I was actually like 30 years old when I realized "EU" meant "European Union" and wasn't a 2 letter abbreviation for the continent of Europe. In the US, we call states by their two letter abbreviations (IL, NY, CA, etc), often call countries by 2 letter abbreviations too (depends on the country, but JP, AR, CR come to mind as common examples), so it's a pretty natural assumption to think of 'EU' as 'all of the continent Europe, independent of whether they participate in the governing body known as the European Union'

If you substitute the GP for 'pretty typical European play' it makes plenty of sense.

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embedding-shape 3 days ago | parent [-]

Yeah, similarly, growing up as a European, I thought "America" was "the USA", but turns out it's the entire continent, and even "North America" isn't just the US, but the two neighbors too! I don't think it's too bad to be confused about something, we can't be expected to know it all, every time. We learn and move past it :)

> If you substitute the GP for 'pretty typical European play' it makes plenty of sense.

Not sure even this makes sense, it's not something that is happening Europe wide, and it seems like there is only two countries so far that been engaging in this, with another one thinking about it. For something to be a "pretty typical European play" I'd probably say it has to have happened more times than "twice".

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rjdj377dhabsn 3 days ago | parent [-]

> I thought "America" was "the USA"

It is, at least that's the most common definition.

If you want to refer to North and South America together, one generally says "the Americas".

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embedding-shape 3 days ago | parent [-]

I think that might be popular and common in the US, but outside the US and in the rest of the world, particularly in Ibero-America, "America" is the entire of South, Central and North America together. But again, what you say seem to be true inside the US, so understandable that many understand it as such.

I don't think anyone (outside the US at least) use "The Americas" in daily language, while "America" certainly is.

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rjdj377dhabsn 2 days ago | parent [-]

Here in Asia, most people with whom I talk are more likely to call the USA "America" rather than the "United States".

Probably because of its closer association with the adjective "American".

If someone with limited English asks where I'm from, they're more likely to understand if I say "America" than "United States". And no one has ever asked "oh but which country in America?".

	▲	embedding-shape 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> If someone with limited English asks where I'm from, they're more likely to understand if I say "America" than "United States". And no one has ever asked "oh but which country in America?". That's interesting! In my experience, meeting people from the US outside of the US mostly, when you ask where they are from, they tend to always say the city or the state, but never actually specify either "United States" or "America". If you don't happen to know that that state/city is in the US, and they never specified the country, you're usually safe to assume they're from the US :)