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?

  • communism@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    You can say USAmerican or US (as an adjective, e.g. US government) as a neutral demonym. “Yankee” and “gringo” have pejorative connotations, although I’m not Latin American so I don’t know what the connotations are among LatAm Spanish speakers. Also, my understanding of the word “gringo” as someone who lives in neither of the Americas is that it refers to specifically white people, not USAmericans in general. I’m not sure if I’ve understood the usage of the term correctly, but if other people have the same understanding, they may get confused if you call eg a Black USAmerican a gringo.

  • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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    1 month ago

    In the USA, Yankee refers to mainly northeast US, including the New York City area. Western Americans would be neutral about being called that and you might piss off some southerners.

    My exposure to the term gringo has mainly been that it refers to white Americans. I don’t know if you would call a black American gringo or how they would accept it.

    • throwback3090@lemmy.nz
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      1 month ago

      Eh, NY has the Yankees sports team but they are not part of New England and I’d say a good portion of the country would say NY has no Yankees in it besides the team.

  • aushtan@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    We call them yankees in Canada. Also usa how’s canada’s dick taste after that 4 nation game?

    • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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      1 month ago

      Idk what a 4 nation game is (at least if it doesn’t involve Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa), but I always thought the land from (fake) London to Windsor, Ontario was very suspicious.

  • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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    1 month ago

    In America, yankee means people from a particular part of America. But we use it here in Australia to mean any American. It’s especially fun when people from the south (that is…the south of the country America, not from the continent of South America) take offence at the term IMO.

    We also use “seppo” which is an Australian shortening slang of “septic”, which is rhyming slang (of the kind used in both Australia and London, England) that comes via “septic tank” via “yank”.

    Gringo seems strange to me. I thought that was a predominantly Latin American term for white people, and would apply equally well to Americans as Canadians as Australians as (of particular relevance to someone from Spain) English…but only the white of each, so it would seem to me it shouldn’t work as synonymous with “American” because it excludes African Americans, Asian Americans, etc. But I’m not Spanish or Latin American, so I might just be misunderstanding the word.

    Edit: what yank means depending on where you are (allegedly):

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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        1 month ago

        Australian rhyming slang in this case, but yeah, it functions in much the same way as Cockney.

    • FloMo@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Hispanic here, I grew up using “gringo” specifically for people from the U.S. despite skin tone.

      Canadians are “Canadiense”, English are “Ingles” but United States? “Estadounidense”? It’s sort of like saying “United Statian” but arguably more “correct/proper”

      Gringo is just much faster/easier to say.

      That being said this can vary a little from one Latin-American country to another.

  • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month ago

    If I want to come off as a pseudo-intellectual I call them Yankee for east-north and Dixie for south-west (but also Florida and the bible belt) and gringo for hispanic Americans. I don’t know if any of those terms are really correct to use in that context and my definitions are entirely vibes-based.

    • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I’d say leave east/west out of the Yankee/Dixie dichotomy you’re imagining, because every single southeastern state was a slave state that supported the confederacy.

      It also falls apart when you go west of the Mississippi River, which was (outside of Texas and California) mostly unincorporated territory during the time of the civil war and not a part of what would have been considered the union or the confederacy at that time.

      Also don’t refer to Hispanic Americans as “gringo” because that is a term used in Latin America to refer to people who are not Latin American.

  • leaky_shower_thought@feddit.nl
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    1 month ago

    imo, ‘gringo’ has no special meaning unless it was given one from a local group. like how “let’s go brandon” only makes sense on a specific group.

    ‘yankee’ used to have a specific one before, i.e. southern US bros, but it got saturated and now could be used generally. imo, ‘yankee’ usage has ye olde vibe to it, but maybe that’s just me.

  • meliante@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Burros como o caralho is Portuguese for USAians.

    It translates to something like dumb as fuck.

  • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
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    1 month ago

    Unfortunately the USAians are so dominant in the region of the Americas that they’ve coopted the term American for most people. My Columbian friend hates when we refer to USAians as Americans because he says “hey we were here first” 😆. But unfortunately that’s the way it is.

    Yanks or Yankee Doodles is what we used to call them but they get rather upset these days when you call them that. I wouldn’t call them gringos because it just sounds unnatural for a Brit to say that seriously.

    • Hyphlosion@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      I like to look at it this way. The full name of Mexico is the United States of Mexico. But we still call them Mexicans.

      It’s totally okay to call people from the United States of America as Americans. Everyone knows what you mean anyways.

  • Alice@beehaw.org
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    1 month ago

    Not too sure about gringo but I know yankee is correct, I hear that one a lot from folks I know in the UK.

    There’s some weird linguistic drift where in the southern US, we call northerners yankees, even though in the rest of the world we’re all yankees. Now I’m curious how that started.

    • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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      1 month ago

      I dunno how true it is, but I’ve heard it gets even more specific once you’re in the north. I shared a map in another comment detailing the different meanings of it.

      As for the etymology, apparently it goes back to Dutch settlers of New Netherlands, and may be connected to the name Janneke. It seems to have gone from being used by English settlers to Dutch settlers to being used in precisely the reverse at some point, and has at times meant either someone of English descent, of early Protestant descent, or other things.

      It was used more generally by outsiders to refer to Americans as far back as the Revolutionary War (the song Yankee Doodle Dandy was originally making fun of Americans—macaroni being a sophisticated style of dress), so its history being used in that way actually predates the Civil War associations that I think many Americans would give it today.

      So yeah, it really does have a fascinating linguistic history.

      Also, weird…this is the second time in as many days I’ve had cause to look up Yankee Doodle Dandy.

      • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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        1 month ago

        As a Dutchie, I’ve heard it being an contraction of the names Jan and Kees, both are common names in Dutch

  • estefanoscopica@thelemmy.club
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    1 month ago

    In Brazil, we use USians or Statesians

    I used the second one on an academic paper and it went through.

    I NEVER use “American”, because

    America no es solo USA, papá esto es desde el Tierra del Fuego hasta el Canada

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      America no es solo USA

      Nah, we often call them Americans too, despite them being like Canada’s trousers. Many (most? I’m not certain) Canadians know how Americans label themselves abroad and are okay being a separate group to avoid bad impressions. “eres Americano? No; soy Canadiense” or so.

      But thanks for thinking of us. It’s great to be considered!

      I use ‘yank’ a lot; sometimes Tank, as I’ve got a Brit friend ;-)

    • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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      1 month ago

      Thing is, it’s “United States of America”, much like “United States of Mexico” and, before 1968, “United States of Brazil”. So when they call themselves americans, they’re technically correct.

  • redrum@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

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