From Spain here, when we want to speak about USA people we use the term āyankeeā or āgringoā rather than āamericanā cause our americans arent from USA, that terms are correct or mean other things?
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Being from the USA, I can confidently say āYankeeā 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, āGringoā seems to be a term used by Spanish-speakers (even ones from North and South America) to refer to English speakers who think theyāre better than everyone, so it appears to be a term with negative connotations
In my experience (as a Brit), people generally only refer to Americans as Yanks in a mildly pejorative way or if weāre taking the piss, otherwise itās Americans.
Southerners are the same way. Nobody calls us yanks as a compliment
Texan here. Yankee is definitely not a neutral word to refer to everyone from the USA. Some people down here will fight you over it, but most would just give you a confused look.
Iāve always understood gringo to mean white person, especially one who canāt speak Spanish. The term is sometimes used in Mexican restaurants to let the staff know that you canāt deal with too many jalapeƱos.
Do Southerners use Yankee pejoratively to refer to northerners?
Iām afraid so. There are a lot of people still fighting our Civil War, the one that supposedly ended over 150 years ago. Even without those troglodytes, there is a distinct cultural difference between the North and South, as I think there is in many countries. We tend to rub each other the wrong way sometimes.
Old joke about the difference. Walk up to a Southernerās house, and they say, ācan I help you?ā Walk up to a Yankeeās house, and itās, āwhaddya want?ā
Yes, since the civil war era.
Or as my husbandās Southern-ass grandma called it, the āwar of northern agressionā š
Reflexively I wanted to downvote that š
Youāre god damn right we do.
The shithead in golf shorts in line ahead of you at Publix bitching out the cashier for not thanking him for letting her help him? The one who left where heās from because he didnāt like it there and then wants here to be like where heās from? Thatās a Yankee, quite likely a halfback.
Username checks out lol
And donāt you forget it.
Iāve heard gringo is about language, primarily English (or another native tongue instead of Spanish). Not about being a whitey
Mexican upbringing here, it is most definitely a āWhiteyā thing.
Thank you for the information. Guess I canāt joke about being a gringo lol
i believe Brits call Americans āyanksā
U.K. bloke hereā¦I donāt use it personally, just because, but yeah we say it for anyone from the USA.
When I was about 10 or so someone local to me had a lawsuit because his colleagues called him Yankee and he claimed it was racism, fairly certain he won, but it was an obscure case.
In America, yankee means people from a particular part of America. But we use it here in Australia to mean any American. Itās especially fun when people from the south (that isā¦the south of the country America, not from the continent of South America) take offence at the term IMO.
We also use āseppoā which is an Australian shortening slang of āsepticā, which is rhyming slang (of the kind used in both Australia and London, England) that comes via āseptic tankā via āyankā.
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) Englishā¦but only the white of each, so it would seem to me it shouldnāt work as synonymous with āAmericanā because it excludes African Americans, Asian Americans, etc. But Iām not Spanish or Latin American, so I might just be misunderstanding the word.
Edit: what yank means depending on where you are (allegedly):
Hispanic here, I grew up using āgringoā specifically for people from the U.S. despite skin tone.
Canadians are āCanadienseā, English are āInglesā but United States? āEstadounidenseā? Itās sort of like saying āUnited Statianā but arguably more ācorrect/properā
Gringo is just much faster/easier to say.
That being said this can vary a little from one Latin-American country to another.
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Seppo, septic tank, yank. Love it! Cockney rhyming slang strikes again?
Australian rhyming slang in this case, but yeah, it functions in much the same way as Cockney.
Seppo is pretty common in the UK too, particularly in families with people in the forces.
Oh thatās really interesting. I would have sworn that o-shortening was a distinctly Australian thing. Do you have other words that you shorten like that? Do you know if thatās a specific term that Brits might have borrowed from Australia, or if it evolved naturally out of British slang?
Not sure where it came from but you can see it here under S - https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary_of_British_military_slang_and_expressions#S
As for other words, I donāt think we do quite so many as the Aussies but there are words like aggro, cheapo, wino, preggo used in every day speech.
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I appreciate Iām nitpicking, but we all use rhyming slang. Probably changed over time.
Burros como o caralho is Portuguese for USAians.
It translates to something like dumb as fuck.
Dumbfuckistan has a certain ring to it when you put it that way.
Just say āidiots.ā Source: USA citizen.
No no, he has a pointā¦
Burgerlander
Marvelstani
That sounds like the name of a person from Docklands in Melbourne.
Itās a weird lacuna of the English language, thereās no official word for estadounidense.
In Italian we have an equivalent, Statunitensi, but Americani is probably used more often to mean the same thing
The reason for this is simple: the word in English is āAmericanā. Because in English speaking countries, it is almost universally the case that we talk about the 7 continents. And in the rare case we talk about 6 continents, itās from merging Europe and Asia (which, frankly, is blatantly a far superior model of the continents), not merging North America and South America.
