This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.
Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that.
All posts should follow this basic structure:
Expect to receive feedback about your posts, they might even be negative.
Make sure you follow this instance's code of conduct. In other words we won't allow bellyaching about being sanctioned for hate speech or bigotry.
YTPB matrix channel: For real-time discussions about bastards or to appeal mod actions in YPTB itself.
Some acronyms you might see.
Relevant comms
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.
For anyone interested, here's the modlog , and to recap:
You get corrected by a Brazilian correctly saying they're also American, and disagree with the US's imperialist co-opting of that term to exclude the majority of Americans.
You respond to them by denigrating "arrogant spanish speakers" (Portuguese is the language spoken in Brazil btw), and get banned for a week.
You're even continuing to do racist rants in this very thread, like this comment of yours below
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.
If every mod would do this, we'd have a lot less low-effort posts here from people who are claiming a wrongful ban because they were "just innocently explaining """racial truths""" to people".
The cherry picked comments from the "wrongfully" banned person are usually not nearly a juicy as the ones the banning moderator can show.
I'm with you on this one Dessalines.
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
The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo
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. 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)
The thread itself is a shitfest that boils down to idiocy on the same level as "is tomato a fruit or a vegetable?" and "ackshyually water is not wet it wets things". And that includes both your comment and the comment that you're replying to. Specially the later, as the guy found some weird hill to die on.
Even then, PTB. As typical for lemmy dot ml.
I'll also address what estefano is saying in another comment in the same thread, as it's outright misinformation:
In Brazil, we use USians or Statesians
Most people in the territory controlled by Brazil refer to people in the territory controlled by USA as "americanos" (lit. "Americans"). People who call them "estado-unidenses" (lit. "United-Statians"), like I do, are a minority. And people certainly do not call them by anything remotely translatable as "USians" (EUAnos? That sounds awful*) or "Statesians" (estadenses?).
I used the second one on an academic paper and it went through.
You can submit a lot of crap on academic papers and it'll still go through. Welcome to Latin America. No, even better - welcome to the world in 2025, the institutions supposed to defend science against the Sturgeon's Law are busier counting money than doing their job.
As such, "they accepted it" is NOT grounds to claim shite.
Ma que djanho.
*EUAnos sounds like "eu ânus" [I anus] for most Portuguese speakers. (It doesn't for me but it gets really close.)
I'm really disappointed at how it went down, because I was actually at first really enjoying the discussion of linguistics and geography and how they intersect.
I think it really went south once dessalines piped up. Which...shouldn't be a surprise, I suppose.
Yeah. And this would make some really great topic for Sociolinguistic research - local demonyms for outsiders vs. attitude towards those outsiders. This stuff sometimes changes even within a linguistic community.
a tomato is both, a fruit and a vegetable, btw.. those terms are not mutually exclusive, because things like fruit, root and leaves refer to the part of the plant, while vegetable refers to how it can be used.
You're in the right direction. The only missing piece is the word "fruit" referring to two, partially overlapping, concepts:
Tomato is a botanical fruit, but not a culinary fruit. And this means that all those "mmh, ackshyually tomato is not a vegetable" claims you see in those discussions are simply a four terms fallacy.
And, more importantly, when people talk about fruits, you typically know which of those two concepts they're talking about, due to the context (are we talking about plant development? or cooking?). And the same applies to "America" referring to the country bordering Canada versus the continent that country controls some territory of. (If you see the whole thing as a single continent, that is. That's roughly as useful as to talk about Afro-Eurasia as a single continent.). And all those "ackshyually" tend to diverge the discussion from shit that matters into things that don't matter.
Your father was a vegetable, Trebek.
Eh, it is what it is.
ML is pretty well known for mods either power tripping, or at least pushing the boundaries to the edge.
This one could go either way.
Technically the comment was a rule violation, so removing the comment isn't totally power tripping.
The problem is that your comment was the least political in the whole damn thread. Like, even my comment was a tad more political than yours, depending on how you look at it. And even that was way less than dessalines' tangent.
The entire post was about language and word usage, and your comment definitely was not political, nor was it in any way rude or insulting.
I'm still really surprised your comment got reported/removed, but mine didn't. It was confusing as hell when I came back after a response and saw yours gone.
So, yeah, definitely PTB. If they'd nuked everyone, I could see it being clueless mods, but targeting yours just means they got a report and wiped it, so that's dumber than dammit, even if it wasn't a literal power trip
I actually wanted to reach out to the mods and ask what's up before posting this. But Lemmy's lack of a modmail feature means when I want to contact mods, I have to direct message them individually. And it looks like all the mods of that community are inactive, with the most recent one only having been active 2 months ago. So I wouldn't even know who to reach out to.
Oh, incidentally I also reported dessaline's comment. Like you say, they were pretty obviously behaving in an offensive manner. I figure if the mods are removing my comments (and giving me a weeklong ban!!), they had for sure better remove dessaline's, which is far more directly offensive with its completely unfounded accusation of white supremacy and calling you illiterate.
In relation to the claims they make about America not being used prior to the 20th century...even their own article proves them wrong.
