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Comment by retired | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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…

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

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.

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”

We are nothing, if not needlessly complex!

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