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Just to understand this: When someone says "country England", do they mean "country" like in "nation", considering England a separate nation, or is it a lapse a
by zelphirkalt 2mo ago
Just to understand this: When someone says "country England", do they mean "country" like in "nation", considering England a separate nation, or is it a lapse and they mean UK? Is England usually referred to as a country, or just part of a country?
I usually think of a country as equal to a nation, and as far as I know, Wales and Scotland have not split off yet? Is the term "country" not actually that sharply defined?
EDIT: Thanks people, I just asked a question to better understand the terminology, you know ...
- llm_nerd 2mo agoEngland is a country, and if you're reading this on the BBC they most certainly are using the correct terminology. It is not a sovereign country, but instead is a part of the constituents comprising the UK state.
- zelphirkalt 2mo agoOK, so now we have the following terms: State, nation, country, sovereign country. For example in Germany one would say there are 16 states, but one wouldn't say that there are 16 countries. Never heard anyone claim that. So state seems to be different from country, at least here. Would people in the UK say that Scotland or Wales are "nations"? Or is at least that term very clearly only for units that could participate under a flag in lets say the olympics? (I assume here, that Scotland and Wales are not separately competing, but are under UK flag.)
- tialaramex 2mo ago"And by 'country' we mean a sovereign state that is a member of the UN in its own right" to quote the famous UK Quiz Show "Pointless". Team GB enters the Olympics but as you may have noticed it was England who came Third in the World Cup recently, and likewise England play international rugby, including against Wales and Scotland.
- M2Ys4U 2mo ago>and likewise England play international rugby, including against Wales and Scotland. Except when they play as part of the British & Irish Lions!
- alexchamberlain 2mo agoAnd, of course, the Ireland rugby team picks players from both the Republic of Ireland & Northern Ireland.
- tialaramex 2mo agoThat's a citizenship thing though right? The Republic is of the opinion that everybody on Ireland† is a citizen of the Republic. If my mother had happened to be in Portavogie when she gave birth to me last century, my understanding is that the RoI considers I am automatically a citizen, because I was born on "their" island even if certainly Portavogie is not under their control. † The exact rules are complicated, but they don't depend on where on the island you were born or stuff like that.
- alexchamberlain 2mo agoI don't think so. My understanding was "confirmed" by ChatGPT, though I haven't looked at the sources. > Rugby in Ireland is governed by the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU), which was established in 1879, decades before Ireland was partitioned in 1921. It has always organised rugby on an all-Ireland basis.
- tialaramex 2mo agoOh! I looked into it more and you're quite right that the IRFU decides and their rule happens to be about the island of Ireland and so who may control some or all of the island is irrelevant. Thanks.
- Blazara 2mo agoThe UK, crown dependencies and overseas territories compete as Great Britain in the Olympics rather than the UK. Northern Irish folks can compete for Ireland or GB. As an English person I would say that Scotland and Wales are nations and countries; constituent countries of the country that is the UK.
- zelphirkalt 2mo agoUntil today I didn't consider, that countries can be compound/consist of countries. That countries can be recursive. I always thought, that any lower level would be called differently. TIL.
- dessimus 2mo ago"State" has lots of meanings depending on context, as it can also refer to the highest level of governments for example: State actors or "head of state". In the U.S., the head of state refers to the President, not to governors in individual states, typically.
- halper 2mo agoThe "Länder" in Bundesländer is plural of Land, which is the same land as in "land of the free" and would be translated to "nation", "land", "country" or "state" depending on context. So in modern English they may be states, but there sure is a lot of overlap between "country" and "state".
- sd9 2mo agoEngland is a country. The UK is a country. People in the UK would refer to England as a country and most people would actually be confused if you referred to the UK as a country, even though it technically is. People in England don’t really think of the UK as anything other than “the UK”. People from Scotland, Wales, and Ireland have more nuanced takes.
- juntoalaluna 2mo agoNo one is confused if you can the UK a country, or if you call England, Wales, or Scotland a country. You might get a tedious person saying something like "actually, Wales is a principality".
- sd9 2mo agoMaybe not in isolation, but if you call the UK and England both countries in the same conversation you’re going to be met with confusion.
- Closi 2mo agoMaybe...? I mean not anyone I know but i'm in the UK to be fair. It's like if you put four boxes in a box, it's not too confusing that the outer box is still a box.
- leereeves 2mo agoI would be confused if someone called Wales a country. I thought Wales (unlike Scotland) was a region of England and had little autonomy. TIL.
- jjgreen 2mo agoSay that in Wales and the locals will stick a leek up your arse.
