Also offensive: pointing out that English speakers do not use the word “American” to refer to people from Latin America. The term in our language is universally used to refer to people from the country America.
Also offensive: pointing out that English speakers do not use the word “American” to refer to people from Latin America. The term in our language is universally used to refer to people from the country America.
You mean continent(s)?
I do not. That was the whole point of my multiple comments in the original thread. America is the correct noun, in English, to refer to the United States of America.
We can get into definitions of continents if you like. I accept that people from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking backgrounds primarily talk about a 6 continent model consisting of America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia/Oceania, and Antarctica. I can also accept that because there’s no real solid definition of a continent, it’s impossible to say that this is wrong per se. I will say that I find it an absolutely baffling grouping to use, and that I myself prefer 6 continents consisting of North and South America, Eurasia, Africa, Oceania, and Antarctica; it makes no sense to me that someone could group the Americas while considering Afroeurasia three continents: to me, either an isthmus like Panama and Suez separates continents, or it does not, and it’s weird to split over Suez but not Panama, and even weirder not to merge Eurasia who have no physical separation. (And IMO, once you start separating Europe and Asia, it becomes hard not to justify separating Arabia and India, if we’re trying to keep a logical definition.) But continents aren’t especially logical. In most of the English-speaking world, the 7 continent model dominates. We talk about North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia/Oceania, and Antarctica. Those are the 7 continents, and while you can disagree with them (as I do!), in most conversations you’re just being difficult if you bring up that disagreement in anything more than a very lighthearted way.
The use of the demonym America stems in part from that. Once you reject the notion that “America” is a single continent, it becomes far easier to understand that the demonym “American” can’t refer to people from two continents, and so it’s very normal to use it to refer to just one country. That country being the United States of America. It’s pretty normal to refer to countries by their short form. Czechia a few years back started a big campaign push to specifically ask people to call them that, rather than always using the formal “Czech Republic”. Australia rarely gets referred to as the “Commonwealth of Australia”, and the fact that Canada is officially “the Dominion of Canada” is rarely even acknowledged by official texts these days. Amusingly, America’s southern neighbour has an equally valid claim on the name “United States”, since Estados Unidos Mexicanos translates to United Mexican States, or, roughly, United States of Mexico. Latin Americans often get upset at this because in Spanish, the demonym is ‘estadounidense’, which roughly translates to ‘United Statesian’. But that’s not a word that exists in English. It’s not especially logical even in Spanish, given that logically speaking, estadounidense could also refer to Mexicans. But words are defined by their usage, and in common usage that word unambiguously means American. The same is true in English. American unambiguously, in English, means person or thing from the United States of America. It’s silly to get upset by that.
I typically just say “American” too but I don’t do all this when I get corrected. It comes across like you’re trying to justify being
racistethnocentric.It is weird to hear someone say “country of America” though when you could just say “the US(A)”
Edit: corrected language
I do not appreciate the accusation of racism. If that’s the kind of tenor this conversation is going to take, I’m not going to engage further.
This is commentary on a thread that was specifically created to get into the nuances of language surrounding America. So yeah, of course I went into a lot of detail about the origins and why we say what we do.
I said that’s how it comes across. I’ve said things in the past that came across as racist/xenophobic/ethnocentric, and I appreciate it when people point it out so I can adjust.
This just seems like one of those thing where if explaining and defending your position sounds racist/xenophobic/ethnocentric, you should consider changing your position or taking it less seriously
If you’re unwilling to consider that- yeah, it might be best not to engage further
Which part of what I said do you think is racist? Because I simply don’t see it. If anything, the ones being intolerant here are the ones who insist that the way they use words in their language is right and we have to all contort the definitions we’ve used for over a hundred years to match the etymological translation of words they use.
I’m intolerant of colonial language. The way “American” is used by English speakers to mean “USAmerican” is actually just US chauvinism. They think they are the center of the world and so of course American only refers to them, even though there’s a bunch of other countries in the Americas and the majority of Americans don’t actually live in the US.
The term “American” is colonial regardless of what you apply to it. There is no acknowledgment of the native peoples of the land today called the Americas, regardless of whether you call them all Americans or only those from the country America.
When faced with multiple different colonial options, I’m going to stick with the one that is short, easy to say, and most widely understood.
