Where are we from?

A recent post of ours, about going to Colombia, said how excited we were to visit our first new continent together. A reader of ours pointed out that we were wrong…that we were still on the same continent, that of America. As it turns out the number of continents in the world depends on where you went to school. In the USA we are taught that there are 7 continents but in other places there can be as few as four. The Americas can be combined into one continent (as is taught in Latin America) and Europe and Asia can be combined into another. A few people will even group all of Eurasia and Africa together as a single continent. The only places that are undeniably continents are Australia and Antarctica.

We encounter the same problem every time someone asks us our nationality, where we come from. If we answer “Americans” we’re not lying…we are Americans, but we’re also being insulting. Everyone, ever person from Canada’s arctic north to the southernmost tip of Patagonia is an American. If someone asks us our nationality and we respond Americanos we are being insulting to the person asking…implying that we are somehow more American than they are. In English, our nationality is American…we have no other word to call ourselves. In Spanish, we are Estadosunidenses; we are Americans too but no more than anyone else in North, Central, or South America.

Even saying that we are from the United States, which is how we generally respond, can be construed as an insult. We’ve traveled to  United Mexican States.  Perhaps we should just call ourselves Norteamericanos and leave it there? If there is one thing we’ve learned though it is never to call a Canadian, an American.