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Comment by thrownawaysz | Hacker News Reader

I'd never call someone from the Netherlands north European, it's western Europe

I'd group the Dutch with the Scandinavians as the "other Germanic branches", possibly also including the UK. As a taxonomy it makes far more sense to me. Western Europe is too broad. You have the French and the Portugese and the Spanish which are all quite different.

It's North when contrasted with the South, like the Mediterranean countries, and West when contrasted with the East, like the old Easter Bloc.

And South when contrasted with the "real" North?

Northern Europe is a region and while there can be various definitions the most common ones do not include Benelux countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Europe

Southern Europeans, Italians, Spanish, Greeks also call Germany Northern Europe. It's anything where the weather is generally not as hot (well, this is changing) people are more reserved, more work-focused, or individual, less prominent communal eating, big families etc. It's a real thing that I often hear from Southern Europeans. You could also relate it to Catholic / Protestant split perhaps.

It depends. Quite often, Germanic countries are grouped with Northern Europe because many of them are located around the North Sea, Latin countries with Western Europe, Slavic countries with Eastern Europe, and Balkan countries with Southern Europe.

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