Comment on What efforts would it take to strip the name Americans from the folks inhabiting the US?
Harlehatschi@lemmy.ml 1 week ago
“americans” is a bad name but it’s more specific than “united statesians”. But I would fully support dissolving that country and founding a new one (or multiple) with a better name.
Mothra@mander.xyz 1 week ago
I’m not OP. As someone whose native language isn’t English, I agree with OP that something like “united statesians” would be more specific than just “american” to refer to someone belonging to the US. A united statesian would be only from US, whereas someone just american could be referring to anyone in the American continent - both North and South.
And that’s exactly how Spanish language deals with the issue. Native Spanish speakers understand that colloquially, american means someone from US and wouldn’t call a Canadian or a Brazilian an American. However it does lend itself to confusion, it is a question often raised by children when learning adjectives, and as far as adjectives go, things other than people (animals for example) usually follow the regular rules of language. Finally, Spanish speakers also say “united statesians” ( * estadounidense* ) instead of “american” when referring to people living in US.
BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 1 week ago
There are other united states than the United Staes of America, for example The United Mexican States (Mexico)
Mothra@mander.xyz 1 week ago
Mexicans call themselves mexicans in Spanish, and refer to their country as just Mexico even if it is formally " united mexican states". Also note is “mexican” and doesn’t say “american” anywhere, so I still don’t see where the confusion would be, at least not in Spanish language ( which mexicans also speak). The only country in the world that refers to itself as a continent both formally and colloquially is USA.
litchralee@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I’ve not known any USA residents that call the continent as “America”. Instead, the continent – which in this case basically just means USA + Canada – would be “North America”. And if they meant the whole post-1490s “New World”, it would be “The Americas” for both North and South America together.
davidgro@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Australia.