Other meaning for USA people
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Hispanic here, I grew up using “gringo” specifically for people from the U.S. despite skin tone.
Canadians are “Canadiense”, English are “Ingles” but United States? “Estaso Unidente”? It’s sort of like saying “United Statian” but arguably more “correct/proper”
Gringo is just much faster/easier to say.
That being said this can vary a little from one Latin-American country to another.
Apologies if this is an ignorant question but, if Canadian = Candiense and English = Ingles, why wouldn’t American = Americano?
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From Spain here, when we want to speak about USA people we use the term "yankee" or "gringo" rather than "american" cause our americans arent from USA, that terms are correct or mean other things?
Just say "idiots." Source: USA citizen.
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What about Canada?
I think the point the previous user is getting at is that there is no "America" the continent in most English-speaking countries—there is North America and South America.
Canada is in North America but it's not in "America," which without the North/South prefix, will make most English-speaking people assume you mean the US and not the continent Canada and the US are on.
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Just say "idiots." Source: USA citizen.
No no, he has a point...
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If I want to come off as a pseudo-intellectual I call them Dixie for east-north and Yankee for south-west (but also Florida and the bible belt) and gringo for hispanic Americans. I don't know if any of those terms are really correct to use in that context and my definitions are entirely vibes-based.
I'd say leave east/west out of the Yankee/Dixie dichotomy you're imagining, because every single southeastern state was a slave state that supported the confederacy.
It also falls apart when you go west of the Mississippi River, which was (outside of Texas and California) mostly unincorporated territory during the time of the civil war and not a part of what would have been considered the union or the confederacy at that time.
Also don't refer to Hispanic Americans as "gringo" because that is a term used in Latin America to refer to people who are not Latin American.
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Being from the USA, I can confidently say “Yankee” is a term that is fairly neutral in meaning. People from the South states use it to refer to basically any American not from the South, and I get the sense people from the UK use it to refer to anyone from the USA.
In my experience, “Gringo” seems to be a term used by Spanish-speakers (even ones from North and South America) to refer to English speakers who think they’re better than everyone, so it appears to be a term with negative connotations
Texan here. Yankee is definitely not a neutral word to refer to everyone from the USA. Some people down here will fight you over it, but most would just give you a confused look.
I've always understood gringo to mean white person, especially one who can't speak Spanish. The term is sometimes used in Mexican restaurants to let the staff know that you can't deal with too many jalapeños.
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From Spain here, when we want to speak about USA people we use the term "yankee" or "gringo" rather than "american" cause our americans arent from USA, that terms are correct or mean other things?
Do you not have a term in Spanish?
If y'all use yank, yankee, or gringo, they're all fine.
But, American is fine too. If you're using English, everyone will know what you mean. It isn't like it hasn't been the term used in English for at least a century.
Here the thing. If you're referring to someone from one of the two/three americas, you specify north, central and south. That depends a little on whether you consider all three as discrete areas, or not, but that's the norm in English.
If you want to refer to all people from the americas at once, Americans is also fine. Context will carry which way you're using it. English is fairly easy to make contextual indicators like that.
An example: "oh, Americans love their flag". Which americans are we talking about? The ones with a specific American flag. Which, the statement isn't universally true, it's just an example.
If you aren't using English, it doesn't matter at all, use whatever terminology is the norm in that language.
The reason it doesn't matter is that there really isn't an "American" people in the continental sense. The cultures of the continents don't even have a unifying effect, though you do have some connection between Spanish speaking vs Portuguese, vs native, vs English, etc. The language links in South America are much more significant than the fact that they live on the same continent.
Any time you'd be referring to the entire Americas, or the peoples of them, you'd specify that because there's not a single American continent.
One nation out of all of them being america really isn't a difficulty in conversation. It's a non issue.
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Or where they currently live.
Or, the case of NYC Puerto Ricans, both (New Yorican lol)
I suppose it depends on context, but someone who was born in PR, but lives in NYC, is a Puerto Rican. Someone born in NYC to a Puerto Rican family is a New Yorican. Both people are ethnically Puerto Rican, but only one is from Puerto Rico.
