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England is definitely a European country. I'm tired of people constantly making this political abuse of language of conflating "the EU" with "Europe". (And yes
by wazoox 11d ago
England is definitely a European country. I'm tired of people constantly making this political abuse of language of conflating "the EU" with "Europe".
(And yes, saying "America" for "US of A" annoys me too. First step towards losing an imperialist state of mind is letting people from Canada and Brazil be in America).
- bwanab 11d agoMost Americans refer to their country as 'the U.S.'. The people I most hear referring to it as 'America' are Brits.
- nasduia 11d agoGulf of America, Lake America, ...
- ericmay 11d agoWhat’s the problem? We took nationalist names (Mexico, Ontario) and used the hemisphere appropriate term. If anything we’re more culturally progressive for doing it. See? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49575360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49575360 Were not Americans, we are United Statesians!
- bwanab 11d agoThis wasn't done by 'most Americans'
- SenHeng 11d agoToo bad that MUSGA never caught on then.
- retired 11d agoIn all fairness, I deal with British tourists a lot and they always talk about "going to Europe" when they refer to their summer holiday in Benidorm.
- Oarch 11d agoWe are nothing, if not needlessly complex!
- ButlerianJihad 11d agoIn the San Francisco Bay Area, the locals refer to SF proper as “The City” (not “Frisco”.) So, they may live in Cupertino, Palo Alto, or Oakland, but when they say “we’re going to The City for a concert on Saturday!” we can hear them pronounce those capital letters as an unambiguous reference to the one, true City.
- kzrdude 11d agoI live in a city (a quite small one) and if I say that I'm going into the city, then it means I leave my neighbourhood (it's in the same city) and I'm going to the city centre.
- ben_w 11d agoSame. I'm in Berlin, I may say "I'm going to the city/town/village" for different parts of the city-state.
- hgoel 11d agoSame with NYC, "going to The City" usually just means going to Manhattan.
- tialaramex 11d agoThe city of London literally has a city also named London inside it and yeah, "Where are you going?" "The City" means clearly that tiny part. There is another small older city inside London, Westminster, but if you meant Westminster you'd say "Westminster" never "The City" in general.
- gizajob 11d agoOne of the smart moves the EU has performed is to bring all ideas of Europeanness and European identity and Europe as a continent under its exclusive umbrella. Even places like Switzerland are somehow now defined by their exclusion when you couldn’t get a more European country slap bang in the centre of the continent. Britain has always been an outlier due to being an island hanging off the edge, and is now a pariah and traitor state which will also be defined by abandonment and disloyalty to the EU project of total integration.
- inglor_cz 11d agois now a pariah and traitor state which will also be defined by abandonment and disloyalty to the EU project of total integration. Ugh, your concept of EU is closer to the USSR or maybe current Russia than to the actual EU. I sincerely hope that such nightmarish concept will never prevail over the relative sanity that we have now.
- gizajob 11d agoAs a British person who was born in the EU and spent 35 years of their life as an EU citizen, the treatment of us since Brexit has felt like it. Naturally the standard comeback can be “yes but you all voted for Brexit this is your fault what did you expect” but I’m just reflecting what it has felt like and the difficulties thrown up towards people who even believed in the project of Europe who suddenly found that they were no longer a welcome part of it.
- inglor_cz 11d agoPersonally, I am sorry that the British left, but coming from a small nation which had their sovereignty often trampled upon, I believe that consent of the governed matters fundamentally and that there is no project important enough to force people into it if they express their wish to the contrary.
- carlosjobim 11d ago> One of the smart moves the EU has performed is to bring all ideas of Europeanness and European identity and Europe as a continent under its exclusive umbrella. But only the most imbecille people have fallen for that. Nobody with any kind of sense or basic knowledge considers EU to be Europe or vice versa. > Britain has always been an outlier due to being an island hanging off the edge, and is now a pariah and traitor state which will also be defined by abandonment and disloyalty to the EU project of total integration. Just like they were last time, but they won that war in the end.
- ericmay 11d ago> (And yes, saying "America" for "US of A" annoys me too. First step towards losing an imperialist state of mind is letting people from Canada and Brazil be in America). Hmm, maybe I should be pro-imperialism. I’ll do that before calling a Brazilian, Canadian, or Mexican an American to satisfy the whims of the language police. But if you want to go to uni and call Americans United Statesians and fight a made up culture war, you’re certainly free to do that (in America at least, wherever that is).
- owebmaster 9d ago> Hmm, maybe I should be pro-imperialism. I’ll do that before calling a Brazilian, Canadian, or Mexican an American to satisfy the whims of the language police. Sounds like a culture warrior
- paradoxyl 11d agoThe pedantry of being angry at the US for being the only country that actually has the word "America" in its name and yet calling itself American is almost comical in its ineptitude. Nobody shakes their metaphorical fist at the Central African Republic for daring to use Central African as its demonym. It's simply understood that the surrounding countries are also African, yet simply do not have the name of the continent in its name. But if you do want to be pedantic, England is not technically a country anymore, it's the United Kingdom.
- retired 11d agoEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom.
- badabingfrlgl 11d agoIn contrast to the falklands that isn’t part of england, and never has been.
- retired 11d agoThat's true in the sense that the Falklands have never been legally part of England. But Britain has exercised control over them since the 1760s, with interruptions, and they’re still a British Overseas Territory today. So saying they've never been British would be inaccurate, but saying they're "part of England" would also be inaccurate.
- xdennis 11d ago> The pedantry of being angry at the US for being the only country that actually has the word "America" in its name That is not the reason. People say that Columbus discovered America. They don't mean the country, they mean the continent. The people in the continent of America are called Americans. About a century ago, US Americans came to view America as two continents. Many countries still hold to America being a single continent, but there's no name for the people of America because US Americans stole it. The is very equivalent to how the EU is stealing Europe/European.
- jandrewrogers 11d agoAmericans are from the United States of America in the same way Mexicans are from the United States of Mexico. When South Americans refer to Americans as "estadounidense" is that imperialist Mexico erasure? The USA is not the only "United States" in North America.
- carlosjobim 11d agoWe say "America", because "United States of America" isn't really a name. Just like we say England or Britain, because "United Kingdom" isn't really a name either. "The Soviet Union" wasn't really a name either, as "soviet" just means a governing council. But since it's a foreign word it sounds like a name. It's interesting that some of the historically most powerful entities don't have proper names. As for England being European, is it really? Traditionally people don't always count the Nordic countries as Europe, and I'd assume the same would be true of England? Culturally it is of course, just as much as France or Germany.
- frenchamerica 11d agoFrench Guiana is part of America and of European Union.