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Posted by: Penta Oct 8 2009, 03:02 AM

Okay. A question that suddenly arose in my mind during a boring bus ride today.

What the hell is the adjective form of UCAS? Or CAS? Or Tir Tairngire? (Or worse, Tir na Nog)

It's a common complaint I have about sci-fi (or fantasy) country/state names - there's no allowance for non-noun forms.

To wit, in English there's usually an adjective form of a country name. The USA gets "American", the UK "British", Saudi Arabia "Saudi". And so on and so forth.

Except with future countries. FASA/FanPro/CGL made it worse by creating countries where both could conceivably use the same damn adjective (see UCAS and CAS), or where the name isn't in any real language, so we can't even derive the adjective form.

For UCAS:

"UCASian" is like "USAian", a horrific mangling of the language for political correctness. "Canadian-American" has the problem of being rather unwieldy and sounding more like a personal descriptor.

It actually gets no better a lot worse with corporations being nationalities, now, of a sort.

Are you a "Shiawasian"? A "Saeder-Kruppian"?

Gah.

I can be liberal on many things, but (and maybe it's me) this drives me batty.

Posted by: wind_in_the_stones Oct 8 2009, 03:30 AM

UCASers will still be "American".

We were American before, we're still American, dammit! And you former Canadians should stop whining about it, because you are from North America, so we can still call you that!

Posted by: Ancient History Oct 8 2009, 03:31 AM

American or Canadian-American; American or Confederate; Tuatha Tairngire or rethsa; Tuatha na nOg or rethsa


Man, Africa must just annoy the living hell out of you. "There's the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo! That is unsatisfactory!"


Shiawasejin and Saeder-Kruppscher

Posted by: rob Oct 8 2009, 03:54 AM

Congolese?

At some point, esp. w/ relatively new nations or nations with ineffective political control or national identity (thinking Chad here), you just revert to the ethnic identity.

In something like a corporation, I doubt they'd even have made up a formal abbreviated identity. Most Ares people would identify themselves as American, as a kind of national identity separate from the state identity.

Posted by: Wacky Oct 8 2009, 03:58 AM

I'd just go with "United Canadian" for the UCAS and Confederate for the CAS.

Californian for Cal Free State and "Elves" for either of the Tir's...

Sign--

Wacky

Posted by: underaneonhalo Oct 8 2009, 07:14 AM

You can call us CASsers "rebs". We don't mind at all.

Posted by: AK404 Oct 8 2009, 10:08 AM

Regionalism and history sets in, actually.

Take UCAS, for example. Ones from the US would call themselves Americans, the ones from Canada would call themselves Canadians, and you'd probably get more than a few people who identify themselves from the state they live in (especially if you're from the original 13). Because the school systems would still be controlled by the state, the history education and identity formation we all learn in school (assuming history classes are still being taught!) would most probably be based on what country you were from before the formation of UCAS, which at that point, American and Canadian education would be the same.

The people from CAS would call themselves "Confederates," while folks from UCAS would call them "Southerners." If you're from Texas, you're a Texan, not a Southerner. (This rule stands today: Texans are Texans first, Americans second. Weird how that one goes.)

Actually, something that might be interesting to know is how far back history courses go in the elementary levels. School is a place where one has nationalism ingrained into the system (hence, the Pledge of Allegiance every morning and having to learn American history, but not world history), but if every country in the Americas wanted to form a unique identity for itself, history courses probably wouldn't go too far back.

Posted by: AK404 Oct 8 2009, 10:08 AM

Weird. I'm fairly certain I didn't hit 'post' twice....

Posted by: Chrysalis Oct 8 2009, 01:20 PM

This can be a nightmare with the United Kingdom for example. Since you can be from Jersey or the Isle of Man or the Shetlands, which are part of the UK, but are certainly not British. Does that make you an UKer? What about the English, the Scottish, those from Northern Ireland, the Welsh? Can you be ethnically Indian and still be called Welsh?

To unproblematize the situation, the official title is:

citizen of [country]
and
corporate citizen of [company]

You identify yourself as

"I am from [country], I work at [company]. I am a corporate citizen of [company]"


The usual example I give with this is: two friends met, one from Nigeria and the other from Niger. How many Nigerians were there?

Posted by: rob Oct 8 2009, 03:08 PM

This is not weird. This is the natural and proper order of things.

Thinking about states led me to one simple insight - we have some states that don't have convenient noun forms even today - Colorado springs to mind.

Posted by: BishopMcQ Oct 8 2009, 04:05 PM

Rob - I believe the proper term would be Lush, hick, or tourist.