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I wish Oregonians were called Oregonos instead because sounding like a spice is cool. lol
Oregonos sounds like part of a complete breakfast.
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Oregonos sounds like part of a complete breakfast.
Oregano-s and Oregon-O’s. I like it.
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Texan here. Yankee is definitely not a neutral word to refer to everyone from the USA. Some people down here will fight you over it, but most would just give you a confused look.
I've always understood gringo to mean white person, especially one who can't speak Spanish. The term is sometimes used in Mexican restaurants to let the staff know that you can't deal with too many jalapeños.
Do Southerners use Yankee pejoratively to refer to northerners?
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Do Southerners use Yankee pejoratively to refer to northerners?
I'm afraid so. There are a lot of people still fighting our Civil War, the one that supposedly ended over 150 years ago. Even without those troglodytes, there is a distinct cultural difference between the North and South, as I think there is in many countries. We tend to rub each other the wrong way sometimes.
Old joke about the difference. Walk up to a Southerner's house, and they say, "can I help you?" Walk up to a Yankee's house, and it's, "whaddya want?"
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Texan here. Yankee is definitely not a neutral word to refer to everyone from the USA. Some people down here will fight you over it, but most would just give you a confused look.
I've always understood gringo to mean white person, especially one who can't speak Spanish. The term is sometimes used in Mexican restaurants to let the staff know that you can't deal with too many jalapeños.
I've heard gringo is about language, primarily English. Not about being a whitey
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What about Canada?
They're just Americans anyways
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Do Southerners use Yankee pejoratively to refer to northerners?
Yes, since the civil war era.
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From Spain here, when we want to speak about USA people we use the term "yankee" or "gringo" rather than "american" cause our americans arent from USA, that terms are correct or mean other things?
In the USA, Yankee refers to mainly northeast US, including the New York City area. Western Americans would be neutral about being called that and you might piss off some southerners.
My exposure to the term gringo has mainly been that it refers to white Americans. I don't know if you would call a black American gringo or how they would accept it.
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Yes, since the civil war era.
Or as my husband's Southern-ass grandma called it, the "war of northern agression"
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Or as my husband's Southern-ass grandma called it, the "war of northern agression"
Reflexively I wanted to downvote that
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Do you not have a term in Spanish?
If y'all use yank, yankee, or gringo, they're all fine.
But, American is fine too. If you're using English, everyone will know what you mean. It isn't like it hasn't been the term used in English for at least a century.
Here the thing. If you're referring to someone from one of the two/three americas, you specify north, central and south. That depends a little on whether you consider all three as discrete areas, or not, but that's the norm in English.
If you want to refer to all people from the americas at once, Americans is also fine. Context will carry which way you're using it. English is fairly easy to make contextual indicators like that.
An example: "oh, Americans love their flag". Which americans are we talking about? The ones with a specific American flag. Which, the statement isn't universally true, it's just an example.
If you aren't using English, it doesn't matter at all, use whatever terminology is the norm in that language.
The reason it doesn't matter is that there really isn't an "American" people in the continental sense. The cultures of the continents don't even have a unifying effect, though you do have some connection between Spanish speaking vs Portuguese, vs native, vs English, etc. The language links in South America are much more significant than the fact that they live on the same continent.
Any time you'd be referring to the entire Americas, or the peoples of them, you'd specify that because there's not a single American continent.
One nation out of all of them being america really isn't a difficulty in conversation. It's a non issue.
Most americans, the majority of whom don't live in the US, dislike the usurpation of that term. There's a longer history starting in the late 1800s of US politicians using "america", "greater america", to coincide with its imperial ambitions in Latin america and the carribean.
The USA even had a time when it had more people in its colonies living outside its contiguous borders, than it did inside.
There's a lot on this in the book, how to hide an empire.
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The reason for this is simple: the word in English is "American". Because in English speaking countries, it is almost universally the case that we talk about the 7 continents. And in the rare case we talk about 6 continents, it's from merging Europe and Asia (which, frankly, is blatantly a far superior model of the continents), not merging North America and South America.
So "America" unambiguously refers to the country, and there's no need for estadounidense, any more than there's a need for "commonwealthian" for someone from the Commonwealth of Australia.
What about it?
