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.
It’s so weird how some people are so committed to this. “United Statesian” and variants thereof don’t actually solve the perceived problem due to the fact that Mexico is formally the United Mexican States (Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia were all United States of their own in the past too). And besides that, there are so many other examples of countries using the name of something they do not encompass the whole of. South Africa? Not actually the whole of the south of Africa, it turns out. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo? Both not the only country in the Congo basin. The European Union isn’t all of Europe, Sudan doesn’t include South Sudan, and the only part of the river Indus that’s in India is in disputed Kashmir
The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo
I had no idea these were two separate nations
Ex-Belgian Congo and Ex-French Congo respectively. Which actually means they even share French as an official language. DR Congo is the really big one, and also the one more commonly in the news because it has generally had an extremely rough time of things. It was called Congo-Leopoldville upon gaining independence, then Zaire under a military government, and then finally DR Congo from the 90s up to today.
It’s quite common to refer to them by their capitals to distinguish them: DR Congo is Congo-Kinshasa, Rep. Congo is Congo-Brazzaville. Kinshasa is what they renamed the old capital Leopoldville to, quite understandably in my opinion given what Leopold was responsible for. To make this even weirder, Kinshasa and Brazzaville are literally just on opposite sides of the river from each other (although it is a very big river)
Eh, it is what it is.
ML is pretty well known for mods either power tripping, or at least pushing the boundaries to the edge.
This one could go either way.
Technically the comment was a rule violation, so removing the comment isn’t totally power tripping.
The problem is that your comment was the least political in the whole damn thread. Like, even my comment was a tad more political than yours, depending on how you look at it. And even that was way less than dessalines’ tangent.
The entire post was about language and word usage, and your comment definitely was not political, nor was it in any way rude or insulting.
I’m still really surprised your comment got reported/removed, but mine didn’t. It was confusing as hell when I came back after a response and saw yours gone.
So, yeah, definitely PTB. If they’d nuked everyone, I could see it being clueless mods, but targeting yours just means they got a report and wiped it, so that’s dumber than dammit, even if it wasn’t a literal power trip
Oh, incidentally I also reported dessaline’s comment. Like you say, they were pretty obviously behaving in an offensive manner. I figure if the mods are removing my comments (and giving me a weeklong ban!!), they had for sure better remove dessaline’s, which is far more directly offensive with its completely unfounded accusation of white supremacy and calling you illiterate.
In relation to the claims they make about America not being used prior to the 20th century…even their own article proves them wrong.
For some thirty years prior to 1898, while the adjective ‘American’ has been in general use, the noun ‘America’ has been extremely rare,
it says. Remembering that this is a thread specifically about the demonym. So the adjective has been in widespread use since at least the 19th century, despite what our fascistic friend says.
Not that the claim made in that article is exactly correct. One of my favourite books (and certainly my favourite pre-20th-century text) uses some derivation of “America” no fewer than 7 times, two of which are nouns. Not exactly an obscure text, and not one with any reason to be strongly biased in favour of America. Still, that at only serves as proof that the claim in the article is wrong by at least 1 year, so it’s not the most damning. Not as damning as the fact that the article given in evidence that “American” only exists because imperialism (never mind the bleeding obvious…America as a country, and indeed all the various other countries of the Americas, only exist because of imperialism) specifically states that “American” existed prior.
I actually wanted to reach out to the mods and ask what’s up before posting this. But Lemmy’s lack of a modmail feature means when I want to contact mods, I have to direct message them individually. And it looks like all the mods of that community are inactive, with the most recent one only having been active 2 months ago. So I wouldn’t even know who to reach out to.
YDI. Seems like a really dumb take. AFAIK to many folks (not from the USA) North Americans are from Canada, USA, Mexico combined with the Central and South American countries, they are collectively known as The Americas. Everyone in the Americas is American in the same sense that all Africans are African despite there being many countries. The arrogance of USAsians co-opting the name of the whole continent of The Americas as though they are the only country that matters is kind of mind boggling.
The thread was literally asking “hey, what are the right words to use to refer to people from America”. Even if my take was wrong (and I maintain in the strongest terms that it was not…see my reply to @[email protected]) it was a respectful input to the discussion at hand. “YDI” is the dumbest of dumb takes. Contributing to a thread about a given topic with input on that topic does not deserve a ban and to have your opinion silenced.
You going on racist rants, calling spanish speakers arrogant (which you’ve done twice now), is not anything we will ever allow on lemmy.ml.
Also the absolute gall of someone calling spanish speakers arrogant, when it’s the US who’s trying their best to exclude them from a designation they call themselves.
Also the absolute gall of someone calling spanish speakers arrogant, when it’s the US who’s trying their best to exclude them from a designation they call themselves.
