Scotland is NOT England!
Image via Wikipedia A wee rant about the semantic conception of ‘England’ in Germany. It happens quite frequently that Germans refer to Scotland as ‘England’. For many Germans, ‘England’ = ‘the island containing the countries England, Wales, and Scotland’, i.e. the UK minus Northern Ireland (or: Great Britain). ‘Ireland’, on the other hand, = ‘the island containing the countries the Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland’.
My mum for instance to this day sometimes asks me,
So how are things in England?
And I say
Scotland, SCOTLAND!
Same with some friends who visited me in June. Today I came across the same thing at work and it made me mad (it always does). I was reading this piece of research and it had as one answer (in a list of countries) in a questionnaire:
England/Ireland
The research was done by a German company and it had the guy’s contact details on the cover. So I phoned him straight away and asked that it be corrected in the future 
He defended his using it, stating that for Germans, England means ‘the island’, and that it didn’t matter since semantically, it’s the same thing for Germans. He also said he wasn’t sure whether or not he would change it, and that he would think about it.
The problem is that by using ‘England’ synonymously with ‘UK minus Northern Ireland’ he perpetuates the misunderstanding of our countries in Germany. Furthermore, anyone consulting this piece of ‘research’ who is *not* German (the research is in English and for an international market) will potentially misinterpret the data.
@ everyone in the world: Scotland is NOT England!
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I guess people know that, in theory, but it’s easy to get confused as the language spoken in England and Scotland alike is English (with Scottish being substandard). Demanding that people make a point about you living in SCOTLAND is like someone living in Munich demanding that people finally grasp that he lives in the FREE STATE OF BAVARIA, and not in Germany. With the sole difference being of course that there is no federal state called Germany.
I agree that some of it is just my being personal about it and getting annoyed. However, this guy uses in his report sometimes ‘England/Ireland’ and sometimes ‘UK/Ireland’, and the latter is acceptable(ish), I think.
But England/Ireland is plain incorrect for people using this study in their work, like I did. I.e. I had to phone him and ask as the information wasn’t clear. If he has to use it so that his research objects know what he’s on about, fine. For the official results though he should at least have added a footnote. I mean this is a professional company!
Well, at least he should edit the results before passin them on to customers – if he insists that he wants to use terms in the survey that are more suited to the petty conceptions of the people completing it!