I think that some people who are upset about this feel that people who converse in another language are hiding something (not me, so dont attack!) . It does happen in negotiations to me when I am selling something like a car. It does not help them that I know enough spanish to pick up on what they are saying. Usually I think that for many immigrants and visitors it is just easier to converse in their native tongues, They might not have the vocabulary to converse accurately.
Just a fun little aside: If you feel disadvantaged in negotiations by not being able to hide your speech, try pig latin. Most ESL people cannot understand it. Every language has these sort of letter mixing games. When people try the spanish ones on me, I cant tell what the heck they are saying.
There’s exceptions to this one. I’ve seen lots of people in Asia walking around with college sports team memorabilia. MLB team shirts show up in Japan. It’s unscientific, but I’ve not really observed foreigners giving much of a shit about the NFL.
Oh sure! We refer to “North America” as a thing different from other regions all the time. If there’s any fault there, I think Canadians often use the term to mean “USA and Canada”, neglecting Mexico in the thought. Most often, I think we use the term to draw contrasts, between, say, Europe and “the Canada/America region”. Canada is, culturally, exactly in the middle between the US and Western Europe, and we often use “North America” when discussing areas where we are similar to the US (again, generally neglecting Mexico in the equation, probably because mild racism). For example, “North America uses the metric system for a lot of things, but Imperial is still common as well”.
This may be as much a linguistic problem as anything. Spanish and Portuguese have demonyms for the USA that are more specific than “American,” so native speakers of those languages have the experience of finding that English doesn’t offer a (widely-used) word for something they do have a word for. A Canadian wouldn’t experience that. Unless I’m mistaken, even a French-speaking Canadian would be accustomed to using “Américain.”
That’s super insightful, and I bet you’re right! In English and French we just sorta let the USains have that word a long time ago and it’s settled law at this point.
Heh; I did have a conversation on another blog some time ago, and someone from a non-English speaking country was arguing that I am “American” because I am from North America. I will accept “North American” as a descriptor that includes Canada, the U.S., Mexico, and some smaller nations. But “American”? No.
I think “Americans” is fine; I was just confirming to the previous commenter that their terminology is commonly used in English speaking countries. I don’t find it to be derogatory or anything.
I will sometimes use “USian” with tongue in cheek when speaking to Americans that I’m on fairly familiar terms with.
I know academics who use it quite seriously, along with United Statesian and U.S. American, in recognition of and resistance to the U.S. colonization of the term “American.”
Elsewhere, I have no doubt there are people being confronted for listening to music on the bus without headphones (or even with crappy headphones), with people applauding the confrontation.
Most people kind of roll their eyes at those, and for good reason.
The reason that “The United States of America” is often referred to as “America” for short is because it is the only country in the world to have “America” in its name. It is NOT the only country to have “The,” “United,” “States,” or “of.”
Confirming what VeronicaConnor said; most Canadians are “Canadians” and don’t feel that people from the U.S. have co-opted the term “American”. “North American” is fine for a broader geographical identifier.
The “American” part of the designator is from the “United States of America” rather than “North America”.
I recall going to an NFL pre-season game at Wembly in 1992. We had to explain to the people in the seats around us that a “safety” was two points. Interestingly the police treated it as a “football” game. They were ready for hooligans and rioting. I have never seen such impressive and well thought out crowd control.
The normal behavior of US Citizens (and, on small scale, every other developed country in the world) is to expect that us behave as they want in our country.
That swimmer asshole from Rio '16 is the extreme example.
