It's fairly straightforward really. The only complication is the merging of England and Wales into a single entity back in the dim and distant. When Scotland was annexed under the English crown, the Union became 'Great Britain'.
When (Northern) Ireland became part of the Union, it became the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. So if you want to talk about individual countries/provinces/principalities, you call them by their own name. If you want to talk about the mainland, it's Great Britain. If you want to include Northern Ireland, it's the United Kingdom. If you want to include the Irish Republic, then it's the British Isles. DaveD -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Sent: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 21:07 Subject: Re: [canals-list] Re: Waterways Adjournment Debate in Parliament [email protected] wrote: On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:42:09 +0100, [email protected] wrote: >...assuming that '...in the country' means we can exclude Northern Ireland. I think you can't. Do you want to exclude Wales too? Yes, quite possibly. I tend to take the view that England, Scotland and Wales re three countries which happen to come under the same government for some hings. But then it gets trickly with the two parts of Ireland - even the locals don't eem to be able to agree on what their status is... So in fact I wouldn't use '...in the country' at all, I'd use '...in England' or ...in Britain' or '...in the UK' or whatever. ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links Individual Email | Traditional http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
