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What do you call the US in German? | ||
Tags: United States | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4699 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes  Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 9 of 14 22 January 2013 at 7:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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We call the USA:
"Amerika" "Die USA" "Die Vereinigten Staaten" 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4557 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 10 of 14 22 January 2013 at 7:20am | IP Logged | |||||
From what I understand, it's somewhat colloquial but certainly accepted. I'm not sure if I'd go as far as to say it's the preferred term, but I'll leave that for the native speakers. Synonyms include die US, die USA and die Vereinigten Staaten. My hunch is that Amerikaner/Amerikanerin is more common than Amerika. EDIT: On second though, US might only appear in compounds. What say the native speakers? Edited by sans-serif on 22 January 2013 at 7:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Spinchäeb Ape Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4468 days ago 146 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 11 of 14 22 January 2013 at 7:32am | IP Logged | |||||
That was the impression I got when I lived there. And the custom here in the US is to call someone from this country and American. It would be awkward to call anyone a United States of American or a United Statesian. Hence, American. I think people are getting very pedantic when they say an American is anyone from North or South America. The founding fathers of the US picked a name for the country that leads to some confusion. To keep thing simple, it make sense to call a person from the US an American, someone from Canada a Canadian, someone from Nicaragua a Nicaraguan. We Americans need that word to get around our awkward name of our country. You can still call someone from anywhere in North America a North American or anyone from the southern continent a South American without any confusion. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 14 22 January 2013 at 10:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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In Danish we may also refer to USA as 'Amerika', and if we speak about 'Amerika' without further ado then it is generally USA we mean. And the 'A' in USA does mean "America". But the normal term would be USA, pronounced with Danish letter names.
It is different when it comes to its inhabitants or goods from over there. We don't have a parallel to "estadounidense", so here "amerikaner" is the established word. Americans from any other nation in the Americas are named after their country, which means that the system rarely leads to confusion - even though it strictly speaking is misleading. In Europe the obvious parallel would be the Netherlands/Low countries, which often erroneously are named as "Holland" (with a population of "hollændere" who speak "hollandsk"). As for knowledge about Denmark 'in the States' (another general expression which often used specifically as a reference to the United States of America) I'm not too optimistic. On the other hand some Danes see USA as mainly consisting of New York and California and a prairie somewhere in the middle. We get amerika-amerika-amerika stuffed down our throats like the French feed their foie gras geese, but watching American soaps doesn't necessarily mean that you can pinpoint a location on a map, and I think that some Danes might have problems pointing out places like Nevada or Dallas or Fresno or .. well even the mighty prairie, except that it is somewhere in the middle. I do however think we know that Mexico is just South of USA, and that South America is a whole continent even farther South. Edited by Iversen on 22 January 2013 at 10:17am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4637 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 13 of 14 22 January 2013 at 10:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that in Germany, as in Scandinavia, Amerika is synonymous with USA. If in German you talk about "amerikanische Filme", you basically refer to the US film industry. Nobody will think you include Mexican or Brazilian cinema in this.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 14 of 14 22 January 2013 at 11:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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Amerika and VS (Verenigde Staten) here. Amerikaans refers to the US exclusively. If you
wanted to say Latin or South American you would specify nationality or continent; Latijns-Amerika, Zuid-Amerika, Argentijns, Boliviaans, Peruaans, Braziliaans, Venezolaans, etc. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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