The whole world used that term, since the other countries are covered by other terms, or other encompassing terms like I explained already.
Comment on That's how the world works.
ObtuseDoorFrame@lemmy.zip 6 hours agoNorth America is Canada and the USA. And there’s also central America, which isn’t included in those two terms.
It’s a problem because ignorant USians think of themselves as the center of everything, and referring to them as “Americans” further entrenches this selfish world view.
SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
ObtuseDoorFrame@lemmy.zip 6 hours ago
When someone says American, it’s ambiguous what they actually mean. I assume they mean resident of the USA because it’s the norm, but technically you could be talk about a Canadian or a Brazilian. Language should be precise. I think that’s why I see so many people using the term USian on Lemmy.
Just because the whole world uses the term doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful.
StillAlive@piefed.world 3 hours ago
When someone says American, it’s ambiguous what they actually mean.
2 minutes later:
Just because the whole world uses the term doesn’t mean it isn’t harmful.
Is it an ambiguous term or the whole world uses it?
plantfanatic@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
I’ve never seen that term before.
PhoenixDog@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
No one has. I live in Canada. If anyone called me ‘American’ I’d take compete offence to the word. If they called me North American, I’d nod.
OP is an idiot.
piranhaconda@mander.xyz 5 hours ago
I’ve only ever seen it used on lemmy. I don’t like it. Mostly because I don’t know how to pronounce it.
SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
but technically you could be talk about a Canadian or a Brazilian.
No, that would be a North American or Canadian. You always covered this yourself.
Give your head a shake and get lost.
drcobaltjedi@programming.dev 6 hours ago
In English, the correct demonym for a citizen of the United States of America is “American”. There have been others that somewhat are accepted but are not universal like “Yankee” which half the population would take great offense to.
It isn’t centering the world on us to call ourselves Americans, it’s the only thing that works in the language and is accepted by everyone it applies to. Call a Canadian an “american” and watch how quickly they correct you.
I’ve seen people propose “United statesian” but there 2 problems with that, first it does not flow well in English, second that doesn’t actually fix the problem since there’s still be ambiguity with people living in the United Mexican States.
Luca@lemmygrad.ml 6 hours ago
“Central America” is in North America. Racists just pretend it’s not so they don’t have to mentally grapple with brown people natively being on the same continent as themselves.
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
What countries have the word “America” in them? How many countries in the Americas are “united States”?
What do you call a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?For the record, The United States of America is the only country with the word America in it’s name. Our immediate neighbor, The United Mexican States, is another country you could, but no one would, plausibly call the United States.
The British isles contains two countries, Ireland and the UK. One of these is the home of the British, and the other would be much happier if you didn’t call them that.
Insisting that you not refer to the people of a country by the most unique name in the countries name, because the geographic region has that word in common is … Odd.
PhoenixDog@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Just casually ignoring Mexico as part of North America says everything I need to know about how intelligent you are.
Name checks out, you’re obtuse.