Hell, watch an American's face when you explain to them that "America" doesn't ONLY refer to the united states.

See the gears grind to a halt when they are reeducated on the concepts of "Central AMERICA" and "South AMERICA".

nicole_express 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

In the United States, "North America" and "South America" are generally treated as separate continents, so therefore as a whole are called "the Americas". This frees up the singular "America" to refer to the US without too much risk of ambiguity. My understanding is that in some places, especially non-English speaking, is that North and South America are treated as a single continent called "America", which adds ambiguity.

People often get confused by divisions like this because they feel like they should be real in an objective sense, but continents are almost entirely social constructs. (There is a North American tectonic plate, and that's real, but it doesn't quite line up with the continent)

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rob74 3 days ago | parent [-]

Be that as it may, the thing that sounds odd (and a bit arrogant) to most "outsiders" is using the name of a whole continent for a single country and its citizens. I (from Europe) would definitely consider a Canadian, Mexican or Columbian citizen as an "American" too, not only a citizen of the United States. BTW, I'm really curious what Trump thinks the "America" in his "Gulf of America" stands for - the whole continent or only the US?

	▲	epolanski 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Okay, maybe arrogant, but still, it's the only country in the continent to contain the word America, no?
	▲	nicole_express 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Trump's definitely referring to the United States with his pointless renaming attempt because it's singular and not plural, but I'd be careful accusing him of thinking about anything. I doubt he does that very often. I guess the Organization of American States exists. But usually it's pretty unambiguous which sense is being used; like, I guess you could call Mark Carney an American head of government but it's basically just being obtuse, unless it was in the context of, say, a meeting of Carney with other heads of government in the hemisphere, and then it'd be unambiguous what was meant. Even "United States of America" is not unambiguous in the most pathological case; Mexico is also a country consisting of united states existing in the Americas.

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smolder 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

US education covers that much pretty well. Just not so much the geography of specific countries that belong to south america, europe, asia, and africa.

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ineedasername 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That would be the same grind to a halt you'd get on just about anyone's face when they have a random stranger try to explain something obvious in a rude and condescending way. The inside voice goes something like: "Do I walk by, is this person sane, or maybe say something equally condescending like 'Hey buddy, with the bombs we have it will be called whatever we want.'"