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Comment by thisistheend123 | Hacker News Reader

So what exactly is the criteria for a country to be called Western or Eastern?

Is there a hard criteria at all?

It would also be handy if the parent used the common English meaning when writing in English.

Sorry but English is spoken all over the world. When I speak of the president, I mean Rutte. If someone in India (English is an official language there) speaks of the president, I'm sure they mean someone else. If English were to be beholden only to USA-centric concepts, we're going to need a new universal language because that's going to be super annoying.

And even in "the west" (by which I would mean the top ~40 countries by HDI), "the west" is a poorly-defined term.

Edit: turns out Wikipedia has an article about "Western world", which makes it quite clear that the term is vague. Apparently the original meaning was "Western Christendom", so it's a religious thing. TIL.

First, president isn't a common name, but you know very well that you'll confuse people if you use it in a context in which people don't assume the is Rutte. Look up Gricean maxims. They're not the be-and-end all of language, but they do explain a large part of how we communicate. And Rutte is a prime minister, of course, not a president. Mine too, alas.

> USA-centric concepts

It means the same in other languages. And English is, AFAIK, also spoken outside the USA. If I'd call anything to the east of the Poland "Mongolia" or "Eastern Asia", I think people wouldn't understand me or think I was being obtuse.

The West / East divide is fundamentally a European concept, because it has existed there in one way or another for almost 2000 years. The West is associated with Germanic peoples / languages, Catholic / Protestant churches, West Roman Empire, capitalism during the Cold War, EU / NATO, and Europe. The East is associated with Slavic peoples / languages, Orthodox churches / Islam, East Roman Empire / Ottoman Empire, communism during the Cold War, Russia, and Asia. The more boxes you tick, the more strongly you are in that camp. Countries far away from Europe are only Western or Eastern by extrapolation.

(In a similar way, the Europe / Asia / Africa divide is fundamentally a Mediterranean concept. The farther away from the Mediterranean you go, the less sense it will make.)

The Ural mountains.

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