America, America...

Many of you have already formulated an idea on what this blog must be about. America, the large, influential, but culturally dominant superpower? Or perhaps it's about America, the wider continent which contains the gigantic superpower? Or perhaps America, the huge landmass unknown to the rest of the world (Europe) until it was 'discovered' by Columbus as a stubborn obstacle in the way of India. But this blog is not about any of that. It's actually about nothing at all. It's about a place called America, a place, that I'd argue, doesn't actually exist.

America, as many of you know, is neither a country, a continent nor a hemisphere. There's nowhere quite like America, because America is nowhere. 'That can't be true' I hear some of you say. 'American' is a nationality so it must be that a place and its people somehow exist. But the term American as we use it identifies something or someone that comes from the United States of America, and it's a simple fact that to be an 'American' sounds a whole lot cooler than to say you are United Statian.

So, Americans must be from some place called America, you'd figure. But that's a point that can't be proven. There's no place called America and if you don't believe that, just take a second to try and find it on a map. The USA is part of North America, which is distinguished from South America, being considered a separate continent by some or a sub-continent by others. That's another issue for another day. Never mind.

Together, North and South America are properly called 'The Americas' in English. Oh, but there's also a Central America too, leading anyone to think that anyplace that has a north, a south and central part must actually exist in of itself, right? Check the map.

But this is all semantics, of course. It is common British English usage to use 'America' as the short version of USA yet this misnomer is annoying and confusing and not really that much shorter after all. It's also not very international. The French use l'Amerique, to mean both Americas but the Spanish use Americano to identify the Spanish speaking part of the Americas and norteamericano to mean American, I mean from the USA, which leaves out the Mexicans, because they're just Americanos. and Canadians, who consider themselves North Americans, but definitely not Americans.

Confused? Well,that's the whole point. Somebody should have come up with a less vague and confusing name for all these people. An American could be from anywhere the North Pole to Terra del Fuego but they don't come from America because that is properly is a name without a place. In fact, I'd like to say that I'm an American, but after all this you'd would have no idea what that actually means.