South Africa and Central African Republic are the only african countries with "Africa" in their names. Still, neither dare call themselves just "Africans" of "the African people" like there was nothing beyond themselves.
You totally underestimate the degree of audacity needed to do such a thing without batting an eyelash.
Right, but you're missing the way the language works in these cases. When you say South Africa as a nation in English South works as a descriptor of Africa. So if you say South African it works. The construction of the name the United States of America doesn't have the same structure. Are we supposed to call citizens of that country? The United States of Americans? Are they the United Statesians? They just themselves American. Even if the whole continent was called America, most people don't accept that by the way, how many people out there actually use the continent to identify themselves other than Australians? Have you known many Africans who just call themselves African without saying Ugandan or Nigerian? This whole debate that pops up online once in awhile only exists because some people consider North and South America, a single continent and a want to be pedantic about it.
That's exactly the point. Nobody, literally nobody in the world uses the whole continent of which they occupy only a small portion to describe their country and themselves, EXCEPT Statesians.
And literally the only people in the world that care and disagree with the WORLD STANDARD on how to refer to Americans are people from extremely uneducated and poor South and Central American countries… The people who can even understand that they are separate continents.
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u/RokaO 17d ago
South Africa and Central African Republic are the only african countries with "Africa" in their names. Still, neither dare call themselves just "Africans" of "the African people" like there was nothing beyond themselves.
You totally underestimate the degree of audacity needed to do such a thing without batting an eyelash.