As an Englishman I see fighting words there.
I'm not trying to give offence, and I apologize if I have. What I'm trying to say is that, as an outsider, "British" has a very specific locational meaning that might not bear any resemblance to how people who live in the area would use it.
No offense taken.
Careful there though, Irish is its own nationality, one which isn’t part of the UK and therefore certainly not part of Britain at all.
Northern Ireland isn’t part of the Republic of Ireland, nor is it part of Britain but is within the UK, for extra confusion it is part of the island of Ireland though.
Oh, and for even more added confusion of geography vs politics, Ireland despite as mentioned, not being part of Great Britain is however, part of the British Isles.
Much like all our other neighbours they don’t take kindly to having their nationality conflated with us English.
My head hurts after trying to clarify all that. Isn’t learning fun!
Anyway, I’m going to listen to the podcast now. Yay.
A.B.E.
I'm British, but I'm English first.
Unfortunately much of the rest of the world (most notably the US) use "British" when they mean "English" and so get confused when someone points out that England is only part of Britain and that Scotland and Wales also exist.
Describing someone as British can easily sound like "I can't work out whether you're English or Welsh or Scottish despite the accents being very different, but hey, you're all the same, right?" Like calling someone a hominid rather than a human - technically correct, but not terribly specific.
Wait, what?
That's totally not what an American means when he calls someone British. He means they're English (or possibly Welsh because who can tell the difference?). We've watched enough old James Bond movies and computer animated movies about dragons and redheaded archer girls to know when someone is Scottish.
Seriously, have you seen "Under the Skin"? Whatever those Scotts were speaking, it sure wasn't English. Probably Martian. Easy to tell who's a Scott from the accent.
Gaird yer gab, ye laidron.
English Muffins!
Perhaps this will help:
The Difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England Explained
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10
I should say that in the same way that "British" is English inside America, outside America "Yank" is synonymous with American, sorry Texans.
Great point. Being a Californian, I suppose I should have some kind of an opinion about all Americans being called Yanks, but I don't.
I think there are some people from Northern Ireland who would identify themselves as British, but not as being Irish. They might, at a push, describe themselves as Ulstermen or Ulsterwomen. (Not all of Ulster is in Northern Ireland, by the way.) And of course there are also people from Northern Ireland who would identify as being both British and Irish, and people from Northern Ireland who consider themselves Irish and not British.
Thats because us Left Coasters are something completely diferent from the Northerners and the Southerners, so the divide is very lost on us.
I'm not sure - I worked with a guy from Greenock (near Glasgow for people who don't know it) who definitely considered himself British. He was Scottish too, but he felt that both labels were OK
I suppose "UnKies" is right out.
So, the 3 posts on Doctor Who was split, but this wasn't?
Seriously, with the amount of new posts I keep thinking that GtG posted another bio
I was really joking, but it really didn’t come out that way. So, I will fix it by saying:
MODS ARE THE BEST! GO MODS!
Jeez man, you're going to anger all the Rockers in here...