Paris and the Yanks

Hotel rooms in Paris are expensive! Yes, I know this is not news to most people, but I mean more exactly - they are much more expensive than even a year ago. Most of the little boutique out-of-the-way places that I normally use are now in use by the “cool people”. Who knew? I’m a trendsetter, or I should stop passing on my finds to others… I am pulling my other travel trick out of my pocket – stay where the people aren’t or what hotel is offering a deal? And I found one, it appears the business class stays home over the holidays or goes to Aspen or Gstaad. The quite posh and normally pricey Millennium Hotel has on a lower rate for the last week in December, still costly but oh so much less than anywhere else I found. Now all I need is a plane ticket and I think I shall be walking the Seine for the season. I’m all atwitter. But I am not done looking yet, I’m thinking I still might find something better….

I plan to have my usual visit which consist of walking along the river, sitting in cafés, and people watching while having café’ au lait and pastry; visit the old woman who runs the post card shop near Notre Dame (she and the post cards both qualify for centennial status); and walk around my old neighborhood in the seventh, have wine in the bistro across from the garden in the back of Norte Dame, walk through the orchid fair, visit the book stores over in the sixth, and visit my memories.


What do you call someone from the United States?
Not Americans, that really irritates the Canadians.
In fact there is no agreed upon right answer. In the United Kingdom, the use of “U.S.” as an adjective is common in media and government house styles. In Spanish, Americano tends to refer to any resident of the Americas; English spoken in Latin America often makes this distinction as well. In the North American Free Trade Agreement (1994), the Canadian French word for an American is given as e’tatsunien; in Spanish it is estadounidense. This is clumsy in English. U.S.-American is better, and that’s what the Germans tend to use (US-Amerikaner).

Some (not all serious) suggestions for a specific English word meaning “citizen of the U.S.” have included: Americanite; Colonican; Columbard; Columbian; Fredonian; Statesider; Uessian; United Statesian; United Statesman; USen; Vespuccino; Washingtonian. And Merkin – from the way Americans pronounce “American”.

The likely source for Yankee is the Dutch name Janke, meaning “little Jan” or “little John,” dating from the 1680s when the Dutch ran New York. During the Civil War, yankee referred only to those loyal to the Union. Now the term carries less emotion – except, of course, for baseball fans. The word gringo is widely used in Latin America to mean a U.S. citizen, particularly in Mexico, though not necessarily in a pejorative way. It’s thought to come from the Spanish griego (Greek) – hence any foreigner (as in the English “it’s all Greek to me”).*
*”The Book of General Ignorance”

My own experience teaches there is a world of other names in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and North Africa – that being said the populace usually differentiates between citizens and the government.