For some thirty years prior to 1898, while the adjective ‘American’ has been in general use, the noun ‘America’ has been extremely rare,
it says. Remembering that this is a thread specifically about the demonym. So the adjective has been in widespread use since at least the 19th century, despite what our fascistic friend says.
Not that the claim made in that article is exactly correct. One of my favourite books (and certainly my favourite pre-20th-century text) uses some derivation of "America" no fewer than 7 times, two of which are nouns. Not exactly an obscure text, and not one with any reason to be strongly biased in favour of America. Still, that at only serves as proof that the claim in the article is wrong by at least 1 year, so it's not the most damning. Not as damning as the fact that the article given in evidence that "American" only exists because imperialism (never mind the bleeding obvious...America as a country, and indeed all the various other countries of the Americas, only exist because of imperialism) specifically states that "American" existed prior.
Suggesting that the law might apply to party members is against the law, smarty pants
Damn, they added a ban? And a week? A one day, that's kinda normal for a cooldown period, but a week? Damn.
And, yeah, the subject comes up from time to time, so I've gone looking a few times. Never bothered to keep links, and lost my copy/paste that covered quotes and citations, but there's no lack of evidence regarding the usage I was describing.
The French in specific were pretty hung ho about accepting the US as a nation early on. They use a different term in French, etatsunidens, or something like that, but when they were using English in correspondence with us and our diplomats of the era, American and America were used for sure. Not that it matters too much, since the real point of the conversation was current usage; I only brought up the past to indicate that the subject isn't controversial overall. But I guess I used keywords lol
I respect the work dessalines puts into lemmy as a dev, so I never get nasty with him, and in truth he's not usually that rude himself. But he has that habit when he's on his "home turf" of sticking to the party line no matter what, even if it's having to hammer the square peg of it into the round hole of a conversation.
Makes me wonder what bug is up his ass tbh. Maybe it was a bad day or whatever. We've disagreed in the past without him stepping to a slap fight.
PTB, easy. Regardless of where one stands on the issue of 'Americans', pretty mildly correcting someone for assuming your nationality and using that to disparage your opinion is not (or should not be) a removable offense.
Yeah at this point I'm just telling everyone posting an ML ban YDI. You know what kind of place ML is yet you keep interacting with them. The place is a cesspool of fascism apologia and censorship. Just block the instance and post somewhere actually worth posting.
Ha, fair! I avoid posting in ML as much as possible because of how toxic the admins and mods are, but when someone else posts something interesting that I want to comment on, I do it. Especially in cases like this which at first seemed like they'd be uncontroversial and interesting conversation. Which, in fairness, it was until dessaline stepped in and brought the toxicity.
Block the instance. It improves your experience.
from the country America
You mean continent(s)?
I do not. That was the whole point of my multiple comments in the original thread. America is the correct noun, in English, to refer to the United States of America.
We can get into definitions of continents if you like. I accept that people from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking backgrounds primarily talk about a 6 continent model consisting of America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia/Oceania, and Antarctica. I can also accept that because there's no real solid definition of a continent, it's impossible to say that this is wrong per se. I will say that I find it an absolutely baffling grouping to use, and that I myself prefer 6 continents consisting of North and South America, Eurasia, Africa, Oceania, and Antarctica; it makes no sense to me that someone could group the Americas while considering Afroeurasia three continents: to me, either an isthmus like Panama and Suez separates continents, or it does not, and it's weird to split over Suez but not Panama, and even weirder not to merge Eurasia who have no physical separation. (And IMO, once you start separating Europe and Asia, it becomes hard not to justify separating Arabia and India, if we're trying to keep a logical definition.) But continents aren't especially logical. In most of the English-speaking world, the 7 continent model dominates. We talk about North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia/Oceania, and Antarctica. Those are the 7 continents, and while you can disagree with them (as I do!), in most conversations you're just being difficult if you bring up that disagreement in anything more than a very lighthearted way.
The use of the demonym America stems in part from that. Once you reject the notion that "America" is a single continent, it becomes far easier to understand that the demonym "American" can't refer to people from two continents, and so it's very normal to use it to refer to just one country. That country being the United States of America. It's pretty normal to refer to countries by their short form. Czechia a few years back started a big campaign push to specifically ask people to call them that, rather than always using the formal "Czech Republic". Australia rarely gets referred to as the "Commonwealth of Australia", and the fact that Canada is officially "the Dominion of Canada" is rarely even acknowledged by official texts these days. Amusingly, America's southern neighbour has an equally valid claim on the name "United States", since Estados Unidos Mexicanos translates to United Mexican States, or, roughly, United States of Mexico. Latin Americans often get upset at this because in Spanish, the demonym is 'estadounidense', which roughly translates to 'United Statesian'. But that's not a word that exists in English. It's not especially logical even in Spanish, given that logically speaking, estadounidense could also refer to Mexicans. But words are defined by their usage, and in common usage that word unambiguously means American. The same is true in English. American unambiguously, in English, means person or thing from the United States of America. It's silly to get upset by that.
Two corrections:
[Info dump that sounds like an "ackshyually", but doesn't contradict what you said, nor tries to. It's just that you touched a topic that I enjoy talking about.]