Not only does that not say what you claim it does, it’s also deeply inaccurate. Fuck’s sake.
Ya. Both of those qualities represent an incredibly recognizable pattern.
PTB, easy. Regardless of where one stands on the issue of ‘Americans’, pretty mildly correcting someone for assuming your nationality and using that to disparage your opinion is not (or should not be) a removable offense.
The thread itself is a shitfest that boils down to idiocy on the same level as “is tomato a fruit or a vegetable?” and “ackshyually water is not wet it wets things”. And that includes both your comment and the comment that you’re replying to. Specially the later, as the guy found some weird hill to die on.
Even then, PTB. As typical for lemmy dot ml.
I’ll also address what estefano is saying in another comment in the same thread, as it’s outright misinformation:
In Brazil, we use USians or Statesians
Most people in the territory controlled by Brazil refer to people in the territory controlled by USA as “americanos” (lit. “Americans”). People who call them “estado-unidenses” (lit. “United-Statians”), like I do, are a minority. And people certainly do not call them by anything remotely translatable as “USians” (EUAnos? That sounds awful*) or “Statesians” (estadenses?).
I used the second one on an academic paper and it went through.
You can submit a lot of crap on academic papers and it’ll still go through. Welcome to Latin America. No, even better - welcome to the world in 2025, the institutions supposed to defend science against the Sturgeon’s Law are busier counting money than doing their job.
As such, “they accepted it” is NOT grounds to claim shite.
Ma que djanho.
*EUAnos sounds like “eu ânus” [I anus] for most Portuguese speakers. (It doesn’t for me but it gets really close.)
a tomato is both, a fruit and a vegetable, btw… those terms are not mutually exclusive, because things like fruit, root and leaves refer to the part of the plant, while vegetable refers to how it can be used.
You’re in the right direction. The only missing piece is the word “fruit” referring to two, partially overlapping, concepts:
- botanical - “fruit” as a part of the plant as opposed to stem, leaf, flower etc.
- culinary - “fruit” as an ingredient as opposed to vegetable, meat, seasoning etc.
Tomato is a botanical fruit, but not a culinary fruit. And this means that all those “mmh, ackshyually tomato is not a vegetable” claims you see in those discussions are simply a four terms fallacy.
And, more importantly, when people talk about fruits, you typically know which of those two concepts they’re talking about, due to the context (are we talking about plant development? or cooking?). And the same applies to “America” referring to the country bordering Canada versus the continent that country controls some territory of. (If you see the whole thing as a single continent, that is. That’s roughly as useful as to talk about Afro-Eurasia as a single continent.). And all those “ackshyually” tend to diverge the discussion from shit that matters into things that don’t matter.
hell yeah brother this country is called america and if the latinos dont like it well too bad were not gonna let them mess with our perfectly good english i cant wait for trump to finally make english the national language and dissolve statehood into a meaningless distinction under his divine rule so we can get rid of that useless UnItEd StAtEs part in fact lets change the names of the continents to get rid of the confusion we can call south and central america spainica or something and make canada part of our country so we can just call it america
I get that you’re riffing but god it pisses me off that Mexico is constantly treated as part of Central, not North, America.
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.
For anyone interested, here’s the modlog , and to recap:
You get corrected by a Brazilian correctly saying they’re also American, and disagree with the US’s imperialist co-opting of that term to exclude the majority of Americans.
You respond to them by denigrating “arrogant spanish speakers” (Portuguese is the language spoken in Brazil btw), and get banned for a week.
You’re even continuing to do racist rants in this very thread, like this comment of yours below
The Latin Americans complaining about the use of the term “America” to refer to the country of America were the most arrogant, rude arseholes I had come across.
To be extremely clear, your summary grossly misrepresents what actually happens. Deliberately, I suspect, to back up the fact that the mods banned me and not you despite your extremely blatant violations of the sub’s (and your own instance’s) rules here. Or was it you who abused your admin powers here to silence someone criticising your bad argument?
I have only ever taken issue with Spanish and Portuguese speakers who try to correct my usage of the language, or others who say “American” when they mean person from the country of America. If they simply choose to use estadounidense or some English translation thereof, I have no problem with that. But trying to correct someone else for using the language completely correctly (and the flaws of your source have already been thoroughly debunked elsewhere in this thread, I shan’t bother repeating myself there) makes you the racist (as much as “race” is the right term to use here…which it isn’t, precisely) imperialist here.
I’m with you on this one Dessalines.
If every mod would do this, we’d have a lot less low-effort posts here from people who are claiming a wrongful ban because they were “just innocently explaining “”“racial truths””" to people".
The cherry picked comments from the “wrongfully” banned person are usually not nearly a juicy as the ones the banning moderator can show.
