Culture Question

[daicoses]

Hello! I'm Canadian and I don't mean to sound completely ignorant or anything, but I just had a couple questions for anyone that might be able to answer them.

1) 10 Downing Street - This is the equivalent of our Parliament Building.. yes? Is there another name for it, or is it just always known as Downing Street? Also, I assume there are other buildings on the street (with the 10 and all), what are they?

2) What is the difference between being English and British, and between Britain, Great Britain, England, and the UK? Are they all interchangeable or would that be completely wrong?

Thanks!

[Artemis]

10 Downing St is the official residence of The Prime Minister. the equivalent of The White House.

11 Downing St is the official residence of The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister)

Also in Downing St is the official residence of The Govt. Chief Whip (Head Govt Thug).

English - From England

Great Britain/Britain - England,Scotland & Wales.

UK - Includes Northern Ireland. 

[ursula62]

The Houses of Parliament would be the equivalent of your Parliament Building.

[jno]

so call anyone from Britain 'British' but calling a Scottish or Welsh person 'English' is like asking a Canadian if he comes from the USA.

Britain is the same as the UK ('the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland') but Great Britain is just the one island - Wales, Scotland and England.

[littleoldme]

I hate to be picky (no, really I do), but Britain is not the same as the UK. Britain is simply an abbreviated form of Great Britain i.e. England, Scotland and Wales, and has nothing to do with Northern Ireland.

The British Isles, just to add confusion, include Great Britain, the whole of Ireland, and several smaller islands including the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. However, the British Isles exist purely as a geographical concept, and have no political or administrative status.

[Artful]

When you think about it, it's complicated being British and to say where you come from, isn't it? Well, I find it so and am pleased to have acquired French nationalioy to be able to say "I was born in London and I'm French."!!

[jno]

I believe people from Northern Ireland are British citizens though not from Great Britain? (Sorry daicoses, but let's get this sorted out...)

[littleoldme]

jno - people from Northern Ireland are citizens of the British Isles (and indeed the UK), but not Britain (Great or otherwise). I've done a bit of digging and found plenty of sites explaining the difference between Great Britain and the UK, but the only ones I could find mentioning Britain were this site from a junior school in Kent, would you believe:

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/question s/britain.html

and a slightly more grown-up one here:

http://www.henman.ca/paul/england.htm

[mfewell]

Hello daicoses,

'English' is a thing of the past, existing only now in 30s Agatha Christie novels. This because it is a shameful word - the word now is 'British' - and this in turn is to enable us to notate any citizen of any country of the world as British, and so we can innovate such expressions as 'British Terrorist' - people who attack their homeland, but whom we criticise at our peril lest we become racists.  What happened to the word 'Traitor' and its concomitant penalty ?

[jno]

littleoldme, you're right and I was wrong. Here is the official UK government website. So the Northern Irish cannot be British (not citizens of the British Isles either, I don't think; as you've pointed out, that's geography, not politics). daicoses please ignore my previous post.

mfewell's a bit out of date; England is back in fashion again, partly because (I suspect) of the increasing delegation of authority to separate legislatures in Scotland and Wales, though this has a long way to go. Scotland currently has a lot more autonomy than Wales. 

[sinbag]

 I am sorry mfewell English is not a thing of the past as you put it,  I'm English and proud of it, what makes  us different from British is  you have to be  " born "English you do not just fill in a form.

[brachiopod]

So what does "born English" mean, sinbag?

[nfn]

Be born in England. Scottish born in Scotland, Welsh born in Wales, Irish born in Ireland.
That's the supposed rules of international sport anyway. These days an ancient distant relative of our fair shores appears to be the only qualification!

[sinbag]

To be born English brachipod means being born in England to English parents and the birth registered in England. One can not be nationalized English,  British yes, Sorry  daicoses  after all it was your question and here we are rambling on.

 

[grannyg]

 The British Isles includes England, Scotland, Wales and the whole of Ireland, The Isle of Man, The Channel Isles and The Isles of Scilly.

Great Britain does not include Southern Ireland which is an independent state.

[jno]

hmmmm, sinbag's definition of Englishness would seem to exclude anyone of a non-white hue. Methinks this is a matter of race rather than nationality, and a potentially dodgy one.

[nfn]

jno I don't agree. There are many 'non white' 3rd or 4th generation English people here and I for one welcome everyone. We might be an island but that doesn't mean we have to live like one.

That said, clear off Europe, I like my bananas curvy!

[jno]

nfn, those people don't meet sinbag's definition. According to that definition you can't be English unless you have English parents - which means they have to have English parents, who also have to have English parents  - and so on backwards forever. None of them could ever be naturalised. So where would non-whites ever have qualified?

[tell-me-more]

Daicoses,

1) Strange though it may seem, I believe that 10 Downing St. is used by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Gordon Brown) and his family, whilst the Prime Minister uses number 11. Can't rembember why.

2) England, Britain, Great Britain, The United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) and The British Isles are all well-defined geographical areas (I think) and I've listed them in increasing size. In the list, each place is included in the following places (i.e. England is part of Britain, which is part of Great Britain and so on). Interchanging any of those words for any other would therefore change the meaning of any statement - although in practice, that might not be much of an issue.

The meaning of words like British and English, on the other hand, is likely to be a much more sensitive issue.

As you may be aware, some believe that English means "born in England to parents who are English". Whilst on the face of it, this might seem a sensible definition, I imagine that under that definition, no English people would exist.

I do not believe that there is a single person whose ancestors (including those unknown to him) were all born in England.

The same applies to 'British', but I understand that that's a nationality, so I presume English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish etc. are not nationalities.

I find it difficult to answer your question in terms of race, because race itself seems to be a very poorly defined term to me. As far as I can see, race is only well-defined if we  came from more than one original source. rather than - for example - all coming from Adam and Eve.

I've forgotten what I came on here for now.

[grannyg]

 

 The presesnt Prime Minister and his family swapped residences in Downing Street with The Chancellor Of The Exchequer because the accomodation at No 11 is larger than at No 10 therefore better for his larger family.