Seems to me you’re the one policing others’ language, ultimately suggesting Latin Americans aren’t Americans.
For “Americans” to refer to only “US Americans” (and make sense), the term necessarily must exclude Latin Americans
Note: Another user pointed out, I should’ve said ethnocentric rather than racist
If they want to use it, I’m not going to correct them. If they try to “correct” me for using my language in its most widely accepted manner, that’s when I start getting mad. The only one policing others’ language arethose insisting you cannot call Americans Americans.
Two corrections:
[Info dump that sounds like an “ackshyually”, but doesn’t contradict what you said, nor tries to. It’s just that you touched a topic that I enjoy talking about.]
Under the territory controlled by the Brazilian most people do speak Portuguese but there are ~200 other languages; for example a good chunk of my family speaks a Venetian variety. Spanish is among those, and it’s actually spoken by a few people born in the territory controlled by Brazil due to border changes. Other varieties besides PT and ES can be roughly split into colonial (e.g. Talian, Hunsrik, Pommersch, Polish) and Amerindian (e.g. Mbyá, Kaingang, Laklãnõ).
On the other hand, Portuguese sometimes pops up even in territory controlled by other governments than Brazil. Ciudad del Este (Paraguay) and Puerto Iguazú (Argentina) are an example, but as well some northern chunk of Uruguay. And then there’s a bunch of “portuñol” mixed varieties that IMO should be protected by the statal governments (because the federation certainly won’t).
As in, the Italo-Western Romance language? That’s fascinating! When you said there are about 200 other languages, I was expecting indigenous languages and maybe some Spanish, but certainly not other European languages. What’s the history there? Were there Italian colonies in Brazil, or a notable migration of Italians to Portuguese colonies?
See, this is exactly the sort of conversation I had hoped the original thread would lead to. Interesting linguistics, history, and geography. Until dessalines came in with the toxicity.
Yup, that one. Numbers are not to be trusted, but estimates are usually around 500k speakers in Brazil alone. There’s also a bunch of them in Argentina, and even in Mexico (more specifically Chipilo, Puebla).
Under Brazilian territory Venetian is often called “Talian”, and sometimes partially creolised with Portuguese. The name is a misnomer though, the language has little to do with the Tuscan-based standard Italian.
There are a few other colonial languages among those 200, like Eastern Pomeranian (Low German; extinct in Europe after WW2), Hunsrik (German too, but in the Franconian group). And I wouldn’t be surprised if here in Paraná some Polish- or Silesian-speaking clusters survived.
Additionally, some folks down north use Kikongo (a Bantu language, brought to South America due to African slavery) as a liturgical language for their syncretic religion (candomblé).
That said the “bulk” of those 200 languages I mentioned are Amerindian languages indeed. Typically Macro-Ge and Tupi-Guarani families.
Yup, immigrants. Not just in Brazil; Latin America as a whole got a lot of them in the XIX and early XX centuries, and since Italy was in a ruckus a lot of them were from Italy. Mostly Gallo-Italic speakers in a “belt” between São Paulo and Buenos Aires. Both are tendencies though, and there are plenty exceptions - São Paulo city for example got also a bunch of Calabrians and Sicilians, and as I said there were Venetians even in Mexico.
Other common groups of immigrants in LatAm were Iberians, Germans, Levantine Arabs, Japanese. But the distribution changes heavily from place to place; for example here in Paraná we got quite a few Poles and even a few Ukrainians and Lithuanians, but up south in Chubut (Argentina) there were Welsh immigrants instead.
There’s !linguistics@mander.xyz for any topic involving language. [Disclaimer: I’m one of the mods there.]
That backtracks to the main subject: the community was originally in lemmy.ml. One of the reasons why I migrated it to mander.xyz was the notoriously poorly way that .ml admins enforce rules in their instance - with the straw that broke the camel’s back, for me, being !anime@lemmy.ml. (I wasn’t a mod there but I’m a weeb so…)
Now thinking, if I didn’t do so, I bet that I would enter in direct conflict with dessalines and cypherpunk. What if someone wanted to talk about the Uyghur language? Or surzhyk (mixed Ukrainian/Russian) varieties? Bloody hell, even Proto-Indo-European (the Late PIE homeland is right where the war is happening now). Even mentions of lavender linguistics (i.e. how queer people use language) would become a ticking bomb.