I agree. Maybe immigrating Europe or emigrating the US, but that does seem odd.

Good point

This is already common usage and I don’t see the need for any prefixes to the word.

As we’ve already seen in this thread, sometimes prefixes are needed to help establish the arrow of causation when people do migrate. Did they come to or leave from this or that country? Etc.

not the current english word.

Good thing language can change over time :)

Another reason to go vegan:

Your butter won’t have shit in it!

people were immigrating from Europe

The linguistically correct term her would be emigrating from Europe.

to the US

This is immigrating.

emigrating to Europe

This is immigration.

from the US

The word you’re looking for is emigration.

emigrating from Europe

You’re correct here.

to the US

Once again, immigration.

immigrating to Europe

This is the linguistically correct use of the term.

from the US

Proper word would be emigrating.

Easiest solution is to say migrating

Migration by itself doesn’t indicate whether you’re referring to domestic-only movement, where people migrate inside of a country, or domestic-to-foreign where they cross a border, or foreign-to-foreign movement.

It all depends on the boundary you set.

If your chosen boundary is Europe, people moving to Europe are immigrating there, and people moving from Europe are emigrating there.

If your chosen boundary is the US, immigration is moving to the US while emigration is moving from the US.

Since migration isn’t specific and can refer to any of the above cases, I prefer transmigration since “trans-” refers to “across” which I often interpret as “out from and in to”.

We don’t need to give up on prepositions in order to have more accurate language.

In my view, “migrate” according to Etymonline originates from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *mei which means “to change, go, move”.

I don’t believe this term refers to moving in or out of something, or any other preposition.

As we’ve been discussing in this post, immigrate and emigrate represent inverses of each other. It makes sense to look for logical ways to combine those.

I think the best prefix for this would be trans- for, according to Etymonline, this means “across, beyond, through, on the other side of; go beyond”. Specifically, I would refer to trans- as meaning “out from and in to”, which gives us the word “transmigrate”. Etymonline has a dictionary entry for “transmigration”.

It looks like Merriam-Webster, Oxford, and American Heritage dictionaries support “transmigrate” as an entry.

According to Etymonline,

Immigrate = in- “into, in, on, upon” from PIE root *en + migrare “to move” from PIE root *mei

Emigrate = assimilated form of ex- “out” from PIE root *eghs + migrare “to move” from PIE root *mei

So I guess to correct usage would be:

Immigrating to Europe/US

Emigrating from US/Europe

##NicoleDeservedBetter

Big brain

Interesting! Do you have any etymological sources that go into this more? I’d be curious to learn

I believe I read somewhere that the singular for “they” used to be “thy”, but that makes language sound terribly old. Doubt it’ll get picked up in the mainstream

Great comic.

Sync for Lemmy >>>>

Depending on where you grew up and were taught geography, America may or may not have been taught to you as a combined landmass from the Southern tip of Chile to the northern islands of Canada, or separate continents split near Central America.

There is no right or wrong way of defining that. It all depends on custom and convention.

The reason you say why people from the USA respond with the United States when people ask them where they’re from is likely because it’s a shortened version of the full country name. This is similar to asking someone born in the United Mexican States that they’re from Mexico, or someone from the People’s Republic of China that they’re from China, or someone from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that they’re British (or Scottish or Irish or Welsh), or someone from the Argentine Republic that they’re Argentinian, or someone from the Boliviaran Republic of Venezuela that they’re Venezuelan, or someone from the Republic of Korea that they’re South Korean (although most people actually just refer to this country as Korea, but that might depend on regional differences too depending on which country you grew up in and were taught from).

Another reason might be how the USA’s government is structured. We have a federation where the overall government is a sum total of Tribal, State, and Federal governments. People of indigenous tribes in the USA refer to themselves as Native Americans or Indigenous, while people from different states have names for themselves (e.g. Michiganders from Michigan, Californians from California, Kansans from Kansas, Hoosiers from Indiana). You might think that because the federal government, officially called the “United States” in our constitution, covers the entirely of the geography of the USA that that’s how you would refer to people from that nation. And you would be somewhat right because the US takes on international relations per the duties outlined in the constitution. But it would be false to refer to the whole country as just the US. The whole country is the USA, and perhaps that is why people from that country refer to themselves as American.

Why can’t we have a more nuanced discussion where we talk about how each country/culture prefers to be referred to? I think it’s pretty asinine to refer to the people of, for instance, South Korea as South Koreans because that’s my American conception of that country, when in reality people of the Republic of Korea refer to themselves as Hanguk-in or Hanguk-saram. I would be perfectly fine with referring to that people using that terminology.

Why do we have to force labels and categories onto peoples when we could just listen to them for what they prefer themselves