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.

  • Zier@fedia.io
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    4 hours ago

    Two corrections:

    1. Canada is legally called 'Canada" since 1867 and again in 1982.
    2. Brazil speaks Portuguese, not Spanish like many of the other Central & South American countries.
    • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
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      48 minutes ago

      [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).

    • ZagorathOP
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      1 hour ago

      What I have seen suggests that Canada has not changed its legal name since confederation in 1867, and at that time they chose the Dominion of Canada. The name has been allowed to fade out of use and has not been used in a long time, but neither was the name ever officially changed. Its obscurity is precisely why I chose to bring it up.

      Not sure what you put up point 2 for. I explicitly included one reference in my comment to acknowledge that, and at no time did I call out Brazil as speaking Spanish.