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Some Thoughts on Geography After Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Halftime Performance and the Ensuing Pedantic Tweets
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Bad Bunny did his halftime performance on Sunday night and we all survived – conservatives, liberals, and disgruntled independents alike.
The ending was a rundown of the countries making up the Americas, followed by the spiking of a football that had “together we are America” written on it:
Quick aside, if the Super Bowl halftime show can be performed in Spanish, does this open the door for other foreign-languages in 2027? It’s gonna be wild when Rammstein brings out Sigur Ros for a rousing rendition of “Du Hast.”
Anyway, the ending routine had people tweeting out stuff like this:
This is a pedantic tweet. The “millions of viewers” watching the Super Bowl are largely English-speaking U.S. residents who see North and South America as two different continents. Then we use “Central America” in reference to countries like Honduras and El Salvador while the Caribbean nations more or less have their own designation. We are taught this in grade school, while in other countries they’re sometimes taught that America is one big continent.
It’s really a linguistics and demonym issue more than a geography thing. English speakers from the United States call themselves Americans because the continent name is shared with the country name. There is no other country in North or South America that has “America” in the name. It doesn’t mean the average joes see ourselves as superior to everyone else in the Western Hemisphere or are trying to appropriate the entire continent. It just is what it is. What are we supposed to be called, Statesians? Unitedians? Likewise, there are Spanish speakers in the Latino world who call us “Americanos,” and not sure about you, but I’ve never met a Mexican or Canadian who asked to be called an “American.”
Anyway, the reason a lot of us are bad at geography is because we live in a massive country and rarely leave. Some of our states are bigger than sovereign nations. You can drive 1,500 miles west of Philly and you’re still in the U.S. and everybody speaks English. But you take the train 1,500 miles west from Bulgaria and now you’re in France after crossing through six countries that speak six different languages. We’re a melting pot of immigrants but don’t spend a lot of time in other countries, because why vacation in Italy when you can go to Wildwood? Asking us to be familiar with places like Africa and South America is like asking the guy from Turkmenistan to point to New Jersey on a map. It’s generic ignorance, but without animus.
There are all kinds of geographic and gentilic quirks that make little sense to begin with, and could use updating.
For instance:
- We call everyone from Japan, China, etc. “Asians,” when folks from Jordan also live on the continent of Asia. Why are Jordanians not Asians? Huh? HUH?
- People think everybody in the Middle East is an “Arab,” when Iran, for example, is a Persian country. They speak Farsi, not Arabic.
- The equator doesn’t actually run through Equatorial Guinea, it’s just nearby.
- New Zealand is part of the Australian content, as is the country of Australia itself.
So on and so forth. If we want to convene a council and make some decisions on these things, we’ll come up with a better term than “Asian,” or maybe people from Paraguay can be Americans, too. But they have to beat us in the World Cup. Vamos gringos!
Thanks for reading, and remember, not all Americans have maps:
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com