QUOTE (DFV @ Nov 24 2009, 15:08)
But what you are writing isn't really the problem. As I have said, I agree that in everyday speak, American is a common description of someone from the USA. But it can also mean any other American country (especially in any other language than English).
My point is that people are commenting that Lopez isn't an American (which is false). It would be, to use one of your examples, the same as saying that a German isn't a European.
I have no problem with people calling a US citizen an American, my problem is when someone says that an Argentinian is not an American. I'm sure Lopez also considers himself an Argentinian first and foremost, but Argentine is in America and he is, by definition, also an American.
I'll take your statement at face value, and accept you aren't simply trying to create a larger argument.
But this argument is usually started by people with far larger axes to grind than technical correctness in the use of language (see ezequiel's posts). It is quite clear and understood that when someone locates a team in Charlotte, NC and terms the effort to be an "American" effort (drivers, technology, etc.), they are talking about USA citizens and technology.
This BS argument that comes up time and again usually does so to give a platform to lecture about how insular and myopic people from the USA supposedly are, usually devolving into arguments about the name of baseball's World Series, and the correct name of the major world sport of football (which our supposed jingoism leads us to call it soccer to differentiate it from our game we call football). Wow, I'm really digressing now.
My point is it's absurd to go on these rants about how insular people from the USA are on a board heavily populated by said people discussing a major world sport that is only minor in the USA!
