You Keep Using That Word/Very Pedantic: Difference between revisions

* The word '''earth''' means soil. The planet is "''E''arth".

** Beautifully lampshaded in ''[[Pocahontas]]'': "You can own the Earth, and still, all you'll own is earth, until... (you can paint with all the colors of the wind.)"

* A '''nation''' is a collective group of people who share a racial or cultural identity. A '''state''' is a political entity that controls a geographical area. While the two often coincide, and are used as synonyms (since it became fashionable for the state to rule in the name of the people), there are plenty of places where they don't, such as the UK which has many nations in one state, Ireland, where (arguably) one nation is in two adjoining states, and Africa, where the boundaries of nations and states rarely have anything to do with each other.

* Being '''Hispanic''' and being Spanish aren't the same thing. Hispanic people are of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race. Hispanics may be white, black, native, Asian, or any combination of the above. Spanish people (aka Spaniards) are from Spain, and ''only'' Spain. People may confuse the two terms because [[Spexico|Spanish culture has a huge influence on Hispanic culture]] and is the name of the language commonly spoken by those people in those places, and indeed because many of these regions used to be part of the Spanish Empire, but that's like calling people from the U.S. "English". Not helping the confusion is that Hispanic until recently also sometimes meant 'of Spain', from ''Hispania'', the Roman name for what is now known as the Iberian Peninsula. Which is in Europe, and includes Spain. In truth, neither Spanish or Hispanic have any better geographical accuracy (in fact the Iberian Peninsula, containing Portugal, part of France, and other places that are neither Spanish nor Hispanic as it is understood, is slightly worse) and the use of either of them is because of their connection to the Spanish Empire. This is likely a factor in why "Hispanic" is slowly going out of favor and being replaced by Latino (for males)/Latina (for females) and more country of origin-specific names (e.g. Chicano [for males]/Chicana[for females] for Americans whose predecessors came from Mexico).