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I’m not familiar with the arguments for or against this so to me, this sounds redundant.
Everyone in the world knows what “American” means. Europeans on the internet pretend not to because it lets them feel smugly superior. It’s both sad and silly, but they can call us whatever makes them feel good I suppose.
It’s deeply cringe and reeks of “trying to create a solution to a problem that doesnt really exist.” Nobody who uses a term like that unironically has anything to say that’s worth hearing.
There are no good arguments for it. There is no continent in the english language called “America,” and this is a conversation about what to call US citizens ***in English***.
Whats supposed to be the reason for this? It seems redundant and that it would make conversation more awkward.
US Americans, as opposed to what other Americans?
Absolutely not. “American” is our demonym in American English.
The only argument “for” is that some countries don’t want to acknowledge that North America and South America are (at least) two different continents. The same people feel that attaching their self identity to a *continent* gives them a need to deny our people our preferred demonym.
American is an endonym. It’s who we are. There is no continent called “America”.
It’s dumb because like, for example, I’m Mexican American but I’m not from Mexico, I’m from the US. Whatever prefix you put before American, it’s always just going to sound like someone from the US. So it serves no real purpose.
It’s performative at best.
I would probably make fun of it if I heard it, because I usually would make fun of terms that fix problems that don’t actually exist.
In English, America and American refer to the country of the United States, and “The Americas” refers to the continent/continents as a whole.
In Spanish, “América” refers unambiguously to the continent/continents, and “estados unidos” and “estadounidense” to the country.
In neither language is there a common single word for “a person who comes from North or South America” because the difference between the US/Canada and Latin America is understood to be significant enough that nobody has any real use for a specific word for a trait that is basically never relevant in any conversation.
Because “American” clearly and unambiguously refers to the country and nobody would confuse it for any other meaning, adding an additional qualifier seems kinda pointless.
Sounds like a stupid term that weirdos come up with to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.
sounds dumb in English, I don’t really care what nomenclature people use in non-English languages though.
there’s an epidemic of chronically online people trying to intervene in situations that don’t involve them to be some kind of virtuous “hero” for internet points. this is a good example of that.
we have a demonym. everyone knows what it is. we aren’t crowd sourcing a new one.
There’s rarely any ambiguity that this would resolve.
It sounds silly.
Why should we change the name we’ve gone by for centuries? What gives Europeans the right to change our name?
We’re Americans. It’s been our internationally recognized demonym in English for actual centuries now. Calling us anything else is as rude as calling someone by the wrong name because you think another is more suitable.
“HI Dave!”
“For the thousandth time, my name is Bob.”
“Yeah well I have a neighbor named Bobby, and I thought I would call you Dave to avoid confusion.”
That’s what this whole debate sounds like, and it’s just as rude.
Makes my fucking skin crawl
It’s dumb and pointless. And not the flex euros think it is. They can obviously say whatever they want. I will never use it, and I will always correct anyone who does lol
It’s asinine.
They’re attempting to force their language’s ruleset onto English. That ain’t how language works.
Related: “Latinx”
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Sidebar: if anyone from The Americas is “an American”, that means that Canadians are “Americans”.
Try telling Canadians that they’re Americans and report back to me.
>From Ireland
So you’re British. You know…cause they’re the British Isles and I’m under no obligation to respect what you call yourself.
Or is that annoying?
>has risen a lot in Europe lately
You mean West Asia? If America is one big continent, Europe sure as hell isn’t one.
>Do you approve or disapprove?
It’s dumb and the people saying it are stupid. That’s not an insult, it’s my genuine assessment of their intelligence. Clinically stupid.
In general I think it’s polite to call people by the way they want to be identified. For people from the US, that’s “American”, and arguing with someone that their own word in their own language for their nationality or ethnicity is inappropriate doesn’t look great!
It’s similar to saying Germany Germans. It’s ridiculous and inane, especially when speaking English.
If they want to start using it, because of the arguments for a single continent, however, they should be sure to start using it for others on the American continents too. Don’t leave anyone out, please.
– Canada Americans
– Brazil Americans
– Mexico Americans
– Chile Americans
– Bolivia Americans
– Cuba Americans
– Argentina Americans
– Paraguay Americans
– Uruguay Americans
– Panama Americans
etc.
While they’re at it, they should use it with other continents as well.
– Ireland Europeans
– UK Europeans
– Spain Europeans
– Netherlands Europeans
– Australia Oceanians
– China Asians
– Japan Asians
– Democratic Republic of the Congo Africans
– Malawi Africans
etc.
Eventually, everyone will understand the absurdity of it. Or, everyone could just accept that Americans aren’t claiming two continents and avoid it all.
It’s rude, very weird and mega-cringy.
