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Comment by wazoox | Hacker News Reader

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).

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The 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.

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom.

In contrast to the falklands that isn’t part of england, and never has been.

That'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.

> 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.

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. 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.

is 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.

As 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.

Personally, 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.

> 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.

In 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.

We are nothing, if not needlessly complex!

In 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.

I 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.

Same. I'm in Berlin, I may say "I'm going to the city/town/village" for different parts of the city-state.

Same with NYC, "going to The City" usually just means going to Manhattan.

The 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.

I grew up equidistant from Philadelphia and New York. "The city" was exclusively used for New York regardless of the many cities between us

> In the San Francisco Bay Area, the locals refer to SF proper as “The City” (not “Frisco”.)

Eh, they also say “I’m going to SF”

But agreed definitely not “Frisco”

I don't think that's a problem, and it doesn't mean that Britain is not in Europe, IMO. Comes naturally with human perspective. "Where did you go this summer?" A) "I stayed in England"; B) "I travelled around Britain"; C) "I went to Europe". All perfectly understandable, I think..

In a non-pedantic context, yes. Otherwise, no.

    A) "I stayed in England"

And you actually traveled in Scotland and Wales but England was synonymous with UK for you. Technically incorrect of course.

    B) "I travelled around Britain"

And in actuality you only traveled in England.

    C) "I went to Europe"

As an American (yes, a US-ian) and you start in Poland at the Baltic sea and then via some nice Eastern European countries with other attractions like Kroatia, all the way down to Greece. But without further explanation and context most people would've assumed you probably traveled Spain, France, Italy etc.

yea but that's clear from the context

we use "going to Europe" and "going to the continent" fully aware that the UK is in Europe

But almost invariably in this context they mean "the continent" ie France, Spain, Italy and so on, probably not Scandi and not Ireland. So that's more like how people would say they're going "to the UK" when actually they're travelling to like the Isle of Man or even sometimes Jersey which are not in the UK but like sure, people who speak English live there, if some lunatics attacked them the military forces would work for the UK, and in Man's case it even makes geographical sense (Jersey is basically in France, it isn't French for historical reasons) but these places are not part of the United Kingdom any more than Canada or Australia. Same King, different government.

The British Isles lie on the Eurasian tectonic plate, on the northwestern part of the European continental margin. Going to "the continent" is an incorrect expression. You are already on it.

I'm being highly pedantic here.

Pedantic maybe, but technically correct.

Which we all know, is the best kind of correct.

If you want to be pedantic, then this also wrong: half of Ireland, the Isle of Man, and Scotland are actually on the Laurentian plate, which split apart. The Scottish Highlands used to be part of the same range as the Appalachian. Plates are not continents.

I thank you for correcting me! I learned something today.

Geologically speaking, Scotland had a lot more to do with Appalachia than the rest of Europe…

I live in continental Europe, and we also say "going to Europe" when talking about holiday trips abroad. It's just a natural thing to say when you want to stress you're going outside of the border, buy without being overly specific.

Americans 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.

Most Americans refer to their country as 'the U.S.'. The people I most hear referring to it as 'America' are Brits.

Gulf of America, Lake America, ...

What’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

Were not Americans, we are United Statesians!

Lake Ontario wasn't a "nationalist" name. It's an anglicised version of the Wyandot name for the lake. The Canadian province is named after the lake, not the other way around.

Don't be a ghoul.

Either way, America is more inclusive. Don’t be a ghoul

This wasn't done by 'most Americans'

Too bad that MUSGA never caught on then.

We 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.

French Guiana is part of America and of European Union.

> (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).

> 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

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