He called the people he found here indios (Indians), after all. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Contrary to legend, people have known that the world is round since ancient times. They even had a pretty good estimate of its diameter and circumference. Sailors in particular knew this, because the curvature of the earth's surface has a tremendous impact on their navigation techniques. Columbus can only be described as a wretchedly awful sailor, since he assumed that that the distance from Spain to the eastern coast of Asia was about one-fourth of its actual span. If there had not been another land mass along the way, which no one could have predicted (and rather close, at that), he and his crew would have run out of supplies and died long before they met the real "Indians." It would be more precise to say that Columbus discovered "the Americas" rather than "America," a name which by informal but universal agreement refers only to the United States. He landed on Hispaniola (the earth's 22nd-largest island, now shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and never saw the continents of North and South America. We must remember that the Norsemen discovered North America long before Columbus. They established a thriving colony, although no one knows for sure what happened to it. Assimilation is an easy assumption. And of course there were three waves of migration across Beringia from Siberia, starting around 15KYA, establishing three distinct populations of Native Americans. And recently it's been discovered that at a much earlier time (at least 20KYA) explorers from Europe landed on our eastern coast. It was during an ice age when sea level was lower and the shoreline extended further out, so the remains of their settlements were found about 25 miles out to sea. These would have been the Cro-Magnon, since the Indo-Europeans had not arrived in Europe yet. Outside of the USA and Canada, the Western Hemisphere is generally referred to as "the Americas." Geologically, North and South America are actually a single continent, connected by the Isthmus of Panama.
:runaway: I have fortunately never encountered that. But I try to avoid the word 'serendipity' in general since I've come to associate it with teenage girls and their love stories, and religious people, people who think anything that happens to them is a sign from God. I would normally just say 'coincidence' or 'nice coincidence'.
Why are you talking about this? My statement was in response to your assumption that people can't appreciate the efficiency of 'monitorable' because they prefer government writing. Here: And about this - So it turns out 'squalidity' is a real word after all. And so is 'squalidness'. I wonder if it only became official recently--like the way "12 items or less" will soon (probably) become official... Still every instance that might call for 'squalidity' you could use 'squalor' instead. They're both nouns. 'Squalor' is also shorter and more efficient. I'm surprised you would bother with 'squalidity'. So the US is going in the opposite (and right) direction? In the UK nobody uses 'fewer' anymore, I don't think. No, you didn't, sorry. But if you look at the sentence more implicitly than explicitly, you know... I don't feel as though you answered anything from my last post directly, or that you even bothered to give direct answers. Then again, perhaps we've overdiscussed 'monitorable'. It's been a surprisingly enjoyable thread actually, even if I didn't understand the 'pronunciation of 'bulgarian' ' posts and don't know what the maps have to do with 'East Korea'.
Government writing in the UK is getting quite good. My Tax Form last year, while not exactly a pleasure, was straightforward. The most incomprehensible prose is that written by Parking Fine companies in the "appeal" section of the ticket.
