Asklemmy

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.

Do you not have a term in Spanish?

If y'all use yank, yankee, or gringo, they're all fine.

But, American is fine too. If you're using English, everyone will know what you mean. It isn't like it hasn't been the term used in English for at least a century.

Here the thing. If you're referring to someone from one of the two/three americas, you specify north, central and south. That depends a little on whether you consider all three as discrete areas, or not, but that's the norm in English.

If you want to refer to all people from the americas at once, Americans is also fine. Context will carry which way you're using it. English is fairly easy to make contextual indicators like that.

An example: "oh, Americans love their flag". Which americans are we talking about? The ones with a specific American flag. Which, the statement isn't universally true, it's just an example.

If you aren't using English, it doesn't matter at all, use whatever terminology is the norm in that language.

The reason it doesn't matter is that there really isn't an "American" people in the continental sense. The cultures of the continents don't even have a unifying effect, though you do have some connection between Spanish speaking vs Portuguese, vs native, vs English, etc. The language links in South America are much more significant than the fact that they live on the same continent.

Any time you'd be referring to the entire Americas, or the peoples of them, you'd specify that because there's not a single American continent.

One nation out of all of them being america really isn't a difficulty in conversation. It's a non issue.

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

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):

It's a weird lacuna of the English language, there's no official word for estadounidense.

Burros como o caralho is Portuguese for USAians.

It translates to something like dumb as fuck.

Burgerlander

Gringo and yankee are both fine. However, it's most correct to refer to people from the USA by their birth state.

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. north-eastern 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.

EDIT: corrected 'southern', thanks to Denvil

I'm USAian. (just identifying for this thread, i don't call myself that)

would "gringo" include Black USAians? Asian USAians? Spain-born USAians?

from my understanding of "gringo", that doesn't seem to include non-white USAians. Most English monolingual USAians think that means "white guy".

a lot of gen z USAians might not know the word Yankee as a term for USAians. if speaking to them, you might have to explain it's not the baseball team.

maybe it's better to stick with "USAians". it's never been used but it's easy to figure out. other possible choices are:

• Statesians
• USAliens
• USAmericans
• Staters
• Stater Tots (re: tater tots)
• USticles

better yet, call each of us by the state we're each from. that's the safest bet. you know all our 50 state names right? and their official demonyms? 🤣 kidding

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

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.

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.