Regarding My Sobriquet, Yanki and Associated Questions of Geography

"To a foreigner, a Yankee is an American.
To an American, a Yankee is a Northerner.
To a Northerner, a Yankee is a New Englander.
To a New Englander, a Yankee is a Vermonter.
To a Vermonter, a Yankee is someone who still has an outhouse."

Everyone in a spanish speaking country has a nickname. Un apodo. So it seems, anyway.

Mine is yankee. Except written yanki and pronounced shan-kee, due to the eccentricities of pronunciation here around the Rio Plata.

Many people believe that this word is "despectiva" which I take to mean disrespectful. I tell them that it´s not and that the only time I´ve ever heard the word was mainly in the song Yankee Doodle, which does not cause me a feeling of disrespectedness, to say the least.

Then I realized I´ve never really been to the South and I found this quote, which I assume to be something in general usage.  As a guy from the midwest, I said to myself self, huh, well I guess the word can refer to me. Now I realize that maybe a southerner might resent the word. And NOW I realize that perhaps my attitude towards the word is a typical midwestern reaction towards anything and the southern reaction is similarly stereotypical.

Also, I prefer the term yanki because its a pretty complicated to get into politics surrounding the use of the word American to describe citizens of the United States of America. In case you don´t know, anyone else (except maybe Canadians, I haven´t spoken to one, you tell me) living in the Americas feels like the word American should refer to anyone living on the continent. Ha, yes, thats right. THE continent. From my experience, most people believe that the terms North and South America refer to two extremities of the same object. Terms of direction rather than distinction. Nicholas?

Did you ever think that might disagree on something such as the number of continents in the world? I mean, yeah it occurred to me, I studied anthropology, I´ll accept anything as possible. But usually its something like the number of colors or vowels, things that we ourselves make. Cultures with two colors? Conceivable (the WASP male for example recognizes two colors Statistically Speaking, Probably Will Match (tan, cream, black, white grey and khaki) and Statistically Speaking, Probably Will Not Match (everything else).

But my aside aside, people I´ve asked have reported there to be five continents or six, depending on if they´re anticipating my yankee belief in America as two continents in order to fight with me on the topic. So, even in the most continent-generous interactions I´ve had on the subject, we are still short of the typically taught seven continents. Turns out that don´t include
Antartica. Meg? Can we get a statement on all this?

Another term they throw at me in their efforts to avoid something that my yanki brain will identify as offensive is "norteamericano." While broadly accurate, I can not accept this word on principle. I have no problem being grouped with our lovely, more internationally accepted neighbors to the north (though they probably do), but I´m troubled by the fact that Mexicans are excluded from this groupation*.

So, then the the exclusion appears to be one primarily of linguistic or racial division. It´s nice to know (in a we´re both lacking sort of way) that the south of the border geographic attitude of Americans is in someway reciprocated.

There does exist the word "estadounidense" which surely was invented to punish english-speaking hispanophones. The word is baroque piece of booby trap, practically leaking with common points of ensnarement for the unknowing yankee. It´s long, its got that fucking O in it, its got that fucking D in it and on top of that, because its literal translation sounds goofy as balls. I´m not convinced this is a passable way to refer to once self. Unitedstater? Unitedstatist? C´mon.

So, that leaves me with Yanki, something I gladly accept. I like the idea of introducing myself in away that causes the person on the other end of the introduction to blink and hesitate a little. Hey, I´m speaking in another language that I didn´t study til I was way past my critical period. I´m always off-footed, they can stand to be off-footed for the first round. Furthermore, I think it helps them get to know me a little faster. I am the sort of guy that would gleefully refer to himself as a spic if that term at all referred to me. Though that term is a little strong, reletive to yanki. No one has ever shouted yanki at me while pointing a gun at me and crafting draconian legislation to ruin my life

Anyway, drugstore yanki, signing off.

*This blog will still occasionally include formations of words which should not occur in English but do in Spanish for the sake of whimsy and what I like to call "local color".