Americocentric

Americocentric is a term that is used to describe that a person thinks that everything and everyone in the entire world revolves around "America", in other words USA. In times past, other countries also had similar national bias. For example, the phrase "All roads lead to Rome" was indicative that, during the time of the Roman Empire, everything in the entire world revolved around Rome. A similar situation also existed in other empires, such as the British empire (although the French empire, which existed at the same time, also competed), the Portugese/Spanish empires, the time when Vikings had a lot of power, and generally at any time in history that one country has been very powerful.

Americans are widely criticised by people from all over the world because of their focus on USA. Ronald Reagan, George Bush senior, and George W. Bush have all been widely criticised because they did not seem to be aware of anything that did not involve USA. George W. Bush on many occasions didn't even seem to know where other countries were.

Americans speak their own dialect of English, which is described as "American English". Some words are pronounced differently to in traditional English (or British English) and, uniquely, a number of words are spelled differently. American English spells words with "er" for example "meter" and "liter" whilst in British English these words are spelled with "re" as in "metre" or "litre". Similarly, some words are changing from oe and ae to simply e. Colour is changed to Color, "ise" endings are changed to "ize" and so forth

Americans, however, insist that everyone else must learn their dialect, must spell with their dialect, and must do everything in their way. Whilst people from outside of USA are all too happy to accommodate American spelling, and to allow both, Americans generally are not so willing to compromise. This is indicative of the Americocentric nature.

There is a similar issue with time. Americans write the date as "Month, Day" whilst most other countries write "Day, Month". For example, September 11th, in American writing, is "9/11", whilst in most of the rest of the world it is written as "11/9". Most people outside of USA are happy to compromise by writing "September 11th" to avoid confusion. Americans, on the other hand, refuse to compromise and insist on writing "9/11". This is another element of Americocentrism.

Americans tend to learn more about their own country than students in any other country. In Australia for example, students learn about 6 months - 1 year about their own nation's history, the rest of the time about countries outside of Australia. The typical American student will spend over half of their history lessons learning about American history, and know very little about countries outside of USA (unless they do extra classes to learn more). The education system in USA is therefore Americocentric, and products of that education system are also Ameicocentric.

Additionally, Americans shorten states to 2 letters. Whilst there are various short cuts used in other countries too, Americans expect people from overseas to automatically know what it means. They write "Houston, TX" to mean "Houston, Texas", and expect people from outside of USA to know that that means Texas. People in other countries don't do this. They don't write "Burnie, TAS" and expect Americans to know what that means, even though anyone in Australia would know it. This is yet another example of Americocentrism.

Not every individual person in USA is Americocentric. They do, however, make up a very large proportion, and Americans are stereotyped around the world with this tag.

One argument to defend Americocentrism is that USA is the most powerful country in the world. In many ways, this is a fair argument. Indeed, throughout history, the most powerful nation or nations or empires have always been focussed on their own countries at the expense of all others.

Another argument that is used is that USA is a large country with a large population. On the English speaking internet, the vast majority of users are American, and indeed the internet was invented in USA. However, China is larger and indeed in many ways is more powerful, yet Americans know very little about China.

The best argument for Americocentrism is that if we hadn't saved all your asses, Blissyu2 would now be writing in Japanese.