[rbanffy]

Technically “America” is a continent. The country is called “United States of America”. ;-)

And yes, saying it’s not a democracy infuriates me as well, because it’s being used to justify a whole lot of undemocratic shenanigans.

[OneDeuxTriSeiGo]

Lol I almost went for that pedantry. However technically America is not a continent (under most definitions of continent) but North and South America are. :P

[rbanffy]

America would then be the whole land mass. Or something like that.

[SllX]

Unless you grew up in a place that taught a six-continent model instead of a seven-continent model and it was NA/SA consolidated instead of Europe and Asia into Eurasia.

Also: continents are bullshit.

Also also: America is the United States of America in the English-speaking world.

[skissane]

> Also also: America is the United States of America in the English-speaking world.

As an Australian English speaker, I will normally call it “the US”-the only time I ever call it “America” is when speaking to our 7 year old, because I know she knows what “America” means but I worry “the US” might confuse her; but with older children (such as our 12 year old) and with adults I say “the US”, because calling it “America” feels incorrect to me. In everyday speech, “the US” is (in my experience) more common than “America”, although both are understood as referring to the country; for the continent I use the plural (“the Americas”) to avoid the risk of confusion.

[SllX]

Using "United States" or "the US" is fine, but where "America" is used in the English-speaking world it still predominantly refers to the United States of America; but Australia is a big country. Given a large enough population of individualistic people—and there are a lot of individualistic English-speakers on Earth whether people such as yourself who share your particular hang-up or just contrarians—exceptions are not notable.

[skissane]

You are suggesting that preferring “the US” to “America” is due to myself being “contrarian” or “individualistic”, but I don’t agree-I’m not just describing my own personal usage, I’m describing my experience of the usage of other people around me-which assuredly is not an unbiased random sample of the general population-I think “the US” is preferred in more formal registers, and coming from a tertiary-educated upper middle class professional background, such people naturally tend to have a greater preference for more formal terms (even in informal contexts) than people at the other end of the educational/socioeconomic spectrum do-so it is understandable why I might hear “the US” more often than “America”, but people inhabiting different social contexts it would likely be the inverse

[SllX]

> I will normally call it “the US”-the only time I ever call it “America” is when speaking to our 7 year old, because I know she knows what “America” means but I worry “the US” might confuse her; but with older children (such as our 12 year old) and with adults I say “the US”, because calling it “America” feels incorrect to me.

It’s not wrong nor incorrect to call this an individualistic choice, and I mean, I’ve always perceived Australians as fairly individualistic people, but perhaps you feel differently? I’ll defer to you if that’s the case, it’s not a point I wanted to argue about, nor is it intended to be derogatory or disrespectful.

You are going out of your way to refer to America differently in different contexts though, and claiming that one variation feels incorrect. I stopped short of calling you specifically a contrarian because you didn’t express yourself like one, but that’s still a personal hang-up. It might be a shared personal hang-up with some of your cohorts, but it’s not one that any other Australian has ever confided in me, especially unprompted, and I don’t go around prompting people for terminological preferences on this subject. Most Australians I know or have known just call America “America” unless it’s like, the news.

[JumpCrisscross]

> with adults I say “the US”, because calling it “America” feels incorrect to me

Sure. But if someone says America, you aren’t confused unless for performative purposes.

[skissane]

Yes, which is exactly what I already said in the comment you were responding to: “although both are understood as referring to the country”

[rbanffy]

I don't hear it being called "America" here in Ireland. The only place I hear it is in the US, which is how I call it.

[SllX]

If somebody says "America" to you in Ireland, are you confused about what they are talking about? That's the difference.

[rbanffy]

I’ll immediately know I’m talking to someone from the US. It’s a bit like someone saying the hood of a car and we understanding they are referring to the bonnet. We don’t call it “hood” here, or, I suspect, anywhere else in the English speaking world.

[SllX]

> We don’t call it “hood” here, or, I suspect, anywhere else in the English speaking world.

Canadians use "hood", or at least I've never heard one refer to the "bonnet" of their car, although apparently "bonnet" is supposedly still used in Newfoundland.