Why are the English viewed through retrospective glasses?

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I think there are several reasons why the terms 'English/British' have been used interchangeably in error over the years.

a) As the language we all speak is called English (ironically,the modern language is based on so many foreign words that the
nearest equivalent to Old English is 'Scots',which is mostly seen now only in literature and song,e.g. Auld Lang Syne )
b) England is the focal point of the UK,accounting for around 80% of the UK population,although not so much in land area.
The same scenario exists in the Netherlands,which most people still call 'Holland' when that is in fact only the name of its 2 main
provinces,North & South Holland.
c) A minority of English people themselves have always been happy to use the terms interchangeably,despite the fact (or sometimes
because) it annoys the rest of us who are from other parts of Britain.
d) If I'm not mistaken the name 'England' is easier to pronounce in an American accent than 'Britain' .

As a Scot I actually sympathise when English people feel a loss of identity when it's not recognised that it's a distinction from 'British'
in general.

Last edited by pluto on 21 Sep 2014, 4:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Most English people simply don't identify as "British" - or at least, they identify as English first, and British second.

57.7% of people in England and Wales identify as English, exclusively. 19.1% identify as only British (I would guess that most of these are English). 3.7% identify as Welsh, 9% do not identify as any (British) nationality and the remainder either identify as two things or Scottish or Northern Irish.

I think a big thing here is that the main thing that gives us our national identity are our sports teams. In football and rugby, each nation has its own team and there is rarely a British side. The Britain cricket team is called England. We compete as Britain at the Olympics but that only comes around every four years, whereas other sports are nearly constantly in the public eye.

I guess our nations have retained a sense of identity that doesn't exist to the same extent with, say, American states. We're happy to be proud of our nations and their distinctive character, but most Americans would probably barely notice a difference if they moved one state over (except for a few small points of law - I guess healthcare is probably the main thing). If I even moved to Birmingham (100 miles away) I would stand out as an outsider due to my accent. In Scotland or Wales, the culture is very different on top of that. You'd be accepted, but you'd notice the cultural shift, big time.

English and British are completely different concepts. I think it is completely wrong to say that English don't identify as being British, simply that the the UK is made out of different nations and it is accurate to say you are English if you are. This has long been the convention. It is a new thing to identify as British only.

Generally people who emigrated from the commonwealth and elsewhere more recently may identify as being British only, as they find it a bit awkward identifying as English even if they resident in England. Personally if they truly feel English I have no problem with them identifying as English.



That is a not a great statistic, if you surveyed people in Wales only, the majority would say they are Welsh with an English minority. Who would survey England and Wales together, given that Wales has a very small population compared to England. Not really a fair statistic for the Welsh.

Even though I have a Welsh surname, I identify primarily as English becuase I grew up as English and from great grandfather who moved to England, and the other side of the family English, so I am English but have with Welsh ancestry. Proud of both.

It is not really like a Venn geographically becuase there is no overlap. Think of a four state union. Simple really.

Scotland does actually have its own international cricket team,which has played in the World Cup,although the team came about because it's mainly an amateur sport up here and only a few players have ever reached the standard to play for the 'England' team.
A Scotland v England match this year had to be cancelled due to rain.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there - if I'm called English instead of Scottish I don't feel insulted or anything,I just want to explain
why it isn't accurate ! However,if someone like a US Customs official asked me what nationality I was,I wouldn't think of saying anything
other than 'British' because that's what appears on our passports and again is a question of accuracy.

My point is that the problem word is "English", not "British".

Look at a map of the British isles.

There are two big main islands: Ireland and Britain.

Britain is subdivided into three main parts. They are England, Scotland, and Wales.

Look at the map: there are borders dividing England from wales, and england from scotland. So all of England is on the island of Britain. But not all of Britian is England.

Scotland, and Wales, are both part of Britain. But both are seperate from England.

Originally they were seperate kingdoms,and seperate soverign nations. They all fought a bunch of wars with each other. Then England conquered both Wales and Scotland. And then the English crossed the sea and conquered Ireland. And then England crossed even wider oceans and conquered one fourth of the dry land on the planet forming the British Empire (Canada, India, Kenya, etc). But thats another story.

So back in the British Isles the English created this pretense that all of these ethnic groups are one big happy family. So they named this shotgun polical marriage of all these one time seperate kingdoms formed in 1707 the "United Kingdom". Or "the United Kingdom of Britain and Ireland".

In the Twentieth Century the big part of Ireland broke free. But Ulster is still part of the United Kingdom.

So folks who hail from the island of Britian are "British". And folks from Ulster (though not from the physical island of Britian) are also part of the UK- so are also "British" (because there is no such word as "United Kingdomite" so "British" has to do).

So the word "British" can mean "from Britain", or it can mean from the political entity called "the United Kingdom".

So the political entity formed by England dominating the British Isles is the United Kingdom. Its citizens are "British". But the word "English"only applies to the subset of British UK citizens who really are ethnic English. But outsiders like Americans are sloppy about word usage and label all United Kingdom folks "English". That doesnt bother UK folks who really are English that much. But it pisses off the Scots, the Welsh, and the Irish, who view the English as the oppressors. So the Welsh, the Irish, and the Scots, are fine with you acknowledging that they pay taxes to the UK government by calling them after the big island they live on (British). But they dont like you calling them by the name of the enemy tribe that subdued them (English). And they dont like it when you call all of Britian (or all of Britain AND Ireland) "England".

That ofcourse is a highly simplistic version of British Isles history, but I think that it captures the essence of it.

Lol!

Hope that makes it somewhat understandable.

The Irish are not from Great Britiain ('Big Britain'), so there's no reason why they should call themselves British. The English are the least British of all the British nations. They're basically French (Germanic), whereas the Welsh are Celtic (Brythonic). The Scottish are Celts too, but Gaelic rather than Brythonic, and therefore closer to the Irish than the English anyway.

The nearest equivalent to Old English is Frisian. Scots has little to do with Old English, and even little to do with Middle English.

The English are happy to call themselves British because they want to retain control over the Celtic colonies, which outnumber them.

I think you'd be 'bigoted' too if your land was stolen and your people were persecuted.



Is that meant to be some sort of sick joke?

I think you're confusing 'Scots' with Gaelic,which indeed has nothing to do with English.'Scots' refers to the variant of Northumbrian Old English that was formerly spoken in Lowland Scotland.The Scottish Government have even published papers in 'Scots' although I suspect that only linguistic scholars would be interested in them.

I realise that's a version of history that even some of my fellow Scots believe,but the two nations were united firstly by the Scottish king
'inheriting' the English throne and then the Scottish & English parliaments uniting in 1707 by agreement,albeit Scotland had run out of money and it benifitted us more at the time.

People with any sense - including a lot of Irish republicans - have moved on. The British aren't persecuting anyone now and haven't for a long time. Even during the potato famine, people weren't necessarily being persecuted. They were just ignored. Same result, essentially, but they weren't persecuted.



Why do you say that? I'm quite serious.

I'm mainly on about the Falklanders, Gibraltarians and Northern Irish here.

No-one is being oppressed.

Last edited by Tequila on 22 Sep 2014, 2:07 am, edited 2 times in total.

The Irish in this instance refers to the citizens of Northern Ireland which is part of the United Kingdom. That some 'Northern Irish' view themselves as British rather than Irish is a key factor in its troubled past.

Most Catholics over there want to keep the Union now, even if they don't necessarily see themselves as being British.

They aren't colonies if they want to remain in the Union.

Independence/a united Ireland in NI's case are there if they want it. They don't.