[ SECRET POST #2479 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2479 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 018 secrets from Secret Submission Post #354.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Er, most of the people of the English-speaking world refer to the US as America, especially when they don't need to type it out. It is also universally understood that "American" means "citizen of the US".

The biggest problem Central and South Americans don't understand is that English =/= Spanish. A "false friend" is a thing--the Spanish word for South American might sound a lot like the English word American, but it's not the same word, regardless of the etymological connections.

For reference, this is like English-speakers getting unbearably angry whenever the French "demande" something. Regardless of how similar the words sound, they don't mean the same thing.

It's just the people retroactively deciding that they are very offended by the idea of the historical use of a term being...what, also the current use? trying to make it more complicated.

[gondremark]

Actually, I see "USian" as an attempt to make things less complicated. It isn't something only Spanish speakers use, it's a term everyone can use in English when they want it to be absolutely clear that they mean someone from the US and don't feel like writing or saying something as unwieldy as "someone from the US".

Or maybe we can just avoid all this wank and all the people from the States can just call themselves Americans, which they already do and which they have every right to do, and then rest of the world can call themselves "citizens of the United States of America" because that avoids the confusion AND the wank.

[(Anonymous)]

But it doesn't cause any confusion for the majority of the populace. Only the Spanish-speakers of Central and South America who don't realize that "americano" is a false friend of "America".

When a native-English speaker who is not trying to adopt the Latino mindset says "American", they 100% always mean "citizen of the United States". Never does it cause any confusion, until someone decided they didn't understand the concept of 'false friends', and caused confusion.

The only confusion it brings about is the people who are not educated well enough in English or Spanish or refuse to acknowledge the differences in the two languages.

I don't understand why you think this would avoid wank. Americans have had that name for centuries. You're asking for a grassroots movement to change an entire language. What would cause the wank to go away is if the tiny tiny minority of people who insist that "American" doesn't mean "citizen of the US" just understood americano=/=American.

If they need to make it abundantly clear they mean US citizen. Then they can say that. Or US-American.

Literally the most complicated option is adopting the Latin viewpoint.