| I understand gringoes might not be too particular with their grammar but remember most people speaking English today are not native speakers, this will have to have impact on acceptable English usage. Most other languages are fairly rigid with their grammar (Spanish sure is) and this suggests they (particularly Hispanics) would favour strict compliance with whatever rules prevail in English. "American" is the origin designator for things from America, the suffix works as a nationality designator only for subjects of a country whose name forms the root of the origin designator. Since we don't have any country called "America", American cannot be other than the native of that continent. These are the rules of 'proper' English, there can be no argument to sustain the claim correct usage would be to apply the origin designator of a continent to a subordinate national entity within it -particularly since there are several national entities within America and this is not the name of any. |