America is a continent, not a country [LWN.net]

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Mar 19, 2020 17:41 UTC (Thu) by tekNico (guest, #22)
In reply to: Bringing encryption restrictions in through the back door by sub2LWN
Parent article: Bringing encryption restrictions in through the back door

> If any non-American cryptographer

As an aside, I find it rather sad that a Canada-based project uses the word "American" to mean "USA citizen". America is obviously a continent (which includes Canada, by the way), not a country.

Why sad? Because it's cultural appropriation, in addition to being imprecise and confusing. You would never say "European" to mean "German", for instance.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Mar 19, 2020 18:52 UTC (Thu) by jkingweb (subscriber, #113039) [Link] (16 responses)

In my experience it's far more common for Europeans (besides Americans) to refer to the United States of America as "America" than it is for Canadians. Given that the foreign audience for that article is larger than the "domestic" (Canadian) audience, it would make sense to adapt to what people elsewhere are used to.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Mar 19, 2020 19:07 UTC (Thu) by jkingweb (subscriber, #113039) [Link] (15 responses)

More to the point, though, how else would one refer to an American? There is no other widely recognized demonym, and while I've seen "USian" and "US American" used informally, the effect is for me usually to sow confusion in my mind. Even "USA citizen" (as you employed) is reductive as not all people who would be American for the purposes of OpenBSD's concerns are citizens. If you have to go to the trouble of saying "nationals and residents of the United States of America" to get the same point across as just saying "Americans", whom does it really help? That the continent I live on is called "America" is completely unimportant to my life, and I attach no importance to being a person from the Americas; as far as I'm concerned they can keep the word.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Mar 19, 2020 22:07 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (6 responses)

The UK has the same problem, saved by the fact that 'Briton' refers to *almost* the same people -- and unsaved by the fact that, to a first approximation, nobody uses the word 'Briton' other than newspapers.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Mar 20, 2020 13:05 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Not helped by the fact that "Briton", in modern British usage, means someone who was here before the Anglo-Saxons arrived ... :-)

Cheers,
Wol

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 22:30 UTC (Wed) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link] (4 responses)

We don't say "Briton", we say "British", which is an adjective just like "American" is.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 16, 2024 22:55 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

Bear in mind also, that Briton and Breton are (historically) the same word.

Nowadays the distinction is that Britons come from Grand Bretagne, while Bretons come from Petit Bretagne.

Nationality is complicated ... and usually rooted in myth, not fact, to boot ...

Cheers,
Wol

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 19, 2024 7:53 UTC (Mon) by laarmen (subscriber, #63948) [Link] (2 responses)

Since we're wading into linguistic pedantry, that'd be Grande-Bretagne (Great Britain) vs Bretagne (Brittany). Brittany is culturally divided into Lower and Upper Brittany, so as a Breton I would probably wonder if you're talking about Lower Brittany if you say "Petite Bretagne".

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 20, 2024 14:50 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

I did say it was complicated ... :-) and more myth than fact :-)

But I've always understood Grand- and Petit- Bretagne to be a matching pair, as in "the land of the Br(e/i)tons" before the Romans, so Petit-Bretagne to me is all of Brittany. I didn't know that was divided into "Upper" and "Lower".

Cheers,
Wol

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 20, 2024 23:45 UTC (Tue) by jkingweb (subscriber, #113039) [Link]

Just by the way, Bretagne is feminine. La Grande-Bretagne est au nord de la plus petite Bretagne.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 12:52 UTC (Wed) by Delicieuxz (guest, #172896) [Link] (7 responses)

There are widely-recognized demonyms to refer to a US citizen other than the misnomer and misappropriation of American. Just maybe not in English.

In Spanish (which is the dominant language of America), there's "estadounidenses", which translates to United-Statesian. The shorter form for which would be USian.

In French, there's états-unien, which again translates to United-Statesian.

In Italian, there's statunitense, which is again United-Statesian.

In German, there's US-Amerikaner, which translates to US-American - as opposed to Canadian-American, Peruvian-American, Bolivian-American, etc.

In Canada, we rarely use the term America to refer to the US, or American to refer to a US citizen. We usually call the US the US, and a person from the US simply a US citizen, from the US, or from the States. Personally, I use the term USian all the time now.

I've seen it said on occasion "but Mexico's full name is the United States of Mexico, so wouldn't there be confusion there?" And that's not correct, as the full name of Mexico is actually The United Mexican States.

There's a document I saw on the Library of Congress' website which says that the trend of referring to US citizens as Americans wasn't popularized until the 20th century, and happened as a result of the US becoming an empire. So, it's an imperialist slang.

