Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 January 14

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January 14

America

In the article on Israel Zangwill's The Melting Pot (play), the hero David Quixano "decides to emigrate to an American country ... (and) ends up moving to the US." I did a second take on this, being accustomed to "America" being synonymous with the United States. Then another: was he tossing up between Canada and the US, or the whole shebang, north to south, and if so what do these 15 or 20 countries have in common for a refugee? Doug butler (talk) 05:45, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't know where to find a secondary source discussing this. However, the play itself is available on Project Gutenberg, here.

On the HTML page, the word "America" or derivatives (not counting the German/Yiddish "Amerika") appear 119 times. From a brief scan, I see very little indication that it ever means anything but the United States. I suspect that the phrase "an American country" in the article is the invention of some Wikipedia editor. --Trovatore (talk) 06:01, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Hello Doug butler. When you ponder the concepts North America, Central America and South America, you will come to understand that the concept of "America" was much broader for Jewish refugees back then than the common contemporary usage of that word. If a ship for New York had just departed when an emigre reached the docks, they may have chosen to depart for Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina or several other smaller countries. There are Jewish communities today in all of them. My father-in-law's parents emigrated from Belarus in exactly this time period and somehow ended up in Berkeley, California despite being largely uneducated. Their son earned a degree in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley in 1938. Those were the days. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:06, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

There's two different, mostly unrelated questions at play here. One, answered admirably here by Cullen328, is the migration of Jewish people to the western hemisphere broadly. As noted, there are Jewish communities in every country in North and South America, and a Jewish person from Europe could have migrated to any of them; there's a larger Jewish community in the U.S., but that doesn't mean that none went to places like Canada or Guatemala or Brazil. You can find more to read about this in History of the Jews in Latin America and the Caribbean and History of the Jews in Canada for non-U.S. western hemisphere Jewish peoples. The other question, basically unrelated to that one, is the linguistic question of the meaning of words like "America" or "American". Generally, when the word "America" or "American" is used unadorned by any modifiers or determiners or anything else, it almost always refers to The United States. When a person wishes to refer to something else, they usually add some modifier like "North America" or "The Americas" or "South American". Whether or not it should be that way is irrelevant; it simply is that way. Language does not always follow the rules we may want it to. It develops on its own and can come to a state which doesn't fit with our desires for logical consistency. Oh well. See American (word), to wit "In modern English, American generally refers to persons or things related to the United States of America; among native English speakers this usage is almost universal, with any other use of the term requiring specification." The article does go on to say that some people wish really hard this wasn't the case, however despite their deepest desires, it is. --Jayron32 15:47, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Good catch. It was changed a couple of weeks ago by a troll, 188.37.246.134 (talk · contribs). Pretty much everything he's done on Wikipedia has been reverted. Including, now, this "an American city" stuff. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:16, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

(ec) @Cullen328: Possibly. But take a glance through the text with CTRL-F. Albeit there are a few references to Columbus and to America being discovered, in the main it seems pretty clear that the author is using "America" to mean the United States. The term is used together with references to the flag, and to a particular republic, to "our" Statue of Liberty. --Trovatore (talk) 06:19, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Trovatore, after speed reading the script, I agree. When this playwright wrote "America", he meant the United States. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 07:00, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

I'll bet there are more than a few US citizens (and others) who believe that Columbus did discover the area now occupied by the United States (excluding Puerto Rico). Cuba was the closest he came, I believe. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:48, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

There's a day off on Columbus Day every year, so its not surprising. Alansplodge (talk) 15:36, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

In one episode of "I Love Lucy", Ricky (a Cuban, fittingly) says, "All I know about American history is that Columbus discovered Ohio in 1776!" ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:34, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

In the Old World, ESPECIALLY prior to World War II, 'America' was often synonymous with the New World in general. While that might not have been the case in England, to the rest of the world in the 19th (and very early 20th) century, the United States was not of any particular greater importance than any other country. (Great Britain was the world superpower of the time, and the United States kept up a fairly isolationist foreign policy in those days). So, I would say that the answer to your question is that it could have meant anywhere in the a New World. Firejuggler86 (talk) 22:33, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Are there sources that support your assertion that (non-English) Europeans routinely used “America” to mean the entire New World prior to WWII? Blueboar (talk) 22:54, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Khomeini's the Little Green Book

• Khomeini, Ayatollah. Khomeini's the Little Green Book. N.p., CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.

Seems to be available @ Google books but without preview. Like in this Quora online there are unconfirmed claims that book contains references to 'thighing'. A related discussion seem to be on @ reliable sources notice board subject seem to be under discussion.

Does any one has access to above said 'Green book' and can any one confirm if there is any truth in the claims? and if so what is the page number?

Bookku (talk) 18:26, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

WP:REX is a better place to find people who can access obscure or hard-to-reach sources rather than here. Perhaps you could try there? --Jayron32 18:55, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

I have a copy of Tahrir al-Wasilah translated to English by Sayyid Ali Reza Naqavi in 2001 in e-book format (so page numbers are more or less meaningless). It indeed mentions "thigh sex" but not in that context. Thigh sex and menstruation: it is permissible to enjoy the menstruating woman in a way other than sexual intercourse through the front female organ, like kissing, or rubbing the male organ on the woman's thighs, or the like Thigh sex and fasting: If a person merely intended to rub his organ on the thighs, but the penetration has taken place unintentionally, then the fast shall not be rendered void., Ejaculation of the Semen, whether by masturbation, touching, kissing, rubbing (the male organ)on the thighs (of another person), or such other acts which are intended to cause discharge of semen. Rather even in case when the discharge of semen is not intended, but it was the usual consequence of the said act, in that case too it shall render the fast void. I cannot find any mentions of sex with infants. It is, of course, possible that the paragraphs mentioning sex with infants was redacted by the translator. ImTheIP (talk) 18:59, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

That mention of infantophilia comes across as a jarring non sequitur unless one first reads the unconfirmed quotes in the Quora post linked in the question. -- ToE 05:51, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Intercrural sex.
Sleigh (talk) 00:29, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

I think that is in the Tahrirolvasyleh, Fourth Edition, Darol Elm, Qom. Anybody have access to that edition? Ypatch (talk) 05:11, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

I would assume that sex with infants is highly non-Islamic, as far as anything that I've heard -- however, some (by no means all) historic traditions of Islamic legal interpretations have taken the hadiths and historical reports that Muhammad consummated his marriage with `A'ishah when she was nine years old as a precedent[1] (of course, this would apply in terms of lunar years, so nine lunar years would be about 8 years and 9 months in solar terms)... AnonMoos (talk) 05:45, 16 January 2021 (UTC)