictionaries and compendiums differ regarding usage and rendition.
American
English usage
Whether usage of
America or
the Americas is preferred,
American is a self-referential term for many people living in all of the Americas. However, most of the English-speaking world uses the word to refer solely to a
citizen,
resident, or national of the United States of America. The word
pan-American is used instead as an adjective to refer to the Americas.
In addition, some Canadians resent being referred to as Americans because of mistaken assumptions that they are U.S. citizens or an inability—particularly of people overseas—to distinguish Canadian English and
American English accents.Portuguese usage
In Portuguese the adjective americano refers commonly to the whole of the Americas. Dictionaries such as Aurélio also include americano as referring to "US citizens and things" as the third meaning in usage list. The second one refers to americano as being a fan of one of many soccer teams that have America as part of their names.
Normally the adjective norte-americano is used when referring to the United States. In more formal language estadunidense can also be used instead. More recently the usage of americano as referring to people and things from the US has grown in areas with deeper influence of US culture , but it is not considered the norm in other parts of the Portuguese speaking world.
The continent itself is called América. More recently As Américas has been growing in usage in areas more influenced by the United States culture . This usage has not yet been added to Portuguese dictionaries, and it is considered to be an Anglicism.
Spanish usage
Calling a U.S. citizen simply americano or americana in Spanish is considered offensive by many Latin-Americans . Sometimes "gringo" or "yanqui" is used but those terms tend to be despective . In Spanish, americano or americana is used to refer to people from the American continent, much like europeo or europea is used for those living in Europe. The term or norteamericana technically refers to any person living in North America but is also commonly used to describe U.S. citizens . Often context clues are needed to know if a speaker is refering to a U.S. citizen or any person living in North America.
French usage
In French, as in English, the word Américain can be confusing as it can be both used to refer to the United States, and to the American continents.
The noun Amérique technically refers to the continents; the United States is generally referred to as les États-Unis d'Amérique, les États-Unis, or les EU. However, the usage of Amérique to refer to the United States, while technically not correct, does have some currency in France.
The adjective américain is most often used for things relating to the United States; however, it may also be used for things relating to the American continents.
Things relating to the United States can be referred to without ambiguity by the words étatsunien, or étasunienne, although this usage is rather rare.
Demography
Ethnology
The American population made up of the descendants of three large ethnic groups and their combinations: the native inhabitants of the Americas, being Amerindians, Eskimos, and Aleuts; Europeans, mainly Spanish, English, Irish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German and Dutch; and black Africans. There are also more recent immigrants, such as from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Central and Eastern Asia.
The majority of the people live in Latin America, named for its dominant languages, Spanish and Portuguese, both of which are descended from Latin. Latin America is typically contrasted with Anglo-America where English, a Germanic language, prevails: namely, Canada and the United States have predominantly British roots and are quite different in terms of linguistical, cultural, and economic situation from other countries in the Americas.
Languages
Various languages are spoken in the Americas. Some are of the European origin, others are spoken by indigenous peoples or are the mixture of various idioms like the different creoles.
The dominant language of Anglo-America, as the name suggests, is English, though French is also official in Canada and is the predominant language in the Canadian province of Quebec, and along with English is an official language in New Brunswick, Ontario and in the U.S. state of Louisiana. Due to heavy immigration from Latin America to the south, Spanish has become widely spoken in much of the United States and is official in the U.S. state of New Mexico. High levels of immigration have brought great linguistic diversity to Anglo-America, with over 300 languages known to be spoken in the United States alone, but most languages are spoken only in small enclaves and by relatively small immigrant groups.
The dominant language of Latin America is Spanish, though the largest nation in Latin America, Brazil, predominantly speaks Portuguese. Small enclaves of French- and English-speaking regions also exist in Latin America, notably in French Guiana and along Nicaragua's Mosquito Coast, respectively, and Haitian Creole, of French origin, is dominant in the nation of Haiti. Native languages are more prominent in Latin America than in Anglo-America, with Nahuatl, Quechua, Aymara and Guaraní as the most common. Various other native languages are spoken with lesser frequency across both Anglo-America and Latin America. Creole languages other than Haitian Creole are also spoken in parts of Latin America.
The nations of Guyana, Suriname and Belize are generally considered not to fall into either Anglo-America or Latin America due to lingual differences with Latin America and geographic and cultural differences with Anglo-America; English is the primary language of Guyana and Belize, and Dutch is the primary language of Suriname.
- Spanish - spoken by approximately 360 million in many nations, regions, islands, and communities throughout the two continents.
- English - spoken by approximately 325 million people in the United States, Canada, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, The Bahamas, Bermuda, Guyana and many islands of the Caribbean.
- Portuguese - spoken by approximately 185 million in Brazil
- French - spoken by approximately 12 million in Canada , the Caribbean ; in French Guiana; and in Acadiana .
- Antillean Creole - spoken by approximately 1.2 million in the Eastern Caribbean and French Guiana.
- Haitian Creole - creole language, based in French and various African languages, spoken by 7.8 million in Haiti.
- Guaraní - native language spoken by approximately 6 million people in Paraguay, and regions of Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil.
- Nahuatl - native language of central Mexico with 1.5 million speakers.
- Mapudungun - native language spoken by approximately 440,000 people in Chile and Argentina.
- Cree - Cree is the name for a group of closely-related Algonquian languages spoken by approximately 50,000 speakers across Canada
- Inuit - native language traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and to some extent in the subarctic in Labrador.
- Aymará - native language spoken in the Andes, especially in Bolivia.
- Dutch - spoken in the Netherlands Antilles, Aruba
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, U.S. The use of this language has rebounded in the late 20th century. It is known to possess its own alphabet, the Cherokee syllabary.
- Gullah- a creole language based on English with strong influences from West and Central African languages spoken by the Gullah people, an African American population living on the coastal region of the U.S. states of South Carolina and Georgia
- Georgia [i], a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia: **Formerly ...
. - In Argentina, two towns of Trelew and Rawson were settled by Welsh immigrants in the late 1800's and the Welsh language remains alive by the towns' older residents.
- Some descendants of the Pennsylvania Dutch in the Northeast U.S. state speak a local form of the German language dates back to the 17th and 18th centuries, as they strive to preserve an American heritage.
Most of the non-native languages have, to different degrees, evolved differently from the mother country, but are usually still mutually intelligible. Some have combined though, which has even resulted in completely new languages, such as Papiamentu, which is a combination of Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch , native Arawak, various African languages and, more recently, English.
Because of immigration, there are many communities where other languages are spoken from all parts of the world, especially in the United States, Brazil, Argentina and Canada, four very important destinations for immigrants.
See also
Notes
Sources
- "Americas". . 2006. New York: Columbia University Press.
- "Americas". Encyclopædia Britannica was first published in 1768–1771 as Encyclopdia Britannica, or, ...
, 15th ed. 1986. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. - Burchfield, R. W. 2004. Fowler's Modern English Usage. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- Fee, Margery and McAlpine, J. 1997. Oxford Guide to Canadian English Usage. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
- Pearsall, Judy and Trumble, Bill., ed. 2002. Oxford English Reference Dictionary is a dictionary [i] published by the Oxford University Press [i] , an ...
, 2nd ed. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. - Geography at about.com.
External links
-
- Organization of American States
- 1633 Map of North and South America, hosted by the Portal to Texas History.
