One of my pupils has asked me if there is another word to refer to USA citizens apart from American. I have looked it up in several dictionaries but I haven�t found any. Apart from saying USA citizen, is there another way of writing American in a composition without sounding misleading (I mean, meaning just USA citizens and not people from the whole continent, as the word suggests). Thanks in advance.

 

Then they start - but Canada is in North America - so you are an American. 

 

Big problem, because Canadians hate being called Americans. 

 

I agree that most people understand that being American means being from the U.S. of A.

It is always difficult to teach distinctions that exist in your language but don�t exist in other languages.

Doesn�t the term American sound offensive to people from Canada? I am not looking for controversy. I just want to know out of curiosity. They are questions that you don�t think of till students come up with them in class and you don�t know what to say.

Thanks for your answers

eng 789, You wrote my reply when I was writing mine.

When I say offensive I mean that they think that all people from American should be called Americans and people from the USA should be called somewhat else.

How do people from Canada like to be called, appart from Canadian?

I remember back in the late sixtys and seventys that American kids that were backpacking through Europe used to put Canadian flags on their packs because they didn �t want people to know they were American.  It had to do a bit with politics - Vietnam etc.

 

Canadians are sometimes called Canuks.   

 

YANKEE - (Dictionary entry)
A native or inhabitant of New England OR of a northern U.S. state, especially a Union soldier during the Civil War OR of the United States.

The origin of Yankee has been the subject of much debate, but the most likely source is the Dutch name Janke, meaning �little Jan � or �little John, � a nickname that dates back to the 1680s. Perhaps because it was used as the name of pirates, the name Yankee came to be used as a term of contempt. It was used this way in the 1750s by General James Wolfe, the British general who secured British domination of North America by defeating the French at Quebec. The name may have been applied to New Englanders as an extension of an original use referring to Dutch settlers living along the Hudson River. Whatever the reason, Yankee is first recorded in 1765 as a name for an inhabitant of New England. The first recorded use of the term by the British to refer to Americans in general appears in the 1780s, in a letter by Lord Horatio Nelson, no less. Around the same time it began to be abbreviated to Yank. During the American Revolution, American soldiers adopted this term of derision as a term of national pride. The derisive use nonetheless remained alive and even intensified in the South during the Civil War, when it referred not to all Americans but to those loyal to the Union. Now the term carries less emotion except of course for baseball fans !!!

eng789:

 

I guess just Canadians or also northamericans