I don’t really mind, but it does give the energy that Europeans must only ever interact with Latin Americans online.
Because to be perfect honest with you, I have only ever seen this raised as an issue by specifically Mexican and Argentinian posters online. Never in person. And not even other Latin American countries’ citizens seem to care online.
It’s like the European version of “LatinX” which was a term that arose in “US-American” left wing circles for a while in an effort to be super PC to appease a vocal online minority until people finally realized that the majority of Latinos actually hated the term and it was actually its own form of linguistic imperialism because “X” has no sound in Spanish.
Like, I can tell you that I’m bilingual English and Spanish and do business with Latin American business partners here.
The demonym for “US-Americans” in Spanish is “estadounidense.” That’s what all Americans learn in our high school Spanish classes and that’s what we use when we speak Spanish.
I was using that term and *they* were all the ones using “Americano/a” not me.
“Americano/a” is also what they used in Brazilian Portuguese.
Are all the Latin Americans used it being asked to change their convention too?
And has anyone asked Canadians how they feel about being called Canadian-Americans?
You can use whatever terms you want to, but it really feels like a repeat of the “LatinX” debacle.
No one refers to themselves as American unless they’re from the US or being pedantic.
Oh god, here we go.
I have had the unfortunate experience of being in a discussion with a passionate supporter of the “US American” terminology. In my experience they are usually either Europeans or Latin Americans who state that “America” includes their country and that using “American” as a gloss for people from the USA is some flavor of exclusionary/arrogant/racist.
This point of view is dependent on the fact that many of these countries consider North and South America (which we in the US consider two separate continents) to be a single continent just called America. In the USA, if we ever refer to their “America” as a concept, we call it “the America*s*”, or perhaps “the new world”. In Spanish, Portuguese, and sometimes French, these countries are indeed in “America” and are therefore genuinely “American”. But in English they are in either North or South America. Simply calling them American is unhelpful, vague, and ambiguous.
The United States and its people gained the shorthand “America” and “American” because we were the first internationally recognized independent country in the Americas. The phrase was not adopted with malicious intent towards our less socially and politically powerful neighbors to the south.
I’m not going to insist that they call me *Americano* in their own language because the term makes more sense there, and in any case that is their lane and not mine. I’m also not going to really be a jerk about it if someone innocently uses it, because unless they’re deeply familiar with it they were probably just trying to be politically correct. But I think it’s stupid, oppose its use in English, and frankly doubt the good faith of those who push its use. In too many cases, it appears to be nothing more than an outlet for frustrated people to exercise inferiority complexes vis-á-vis the United States by harassing its citizens.
I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh, people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future. For our children.
It seems superfluous to me.
People from the US – American.
People from North America – North American.
People from the Western Hemisphere – Pan American.
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On top of that, it creates confusion. Assuming you are then going to then call everyone from the Western Hemisphere “American”, plenty of people are going to assume you are talking about only US Americans.
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We don’t call ourselves American because we think of ourselves as the only people in the Americas. We’re called Americans because it’s the logical name. Mexicans are from the United Mexican States. Americans are from the United States of America. Pick a word out of that to call yourself. Unitedans? Statians? Americans?
The English word America and the Spanish word América are false cognates.
America and American in English 100% always, and without any ambiguity, means the United States of America and a citizen of the United States. The correct translation in Spanish is Estados Unidos and estadounidense respectively.
América in Spanish and other romance languages is the word for a continent that stretches from Canada in the north to Argentina in the south. There is no word for this in English as the English speaking world sees it as two continents (North and South America).
Mexico calls our citizens Americanos and Canada calls us Americans. They refer to our country as Estados Unidos and The United States, respectively. I assume this is because it would be stupid to call us United Statesians so they just use the last part of our country’s title. Because it’s the easiest thing to call us.
Europe could at least come up with a better demonym if they wanna reappropriate shit. We’re Americans, deal.
Using that term is the ultimate in douchebaggery
Wait, do you know any native English speaking Europeans who say that or are you talking about not-English speaking Europeans who are trying to apply their native language definitions to English?
As a rule, I think people should be called whatever they prefer to be called rather than inventing exonyms for them.
That said, when it comes to naming things, language tends to be first-come, first-serve. Trying to upend that leads to all sorts of consistency problems. I’m not saying it’s never worth it, but even in extreme cases like the nonsense that is the etymology of *Japan*, it doesn’t really hurt anything to stay consistent, even when the Japanese people internally prefer Nihon.
So what about this case?
* People living in the USA prefer to be called Americans.
* People living in the USA have historically been called Americans.
Therefore, no need to change to “US Americans” in English. (Note that in Spanish, this is not necessarily the case, but that’s a whole other cultural and linguistic history.)