Well, everybody born in the american continent is technically “american” too, including Central and South America. Is there a specific term in english for these people?
Edit: Thanks for all your answers, especially the wholesome ones and those patient enough to explain it thoroughly. Since we (South Americans) and you (North Americans) use different models/conventions of continent boundaries, it makes sense for you to go by “Americans”, while it doesn’t for us.
While technically correct, I’ve never heard a Brazilian refer to themselves as “American” when they intended to mean South American. Linguistically, when you say “American” you’re talking about a citizen of the United States, not just any person from the western hemisphere. And if you’re talking about a specific continent (North America, Central America, South America) you’re going to be specific about it. A Brazilian would say “I’m South American” when referring to their continent.
Brazil considers the Americas to be a single continent, with south/north being subdivisions. A lot of people here don’t understand that usa’s actual name is America just like the continent, so they often get mad when the word American is used to refer to people from the USA instead of from anywhere in the americas.
If anything we should just rename the continents to remove the confusion.
Or just wait for the secessions to inevitably start rolling in, then the gringos can drop the name. They were second anyways.
As a US American, man I wish. Unfortunately, our political divide is distributed evenly enough geographically that I don’t see that being likely.
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I propose North Canada and South Canada. Or North Peru and South Peru.
I feel like I’ve never even heard someone say it like that either. Maybe it’s just my bubble but I never hear people refer to themselves by their continent except maybe occasionally Europeans.
I’ve never heard a Russian say “I’m Asian” that’s for sure.
But the more I’ve been reading these arguments, the more I think that the situation is more like Europe than I originally thought. Smaller countries that might be less culturally distinct or might share a common bond seem to use the term to refer to their region at a larger level.
I still think it is needlessly confusing though.