this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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The correct term for that is American by the way, not USAian.
Yeah, I mean I totally get the annoyance of American being overloaded for both US person and of the American continents, but USAian ain't the solution lol that kind of sucks (hard to say, no history to it, etc)
Give me a term less ambiguous than "American" and I might use it.
American is pretty unambiguous. What are you getting it mixed up with? No one else uses it. If you hear American, do you have to run through a list of other countries asking them which they are from? Of not, it's unambiguous.
You could argue that it shouldn't be the pronoun for a US citizen, but that's a different argument than it being ambiguous.
Whatever adjective makes you feel better: appropriate, apt, fitting, correct, modest, less expansive, less assuming, less imperious, less opulent, less grandiose, less egocentric, less narcissistic
Chile is American
Chile citizens are called Chileans.
Chileans, Californians, Texans, New Yorkers, Minnesotans, Britich Columbians, Guatemalans.....all Americans
The point you’re trying to make is correct on a technical level, not a functional one. Unfortunately we can’t will languages into behaving in ways we think is ideal simply by making pointless assertions in obscure forums.
No thanks. The USA doesn't represent all of North and South America.
I never said it does. I just said it's the correct word. It's not confusing or ambiguous. Only one country uses it. It also does represent multiple states in the americas, hence the name.
If that's the correct word to you, fine, use it. I won't. Just because one country assumes it can be eponymous with not just one, but two entire continents, doesn't make it right, nor do I have to agree with it.
And I guess South African should be something else, because there are other states in southern Africa? Language doesn't really care about being "correct" with terms. It cares about being understandable. No one knows what USAian is. Everyone knows what American is. There isn't really any debate anywhere around what to call people from the United States of America, even among other American nations.
You are correct, it should be something else. To agree on what is pretty difficult though. Azania has been suggested, but there are 12 official languages that probably have their own terms. I won't even attempt to guess how many different tribes were brutally merged into one country by imperialists when they drew the borders to call it South Africa. It wouldn't surprise me if they did rename themselves someday.
Even India doesn't want to be called India. There's a growing movement for it to be called Bharat.
Funny that, I didn't have to explain to anyone what it is because the immediate reaction by people like you was "that's not how you say 'American' ".
You could have called them anything and I would have known what you were talking about because of the context. The same context you used to guess "USAian" was available to everyone else.
So it was context alone, was it? Using the acronym USA in an adjective referring to something from the USA didn't clue you in at all. Just the context. Without it your reasoning would've completely led you astray and the sentence would've become unquestionably incomprehensible.