The continent America, with north and south sub-continents (like Eurasia has Europe and Asia sub-continents) was named America centuries before the US existed, and the US from its beginning was named merely "of" the continent America. In fact, in 1783, right before the US became a country, the states were being referred to as the united states of north America. Then the name was shortened to the US of A, but the America in the name always referred to the continent.

So, I don't feel comfortable calling the US by a name that misappropriates what belongs to 35 different countries, or its people's nationality by a term that applies to all the people of America. It's a misnomer and misappropriation, and is basically identity theft for the sake of aggrandizing and reinforcing the imperialist mindset in an impererialist state.

And I cringe a bit when people claim the term for the collective landmass of north and south America is "the Americas", as "the Americas" is plural, referring to multiple landmasses at once. The fact that "Americas" is plural testifies that, as a singular landmass, its name is America.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 13:12 UTC (Wed) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

There are widely-recognized demonyms to refer to a US citizen other than the misnomer and misappropriation of American. Just maybe not in English.

The architect Frank Lloyd Wright was in favour of the term “Usonian”, which however does not seem to have caught on.

The only language which appears to have picked it up is Esperanto, where the United States is called usono, and its inhabitants are usonanoj.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 14:58 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (1 responses)

I use USAsian. USian seems incomplete to me (United States of ... what? - ian?). USAsian also flows better when spoken.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 15:25 UTC (Wed) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link]

I suspect that if you use "USAsian" (either written or spoken) without sufficient context, many people will think you're talking about people of Asian ancestry in the US, so it will not be very effective at communicating your intent.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 19:42 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (2 responses)

> There are widely-recognized demonyms to refer to a US citizen other than the misnomer and misappropriation of American.

There are two countries with the words "United States" in the official name: the USA, and... Mexico. There's only one country with the word "America" in the official name.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 19:54 UTC (Wed) by daroc (editor, #160859) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, at the risk of being unnecessarily nitpicky: technically, the United States of Mexico's official name is "Estados Unidos Mexicanos", as given by the current constitution, and therefore the words "United States" aren't in its name. While the country, like the USA, has no official language, the government does conduct business almost exclusively in Spanish.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 14, 2024 20:33 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

To add to the irony, "American" is probably the easiest and most correct demonym outside the USA. Something like "usian" will require other people to know English enough to understand what the "US" stands for.

"American" also doesn't clash with any other country's name (official or not). It would have been a different story if a significant number of people identified themselves as "North American" or "South American", but I don't think it's a thing?

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 20, 2024 12:32 UTC (Tue) by jkingweb (subscriber, #113039) [Link]

> In Canada, we rarely use the term America to refer to the US, or American to refer to a US citizen. We usually call the US the US, and a person from the US simply a US citizen, from the US, or from the States.

You and I must live in different Canadas, then. While I agree "America" is practically never used outside an ironic context, I also rarely if ever hear fellow Canadians use a name for our southern neighbours other than "American" (or « américain » in French).

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Mar 19, 2020 22:49 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

But in my native language pretty much everyone uses the word meaning English to all citizens (and things) of/from the UK. Even the "Battle of Britain" is called "angliai csata" (meaning Battle of England). Distinction is only made (if made at all) for football players, because they play for different national teams. Heck, when Czechoslovakia was still a country, we used to call even the Slovakians as "csehek" (Czechs). Natural languages are not precise or logical in all cases.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Mar 20, 2020 18:03 UTC (Fri) by sbdep (subscriber, #13282) [Link]

> As an aside, I find it rather sad that a Canada-based project uses the word "American" to mean "USA citizen". America is obviously a continent (which includes
> Canada, by the way), not a country.

As a Canadian, I can assure you that we universally refer to people from the USA as Americans, and never use "America" to refer to the continent.
Referring to the continent might be "North America", "South America", "Central America" (which is of course a fairly ambiguous term).

However the insistence of Europeans that the term "American" should refer to all people from "North America" or perhaps both "North and South America" is humourous :)

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 15, 2024 8:49 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

I don't understand the "cultural appropriation" thing, but in natural languages it's common that a word has multiple meanings and it's also common that words are not precise. For example in my native language "pesti" usually refers to something or somebody from or related to Budapest even though technically Pest is only one part of the city. The word "American" has also two meanings and one of its meaning might be considered imprecise. However, I don't think it's confusing it because almost always relates to the USA. If not, "American continent" or something like that is used. Trying to invent a Newspeak work for a supposed confusion just creates more confusion.

America is a continent, not a country

Posted Aug 16, 2024 22:57 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

But people are quite happy to say "English" when they mean "American" ...

(Those are nouns, not adjectives, by the way ...)

Cheers,
Wol