Under the territory controlled by the Brazilian most people do speak Portuguese but there are ~200 other languages; for example a good chunk of my family speaks a Venetian variety. Spanish is among those, and it's actually spoken by a few people born in the territory controlled by Brazil due to border changes. Other varieties besides PT and ES can be roughly split into colonial (e.g. Talian, Hunsrik, Pommersch, Polish) and Amerindian (e.g. Mbyá, Kaingang, Laklãnõ).
On the other hand, Portuguese sometimes pops up even in territory controlled by other governments than Brazil. Ciudad del Este (Paraguay) and Puerto Iguazú (Argentina) are an example, but as well some northern chunk of Uruguay. And then there's a bunch of "portuñol" mixed varieties that IMO should be protected by the statal governments (because the federation certainly won't).
for example a good chunk of my family speaks a Venetian variety
As in, the Italo-Western Romance language? That's fascinating! When you said there are about 200 other languages, I was expecting indigenous languages and maybe some Spanish, but certainly not other European languages. What's the history there? Were there Italian colonies in Brazil, or a notable migration of Italians to Portuguese colonies?
See, this is exactly the sort of conversation I had hoped the original thread would lead to. Interesting linguistics, history, and geography. Until dessalines came in with the toxicity.
As in, the Italo-Western Romance language?
Yup, that one. Numbers are not to be trusted, but estimates are usually around 500k speakers in Brazil alone. There's also a bunch of them in Argentina, and even in Mexico (more specifically Chipilo, Puebla).
Under Brazilian territory Venetian is often called "Talian", and sometimes partially creolised with Portuguese. The name is a misnomer though, the language has little to do with the Tuscan-based standard Italian.
When you said there are about 200 other languages, I was expecting indigenous languages and maybe some Spanish, but certainly not other European languages
There are a few other colonial languages among those 200, like Eastern Pomeranian (Low German; extinct in Europe after WW2), Hunsrik (German too, but in the Franconian group). And I wouldn't be surprised if here in Paraná some Polish- or Silesian-speaking clusters survived.
Additionally, some folks down north use Kikongo (a Bantu language, brought to South America due to African slavery) as a liturgical language for their syncretic religion (candomblé).
That said the "bulk" of those 200 languages I mentioned are Amerindian languages indeed. Typically Macro-Ge and Tupi-Guarani families.
What’s the history there? Were there Italian colonies in Brazil, or a notable migration of Italians to Portuguese colonies?
Yup, immigrants. Not just in Brazil; Latin America as a whole got a lot of them in the XIX and early XX centuries, and since Italy was in a ruckus a lot of them were from Italy. Mostly Gallo-Italic speakers in a "belt" between São Paulo and Buenos Aires. Both are tendencies though, and there are plenty exceptions - São Paulo city for example got also a bunch of Calabrians and Sicilians, and as I said there were Venetians even in Mexico.
Other common groups of immigrants in LatAm were Iberians, Germans, Levantine Arabs, Japanese. But the distribution changes heavily from place to place; for example here in Paraná we got quite a few Poles and even a few Ukrainians and Lithuanians, but up south in Chubut (Argentina) there were Welsh immigrants instead.
See, this is exactly the sort of conversation I had hoped the original thread would lead to. Interesting linguistics, history, and geography. Until dessalines came in with the toxicity.
There's [email protected] for any topic involving language. [Disclaimer: I'm one of the mods there.]
That backtracks to the main subject: the community was originally in lemmy.ml. One of the reasons why I migrated it to mander.xyz was the notoriously poorly way that .ml admins enforce rules in their instance - with the straw that broke the camel's back, for me, being [email protected]. (I wasn't a mod there but I'm a weeb so...)
Now thinking, if I didn't do so, I bet that I would enter in direct conflict with dessalines and cypherpunk. What if someone wanted to talk about the Uyghur language? Or surzhyk (mixed Ukrainian/Russian) varieties? Bloody hell, even Proto-Indo-European (the Late PIE homeland is right where the war is happening now). Even mentions of lavender linguistics (i.e. how queer people use language) would become a ticking bomb.
I typically just say "American" too but I don't do all this when I get corrected. It comes across like you're trying to justify being ~~racist~~ ethnocentric.
It is weird to hear someone say "country of America" though when you could just say "the US(A)"
Edit: corrected language
I do not appreciate the accusation of racism. If that's the kind of tenor this conversation is going to take, I'm not going to engage further.
This is commentary on a thread that was specifically created to get into the nuances of language surrounding America. So yeah, of course I went into a lot of detail about the origins and why we say what we do.
I said that's how it comes across. I've said things in the past that came across as racist/xenophobic/ethnocentric, and I appreciate it when people point it out so I can adjust.
This just seems like one of those thing where if explaining and defending your position sounds racist/xenophobic/ethnocentric, you should consider changing your position or taking it less seriously
If you're unwilling to consider that- yeah, it might be best not to engage further
Which part of what I said do you think is racist? Because I simply don't see it. If anything, the ones being intolerant here are the ones who insist that the way they use words in their language is right and we have to all contort the definitions we've used for over a hundred years to match the etymological translation of words they use.