Why do Americans call it marijuana if that's the spanish term?

Answer 1

The word marijuana comes from the Spanish name, Maria Juana, which was an idiomatic version of the late nineteenth-century Spanish word, mariguan, which came originally from Mexican Spanish, marihuana; beyond that there are no reliable records on the origin of the word.

Thousands of words in the English language come from sources other than English. So, we get shampoo from Hindi; restaurant, menu, domino, from French; boss from Dutch, pizza from Italian, and so on and on.

Many words which migrated to English arrived in Europe with New World products, the new words adapted to suit local languages. Orange, tomato, barbecue, beer, are just some examples; food words were frequently among the first to arrive in and become new parts of older languages, because food is always one of the most important and most highly-regarded imports from other cultures.

Get in the habit of checking out the origin of words when you look in a dictionary, or try the link below; you'll be astonished at what's there to learn from words we all take for granted.

In the 20s and 30s people started calling it marijuana because the government wanted to make it illegal for it's uses. Racism was a big factor in much of the Propaganda, so they said that Mexicans and "negros" would smoke the

"marihuana" and turn into violent killers. They said many bad things about marijuana involving violence, racism, loose morality, etc. The propaganda ended up scaring everyone to make it illegal without any scientific facts, expert opinions, ect. Plus today most of the marijuana in America is grown in Mexico.