Comment on Why do Americans always presume that everyone speaks English
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Why are people from the USA always called Americans?
Same reason why people from the United Kingdom are called ‘British’, despite Northern Ireland not being in Britain.
There just aren’t better proper adjectives for these 2 countries.
While you can say ‘North American’ to mean anyone from North America and not specifically the US, I’m not sure there’s a fitting word that refers to anyone from North or South America. Although, at that point, the group of people you are talking about is perhaps too broad to be useful in most cases.
Same reason why people from the United Kingdom are called ‘British’, despite Northern Ireland not being in Britain.
Ireland is part of the British Isles, so you could even call people from the Republic of Ireland british (and then run away really fast).
I recommend not doing this 😂 I prefer to call the British isles “the European archipelago” :)
TEA
For exactly those reasons at least Ireland no longer calls it the British Isles
And saying North America includes Canada, and I think out of respect to the Canadians they don’t wanna be lumped together with us
Because calling anyone else an American is insulting.
Why does someone always smugly point this out in these threads?
Because there’s always got to be some young “boo America” edgelord contrarian that thinks they’re really doing something by saying it. But really they are just an idiot in a long line of idiots who isn’t saying anything at all.
US Americans are seen by basically everyone as the most obnoxious tourists on this planet. Their self importance and undeserved national pride is second to none and it shows in every thread like this. Its just fun to see them get defensive when anyone points it out.
Why are you assuming the sign is about Americans? There’s no reference to the US anywhere except OP’s title
Speaking of obnoxious self importance
No youuu 😭
Is all i get from that.
Would you prefer “yanks”?
Just what people commonly understand so people say it. I always read it in a disapproving Russian accent because of too much TV, the americans
1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Because they’re the only country with America in their name whereas United States is shared by Mexico
Also in English there’s a distinction between North and South America, with the supercontinent being referred to as “The Americas”, so America isn’t really ambiguous, they’re also geologically and environmentally distinct enough that “The Americas” isn’t used so much and “New World” is often more relevant to include Australia as another somewhat culturally similar sparsely populated former colonial area.
droporain@lemmynsfw.com 2 weeks ago
So is someone from Brazil an “American”? Surprisingly yes, and straight to jail.
1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
In Portuguese (as spoken in Portugal, Brazil, USA, Japan, Ghana, wherever) they’re an americano/a but in English (as spoken in USA, UK, Brazil, Portugal, Nepal, wherever) they’re Latin American and South American but not American because it’s a linguistic difference rather than a geographical/cultural one