Comment on What efforts would it take to strip the name Americans from the folks inhabiting the US?
litchralee@sh.itjust.works 1 week agoI’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.
Mothra@mander.xyz 1 week ago
Agree, I also don’t know of any USA residents doing so. But outside it’s a very different story especially in places where the language isn’t English.
What is the demonym for something that can be found or belongs to “The Americas”, comprising both North and South America (and potentially Central if you go by the Three Americas way of splitting the continent)?
Why is it that you have terms such as “North American” to describe something related to USA+anything north in the continent, then you have another term such as “South American” for anything Mexico and south of it in the continent, but when you say American , that’s right, the generic one that doesn’t specify and encompasses it all then it is presumed to be exclusively USA? I understand the history that explains that, but as far as semantics go, it’s still a legitimate question. Languages other than English have different answers for it.
litchralee@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
This is a fair question, and I suspect there simply is no generally accepted demonym in English. One could be introduced, but contrast that fairly simple exercise with the replacement of the broadly-recognized demonym for USA residents: “American”. Quickly, it becomes apparent that replacement is far harder than introducing a new demonym, even if the demonym itself isn’t very logical within the English language.
English is the same language that calls people from Deutschland as “German”, and then American English specifically might also call them “Dutch”, as in, the Pennsylvania Dutch, whom immigrated from Germany. Consistency is not strong in the English language, even over only a few hundred years.