this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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If that's the correct word to you, fine, use it. I won't. Just because one country assumes it can be eponymous with not just one, but two entire continents, doesn't make it right, nor do I have to agree with it.
And I guess South African should be something else, because there are other states in southern Africa? Language doesn't really care about being "correct" with terms. It cares about being understandable. No one knows what USAian is. Everyone knows what American is. There isn't really any debate anywhere around what to call people from the United States of America, even among other American nations.
You are correct, it should be something else. To agree on what is pretty difficult though. Azania has been suggested, but there are 12 official languages that probably have their own terms. I won't even attempt to guess how many different tribes were brutally merged into one country by imperialists when they drew the borders to call it South Africa. It wouldn't surprise me if they did rename themselves someday.
Even India doesn't want to be called India. There's a growing movement for it to be called Bharat.
Funny that, I didn't have to explain to anyone what it is because the immediate reaction by people like you was "that's not how you say 'American' ".
You could have called them anything and I would have known what you were talking about because of the context. The same context you used to guess "USAian" was available to everyone else.
So it was context alone, was it? Using the acronym USA in an adjective referring to something from the USA didn't clue you in at all. Just the context. Without it your reasoning would've completely led you astray and the sentence would've become unquestionably incomprehensible.