- arethuza 2mo agoI must admit I've never heard NI being called a country... wouldn't be the UK if there wasn't some horrible complication involved.
- beejiu 2mo agoA lot of powers are devolved away from England to each other country in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devolution_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devolution_in_the_United_Kingd...
- psp99 2mo agoWales and Scotland are separate countries to England.
- alibarber 2mo agoIn this case it's health related and each of the countries in the UK have their own National Health Services (or Health and Social Care in NI). It's not a lapse here.
- shevy-java 2mo agoI kind of assumed that they actually meant UK. It's indeed confusing. I'd wish the BBC would use a consistent naming scheme. Guess only England was meant. That would insinuate they don't care about scotland though.
- alibarber 2mo agoI don't understand. It's an article about England. They only have information to hand about England, from the authority tasked with dealing with health in England. If I read an article from them about crime in London, quoting the Metropolitan Police, I don't immediately think that they don't care about, say, the West Midlands.
- tavavex 2mo agoThe mistake they made is to directly say "one of the first countries" in the article title, which immediately implies a comparison to foreign countries. But clearly, since they're talking about England, which is a subdivision of the UK, why aren't they comparing this achievement to equivalent subdivisions, such as states or provinces, in other nations instead? This isn't a direct comparison (which might also make it an unfair one), so it makes sense why people would misread them by assuming that this is an error and that they meant to compare equivalents.
- venzaspa 2mo agoEngland and Scotland are separate countries, the UK is a federation of them both.
- 2mo ago
- gilleain 2mo agoSome of the confusion here is from our history. This is my (likely confused) understanding: James VI/I (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_VI_and_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_VI_and_I) was king of _both_ England and Scotland and only later did the Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Union combine the two. You might notice I've neglected Wales which was (considered?) part of England. In any case, England is a country, yes. Also the UK is a country.
- _heimdall 2mo agoEngland is the country, part of the United Kingdom. Kingdom being the key word there, the US is a collection of countries ruled by the crown.
- toast0 2mo agoThe commonwealth is also a collection of countries ruled by the crown; but it's not a country whereas the UK is a country.
- dghf 2mo ago1) Most Commonwealth countries are republics, not monarchies. 2) The monarchies in the Commonwealth countries are ruled by different crowns; but, for historical reasons, most of those crowns are worn by the same physical head. (But not all of them. The King of Malaysia is a different natural person from the King of the UK, for example.)
- JimDabell 2mo agoEngland, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are constituent countries in a larger country called the United Kingdom. When dealing with international affairs, you typically want to be talking about the UK (unless the subject is sport), as that is the sovereign state. But for domestic affairs, it’s often split in ways that are confusing if you don’t understand various bits of history stretching back about a thousand years. For instance, England and Wales share a legal system, but Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own. There’s bunch of special things about Northern Ireland and its relation to Ireland. And all of the constituent countries have their own parliament / assembly except for England (the parliament in London is for the whole of the UK where MPs for all constituent countries can vote). In this particular case, the constituent countries have their own health systems, so it’s normally England we would be talking about, not the UK.
- keybored 2mo agoYeah England is a country. Like what else do we have the name “England” for? We talk a lot more about England than some non-country geography like Anatolia (Asian Turkey). For example there was no UK in the World Cup, but England made it quite far. If that’s a bit eccentric, well this is the same place that refers to Europe as a different place even though France borders the UK by automobile road.
- sscaryterry 2mo agoTo make things worse, sometimes team GB competes :) (Edit: in other sports)
- amiga386 2mo agoCGP Grey: The United Kingdom Explained (2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10
- rcxdude 2mo agoWhen I've heard the distinction (often in a historical context), 'nation' is usually meant to mean a set of people in a place with some sense of collective identity or origin, while 'state' is the governing body which has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within well defined borders. When these overlap the result is a nation-state, but they don't always line up so nearly. Using those definitions England, Wales, and Scotland are nations. Ireland (including northern Ireland) could also be called a nation (though, of course, as should be obvious by the fact that this does not line up with the borders of the state, this is a contentious topic). The United Kingdom is the state (and of course Ireland-minus-northern-ireland is also a state). 'Country' as a term generally doesn't imply either of these (it's just a name for some chunk of land, notionally), though it's often synonymous with the nation-state when the borders all actually line up neatly, as opposed to in the UK.
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- Tangurena2 2mo agoHere's a venn diagram that may help: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_Isles_Venn_Diagram-en.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_Isles_Venn_D... The green circles are each a single island. The yellow circle are a bunch of islands.