Posted by: Warlordtheft Oct 8 2009, 04:39 PM

UCAS: American, Northerner, Yankee, Tory, or by state.
CAS:Southerner, Texan, Confederate, American
NAN:By tribe
Tir Na Og:Irish, Tuatha
Tir Tairngire: Got me...probably they refer to themselves as the chosen ones . Post nobility---I'd say most non-elves would call themselves American, but the Elves would refer to themselves as from the Tir in speritheral.

Posted by: TBRMInsanity Oct 8 2009, 05:04 PM

UCAS -> American
CAS -> Confederate
CFS -> Calafornian
Quebec -> Quebecois
NAN -> By tribe
Tir Tairngire -> Tirs
Tir Na Nog -> Tuatha

I don't think the Canadian's in the UCAS would still refer to themselves as Canadians. To be Canadian you have to be a part of Canada, being part of the UCAS makes you American. Someone may be Canadian-American (to denote that they are from Canadian heritage) but if someone asks them what their nationality is, they are American.

To take a parallel to modern Canada, I consider myself an British-Canadian (as I have a British heritage) but my nationality is Canadian.

Posted by: PBI Oct 8 2009, 07:02 PM

What Canadians in UCAS call themselves would be related to their age, I imagine. 30 years or so of integration, depending on how vigourously it was pursued by the US, especially in the SR verse, may have eroded any sense of Canadian nationalism.

Posted by: TBRMInsanity Oct 8 2009, 07:26 PM

I couldn't agree more. I think that even after unification that many Canadians would have felt some what disappointed about their Canadian heritage (as they asked to join the USA and were lucky enough that the USA wanted to change their names to the UCAS).

Posted by: PBI Oct 8 2009, 07:35 PM

Personally, I think the designers really cocked up on that one, grossly underestimating the depth of Canadian nationalism, but since we're talking What Needed To Be Done In Order To Unsettle Things... the further we move from the event in SR, the greater the lessening of Canadian nationalism. After a couple generations, there could well be no one who even remembers when there was a Canada.

The same could probably be applied to most of the new SR nations, especially if they've been around long enough for national indoctination to have gone through at least a generation.

Posted by: Marwynn Oct 8 2009, 07:49 PM

I thought they were referred to as CanAms or Canamericans? I don't know where I read that though, so maybe it's just in my head.

Posted by: Penta Oct 8 2009, 09:06 PM

This all came about, FWIW, because I was stuck imagining news or diplomatic reports in the Sixth World. And I got to thinking, well...

Where one would say "The American Ambassador" "The British Ambassador", etc....What do you use?

"The Confederate Ambassador" works. "The Tir Ambassador" - Which Tir? And so forth.

Posted by: TBRMInsanity Oct 8 2009, 09:57 PM

And that is the way the Elves want it. Though I think if they said the Tir Ambassador they would more likely refer to the closer or region specific Tir (kinda like the Indian Ambassador in the 1800's). To clarify they may say the Tir Ambassador from Tir Tairngire.

Posted by: Chrysalis Oct 8 2009, 10:05 PM

They are titles and therefore I would use the proper titles. She is not the American Ambassador, she is the Ambassador of the United States (of America).
Again, there are two American presidents today. The Presidents of the United States and Mexico.

But anyways, who gives a damn.

Posted by: Dikotana Oct 9 2009, 03:57 AM

South America isn't America?

I've just become accustomed to using CAS and UCAS as adjectives. Big D was the UCAS (YOO-Cass) president. He planned a diplomatic trip to his CAS neighbors. Tir works the same way, and you can figure out which from context. It works for Georgian today!

Companies generally don't have adjectives. Even the megas don't have the kind of national identity that countries do.

Posted by: Nath Oct 9 2009, 08:08 AM

"American", "Indian", "Congolese", "Dominican", "Georgian", "Guinean" already cause such problem. Also, most people overlook that "British" applies to the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" (that's no longer a problem in Shadowrun, though).

In Tir na nOg, the frequent use of the "Eireann" adjective (gaelic for Irish) implies that the old name still applies. Tir na Nog might be, as the 1937 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_Irish_state put it, "the description of the state" and not its name.
Compare this to Burma/Myanmar. In spite of all the government's efforts to enforce their new chosen name, "Myanmarese" is even more rarely used.

"Canadian-American" was used for the UCAS in Shadows of North America (in nonetheless than a State of the Union address). Personally, I also use "Confederate American" as an adjective for the CAS.