Comments by "Science in Engineering" (@matsv201) on "American Reacts to Where is America??" video.
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Because America is a Latin name, and USA don´t speak lathing group, making it a non Latin name for the English speaking part is natural. There is two part that make it a Latin name. Start with a. Typically A in Latin group is a significance that its a person or a substantive. So just dump that. And also Latin typically have soft vocals in the middle like i or e. replace it with a hard like a, o or u.
Of cause, we can´t use a A, so its effectively o or u. Personally i think u sounds the most right. Murica. Wow.. that cached on fast. already in use.
Anyway, when Columbus called America the west indies, the east indies is not India like a lot of people belief. The indies and east indies is pretty much what we would call southern Asia. That is everything. India, Thailand, China and even Indonesia. In China there was talk about a large landmass to the east. This might have been Japan or Philippines, probobly not america.
Vikings that visited Spain in year 1000 was also talking about a large landmass. And there is actually written accounts of that in Spain.
Worth saying is that the circumference of the earth in 1400 was well known. The idéa that Columbus didn´t know it was made up in the 1960-tys. Its total make believe. Columbus did know very well that it was far to long to the east indies to sail in a ship that small.
He was NEVER aiming for the east indies. He was aiming for the west indies that was a the name given for vinland due to miscommunication.
If we look at the actual log, it turned out that it was far longer to America than Columbus had been calculating. It was almost 50% longer than he had been calculated.
Well. if we look at a world map it all me sense. It would seam like he speculated that the continent would be fairly straight, look at newfoundland (that is actually a old viking name.. meaning... new found land... yea.. sorry. it was not that exciting).
The idea that Columbus was a bad navigator and just found it on a fluke is hilariously stupid statementing looking at the logs when Columbus was going back, he didn´t go back to Gran Canaria, but he went back via Azores . Because it was closer and faster. The issue is that Azores is on a tiny island far out in to the Atlantic.
So.. the collusion. The west indies, is not eastern part of India. It have nothing to do with India what so ever. The indies is the area around indian ocean. East indies is the part east of that. And the west indies would be the part that would be even east of the east indies, but simply called the west indies because it would be closer to to the west than the east. Confusing, a bit, but also logical.
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