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I think this is a great tool for getting people to reconsider how the U.S. views itself compared to the rest of the world, but it's still legitimate to refer to U.S. citizens as "Americans" because the official name of the country is the United States of America. Whatever the larger cultural implications, it is part of the country's name.
Consider what we call citizens of "los Estados Unidos Mexicanos" or "a República Federativa do Brasil." In the context of typical naming conventions, "American" is pretty standard. There's also not much of a need to refer to everyone living in both North and South America as a whole.
Besides, "United States citizen" is nowhere near as snappy as "imperialist."
America in English means something different than America in Spanish or Portuguese, it's just that simple. I don't ask people to use the seven continent model when we're speaking Spanish, and I don't expect people to use the six continent model when we're speaking English. It's a dumb fight.
The actually confusing thing in English is that "American" refers to both people from the US and people from the Americas, but context clues usually cover it.
The confusing thing in Spanish is that estadounidenses technically should also refer to Mexicans, but again, context clues.
Language is imperfect 🤷♀️
The only stupider fight is asking a French or Brazilian person who invented the airplane.
The only stupider fight is asking a French or Brazilian person who invented the airplane.
Well they flew red white and blue,
or
they were Americans
NGL chief I will literally never refer to people from the United States as USians. If you are from the US and won't call yourself or your neighbors american you're being a radlib pedant and cringe.
what annoys me is the people who complain about latinx. get over it already you dumbos
In English the word is American, nothing to correct.
If you find yourself speaking Spanish then be conscious to say estadounidense instead of americano.
Still unclear to me what to do with “Americans”: saw some ppl write “USians” but that sounds so weird.
Generally I say US citizens if the sentence would be awkward rephrased. Otherwise I just rephrase it to something like "people from the US"
Haha I got in the habit of using USians a while ago precisely because it looks and sounds silly
Do you pronounce it similar to "nuisance"? Cause it would be very appropriate.
This is like when you say can I go to the bathroom and the teacher is like I don't know can you it's just pointless pedantry
I don't mind it.
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The United States literally borders another country called the United States, but nobody says "EUMian"
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New Guinea is on the Australian continent, but nobody says "CAian"
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There are fully THREE countries in Italy. Nobody says "RIano"
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They're called IRISH.
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Oops there's also a capitalist China, so "Chinese" is cancelled
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Micronesia consists of Guam, Saipan, Marshall Islands, Palau, etc, but the Federated States of Micronesia just says "Micronesian"
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Wait maybe you can use a US state name! Whoops lol, maybe, but 10% of those are ethnicities maybe that's not the best idea
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Oh also the State of California is only part of California, so fuck you
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North America and South America are continents.
Rest of the world, you can have the name America, you really can. All you have to do is get one other country to put the word "America" in its name. Do it. Until then, I'm gonna have a demonym ok literally everyone else has one
EDIT: ALSO: None of these Canadians or Brazillians actually fucking use it! It's like this aspirational thing or something... like they just want to reserve it so they know it's there. If they want to use it, they will be calling themselves Americans, which would also include the US, so what makes them balk at [persons presiding in USA] if it's supposed to also apply to [persons presiding in USA]???
None of these Canadians or Brazillians actually fucking use it!
There's just not much need to ever refer to everyone living in North and South America collectively. It's way more useful to break the hemisphere down into regions or countries based on linguistic/cultural/historical differences, or a difference like imperial core/imperial periphery, etc. Even broad classifiers like "Latin America" or "Iberoamerica" have notable gaps.
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I don’t care as long as you’re wishing death to the red white and blue :amerikkka: Stupid ass fucking country I swear to god.
yeah but thats the reason it was called that to begin with, to imply a central hegemony over the Americas
I think that's a bit ahistorical. I doubt the framers of the Constitution -- who were living in a failed state under the Articles of Confederation -- were thinking about challenging, say, a Spanish Empire that had ruled most of the Americas for the past ~300 years. They were far more concerned with balancing power among themselves and figuring out how to pay Revolutionary War debts. The early U.S. was not stable enough to do imperialism beyond its immediate western border, and displacing European colonizers isn't even imperialism so much as starting a full-scale war with a highly-organized, heavily-armed enemy. It wasn't really until the mid-19th century (after the Bolivarian wave of revolutions turned much of Latin America into even newer, even weaker states) that the U.S. really started looking outside of continental North America. For the first handful of decades there we were focused on westward expansion and not much else.
I agree it is ambiguous but it's okay. I think we can take it as shortening "The United States of America" by using the last word. Like referring to the UK as Britain isn't entirely the same thing, but okay too.
All the other countries have names that don't include "America". When taking about the continents, you say "Americas" and use North and South if you want to refer to the shitty one or the marginally better one (in the same order).
