On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 05:07:07PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > On Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 02:37:15PM -0500, John Hasler wrote: > > Steve Langasek writes: > > > en_UK is English as spoken in the United Kingdom. > > > > While en_GB is english as spoken in Great Britain. Perhpas one of the > > residents thereof can explain the difference. > > Well, I'm not a resident thereof, but at least at some point, the > official name of the country is "the United Kingdom of Great Britain and > Northern Ireland". AIUI, the island on which you find England, > Scotland, and Wales is called Britain. I'm not sure how "Great" modifies > that unless it's to include some of the smaller outlying islands, like > the Shetlands and the Isle of Man. > > Now, I'll let some Brit come along and tell us all how I've got all that > 100% wrong. :) Close enough. (Great) Britain is the island. The UK is the country. 'Great' is shameless pimping of the name, with no particular meaning to anybody but a historian. I think it got added when some land got annexed or similar, not sure which. (If Irish people can ever stop killing each other long enough, N. Ireland might drop out of the country. At this point the whole thing will become absurd.) -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : | Dept. of Computing, `. `' | Imperial College, `- http://www.debian.org/ | London, UK
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