I’ve worked with folks from around the world (including Central and South Americans), some can be touchy about it.
Had to tell them “sorry, I, as an American, don’t define these terms. Blame Europeans, not me”.
“US”, “America”, “Americans” all have specific denotations… per EMEA, and hell, even Canadians.
It’s like nicknames - if you have one, you didn’t choose it. It was earned or applied by someone else.
Yeah… I learned Spanish in Mexico as a wee lad, the folk living North of there were called “Gringos” or “Yankees”. Back in Europe, behind the iron curtain, it was “Americaniard” or “Yank”, rarely “American”… even when people meant no disrespect.
Then in Spain… (@PRUSSIA_x86@lemmy.world, you may want to see this)… “American” refers to any citizen of the whole continent… even the official dictionary itself, in it’s latest update, actually states:
debe evitarse el empleo de americano para referirse exclusivamente a los habitantes de los Estados Unidos, uso abusivo que se explica por el hecho de que los estadounidenses utilizan a menudo el nombre abreviado América (en inglés, sin tilde) para referirse a su país. No debe olvidarse que América es el nombre de todo el continente y son americanos todos los que lo habitan.
The use of American to refer exclusively to the inhabitants of the United States should be avoided, an abusive use that is explained by the fact that Americans often use the abbreviated name America (in English, without accent) to refer to their country. It should not be forgotten that America is the name of the entire continent and all those who inhabit it are Americans.
So yeah, kind of like nicknames… but then some places have different rules about the nicknames. 😉
(…and then there are the actually vulgar despective nicknames, which I won’t get into here)
And therefore, lies my point: you will find a lot of people whom you’ll have to copy&paste that justification for. For life. 😉
Bonus: also beware of referring to the USA as “the United States”, less you bring forth the wrath of someone from the “Mexican United States”.
Touché
I’ve worked with folks from around the world (including Central and South Americans), some can be touchy about it. Had to tell them “sorry, I, as an American, don’t define these terms. Blame Europeans, not me”.
“US”, “America”, “Americans” all have specific denotations… per EMEA, and hell, even Canadians.
It’s like nicknames - if you have one, you didn’t choose it. It was earned or applied by someone else.
Yeah… I learned Spanish in Mexico as a wee lad, the folk living North of there were called “Gringos” or “Yankees”. Back in Europe, behind the iron curtain, it was “Americaniard” or “Yank”, rarely “American”… even when people meant no disrespect.
Then in Spain… (@PRUSSIA_x86@lemmy.world, you may want to see this)… “American” refers to any citizen of the whole continent… even the official dictionary itself, in it’s latest update, actually states:
https://www.rae.es/dpd/Estados Unidos
So yeah, kind of like nicknames… but then some places have different rules about the nicknames. 😉
(…and then there are the actually vulgar despective nicknames, which I won’t get into here)
Oh that’s cool to hear about. Neat!