[OT] Inuit? Eskimo?

[Erik Max Francis]

Anton Vredegoor wrote:

> The problem with this naming scheme is that the natural way for an
> Indian who was born in America to identify with the Indian cultural
> heritage first and in second place with being an American, seems to be
> taken by the denominination for *foreign* Indians.

I'm still not sure what you're objecting to in the bigger issue. 
There's no question that there is an unfortunate ambiguity in the term
_American Indian_ to mean a Native American -- which comes from
misexpectations of the discoverers and explorers of the New World -- vs.
an American of (Asian) Indian origin.  But that's inevitable in evolving
terminology (in any field, not just the one we're talking about here). 
If I emigrated to India, became naturalized, and renounced my
citizenship in the United States, saying (in English) that I'm an
American-Indian would be ambiguous, but that's simply because of an
existing "corruption" in the terminology, because "American Indian" is a
preexisting term overloaded to mean something else.  It doesn't have
anything to do with the adjective-noun form of the phrasing.

> Would you also rather say American Texan, because Texan American would
> mean an American that is naturalized from the foreign country of
> Texas?

I've never heard anybody use either term, due to the obvious redundancy,
so I can't comment.

-- 
   Erik Max Francis && max at alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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