When I hear the word “America”, I always have the mental image of someone that speaks English in a non-American (or even non-Anglosphere) accent, and that this person eitherreally likes America or really hates The US, no in between. Like sometimes I picture a person saying “America” in a heavy russian accent I think it just sounds so funny. I think I watched too many movies and I just like the russian accent… it sounds very intimidating and that’s why it had that sort of “cool factor”.
Also, I kinda mix both depending on how my brain is thinking. Sometimes I think my thoughts in Chinese and the “美國” automatically converts into English as “America”, cuz nobody says “合眾國” (United States) in Chinese (at least not in the variants/“dialects” that I know of), cuz it feels like a generic term like “The Republic”, doesn’t make a lot of sense unless referring specifically to domestic politics.
As a Naturalized American Citizen, I sometimes feel like the term “American Citizen” feels like a wrong term, and the term “US Citizen” feels more “correct” to say.
I think that in Chinese, sometimes I hear “民國” (shortened from the full term 中華民國) to refer to ROC and I think “共和國” (shortened from the full term 中華人民共和國) can similarly be used similar to refer to PRC, when used in the context of Chinese history.
When I hear the word “America”, I always have the mental image of someone that speaks English in a non-American (or even non-Anglosphere) accent, and that this person either really likes America or really hates The US, no in between. Like sometimes I picture a person saying “America” in a heavy russian accent I think it just sounds so funny. I think I watched too many movies and I just like the russian accent… it sounds very intimidating and that’s why it had that sort of “cool factor”.
Also, I kinda mix both depending on how my brain is thinking. Sometimes I think my thoughts in Chinese and the “美國” automatically converts into English as “America”, cuz nobody says “合眾國” (United States) in Chinese (at least not in the variants/“dialects” that I know of), cuz it feels like a generic term like “The Republic”, doesn’t make a lot of sense unless referring specifically to domestic politics.
As a Naturalized American Citizen, I sometimes feel like the term “American Citizen” feels like a wrong term, and the term “US Citizen” feels more “correct” to say.
I think that in Chinese, sometimes I hear “民國” (shortened from the full term 中華民國) to refer to ROC and I think “共和國” (shortened from the full term 中華人民共和國) can similarly be used similar to refer to PRC, when used in the context of Chinese history.