Talk: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)
