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The proper term is American.
The implied context of your question is in English.. In the English-speaking world, there is no American continent. People from North America are North Americans; people from South America are South Americans. People from the United States of America are American. There is no ambiguity. There is also no good term to collectively describe everyone from the Americas but there’s also rarely any need to discuss that.
I consider terms such as “USonian” and whatnot to be highly offensive. Nobody should tell a people what they are allowed to call themselves in their own language just because the same word means something else in another language. It would be like telling French people they’re not allowed to call their arm a bras because it refers to an article of clothing in English. Other languages where America means something else already have their own terms for people from the US. English, however, has no real ambiguity except that caused by those trying to shame Americans for calling themselves Americans.
"highly offensive" lol wow chill out bud. It's weird but doesn't bother me at all. Let em call me whatever they want in whatever language they have.
Telling people what they're allowed to be offended by is usually a bad choice.
That's not what this is about though, which is precisely the point. In other languages, "America" means something else, and they all have other terms to refer to people from the US. The whole discussion is about what Americans should be called in English.
It's ridiculous to give such weight and care to silly things like labels.
I don't care what they want to call me in English. My comment was intended to read as dismissive of the entire conversation.
I didn't know that, thanks.
Look man, I'm not american and I didn't ask the question to create some debate about the ethics or whatsoever. I just wanted to know if there was a specific word for that.
Eh, I agree common and mostly unambiguous usage is that 'America' refers to USA, but even in English it feels incongruous sometimes.
Plenty of cultures use the term "English" or some variation thereof to refer to the United Kingdom despite England only being 1/4th of the member states of the UK. I find the whole "Mexicans and Canadians are technically Americans" to reek of manifest destiny.
I understand the Scots aren't always best pleased at this, though I'm sure they're too polite to say so.
Just to be clear, I didn't think that you were being offensive. It came across entirely as a good faith question from a foreigner, but it ties into (ironically arrogant) advocacy from some foreigners who call Americans arrogant for using the term American.
Thank you for eloquently responding to the pedantry underlying OP's question.
And yet I've seen so many Americans chastising Spanish speaking people for saying the color black in their own language.
You mean, in USA world.
No, it's the entire English-speaking world, which actually makes sense since the practice originated with the British Empire long before American independence.
Not true. North and South America were made up by the government to brainwash people. It's a conspiracy. There are only 4 continents.
Sure, 4 out continents, but what about incontinence.
This is about language, not geology. Doesn't really matter how it came to be that way, North and South America are effectively treated as separate continents and very rarely referred to as a whole, and you saying "but actually" doesn't change that.
Words can be coined. America is a continent. There, if the word didn't exist before, it does now.
You're right that words can be coined and their usage changed, but you seem to be misinformed about how that happens. You just deciding we're gonna do it this way now in a random thread on lemmy is not gonna cut it, sorry