Note that I already posted about "estadounidense" above. That's perfectly fine for Spanish. But speaking in English, one says "American", not because of a "drip

Note that I already posted about "estadounidense" above. That's perfectly fine for Spanish. But speaking in English, one says "American", not because of a "dripping superiority complex" as stated above, but just because it's idiomatic. In a sense, what the Central Americans are getting offending over is a false cognate. And false cognates can often lead to these kinds of problems: if I referred to trousers as "pants" around Brits, I get yelled at for being a stupid American. There are countless examples of this. This is by no means a problem unique to Americans or unique to the English language. While travelers should be aware of local idioms and the potential for false cognates, they can't exactly be blamed for lacking perfect knowledge either. All other English-speaking countries use the term "American" in this way. Note especially that Canadians share the same idioms, speaking of America and Americans (although they might favor using "the States" over "America"). Also note that Canadians colloquially use "North America" to mean the USA + Canada, leaving out Central American countries.