12 06 2013
Yankees should be and is normally used as a completely descriptive word without any negative connotations. The popular word in the USA ‘Americans’ is not an appropriate synonym of ‘Yankees’ because America(s) and the United States of America are very different things.
The word ‘Americans’ naturally means ‘the inhabitants of America(s)’ or maybe ‘the masters of America(s)’.
I do not recognise Yankees as the masters of Americas, therefore, Americans means to me either all the people who live in America(s) or the indigenous inhabitants of America(s) who are usually derisively called Indians by Yankees.
However, it is clear that the people who govern the USA do consider themselves to be the landlords of both Americas (if not the whole Earth) entitled to steal the name of the two continents.
Of course, hardly anybody dares to resist the USA, which has enough arms to erase all the five continents from the face of the Earth. However, Yankees cannot make us accept humbly their mastership and fulfill their EVERY whim.
Without Americans, there is no satisfactory alternative to Yankees. It is the only commonly known word to name correctly the people of the USA, and therefore is used as a purely descriptive term.
There are possible substitutes to Yankees in other languages – e.g. los estadounidenses in Spanish, amerikonai in Lithuanian – but only British Yanks in English.
It is no secret that I do not like (to put it mildly ) the USA. However, I am not a Nazi, and I understand that there are millions of Yankees who are very good and honest people, completely different from the scum in the White House, Capitol, Pentagon, etc. I would never like to cause pain to any of them.
Therefore, despite its some possible historically negative connotations, I always use the word Yankees as a completely descriptive word – because I do not know any other commonly known alternative that would not offend Mexicans, Argentinians, Canadians, Apaches, Inuits and many millions of other Americans.
What do you think about it?
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