YOU are the one trying to impose speech on ME. Who’s the imperialist? Americans refer to their country as America. Non-Americans refer to the US as America. This all happened organically. You cry about it on the behalf of less-relevant countries sharing the same continent and try to change how people talk.
(E.g. BBC's story of "America Goes to War" doesn't mean Argentina, Chile, and Costa Rica are also going to war. BBC is talking about the USA.)
>America is a geographic area with a North, South, and Central.
That is true but you're not taking into account 2 different usages of "America":
- (1) "America" the geography, the continent,
- (2) "America" the country : e.g. Hawaii is in America even though it's an island in the Pacific Ocean instead of the American continent.
Likewise, why do people who mention "Asia" are talking about China/Japan/Taiwan and exclude Russia?!? Because that's a different usage of "Asia" that doesn't perfectly map to geography of Asian continent.
Including travelling the length of the Americas, and stories from South America.
The point being that the BBC and other countries only use the term after qualifying that they specifically mean the USofA or other parts of the Americas.
> Hawaii is in America even though it's in the Pacific Ocean instead of the American continent.
Who says that though?
I'm 60, well educated and would say that Hawaii is a state of the USofA, as I've done all my life and as the majority of people I know would do so.
> Likewise, why do people who mention "Asia" are talking about China/Japan/Taiwan and exclude Russia?!?
Depends upon the people and the context of the discussion - I was in the asian portion of Russia when I was ground truthing soviet era maps against the "new" global WGS84 datum.
Poltically Russia tends to be associatied with Europe | East Europe | other variations due to Moscow being the capital.
If you're in Vietnam you're often dealing with Russians out of Vladivostok on the edge of the sea of Japan.
>The point being that the BBC and other countries only use the term after qualifying that they specifically mean the USofA or other parts of the Americas.
That is the opposite of what actually happens. Outside of the USA, when people on the street refer to "America" with no prefix of "North-"/"South-"/"Central-", they're talking about the USA without even qualifying that they're equating "no-prefix-America" = "USA". That's just what most non-Americans do. If you go to India and ask a random stranger, "Would you like to visit America?", it's already assumed that the question is about the USA.
>Who says that though?
People living in Hawaii naturally say that. In Hawaii, it's natural in casual conversation to say "living in America" rather than "living in the USA". Example of "As Hawaii residents, we have both the privilege of living in America, with all the perks of not actually living in the continental states." -- from:
https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/hawaii/privileges-hi/
Good to know that a British news publication determines the vernacular for everyone around the world. I’ll be sure to refer to bbc.com’s regional delineations before insensitively referring to any part of the world in a manner that may hurt your feelings. Thanks for the tip!
Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll just speak freely with reasonable, organic language that isn’t dictated by cry bullies and false authorities.
You don’t get to tell me how to speak. Sorry if that pains you.
I'm not in or from the UK, I have travelled in three quarters of the 190+ countries about the world.
> You don’t get to tell me how to speak. Sorry if that pains you.
Speak as you wish, it pains me not.
However, when you say 1+1=5 or that the rest of the world uses the same seppoisms that you do then I quite rightly regard you as more than a little ignorant.
It has nothing to do with ignorance. It’s a perfectly reasonable shortening of USA, which is why everyone, from everywhere, uses it.
People against its use are invariably anti-US, or massively insecure about their less-influential country in the Americas, or are just jerks looking to exert power over others via compelled speech. You seem like you’re all three. We’re gonna keep saying “America”, dweeb.
Cope somewhere else.