This is a response to Thread: ppl from the USA: Stop calling yourselves AMERICAN.

In the English-speaking world, American (capital A, no O on the end) specifically refers to people from or of the United States of America. This is true not only within the United States, but throughout the English-speaking world.

How many Anglo-Canadians actually refer to themselves as American? Not many. Jamaicans certainly don't.

I'm from the USA. If I travel to England and say, "I'm an American," no one would ask me if I was from Peru.

And this would be true throughout Australia and New Zealand as well. It's understood American = USA, and nothing else. In fact, if an Argentinian went to New Zealand and tried to pull this nonsense saying "I'm an American from Argentina," the New Zealander wouldn't understand. He'd ask "If you're from Argentina, and not the USA, how are you an American?"

In English, American = from the USA.

Now, in Spanish and Portuguese, americano (lowercase A, O on the end) may indeed refer to people from or of the North and South American continents...

But you know what, we're speaking English here. What americano means to those people in their languages doesn't bother me, so who the hell are they to dictate what American means in our language?

In other words, to the poster from Portugal, and anyone else who doesn't speak English as their mother tongue, STOP IMPOSING YOUR LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM ON OUR ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Sincerely,

An American (i.e. USA!, not the general americano)