Well, everybody born in the american continent is technically “american” too, including Central and South America. Is there a specific term in english for these people?
Edit: Thanks for all your answers, especially the wholesome ones and those patient enough to explain it thoroughly. Since we (South Americans) and you (North Americans) use different models/conventions of continent boundaries, it makes sense for you to go by “Americans”, while it doesn’t for us.
In Australia we call them cunts.
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Or Seppos.
obese.
The simple answer is really, no. Colloquially if you say “American” you’re talking about someone from the USA. We’ll further segregate ourselves into the States we’re from, which isn’t that different a distinction between “European” and “German”.
Yank
United Statesman
Unironically I know a few languages that use this term, namely French and Portuguese.
Also Spanish 🇪🇸
Judging from playing video games in EU lobbies, “Hamburger”?
But what if I’m not from Hamburg
It’s always been funny to me when latin Americans get pissy at the term American being used to describe the country who’s president is Biden ( said with love as mx) . They always try to correct Americans to “estados unidenses” United Statean. Which in my opinion doesn’t work for 3 reasons. First name recognition most of the world associate Americans with 'merica. 2nd it’s a difficult set of words for Anglo speakers especially vs Americano. Thirdly there are actually 2 countries thats proper name include “United States” those are united states of American and United States of Mexico, who colloquially are known as America and Mexico respectively.
There’s also United States of Brazil.But you’ve got “Mexican” and “Brazilian” for both of those countries that include United States in their proper names.
I’d continue to say “United statean” in Spanish because that’s an accepted name in the Spanish language. There’s no confusion to what country you’re referring to.
But in English it is a lost battle. If you mean to include people from the entire continent, you’d have to say “American, as in the continent”.
Edit: The current official name of Brazil is Federative Republic of Brazil.
America is 2 continents, it’d be easier to say North American/South American. There is rarely a reason to lump both continents together. No one refers to people from Europe or Asia as Eurasians
There are multiple models for continents. The English speaking world uses the 7 continent model. But non-English countries often use a different model. There is a 6 continent model which considers the Americas to be a single continen. It is used much more commonly in Latin and South Americas.
The models of the world that you learned in school are not universal truths.
I am brazilian, and “estadunidense” works perfectly for our daily needs cuz ya know, no one mentions Mexico as “United states”
Oh, fun - I just used Brazilians as an example in another comment. Would you ever say “I’m American” when you’re talking about your continent?
Yes! But usually we are more specific by saying “I am south american”
Treasonous Colonial
U.S.A-holes
Idk about everybody else, but you can call me Michael (or kase, obv) :)
美国人
While technically correct, I’ve never heard a Brazilian refer to themselves as “American” when they intended to mean South American. Linguistically, when you say “American” you’re talking about a citizen of the United States, not just any person from the western hemisphere. And if you’re talking about a specific continent (North America, Central America, South America) you’re going to be specific about it. A Brazilian would say “I’m South American” when referring to their continent.
Brazil considers the Americas to be a single continent, with south/north being subdivisions. A lot of people here don’t understand that usa’s actual name is America just like the continent, so they often get mad when the word American is used to refer to people from the USA instead of from anywhere in the americas.
If anything we should just rename the continents to remove the confusion.
Or just wait for the secessions to inevitably start rolling in, then the gringos can drop the name. They were second anyways.
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I feel like I’ve never even heard someone say it like that either. Maybe it’s just my bubble but I never hear people refer to themselves by their continent except maybe occasionally Europeans.
In spanish its estadounidense
Yankee, or Yank.
Yankees are only people from the North East US, like New York. Calling someone from California a Yankee would be laughable.
In the US, sure.
Outside, a Yankee is a Yankee, even if they’re cosplaying a ghost while standing in front of a burning cross and waving a confederate flag. We don’t care enough to ask in which state they had the misfortune of being born. 🤷♂️
It’s like calling someone in the UK English even though they live in Scotland. You sound stupid but yeah only those people care
That’s a good analogy because that also happens all the time.
Yeah, but British is a thing, and everyone knows about it (the British made damn well sure, back when they were the main global bully)… American, on the other hand, doesn’t work, because it refers to the whole damn continent, not just the USA… so if we want to refer to the citizens of the US Yankee / Yank is about the only option we have; not the best, maybe, but probably the least worst.
In my experience living in Ireland and traveling to other English-speaking countries you’re at least as likely to be called an “American” as you are “yank.”
The reason why is that it dates back to the British Empire and the fact that British subjects lived in the “American” colonies for at least 200 years before they gained independence. By that time the usage in the British Empire, of referring to people from the “American” colonies as “Americans,” was pretty well baked into informal English usage and it never really died out.
Linguistics doesn’t tell us how language should work in a prescriptive sense, it just tells us why it works and how it’s used and why every language we know of is full of logical inconsistencies, especially English.
As a Californian I will embrace any non-american who calls me Yankee assuming it’s followed by some Sherman posting.
Only in the US. In the rest of the English-speaking world many people don’t know or don’t care about these differences and it’s just a blanket term for all Americans.
How to be murdered by someone from Boston or a southerner who’s still not over the civil war
Stinky Gringo
