this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2025
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Being from the USA, I can confidently say “Yankee” is a term that is fairly neutral in meaning. People from the South states use it to refer to basically any American not from the South, and I get the sense people from the UK use it to refer to anyone from the USA.
In my experience, “Gringo” seems to be a term used by Spanish-speakers (even ones from North and South America) to refer to English speakers who think they’re better than everyone, so it appears to be a term with negative connotations
Texan here. Yankee is definitely not a neutral word to refer to everyone from the USA. Some people down here will fight you over it, but most would just give you a confused look.
I've always understood gringo to mean white person, especially one who can't speak Spanish. The term is sometimes used in Mexican restaurants to let the staff know that you can't deal with too many jalapeños.
I've heard gringo is about language, primarily English. Not about being a whitey
Do Southerners use Yankee pejoratively to refer to northerners?
Yes, since the civil war era.
Or as my husband's Southern-ass grandma called it, the "war of northern agression" 🙄
Reflexively I wanted to downvote that 😒
I'm afraid so. There are a lot of people still fighting our Civil War, the one that supposedly ended over 150 years ago. Even without those troglodytes, there is a distinct cultural difference between the North and South, as I think there is in many countries. We tend to rub each other the wrong way sometimes.
Old joke about the difference. Walk up to a Southerner's house, and they say, "can I help you?" Walk up to a Yankee's house, and it's, "whaddya want?"
In my experience (as a Brit), people generally only refer to Americans as Yanks in a mildly pejorative way or if we're taking the piss, otherwise it's Americans.
Southerners are the same way. Nobody calls us yanks as a compliment
i believe Brits call Americans "yanks"
U.K. bloke here…I don’t use it personally, just because, but yeah we say it for anyone from the USA.
When I was about 10 or so someone local to me had a lawsuit because his colleagues called him Yankee and he claimed it was racism, fairly certain he won, but it was an obscure case.