From Spain here, when we want to speak about USA people we use the term “yankee” or “gringo” rather than “american” cause our americans arent from USA, that terms are correct or mean other things?

  • BmeBenji@lemm.ee
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    4 hours ago

    Being from the USA, I can confidently say “Yankee” is a term that is fairly neutral in meaning. People from the South states use it to refer to basically any American not from the South, and I get the sense people from the UK use it to refer to anyone from the USA.

    In my experience, “Gringo” seems to be a term used by Spanish-speakers (even ones from North and South America) to refer to English speakers who think they’re better than everyone, so it appears to be a term with negative connotations

  • meliante@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    Burros como o caralho is Portuguese for USAians.

    It translates to something like dumb as fuck.

  • redrum@lemmy.ml
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    5 hours ago

    I prefer the formal name in spanish of estadounidense (united-statistian) to American.

  • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    This probably isn’t helpful for referring to all Americans but in the U.S., we use whatever state/regjon within the United States a person is from as the demonym. So, someone from California would be Californian, someone from Texas would be Texan. For a regional example, someone from the Northeast would be a New Englander.

    For most of the history of the Republic, the states viewed themselves sort of like EU countries do now: independent states in America that united. It probably wasn’t until the World Wars that it changed.

    It can get more complicated, unfortunately. Native Americans would probably use their tribal name instead of the state, for instance. But that’s why we don’t have a demonym and everyone has resorted to USian or USAian on message boards.

    • Hyphlosion@lemm.ee
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      15 minutes ago

      I wish Oregonians were called Oregonos instead because sounding like a spice is cool. lol