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Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

It's pretty similar in the UK to your description of USA [I assume you mean USA when you say Americans and not any of the other 41 American countries? Bugbear, sorry].

In the UK in many areas we say "[Are you] Alright?" and the response is "[Yes,] [Are you] Alright?". You are not supposed to say whether you are "alright", just answer "Good" or an equivalent. It's analogous to the traditional [middle/upper class] "How do you do?" to which the response expected was "How do you do?". The follow up is usually what the weather is like or something about traffic ...

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[I assume you mean USA when you say Americans and not any of the other 41 American countries? Bugbear, sorry].

Which of those other 41 countries have "America" in the name? Let me know and I'll be sure to consider them when using the word "Americans".

Do you ever use the word "European" or the word "Asian"? If the founders of the USA were programmers they'd probably avoid that unnecessary namespace collision.

I think a more accurate analogy is between "Eurasian" and "American." How often do you use the term Eurasian?

In practice, most references to the people on the American continents are to North Americans, Central Americans, or South Americans. Referring to the collective as 'Americans' is rare and virtually meaningless, given the total lack of shared culture, language, or ethnicity between say, Canadians and Brazilians, comparable to comparing Britons and Chinese.

And in that rare case, context should make clear whether you mean 'people of the Americas' or 'inhabitant of the United States of America.'

It really isn't an issue and I've always been baffled as to why anyone should have problems with the demonym American as it is popularly, and correctly, used.

>Most references to the people on the American continents are to North Americans, Central Americans, or South Americans. Referring to the collective as 'Americans' is rare and virtually meaningless

The terms Latin/Anglo-Saxon America are just as used used exactly to highlight this aspect of the continent.

>given the total lack of shared culture, language, or ethnicity between say, Canadians and Brazilians, comparable to comparing Britons and Chinese.

This is not true. Apart from Canada and the US the rest of the Americas are actually quite close culturally.

Agree completely. My wife is Brazilian and she dislikes that term, but what else can you say? United States-ers? Technically Mexico is the United Mexican States, so that won't work either!

The silly thing is that it's viewed as a form of linguistic imperialism, where in reality it's just where the chips fell. And it's not limited to just that term. In our attempts at political correctness we often make a bigger mess of things. The term "Oriental" had fallen out of favor, and now we say "Asian" which to me is horribly imprecise. In Brazil, my nationality is "norteamericana" (North American), which of course is unfair to the Canadians and the Mexicans.

At some point you just have to accept it as the convention and move on.

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