As a Mexican, I learned there's 6 continents:
That last one depended on who my teacher was, since some considered "continents" only those with "sizable" human populations. I think perhaps they just had bad material and wanted to finesse around it rather than admit they needed to find updated teaching resources.
I went to an American school, so I knew early on that people from the USA like to call themselves "American". In spanish, we can call them "estadounidense" (roughly equivalent to "unitedstatesian") but in english, is there a viable alternative?
Beyond the fact this claims ownership for the demonym of the entire continent (which, let's admit, they do think they own else they wouldn't call us "their backyard"), I recently realized it's not even accurate. Not all "Americans" are American. The USA is a union of 49 states in America and 1 in Oceanía, after all:
Spanning 1,500 miles (2,400 km), the state is physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania. - Wikipeda
So overall if we also consider the fact that there’s hundreds of other states in America —Mexico alone is a union of 32, Brazil 26— it low key is as if a 5 African countries and Afghanistan decided to call themselves the Union of African Countries, and people in Kabul insisted in calling themselves African.
Shared as a tweet too