I think at least part of it is that ‘Acirema’ is way more recognizable as a variant on ‘America’ than is ‘Nacirema’. The ‘N’ is a major decoy, while ‘Acirema’ has the same word shape (“The theory holds that a novel bouma shape created by changing the lower-case letters to upper-case hinders a person’s recall ability.”)
Nacirema huh? I feel stupid now.
It’s a classic! You might enjoy some of the other articles/parables about the Nacirema: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema
So that’s where the N comes from! I was wondering why it was Nacirema instead of Acirema.
I think at least part of it is that ‘Acirema’ is way more recognizable as a variant on ‘America’ than is ‘Nacirema’. The ‘N’ is a major decoy, while ‘Acirema’ has the same word shape (“The theory holds that a novel bouma shape created by changing the lower-case letters to upper-case hinders a person’s recall ability.”)