Does the rest of the English speaking world generally understand what an American means when they say "soccer", or does it help to clarify by adding "football"?

drcouzelis@lemmy.zip to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 105 points –

If I'm talking to an English speaker from outside of the US, is there any confusion if I say "soccer"?

For example, when I was in college a friend asked for a "torch". I was confused for quite some time, because I didn't know it was another word for "flashlight". Does the same thing happen with the word "soccer"? Should I clarify by saying, "...or football"?

Thank you!

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And Canada đź‘‹

And Australia, at least when they're not trying to suck up to the British.

And English... I've heard them use soccer as well on many occasions

Yeah, soccer is actually an English term that they created to refer to association football, as opposed to rugby football or the hundreds of other forms of football.

If an Englishman uses 'soccer' he's almost certainly from the upper class.

As “soccer” was played by the elite (such as the Oxford lad who is said to have coined “soccer”), it soon spread to the working classes, and became “football”.

Which is America.

Canada is in North America the continent, which the US (sometimes referred to as America) is also in - saying Canada is America is like saying Great Britain is Europe

Edit: NA is a sub-continent, not the continent

Edit 2: Scratch Edit 1

North America is a continent.

Looked it up properly, you're right. I shouldn't have second-guessed myself

I think I have seen Central America referred to as a sub continent, but that doesn't really make sense other than to create a formal differentiation between them and USA/Canada.

And North America is in America

People in the USA would probably reword that sentence as "And North America is in the Americas."

It's similar to how North and South Dakota are called "The Dakotas," not "Dakota."

Yes, but I don't think the person I was replying to was referring to America the landmass given the context and wording - plus even in the context given, it would still be more accurate to say North America, as Southern/Latin America doesn't share the same cultural identity with North America

I debated whether I should say NA or American, but I figured I don't know what Canadians use, so there we go. Anyway, nice to see that debate is still alive and healthy. I gave up on it ~20 or so years ago. Writing unitedstatesman was exhausting after a while :)

But it's not called 'soccer' in mexico or central / south america, so 'america' in that context wouldn't make sense