Other meaning for USA people
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Mexican upbringing here, it is most definitely a "Whitey" thing.
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Hi, Brazilian here.
I'm sorry, but "the number of Americans who don't live in the US is tiny"?? WTF?
Hi, South ~~AMERICAN!!!! here.
the US doesn't get to shove their so-called "democracy" up our asses, impose their monetary exchange, be proud of their stupid ass imperialism, force people to learn their dumb as fuck language and then go "yeah, it's OUR language, you can't dictate how we call ourselves"
Sorry, dude, but you kinda lost the privilege to "dictate" your own language when you decided to think about the whole third world as your backyard and to name yourselves after THE WHOLE FUCKING CONTINENT.
peace, bye!
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America no es solo USA
Nah, we often call them Americans too, despite them being like Canada's trousers. Many (most? I'm not certain) Canadians know how Americans label themselves abroad and are okay being a separate group to avoid bad impressions. "eres Americano? No; soy Canadiense" or so.
But thanks for thinking of us. It's great to be considered!
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Might want to check who you're actually talking to here. You seem to be making some incorrect assumptions.
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What about it?
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That has very little to do with the topic, which is colloquial language as it exists now, compared and contrasted between English and Spanish in specific.
And, tbh here, if you wanna talk populations, brazil is half the population of South America. And that total is still only 100million higher than the US. Since we're talking about mainly Spanish and English here, you can decide if you want brazil included or not, but even that's still not some kind of crazy difference.
Since Canada and Mexico are the other parts of North America, and don't generally give a flying fuck about the terminology, are we going to include them in the count too? Like, the Mexicans I know use their own Spanish terms for Americans, sometimes even when speaking English.
Like, dude, I get it, you wanna link everything into colonialism and imperialism, which is fine. But let's not pretend that Americans hasn't been the term used in English across the world for damn near as long as the US has existed. It was what, 1788? 1789? That one of the French diplomats used it in writing the first time? Might have been before that, but that's the one I remember. The term was certainly in use before that.
Now, using "Americans" to refer to everyone over here did exist before the U.S., going back to at least the 1500s. I think that was only in use in English, I've never looked up what was used in French and Spanish back then. But since the USA came into being as country, it has been the default term for US citizens colloquially.
Even some of the other languages use variations of it. There's Mexicans and Nicaraguans at least that use Americanos rather than other terms. I swear the Guatemalans near here default to that as well, when they aren't using gringo or race specific terminology, but I don't have as much interaction with them.
All of which goes back to the point that the whining about it online is a fairly recent thing, and it was definitely not a thing back far as the nineties irl for the general population. That may be biased by my exposure to Latinos being almost exclusively people that live here, rather than visitors.
If people wanna try to shift language into something else, all it takes is coming up with a replacement term that's not unwieldy or stupid sounding (like usians), then getting people to use it.
But nobody has come up with a realistic english replacement. Usians isn't going to happen. You might run into it online because it's easier to type, but you won't see it used in speech because it sounds stupid. It would be like calling brits ukians.
Hell, go find something in another language, English is great at adopting words. Beikoku-jin (japanese) or Usanano (Esperanto) are cool as hell, flow off the tongue, and beikoku would definitely get the weebs on board. Give it a go, see what happens.
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Now, using "Americans" to refer to everyone over here did exist before the U.S., going back to at least the 1500s. I think that was only in use in English, I've never looked up what was used in French and Spanish back then. But since the USA came into being as country, it has been the default term for US citizens colloquially.
Confidently wrong. US leaders didn't start referring to its citizens as americans or its country as america until ~1900.
I know you won't read the book I linked, and are going off of white-supremacist vibes, so here's an article for everyone else about the history of this imperialist usage.
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IDGAF about what leaders called it/us. That's almost irrelevant.
But other people in the world absolutely were using the term American to refer to citizens of the US before the 1900s.
I'm also not sure why you insist on staying on this tangent when the conversation was about current usage.
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Getting you to read is impossible. Stop white-supremacist vibing and actually read about its historical usage. I even linked you an article, which I know you didn't read.
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Dude, stop with the ad hominem bullshit.
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Thank you for the information. Guess I can't joke about being a gringo lol
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Being a native, a Yankee to me is a New Englander. My Spanish friend had to gently explain to me, “shut up, you’re all yanquis.”
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it was difficult writing it too...
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Yeah thanks. I said pseudo because I do t really know the meaning of these words apart from vic3, nor do I know of anyone from the americas
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other people in the world absolutely were using the term American to refer to citizens of the US before the 1900s.
I mean, a few, I imagine. There's always been people saying shit wrong. Would help your case if you actually had a source and not just a vibe to refute an evidence based position.
By population, however, most of the world isn't the anglosphere. Spanish speakers, which is most of America, by and large call you "Estadunidenses" whenever it's not "gringo". A good chunk of us also speak English and object to gringos colonizing "america" much like Indonesians or Indians or Malaysians probably would have if Japan decided it was "Asia".
You might not have decided that we speak English, but the same government that made it a necessity for us in the global south to learn the language is the one that decided to steal that term. Language matters.
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Given that you're the native, you should gently explain to the colonial that they are the ones who are wrong.
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Eh, NY has the Yankees sports team but they are not part of New England and I'd say a good portion of the country would say NY has no Yankees in it besides the team.
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Sounds like that fight was lost 100 years ago.
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Thing is, it's "United States of America", much like "United States of Mexico" and, before 1968, "United States of Brazil". So when they call themselves americans, they're technically correct.
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Call them murican. Everyone gets it, even the usa-ians
