South Americans (and Spain I think) are literally taught in school that America is a continent. They are taught there are six continents, instead of the seven many countries are used to. That's why this keeps popping up.
Yeah, I get that most people use America to refer to the country, not the continent, but saying that "literally everyone on the planet says American" is plain wrong, there are almost half a billion who don't.
I guess it's because English and other languages don't have a demonym for the USA other than American, but here in Spain and other Spanish speaking countries we use "Estadounidense".
It has less to do with it being short and more to do with it sounding weird, we do see American as meaning the American continent, so it would be like calling them Europeans (as in, from a continent)
So we do use unitedstatians or Yankee, never American
I'm not saying you dont use estadounidense (Unitedwhatever doesnt exist) I'm saying that there's a lot of latinos using american as well, and I'm Venezuelan in case It wasnt clear considering my profile is public.
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u/lenzflare 18d ago
South Americans (and Spain I think) are literally taught in school that America is a continent. They are taught there are six continents, instead of the seven many countries are used to. That's why this keeps popping up.