Also offensive: pointing out that English speakers do not use the word “American” to refer to people from Latin America. The term in our language is universally used to refer to people from the country America.

  • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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    11 hours ago

    South Americans are the most butthurt people in the world over the seperate Americas continental model. It’s like they can’t fathom that different cultures call them seperate things.

    Which is sad because otherwise they’re some of the most chill people in the world.

    • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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      10 hours ago

      I propose a way to fix all this shit:

      • Rename NA to Tacoland
      • Rename SA to Empanadia
      • Rename USA to Northern Mexico
      • Rename the Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of the Mexicos and Cuba”

      Done! Now nobody fights over Vespucci’s name.

      • slackassassin@sh.itjust.works
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        10 hours ago

        Finally, some sanity. Tacolandian rolls off the tongue much better than usian, not that anyone actually says that silly shit out loud. Damn that was close, people almost didn’t know what to call themselves. 🌮✅️

    • Zagorath@aussie.zoneOP
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      11 hours ago

      My earliest strongly negative experiences on mass social media (as opposed to niche social media like small forums about specific topics) was on 9gag, before I joined Reddit. The Latin Americans complaining about the use of the term “America” to refer to the country of America were the most arrogant, rude arseholes I had come across. A close second was when they would whinge about the term “soccer”. Even the poms don’t usually bother about that one, unless you’re specifically using that term to call them out.

      • Skua@kbin.earth
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        8 hours ago

        Even the poms don’t usually bother about that one, unless you’re specifically using that term to call them out.

        Fun fact, both names for that game are British in origin, so if any of us ever do complain at you for it you can remind them that it’s their own fault

        • Zagorath@aussie.zoneOP
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          5 hours ago

          Tell that to @skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de, who came in just before you in my notifications inbox (though that’s reverse chronological, so obviously your comment was written much earlier…) edit: disregard. They were apparently trolling

          But yeah, the history of football as a class of sports is really interesting. You may know this, but I strongly suspect at least some people who might read this comment won’t know it, especially the sorts of people who get upset by “soccer”, so I’ll share, briefly, some of the interesting history.

          Football sports throughout England have a long history, but football codes as we know them today really only begin to take shape in the 19th century. Different schools and towns would have different variations in rules around things like catching the ball, tripping, “hacking”, and a whole bunch of other factors. If two teams from different regions wanted to play, they first had to agree to a set of compromise rules. Sort of like how “International Rules Football” is a compromise between Australian Rules Football and Gaelic Football occasionally used for matches between AFL players and Gaelic Football players in the 20th and 21st centuries.

          Rugby School actually codifiers their set of rules far earlier than the Football Association, but later in the 19th century, a bunch of different clubs get together to form the Football Association to try to come up with a standard set of rules everyone can use. Ultimately, Rugby School and a few others cannot come to agreement with those who remain in the Football Association, and so we end up with rugby football and association football, sometimes called rugger and soccer for short. Both sports end up evolving a lot after this stage, but this is where we can first concretely start talking about rugby and soccer as discrete sports. But both share a common history, and neither has a better claim to the name “football”.

          American football also evolves more or less out of this same place, coming not out of rugby as is sometimes claimed, but out of that pre-standardisation football, albeit clearly with more influence from the rules that would end up becoming rugby than those that would end up becoming soccer. The same is largely true of Australian football, which drew heavily from Eton and Rugby school rules, among others, though there are some claims also that it may have borrowed from indigenous Australian games, or that it shares a history with Gaelic football. Even Gaelic football traces its origins in much the same way, albeit out of local Irish football-type games rather than schools like Eton and Rugby, along with much later influences from England after rugby and association football started being played in Ireland.

          • Skua@kbin.earth
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            5 hours ago

            I will sign off on this as a good summary of it. I played a fair bit of rugby and Gaelic when I was younger, so I am perhaps a little less likely than the average Brit to instinctually assume soccer is the One True Football™ (though I do still habitually call it football)

            We’ve got a few places in Scotland that still play a game or two of what is essentially pre-code football each year, most famously the Kirkwall Ba’ Game on one of the islands just off the northern tip of mainland Scotland. The pitch is the high street, and the teams are essentially “anyone from north of the market cross” vs “anyone from south of it”

          • skillissuer
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            3 hours ago

            what do you want from me and in what way i’m supposedly involved there at all? i have never dm’d you and while i have seen you around i’m pretty sure i have never responded to you before. maybe someone set up display name in a way that got you confused

            • Zagorath@aussie.zoneOP
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              53 minutes ago

              Ah my bad. I did the tab-to-autofill and hit the wrong person. I meant to mention @Skiluros@sh.itjust.works. But then I crossed out the mention anyway after it became apparent they were joking anyway.

      • Skiluros@sh.itjust.works
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        6 hours ago

        Who in their right mind uses “soccer”? It’s called football!

        Those 3 hour long advert watching sessions you Americans like to engage in have nothing to do with football!

        • Zagorath@aussie.zoneOP
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          5 hours ago

          You’re at least the third person to incorrectly assume my nationality today. You’d think in this thread of all places, where the title explicitly calls out the fact that someone made that mistake, people would be more likely to get it right…

          • Skiluros@sh.itjust.works
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            5 hours ago

            I try to not use the /s tag (especially in less serious topics), it makes it more fun that way! 🤣

            • Zagorath@aussie.zoneOP
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              5 hours ago

              My apologies. Unfortunately Poe’s Law is very much at play in this subject. I’ve seen far too many people sincerely say what you just said (and I’m now wondering whether or not XTL did the same as you) to be able to take that as a joke.

      • vaguerant@fedia.io
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        9 hours ago

        If the first really bad experiences you had on the Internet were disagreements about the ways English is used around the world, then congratulations might be in order.