That was not the point I was making. It is well known that there is much about language that is ambiguous - even very formal language. In most cases the ambiguity come about through gradual evolution.
What I was suggesting is that just because there are aspects of language that have evolved to be ambiguous does not mean that actually consciously choosing a name to mean something when it already has a natural meaning that is quite different in very similar contexts is a very clever thing to do.
Before whoever it was came up with the term ‘Native Americans’ to mean what it, to many, now means, it already meant something that was a superset of the new meaning.
It would be rather as if an aircraft manufacturer produced a new range of wide bodied jet aircraft using a new alloy that caused them all to glow brilliant white and decided to identify the range by the name ‘light aircraft’. Not clever because ‘light aircraft’ already has an established meaning at odds with the new range. On the other hand if that’s the term the public evolved to identify them there’s not much you can do about it.
Which is odd when you consider how impoverished the English language would be if we were to remove all the words we originally ‘borrowed’ from the French.
“Native American” is pretty much never used by Yanks to refer to aboriginal Hawaiians. They tend to be called Hawaiian or Polynesian. I would not claim that the term is never applied to them, but is so rare as to be insignificant. (The same thing tends to be true of the Eskimoes, although as mainlanders associated with neighboring non-Eskimo peoples, the term might occasionally show up there.)
A rather pointless nitpick, given that the Spaniards were driven from Florida and the French were vastly outnumbered by English in Detroit and Vincennes as soon as the English arrived. A tiny number of outliers does not change the general movement or the language. (And remember, “Native American” tends to be a U.S. term, so the people employing it are not really looking at Quebec or Mexico City when they use it.)
However:
Lots of terms–even those deliberately chosen–have flaws in their underlying logic;
“Native American” is not really a commonly used phrase, given that the peoples to whom it applies generally do not use it and the people who do use it tend to have no contact with the people to whom it refers;
To the extent that it is used, it immediately conveys its intended meaning in 99.99999% of those occasions, making objections to its “logic” rather pointless.
If you need to fight over a poorly chosen word, go pick a battle over the misuse of “shrapnel” for “shell fragment.”
In Alaska, Eskimos are called Eskimos. But the more usual term is “native” or “Alaska native”, which means Eskimo or Athabaskan or Indian or Aleut. Most white people just lump everyone into the “native” category unless there’s a particular reason not to. And of course, “native” can be used with a certain tone of voice that turns it from a neutral descriptor into an ethnic slur, I’m sure everyone has heard “black” used the same way.
If that is your opinion I completely respect your right to hold it.
I wasn’t looking for a fight. I made a simple point (something you have conceded) which seemed to cause a great deal of angst and a lot of strawman counter arguments that I felt I ought to defend.
If you go back and look at how the ‘hijack’ started you’ll see that it was a perfectly sensible and, more importantly, on topic, comment; that to determine who native Americans are you first have to decide which definition you are using.
Nothing more than that.
I had hoped I’d finished with this thread until you posted this. As far as I’m concerned it’s now dropped. Let’s hope no one decides to pick it up and start again.
Even if the determination of what “native American” means is given to some degree of doubt, the determination of what “Native American” means, is not. The same distinction may be made, for instance, between south African, and South African.
We’ve been asked not to continue with this so called hi-jack.
Just to answer your points, though: Spoken communications and ‘Native’ at the beginning of a sentence. And compass points should always be capitalised so you should never see ‘south African’.
Errr… not so much, no. We’re not entirely clear just how closely connected even nominally-similar tribes were ethnically. Lingually, some seem to have been divided. Culture was usually shared significantly with a tribe, but the tribes were also spread out and intermixed, and rarely had a significant government over them as a tribe.
I will grant that evidence is sparse and incomplete now, because many languages have vanished, records never created or gone, and peoples assimiilated. But there’s evidence of two or three migrations now, not just one. Languages seem to have been substantially divergent over area, with little commercial contact between people of the same tribe, let alone neighboring ones.
Our notions of the systems of government in North America are skewed, because aside from early Spanish contact, European contact happened after the continent-wide pandemics. The Mississippi valley is full of earthworks from the Mound Builders, but by the time European settlers arrived the Mound Builder civilization was gone. These earthworks weren’t constructed by a few scattered bands of hunter-gatherers. The Spanish famously encountered many state level civilizations during their conquests. The Pilgrims famously were taught how to farm by the Indians.
The vast majority of Indians in 1491 were farmers, not nomadic hunter-gatherers. State level social organization was common. Continent-wide trade networks existed, although we see interesting things, like tobacco paraphernalia showing up in Alaska in the 1600s–apparently tobacco was introduced from the Americas to Europe, and across Eurasia to Siberia, and showed up in Alaska the long way round.
This is pure bullshit. We simply do not define "native americans " any where in the New World continents or in the United States of America or anywhere else on the globe based on who lived where before English speakers arrived anywhere. It was a completely stupid statement on your part and frankly, I know that you know that as well.
“Native americans” is a term commonly used in Canada as well when we refer to your aboriginals or first nations. You Americans don’t own the English language.
I know that you are getting awfully testy over a rather minor nitpick.
Whatever settlers arrived from Europe before the British involved fewer than a couple thousand people (in a land populated by many millions) and began fewer than 110 years prior to the arrival of the British, (as opposed to the several thousand years that people migrating from Asia had been here).
I never claimed that the U.S. owned the language. I am sorry to hear that some of your co-nationalists have picked up some of the bad habits of their Southern neighbors, given that the people identified as “Native Americans” generally eschew that phrase, themselves.
Note that the term started off in the 19th century being non-idiomatic, that is, literally meaning “born in America.” By the mid-twentieth century, however, this usage had virtually disappeared, and the usage of “Belonging to a cultural group whose presence in North America predates European presence” prevailed.
The phrase should now be understood as an idiom, along with such phrases as, “You’re welcome,” “what’s up,” “keep your eye on the ball,” and, “when come back, bring pie.” Insisting on understanding it as two separate words will only lead to confusion.
And yes, someone learning our language needs to learn the more common idioms. Learning only the grammar and the vocabulary will lead to an impoverished linguistic experience.
But African Americans (negros, colored people, people of color, blacks, American Negroes, Black-Americans, Afro-Americans) successfully change what they’d like to be called about every 10 years, and everyone goes along with it.
Two changes in 43 years, one of them not all that successful, after a couple of hundred years with no real change, does not quite qualify as “every ten years,” and the distinction from “donarbea” is that they selected the change rather than having it imposed from outside. (In fact, one of the better arguments against “Native American” has nothing to do with the rather weak complaint against ambiguity and everything to do with it being imposed by people outside the group.)
Note that among your catalogue, “Negro” and “colored” were used equally by all of society for a very long time and “people of color” and “Afro-Americans” were suggestions that never made it out of a few rhetorical circles. I have never even seen a serious effort for “American Negroes” or “Black-Americans” and they certainly never made it into general use.
You think thats funny ? Let me tell you that the incursion of non aboriginals into the Americas hasn’t exactly worked out for the aboriginals. Every immigrant (and I’m an immigrant) simply has a netgative impact on their quality of life that they would have had without us Europeans. Or Asians Or the Africans for that matter, who were willing enough to work as slaves for the whites and thereby justifierd their existence in the new world.
