Last evening I was talking to a colleague who insisted that a couple from Slovakia had told him they were from Czechoslovakia, a county that hasn’t existed for a while. For those of you who aren’t aware of the fact, the area once known as Czechoslovakia is now the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic. It’s been that way since January 1st, 1993.
Anyway, this colleague was adamant that the couple said Czechoslovakia and even pronounced it slowly so he could recognize it. I maintained my opinion that he had just thought they said Czechoslovakia when he heard Slovakia, being American and being raised before 1993. We argued the point to no avail. My colleague believed that these people had said Czechoslovakia and I wasn’t going to change his mind. To make a point, I stated that “you would think a person would know what country he was from.”
On retrospect, that was a stupid comment considering that most Americans don’t know what country they live in. Is it America, United States, or what? Most Americans are under the false assumption that they live in the United States, which is often referred as America. But the fact of the matter is, Americans live in the States of America, America for short. The United States is a corporate municipal legislative democracy known as Washington D.C., or the “Seat of the Government of the United States”* “not exceeding ten Miles square”*, commonly referred to as the District of Columbia.
