Ok then can you explain why American means both North and South America and not just America?

You're not the first to say that today and i'm intrigued.

Hmmmm...ok, why not?. America is a continent, that we're taught in school was discovered in 1492 by Europe (and of course, the vikings predated that discovery). The continent was then named in honor of Americo Vespucio (don't know how you call him in English), and it's used to mean all the continent, from Canada to Tierra del Fuego. Since the continent is big and very diverse, it can be subdivided in subcontinents, you may say North and South America, here we say North (USA, Canada Mexico), Central America (from Guatemala till Panama, plus the Caribbean) and South America (Colombia down to Argentina). These are only subcontients, the bigger continent is still America, as you're taught in school. Thus, anyone born in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador or Haiti is as American as anyone born in the US

I think away from America we hear America as USA, North America as USA and Canada. Central America as Panama, Peru and South America as Brasil, Argentina etc.

We also Hear only Americans saying they are Americans.

We don't here that from Canadians or Brasilians or Caribbeans so we assume that it relates to Yanks only.

Well, you obviously have more exposure towards yankees than, say, Brazilians, it's logical you'd hear that more

True but we do have exposure to the rest of America (see I'm learning ) and I have never heard them say they are Americans. South Americans yes but not Americans.

Well, I obviously call myself a South American too, I'm both, same as I'm both also an Argentinian or a "south hemispherean" if that existed. Well, certainly anyone here would call himself American, I'm pretty sure other South Americans would too, we could ask Pastro or marciosmg for confirmation (though, I've seen pastro calling people out for the "America" misnomer too, so I don't think it's needed)

Oh god. We should have won that. We edged it and if only Green hadn't made that mistake we would have won

All roads lead to Rome qualification still so as long as we do the job against the brilliant nations of Algeria and Slovenia we should still qualify as first.

Geologically (which is the only proper way to classify such things) North and South America are not the same continent.  They both bear the name only because 15th and 16th century explorers didn't know about plate tectonics.

Personally, I just call those of us born in the US "Americans" because our country sucks balls at naming itself so we can't be "Brasilians," or "Canadians," or "Mexicans," or anything else interesting.  Everybody always knows what we're talking about when we call ourselves (or people call us) "Americans" anyway so I've never seen what the big deal is all about.

Of course I don't have any problem with the term yankee either, though I'm pretty sure it predated the US Civil war.  From wikipedia it seems the original usage was by the British to refer to anyone from their American colonies, and was later used by the South to refer to the North in the civil war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee

I don't like the word Yankee. It has negative connotations to me.

Yanks is also not an insult in my eyes. Just slang for erm a Yankee. Really wanted to say American.

If Capello throws Gerrard on the Left Wing next game in order to accomodate Barry in Central midfield I will be annoyed. He is clearly our best player in that role......why doesn't he dump Lampard out on the left wing? I would love to see how he performs there! sarcasm/