Discussion on Wikipedia regarding the demonyn "American" - full entry here.English usage
American is a self-referential term for many people living in the Americas. However, much of the English-speaking world uses the word principally to refer to a citizen, resident, or national of the United States of America, due to the lack of another widespread demonym. For that reason, many Canadians resent being referred to as Americans when people—particularly those overseas—mistakenly assume them to be U.S. citizens or fail to distinguish Canadian Englishand American English accents.
Spanish usage
In Spanish, América is the name of a region considered a single continent composed of thesubcontinents of Sudamérica and Norteamérica, the land bridge of Centroamérica, and the islands of the Antillas. Americano/a in Spanish refers to a person from América in a similar way thateuropeo or europea refers to a person from Europa. The terms sudamericano,centroamericano, antillano and norteamericano can be used to more specifically refer to the location where a person may live.
Citizens of the United States of America are normally referred to by the term estadounidense(rough literal translation: "United-Statesian") instead of americano or americana, and the country's name itself is often translated as Estados Unidos de Norteamérica. Also, the term norteamericano may refer to a citizen of the United States. This term is primarily used to refer to citizens of the United States, rarely those of other North American countries.[71]
Portuguese usage
In Portuguese, the word americano refers to the whole of the Americas. But, in Brazil and Portugal, it is widely used to refer to the citizens of the United States. The least ambiguous term,estadunidense (used in Brazil, something like "United Statesian" or "estadounidense" in Spanish), and "ianque"—the Portuguese version of "Yankee"—are rarely used. América, however, is rarely used as synonym to the country, and almost never in print and in more formal environments, where the US is called either Estados Unidos da América (i.e. United States of America) or simply Estados Unidos (i.e. United States). There is some difference between the usage of these words in Portugal and in Brazil, with the Portuguese being more prone to apply the term América to the country.
French usage
In French, as in English, the word américain can be confusing as it can be used to refer either to the United States, or to the American continents.
The noun Amérique sometimes refers to the whole as one continent, and sometimes two continents, southern and northern; the United States is generally referred to as les États-Unis d'Amérique, les États-Unis, or les USA. However, the use of Amérique to refer to the United States, while technically not correct, does still have some currency in France.
The adjective américain is most often used for things relating to the United States; however, it may also be used for things relating to the American continents. Books by United States authors translated from English are often described as "traduit de l'américain".
Things relating to the United States can be referred to without ambiguity by the words états-unien, étasunien, or étatsunien, although this usage is rare.
Dutch usage
In Dutch, the word Amerika mostly refers to the United States. Although the United States is equally often referred to as de Verenigde Statenor de VS, Amerika relatively rarely refers to the Americas, but it is the only commonly used Dutch word for the Americas. This often leads to ambiguity and to stress that something concerns the Americas as a whole, Dutch uses a combination, namely Noord- en Zuid Amerika(North and South America).
Latin America is generally referred to as Latijns Amerika or, less frequently, Zuid Amerika (South America).
The adjective amerikaans is most often used for things or people relating to the United States. There are no alternative words to distinguish between things relating to the United States or to the Americas. Dutch uses the local alternative for things relating to elsewhere in the Americas, such as Argentijns for Argentine, etc.
Russian usage
In the 19th century in Russia the word "America" was used for a traditional continent such as Europe and Asia. In the 20th century these traditional continents are known as "parts of the world". Now the term "continent" means any of six large continuous landmasses (Eurasia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, and Australia). Now the word Ameriсa refers to the United States more often than to America as a "part of the world". There is no term equivalent to "Americas" in Russian.
