Maybe I'm not as clear at 2:22 am as I am at 6:29 pm. I have not met any latino adults from ho were born and raised in other countries yet referred to themselves as "Americans", even if they became naturalised. That doesn't happen in the real world. Yes they understand geography and know that they originate from the Central or South America but they NEVER identify as "Americans".
oh god dude, you're talking to people in the US in English. What you're not doing is talking to people in Latin America in Spanish or Portuguese, where the word "Americano" is NEVER used to refer to people from the US, except in the context of being from the (one) continent of America.
It's almost like Spanish and Portugese are different languages from English, and may use different demonyms...... If the Spanish or Portugese word for a citizen of the United States is different from the English word, so be it. But, that doesn't change the fact that the word in English is "American."
If it said, "America has always welcomed incorrect usages from all over," you'd have a point. But it doesn't, so you don't.
Isn't that article about British words creeping into US speech, rather than the other way round? Looking through the list, I'd have sworn "metrosexual" was an American word though. It follows the US style of merging two words to make a new one, like threepeat and prequel
Maybe that's a grammatical/construction tactic we borrowed from German. Maximum speed limit = Hoechsgeschwindigkeitsbegrenzung
One Britishism that really seems to have caught on with the younger generation--'gingers'. My son and many of his peers use that word exclusively. I blame South Park. EDIT: Also, "sell-by date" is now used by many (American) publishers in their dealings with retailers and libraries. Has been for awhile now.
lol, you guys need this. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=contextual+meaning+of+words&l=1 If used as a noun American has two meanings: (1) a person from the USA; (2) a person from the Americas. You can check any English dictionary. If used as an adjective it means: (1) of or relating to the United States; (2) of or relating to the Americas. Since this thread is in "Soccer in the USA forum" the meaning is for someone from the USA.
I just like that we had actual latin Americans objecting to the use of the word "American" to refer to US citizens on the last page and yet pointing out that this is a thing that people actually do on this page apparently makes me retarded
What are we of the United States of America to be called? "American" lumps us in with most everyone else in our hemisphere. I've heard Mexicans refer to us as "Norte Americanos," but that lumps us in with Canadians, as does the somewhat derogatory "gringos". We can't even really use something like "United Staters" as Mexico is formally Los Estados Unidos de Mexico. If only Hancock, Jefferson, etc. had considered this when they named the country. I'll either stick with "American" or just say, "I'm from the US."
Sure, but it's not like anyone actually gets confused when you say you're an American. I have, literally, never heard anyone else refer to themselves that way other than someone from the United States. And if people don't like it, too bad for them.
Sometimes, the Brit expressions can be quite confusing. I've heard a couple of announcers talk about "nervy" to mean "nervous," not "gutsy" as Yanks might mean.
Well I know and associate with a plenty of Latin Americans from the Caribbean (Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic & Cuba), Central America (Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Belize, Costa Rica) and South America (Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil) and not one of them has ever referred to themselves or their countrymen as "Americans". Latinos don't even call their "indians" Native Americans: they refer to them as "indigenas" or by their tribal name. Furthermore I am originally from the Caribbean and although we are not latinos, we also refer to people from the US as Americans, Yankees or Yanks but we sure as heck don't refer to people from Central or South America as Americans Perhaps your examples are the exception to the norm rather than the norm
This has probably come up in the thread already, but I've been "corrected" for not adopting the UK custom of referring to teams in the plural like most foreign announcers, e.g. "Chelsea are down by a goal" instead of "Chelsea is down by a goal" as we'd naturally say it in the US. Even a lot of American announcers do this, even though it's completely foreign to American English grammar.
I don't recall if it's come up in this thread, but it's certainly come up in other threads. Anyone who corrects your grammar for that is just being pedantic. Like many things in English this is a "rule" that is frequently broken depending on the speaker's preferences -- in British as well as American English. Whether a team (or any collective noun) is an "it" or is a "they" is really just what you want it to be. The only thing I ask is that people not be Nazis about it, and if they must make an issue of it, at least be consistent themselves, i.e. if you are going to insist on a singular conjugation (e.g. "wins"), please use the singular pronoun as well, i.e. 'it' versus 'they'.