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?
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
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 ;-)
German here, most of the time I say “US-American”
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.
Just say “idiots.” Source: USA citizen.
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
Texan here. Yankee is definitely not a neutral word to refer to everyone from the USA. Some people down here will fight you over it, but most would just give you a confused look.
I’ve always understood gringo to mean white person, especially one who can’t speak Spanish. The term is sometimes used in Mexican restaurants to let the staff know that you can’t deal with too many jalapeños.
I’m afraid so. There are a lot of people still fighting our Civil War, the one that supposedly ended over 150 years ago. Even without those troglodytes, there is a distinct cultural difference between the North and South, as I think there is in many countries. We tend to rub each other the wrong way sometimes.
Old joke about the difference. Walk up to a Southerner’s house, and they say, “can I help you?” Walk up to a Yankee’s house, and it’s, “whaddya want?”
I’ve heard gringo is about language, primarily English. Not about being a whitey
In my experience (as a Brit), people generally only refer to Americans as Yanks in a mildly pejorative way or if we’re taking the piss, otherwise it’s Americans.
U.K. bloke here…I don’t use it personally, just because, but yeah we say it for anyone from the USA.
When I was about 10 or so someone local to me had a lawsuit because his colleagues called him Yankee and he claimed it was racism, fairly certain he won, but it was an obscure case.
