Question about sports terminology

[Kitsuna]

To change my question back since people are replying:

I’ve seen a lot non-Americans become hostile over Americans referring to what what most of the world calls ‘football’ as ‘soccer’ to the point that I’ve seen an attempt by an American to explain that “soccer” was coined by the British and they just stopped using the word be met with with, “then you should’ve changed it too!” by non-Americans.

I’m a little confused why people become really irritated by this difference and that non-Americans also seem to have a problem with the name for American football. In the end, it seems trivial and just a small cultural difference that doesn’t amount to much.

Can anyone explain it for me?

 

[FayetheAspie]

I don't know anything much about sports.

 

[Judge]

It's a little weird, that's true enough. Unfortunately for any number of sports fans, for some it would seem sports and nationalism are often interchangeable. Often leading to unnecessary clashes on the part of fans rather than actual participants.

In the US, American football remains the dominant sport. Not to be confused with "football" relative to how the rest of the planet thinks of it. So our culture prefers to call football "soccer" instead. And they won't budge from this position. Sort of like how the US never dips its own flag to any others.

Leaving at times for many to be confused over whether this is truly about sports, or just a manifestation of nationalism and pride in one's country. Unfortunate, but then hostilities over sports tend to be less costly than nationalism and war.

Unless you live in El Salvador or Honduras, two nations which one time went to war over a sporting event perhaps best left nameless.

 

[Tom]

I'm not an expert on the subject but it reminds me a little of the Metric (French Based) vs Imperial (English based) measuring systems. 195 countries use metric and only 3 including USA use imperial or at least partially imperial. In similar fashion England started the imperial system but at some point changed to metric.

I sidestep the matter by being aware of the audience. Among americans it's Soccer and Football. In non-american or mixed company its Football and American Football. I think the problem basically is that if it was only a matter of changing the name soccer to football we likely would. But since in the interim we gave the new developing sport the name football and it became eventually our default National Sport there is a lot of resistance to changing it. The stats I've found place Football easily the most popular with 40% and Baseball and Basketball around 10% each.

 

[Princess Viola]

People love to argue and arguing about sport names is probably like one of the more mild things to argue about tbh. It's like how over on another forum I post on, there'll periodically be threads where people argue about how to write dates - Day Month Year, Month Day Year, or Year Month Day. It's not anything most people seriously care about but it's better than arguing about actually serious stuff that can lead to people getting heated.

Personally though, whenever I say 'football' unqualified, I mean association football/soccer, even though I'm American lol.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

You have to go back to the early 1800's. American "football" has its origins in rugby and "soccer" and goes back to the 1820's, with the first college games being played in the late 1860's. European "football" or "soccer" was introduced by immigrants around 1850. So, I suspect, that since American football, as we called it, already had established its name a few decades earlier, the European name of "football" was given a different name, "soccer" in the US.

 

[All-Rounder]

As an autistic person with intellectual challenges it was really hard to learn English on my own to actually hold conversations with Americans and it was so much different studying it rather than what was offered in class and some grammatical differences drive me crazy such as this one. It was too much to remember which sport is which and it interferes with pre-learned local names of too much similarity when it's meant to mean something else. It's just a part of how learning new languages works, but with a bad memory it's worse.

 

[VictorR]

Being Canadian, I'm used to different terminology for things (e.g. Canadian / British / American English), and I'm also comfortable using both metric and imperial measurements (and just to make things more confusing, before Canada went metric, there was the imperial gallon which was not the same as a US gallon), so I'm not too concerned about differences in things as well, as I can adapt.

I think for those who are not used to plurality, things can be more challenging, and potentially frustrating when they are not as expected.

When it comes to language and culture, the US is relatively unique in that it doesn't have many geographical neighbours (just two), and that it's a cultural powerhouse itself, with its neighbours exerting considerably less cultural influence (Canada is de facto a cultural satellite), and so that tends to lead to situations where once something is established in the US, it will just stay that way there, whereas in the rest of the world, push-and-pull factors will tend to lead to more homogenization of language and norms, which also tend to be more plain-language.

To use a sporting example, American English speaks of a team's fans (i.e. fanatics) whereas International English speaks of a team's supporters, and for someone learning English as a second (or third, etc.) language, the latter is a much easier term to learn and use.

 

[Kitsuna]

All of this was really insightful and clarifying, so thanks everyone!

I think I gave away that I’m asking this from an American perspective, but I wasn’t trying to be a stereotypical ‘ugly American’-type.

Being reminded by a couple posts here most level-headed people can clash about these things, but still not really take it too seriously was really helpful.

 

[Forest Cat]

People who complain about that are probably the same people who go to soccer matches to have fist fights with each other. It's a silly thing to be upset about.