Today I Learned
What did you learn today? Share it with us!
We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
view the rest of the comments
I try to explain this to people who don't believe south americans call themselves americans.
The USA isn't the only America nor the only United States. Maybe when the government collapses we can come up with a better name.
North America isn't even the first place to be called America
This becomes even more confusing with the way people commonly talk in English versus Spanish. In English, residents of the United States of America typically refer to themselves as Americans, and in English “American” typically only refers to someone from the USA. In Spanish, it seems residents of the USA are typically called the equivalent of “United Stateser” and “American” refers more generally to someone from the continent, at least in some parts of the Spanish-speaking world. I once had an apparent native Spanish-speaker online argue that was the correct form in English as well and insisted that the official name of the country is United States (Estados Unidos), not United States of America (Estados Unidos de América), and that America never refers to the country in English. They didn’t appreciate when I asked why in international sporting events the Americans’ shirts always say USA and why the supporters chant “U-S-A” all the time.
Languages are weird. If you’re learning a different language and try to insist that the new language behave the same as your native language, you’re going to have a hard time.
Mostly right but nobody in Latinamerica refers to themselves as American in any language. It would be weird.
That one's a weird one. We don't explicitly call ourselves Americans in Spanish because there's no need to but whenever this comes up in conversation it's generally agreed upon that we are technically Americans (and then people immediately take the opportunity to dunk on USians for appropriating the word 😅).
Yeah, that's my point. Being part of the continent is something that almost never comes up. We call ourselves whatever we are and it's never "Americanos".
Yep. In Spain and Latin America, there is no separation between North and South. Its just one continent: América
Most romance languages follow that. The 5 rings in the Olympics logo are meant to be continents.
Antarctica is severely underrepresented in the Olympics. Not a single medal.
Well, they're in South America
Right? Continent or not has nothing to do with it.
And yet when you tell people that you mean south americans when you say americans they always freak out.
Do those same people freak out when you refer to Mexicans or Canadians as Americans?
It might not be a North/South continent thing.
Yeah, that’s really because the USA doesn’t really have a name, just a description.
They may eventually admit they know it's technically correct, but you take your life in your hands if you try telling a Canadian that they are "American." Well, not your life, but they'll probably stop talking to you for a little while.
I think it's one of those "technically" things, that isn't useful.
Someone from The Americas is American, technically. That's how language works.
But I'd venture* that 97.3% of people mean United States when they say "Americans", or better, it's what people mean 97.3% of the time. The only time I've seen people bring it up is when they're from a South American country.
So I'd say context and scale of detail/granularity influence the meaning in the moment.
*Totally Made Up Stats
You mean US citizens. I've had "Americans" chime in on that as well, when I explained that for people who are not from the US, that "America" is not just the US of A but all of the Americas, and that Americans are not just people from the US either.
Not just US citizens, but specifically the Anglophone world as a whole. I've been to other English-speaking country where citizens of the USA are commonly referred to as "Americans" (when they're not called Yanks) while the continents are called "The Americas".
I also colloquially know that the name of the country in Japanese is simply "America" as well with its citizens just called "America-jin"
The relevant Wikipedia article seems to have some interesting insights as to which major world languages opt for which options, but it doesn't seem to be an overly long list of examples.
Well, smart Americans call themselves Americans too, and dumb Americans call themselves Americans, even Usamericans call themselves Americans ;-)