Maybe this is a regional thing but I’ve always called it the US
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I hear “The states,” “The US,” and “America” equally used here in Cali. Almost never do I hear “The USA” unless it’s said like “the good 'ol US of A.”
I say “the US”
Safe to just call it shithole now.
“This is America! I’ll call it whatever I want!”
I use America a lot
I use “the U.S.” or “States”.
There’s more than one America.
But not more States, united or not…?
I’ve been lucky enough to travel a fair amount. If I say, “I’m from the States.”, people knew that meant the USA.
They will. They will also know if you say you are from America. My point was that one is no better than the other, from an accuracy point of view. Both have multiple meanings.
Mexicans, Canadians, Brazilians… All from America.
Agreed. And correct. We are not disagreeing. :)
Definitely not, just adding information for readers.
Yet, I’ve never encountered anyone else from around the globe that uses the term “the States” to indicate whichever country they’re from.
And that is my point! Or half of it, I should say. I’ve made too many comments in this thread to keep track of myself. Contextually it works, but that doesn’t make it more suitable than American as that works equally well. No one that isn’t trying to be obtuse will think you mean Mexican when you say American, even though it is technically as correct.
Well there are Estados Unitidos, but those are in Mexico
It was a retorical question. :)
I’ve noticed this too but it seems like a left vs right thing. But never “the USA”
In Canada we usually refer to you guys as “the States”
Hello neighbor! Very interesting because down here we call ya’ll “the Northern Folk”
That sounds badass I like it
Red Green calls us “americans”, i call us fucked. Take your pick.
I heard in a podcast recently that many people in the US still believed Africa was a country, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this is somehow related to their using the name of their continent to designate their own country.
That’s just not true.
I use them interchangeably. 🤷
It’s a question of shorthand and relative distance to the country. In most European languages, the spelling equivalent of America refers to the country by default. The continent as an entity doesn’t get mentioned that much and when it does either context gets you there or a regional attribute like a cardinal direction or central. In my experience this applies to British English as well. “The United States” is often more cumbersome in translation and might require grammatical inflection when used in a local language - and confusingly could refer to Mexico as well. Funny enough though some languages adopted “USA” as another way to refer to the country, even if in translation this should get you a different letter combination.
Because of the dominance of the English in the United Kingdom, a lot of continental Europeans lazily refer to the UK as their version of “England.” Might be Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, a channel island or what have you. We gave up in trying to distinguish. People and how they call places are like that. Quiet understanding beats accuracy.
UK always struck me as a bit imperialist wrt (Northern) Ireland, GB more neutral… but seemingly Scotland isn’t a massive fan of that one either, so
I think that is a slight misconception. The full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So UK≠GB. Great Britain is just the three contiguous home nations (and possibly all the weird little islands I think). And then the British Isles include all the islands including all of Ireland. It is no wonder people are confused.
I just meant the name “United Kingdom” was conceived not long after the crushing of the Irish Rebellion where thousands of people were killed trying to secede from a union that’d fifty years later cause the Great Famine
Because I’ve been told by people of the other nations of these two continents that it bugs them and I had a nice and easy alternative
US Americans seem to refer to themselves as “Americans” a lot on social media. Or they refer to themselves as “the world” like in “this icecream is the best in the world” (without having visited any other country for a significant time to be able to compare). In Europe, US Americans are referred to by different names: the popular „yanks“, the German “Amis” (die spinnen doch, die Amis), depends on the country. The prevalence of new names is increasing rapidly, e.g. Trumpists, US twerks, dropkicks.
Really? So no one ever anywhere but the US uses the exaggeration ‘best in the world’? Get off it.
You sorta had me in the first half, and there is definitely lots of criticism for US treating say….online spaces as an extension of the US, but you chose to go with ‘greatest in the world ice cream’ as the example? I mean, sure.
The irony of saying that only the US uses hyperbole
No, but it certainly seems like hyperbole is the default for Americans. Everything is “awesome, “amazing,” “SO fucking _____,” “the most,” “the worst,” “the best”… I don’t think they understand how strange it sounds to most people, speaking that way about nearly everything.
You’re not wrong, I was just poking fun at the original comment making a hyperbolic statement about hyperboles
I’d bet that a lot of it comes from how pervasive advertising is; we’re constantly bombarded by ads that use that kind of language, so it’s worked its way into everyday language
The “World Series” of baseball is the example I would use. All but one team is based in the US.
I’ll call it “the US” at the beginning of a conversation but mix it in with America afterwards as the context shows I’m talking about the US and not the continent.
When I hear the word “America”, I always have the mental image of someone that speaks English in a non-American (or even non-Anglosphere) accent, and that this person either really likes America or really hates The US, no in between. Like sometimes I picture a person saying “America” in a heavy russian accent I think it just sounds so funny. I think I watched too many movies and I just like the russian accent… it sounds very intimidating and that’s why it had that sort of “cool factor”.
Also, I kinda mix both depending on how my brain is thinking. Sometimes I think my thoughts in Chinese and the “美國” automatically converts into English as “America”, cuz nobody says “合眾國” (United States) in Chinese (at least not in the variants/“dialects” that I know of), cuz it feels like a generic term like “The Republic”, doesn’t make a lot of sense unless referring specifically to domestic politics.
As a Naturalized American Citizen, I sometimes feel like the term “American Citizen” feels like a wrong term, and the term “US Citizen” feels more “correct” to say.
I think that in Chinese, sometimes I hear “民國” (shortened from the full term 中華民國) to refer to ROC and I think “共和國” (shortened from the full term 中華人民共和國) can similarly be used similar to refer to PRC, when used in the context of Chinese history.
The dumber kids I went to middle school with called it America
Granted, that was in the 90s
