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.
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.
It’s so weird how some people are so committed to this. “United Statesian” and variants thereof don’t actually solve the perceived problem due to the fact that Mexico is formally the United Mexican States (Brazil, Venezuela, and Colombia were all United States of their own in the past too). And besides that, there are so many other examples of countries using the name of something they do not encompass the whole of. South Africa? Not actually the whole of the south of Africa, it turns out. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo? Both not the only country in the Congo basin. The European Union isn’t all of Europe, Sudan doesn’t include South Sudan, and the only part of the river Indus that’s in India is in disputed Kashmir
I had no idea these were two separate nations
Ex-Belgian Congo and Ex-French Congo respectively. Which actually means they even share French as an official language. DR Congo is the really big one, and also the one more commonly in the news because it has generally had an extremely rough time of things. It was called Congo-Leopoldville upon gaining independence, then Zaire under a military government, and then finally DR Congo from the 90s up to today.
It’s quite common to refer to them by their capitals to distinguish them: DR Congo is Congo-Kinshasa, Rep. Congo is Congo-Brazzaville. To make this situation even weirder, Kinshasa is what they renamed the old capital Leopoldville to, quite understandably in my opinion given what Leopold was responsible for. To make this even weirder, Kinshasa and Brazzaville are literally just on opposite sides of the river from each other (although it is a very big river)