On 4/11/06, Mark Gallagher m.g.gallagher@student.canberra.edu.au wrote:
Err ... maybe in America (I have noticed Americans don't seem to see the need to specify nationality, presumably because anyone important is from the USA).
If an Australian said "my grandmother was born in Georgia", they would usually mean the country. Otherwise, they'd say "my grandmother was born in Georgia ... you know, in America".
I'm just saying in terms of the likelihood of somebody speaking English who said they were born in "Georgia". The odds are just statistically higher that somebody saying that, knowing nothing else about the context in which it was said, were born in the US state than in the Eastern European country. I of course don't mean that to be much of a convincing argument, but it was something which occurred to me in response to an earlier comment.
FF