So āAmericaā unambiguously refers to the country, and thereās no need for estadounidense, any more than thereās a need for ācommonwealthianā for someone from the Commonwealth of Australia.
What about Canada?
I think the point the previous user is getting at is that there is no continent of āAmericaā in most English-speaking countriesāthere is North America and South America.
Canada is in North America but itās not in āAmerica,ā which without the North/South prefix, will make most English-speaking people assume you mean the US and not the continent Canada and the US are on.
What about it?
Theyāre just Americans anyways
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Being a native, a Yankee to me is a New Englander. My Spanish friend had to gently explain to me, āshut up, youāre all yanquis.ā
Being a native from The South, āYankeeā to me means anybody from the area above the Mason Dixon line. Full disclosure, Iām not proud to be from The South. However, I do find many Yankees to be at least a little bit strange. So, the designation stands in my head.
Given that youāre the native, you should gently explain to the colonial that they are the ones who are wrong.
I prefer the formal name in spanish of estadounidense (united-statistian) to American.
In Brazil, we use USians or Statesians
I used the second one on an academic paper and it went through.
I NEVER use āAmericanā, because
America no es solo USA, papĆ” esto es desde el Tierra del Fuego hasta el Canada
Nah, we often call them Americans too, despite them being like Canadaās trousers. Many (most? Iām not certain) Canadians know how Americans label themselves abroad and are okay being a separate group to avoid bad impressions. āeres Americano? No; soy Canadienseā or so.
But thanks for thinking of us. Itās great to be considered!
I use āyankā a lot; sometimes Tank, as Iāve got a Brit friend ;-)
Thing is, itās āUnited States of Americaā, much like āUnited States of Mexicoā and, before 1968, āUnited States of Brazilā. So when they call themselves americans, theyāre technically correct.
Ya tu sabƩ
we call them āestadunidenseā which roughly translates to āusianā. usians tend not to like it.
but, like, you call yourself after the entire continent, am i supposed to take it seriously?
Iām USAian. (just identifying for this thread, i donāt call myself that)
would āgringoā include Black USAians? Asian USAians? Spain-born USAians?
from my understanding of āgringoā, that doesnāt seem to include non-white USAians. Most English monolingual USAians think that means āwhite guyā.
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 itās not the baseball team.
maybe itās better to stick with āUSAiansā. itās never been used but itās easy to figure out. other possible choices are:
better yet, call each of us by the state weāre each from. thatās the safest bet. you know all our 50 state names right? and their official demonyms? š¤£ kidding
Honestly, reading this comment is really just reinforcing for me why we say American. Reading āUSAienā over and over again hurts my head.
it was difficult writing it tooā¦
German here, most of the time I say āUS-Americanā
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 donāt know if you would call a black American gringo or how they would accept it.
Eh, NY has the Yankees sports team but they are not part of New England and Iād say a good portion of the country would say NY has no Yankees in it besides the team.
Thatās the reason I didnāt say New England.
I think you should reread what I said, I donāt think your response makes sense vs my statement.
The term Yankee includes more than New England. Thatās why I didnāt use the term New England while you did.
Iām in Texas, so there is a lot of Mexican cultural exchange. Spanish was practically a second language in my public schools, and most people speak at least a little bit of spanglish.
When a Mexican calls an American a gringo, theyāre not being nice. āGringoā is typically used as a pejorative, to refer to a specific type of āmayo is too spicy and Iām afraid of people who have melatoninā white people.
Those deeply sleeping bastards
Not too sure about gringo but I know yankee is correct, I hear that one a lot from folks I know in the UK.
Thereās some weird linguistic drift where in the southern US, we call northerners yankees, even though in the rest of the world weāre all yankees. Now Iām curious how that started.
That Southern US usage dates back to at least the US civil war in the 1860s.
But yankee was used to refer to at least some people in what is now the US as early as the 1660s.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee
I dunno how true it is, but Iāve heard it gets even more specific once youāre in the north. I shared a map in another comment detailing the different meanings of it.
As for the etymology, apparently it goes back to Dutch settlers of New Netherlands, and may be connected to the name Janneke. It seems to have gone from being used by English settlers to Dutch settlers to being used in precisely the reverse at some point, and has at times meant either someone of English descent, of early Protestant descent, or other things.
It was used more generally by outsiders to refer to Americans as far back as the Revolutionary War (the song Yankee Doodle Dandy was originally making fun of Americansāmacaroni being a sophisticated style of dress), so its history being used in that way actually predates the Civil War associations that I think many Americans would give it today.
So yeah, it really does have a fascinating linguistic history.
Also, weirdā¦this is the second time in as many days Iāve had cause to look up Yankee Doodle Dandy.
As a Dutchie, Iāve heard it being an contraction of the names Jan and Kees, both are common names in Dutch
Yeah, that was another one of the theories. Linguists seem pretty sure it has something to do with Dutch, but are in disagreement over exactly how it came to be. (The āJannekeā example I gave above being, according to what I read, a diminutive form of Jan.)