Example: where wet bulb temperatures are the new normal, air conditioning is as vital as air and water because you will literally die without cooling. “You can buy all the electricity you can afford” is not good enough.
When you think about it, it’s kind of offensive to call ourselves (US residents) “Americans” as if in all of North and South America we’re the only country that matters.
But “Americans” doesn’t refer to the continent, it refers to the name of the country. It’s really just shortened from “United States of Americans”.
That’s a very United States centric outlook. Most other Americans on the continent (north and south) also consider themselves Americans. Here in Colombia they call those of us from the US “estadounidenses” which basically translate as unitedstates-ian.
Just FYI I’m not American, I’m Canadian.
I would never consider myself to be American, because I don’t really view the americas as one large social group.
North America and South America don’t speak the same primary language, use similar currencies, or have similar cultural values. However most South American countries are similar, just like North Americans are to each other.
If I listed in increasing size the areas i inhabit, it would be Canada, North America, Earth.
It’s like how we generally refer to Europe and Asia separately, not typically Eurasia.
Really?
How many countries have “of America” in their names?
When you actually think about it, it isn’t offensive. Matter of fact, if you’ve been around the internet long enough, you could remember when it first started, and it wasn’t people in the Americas doing the complaining.
Are Mexicans being offended when we get called the US? It’s in the same place in the name for their country, the United States of Mexico. Or would they prefer being called the EU? Oh, that’s right, if they use the words in Spanish, they’re screwed because europe got there first.
Come the think of it, what do Mexicans call the US? The ones I know call it “el Norte”, which is offensive to Canadians by the same way of thinking, since the USA isn’t the only country in the north of north america.
The whole thing is stupid. The only time being “american” and not talking about the US matters is if you’re referring to everyone in South and/or Central America as a group. Which isn’t exactly a common thing. And, guess what, you’d still have to apply the term North Americans to people from the USA if you wanted to lump them in with Canada and Mexico.
Brazilians aren’t called Americans because their country is Brazil, and that’s a much bigger component of their national “vibe” than being south American. Hell, you talk to some Brazilians, and they’ll argue that their entire culture is separate from the rest of South America. And, btw, they’re called Brazilians, not FRians, despite being the federative republic of Brazil in English, (which is republica federativa in Portuguese, which is missing some accent marks, but there’s a limit to typing on screen and hunting down the right ones when you’re dyslexic).
People from the US have been called Americans by other people in the Americas way longer than this whiny trend has existed. Mind you, us citizens aren’t always called Americans, there’s other terms used here and there in both Spanish and Portuguese speakers for sure, and likely in indigenous languages. So, calling us citizens “Americans” is really only an English thing, there’s variants in other languages that are the dominant term in that languages, even compared to other terms.
Hell, there’s even an argument to be made that the U.S. got the name first, so anyone else can bugger off, but I’ve always found that argument both specious and rude.
Besides, let’s be real here, when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter. You might get some people to switch over, but when every news source in the world has to get on board, and every person around the world is expected to care, it isn’t going to change, even in English.
The whole argument is a nothing burger anyway. It’s dumb. And there’s a thousand things ahead of it on the list of things to change.
You spent a lot of paragraphs on a “dumb” argument. Sounds like, despite your insistence it doesn’t matter, it really does matter to you.
USians gonna US, I guess.
I think there’s a translation barrier, maybe.
When I said “it doesn’t matter”, I meant that none of the arguments about it matter in a real way. I then explained why I don’t think it matters.
English is a pain in the ass language sometimes.
In this instance, I think perhaps “the subject is moot”, or “the debate is without relevance beyond conversation for the sake of conversation.” would have been better.
For most Americans, you’ll find that “it doesn’t matter” isn’t the same as “I don’t care”, unless they say “it doesn’t matter to me”. Depends on where they grew up, or where they’ve lived long enough to change their use of casual english, though.
Secondary to that, what I wrote was a fairly small bit. Less than most op-ed pieces in newspapers, less than most other articles too. I get that the internet, and texting, have driven down our collective patience with longer writing, but still. If it can fit on the screen of a tablet, with the paragraph breaks included, it really isn’t that long.
