The UK.

[Hravan]

Ok, this is mainly a question to those who aren't from the UK.

On a lot of forums, around the Internet, on the TV etc, I commonly see Britain and the British being referred to as England or English. As if England is the only country of the UK and the English are the only British people.

Why is this?
It's something that I've never understood. There are 4 countries in the UK and England is only one of them. Wales, Scotland and England makes up Great Britain and then there's Northern Ireland. Those 4 countries make up the UK.

So I was wondering how are Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland portrayed in your country? Are they know as part of the UK/Britain as well or is the UK/Britain just used for referring to England or vic-versa?
Is English portrayed as the only language of the UK or are the other British languages know to exist as well?

Sorry, this is just something that's mystified me for years.
I had a friend from the USA who came to live over here for 3 years and she never understood that Wales wasn't part of England. (I live near the border) She was adamant that if it was part of Britain then it was England. She was even calling parts of Scotland English.
So I've always wondered why she was so adamant and I thought it might be down to how we're portrayed abroad.

[ladytera]

That's a really nifty question hravan. I read this earlier, and I've been mulling it on and off all day, and came to some strange conclusions.

I've always referred to Britain and England and the UK as interchangeable. But, at the same time, I'm aware that Wales, Ireland, and Scotland are a part of the UK but not England. I'm also aware that they speak Welsh in Wales, Gaelic in parts of Ireland, and while the Scotsman's burr is probably not a language in itself, I always assumed it was a result of another language there as well. So, that got me to wondering why most of the people I know in America refer to the whole thing as Britain or England or The UK, and kind of lump it all together in their thoughts and language, even though we know that there are separate countries. I've come to the conclusion that it all comes down to human nature and history.

As I understand it (and please understand this is limited, simplistic and brief), the four countries of Britain were all once sovereign nations in their own right, at some point the British Empire arose (I think that might have started as a means of defending against invaders, but I'm cloudy there), and those four nations were brought under a central control, dominated by England. The British Empire then expanded, colonizing lands around the globe. I know very little about the Welsh, but, as the Empire declined, Scotland and Ireland made bids for independence, and eventually, they all became, once again, sovereign nations, but were still under the rule of the Royal family of England (or is it Britain?). Now, as I said that's sketchy at best, and probably leaves out a great deal, and quite possibly misunderstands some of it entirely, but this is what I can remember of twenty year old history lessons and too much Arthurian Legends, Bernard Cornwall and Katherine Kurntz novels.

Now, from our perspective here, we find all that a little difficult to understand. We've never had a royal family since we left the Empire. We've also, despite cries of imperialism in the media, never built an empire. The concept, in and of itself, is a bit foreign to the American mindset. So, when we translate the four countries that make up the United Kingdom, being human, it translates in our minds to something within our own experience. In our experience, we have fifty states, that make up one country, called the United States. Within certain boundaries, each of those fifty states has sovereignty of a sort, but they are bound together as a single country under a federal government, so we don't think in terms of 50 different countries, and haven't since just after the Civil War. So, when we look at the United Kingdom, we tend to picture it as four states, with a certain level of sovereignty, under a single government, that is based in London, England. Thus, the four individual countries, in our minds translate to England as a single entity instead of what they actually are. Even though, we know that's not quite the reality, it's how we understand it a little.

I hope that makes some sense. It probably does have a little to do with how you are portrayed as well. Not so much intentionally, but just that when someone refers to the whole of the UK as England, nobody usually corrects them, and so it becomes common usage, and the distinction gets lost.

[Hravan]

Thanks ladytera, I've never thought of it that way before....
I'm a bit tired at the moment and have a job interview in 2 hours so I'll write a proper reply later.

Scotland does have its own language: Scots Gaelic. It's from the same branch of the Celtic languages as Irish and Manx (Isle of Man), the Goidelic languages branch. (Welsh, Cornish and Breton form most of the Brythonic languages branch...) Sorry, I'm a bit of a Celtic languages freak lol

[ladytera]

Good luck with your interview.

[Raivynn]

Ah beaten to it about the language thing. Sad part is I studied it for two years in High School and I suck at it.

As a native Scotsperson, I can get irked when people call Scotland, England. Or Britain, England. Though not as much as when there's a sporting event on tv and the commentators/presenters refer to Scottish winners as 'British' but English winners as 'English'. It might seem petty, but after decades of it rammed down your throat. It tends to make you choke a bit.

That all being said, I really don't hate or dislike English people as my previous paragraph may imply. Just certain parts of the English media that get on my last frayed nerve.

[Rhovanion]

When I was little I always thought that England meant the whole of UK (I also thought Scotland was its own country). But I also thought that Africa was a country, New York was the capital of the US and Sydney was the capital of Australia.

I think Swedish people are a tad bit confused as we don't even have a word in the Swedish language for the 'United Kingdom'. We only have 'Storbritannien' (which means Great Britain, but in theory that doesn't include Northern Ireland so it's still not the same as the UK). When I hear 'Great Britain' I mainly think of England and everything English. The same with British - to me that represents England and not necessarily Scotland or Wales. I think it's because, to me, England, Wales and Scotland (and Northern Ireland) are like their own separate nations and should be treated as such rather than just being lumped together.

[misaki]

^ Haha, same here. Only we call it Groot Britannië.

And England is Engeland. Pronounced as Engelland, which means Angel-land, which caused me to think it England was the country where the angels lived till age 7