Re: So it is true...

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> Seán O'Leathlóbhair wrote:
>
> > I think that few here in the UK are aware of that but that may improve
> > since the countries have split. There is a very common naive view of a
> > one to one relationship between country and language. You can even
> > stump many people with questions such as: what language is spoken in
> > Belgium or Switzerland? I would bet a fair amount that if you asked
> > what was spoken in Czechoslovakia, you would get the single answer
> > Czech. But I would also think it likely that if you asked about
> > Slovakia, you may now get the answer Slovakian.
>
> Belgium and Switzerland (and Iraq) are nations in the American sense,
> but not really in the more widespread sense of the word. (We needed a
> term for the "United States" in 1787 and took the word that previously
> designated both an ethnic and a state unity, to designate a political
> unity.)
>
> Which also explains why Americans don't understand how Saddam could try
> to eliminate the Kurds -- they kept calling them "his people," which
> they weren't. They were drawn within his (and the others') borders by
> Woodrow Wilson.
> --
> Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx

Do you mean that Americans today use "nation" differently to other
English speakers? Or, do you mean there is a distinct sense in which
the United States is a nation? That may become an issue for the
European Union one day but probably not in the near future. I expect
the vast majority of EU citizens would name a smaller entity as their
nation. I am happy to say that an I am an EU citizen rather than
British or Irish but I think that I am in a small minority.

The sense that I meant was an area under a particular government. Here
is the first definition from the Cambridge Online Dictionary.

1 [C] a country, especially when thought of as a large group of people
living in one area with their own government, language, traditions,
etc:

Which is pretty much what I had in mind.

I am aware of other senses e.g. some people talk of the Muslim Nation
or the Nation of Islam which does not fit the above definition. The
second definition is a better but not perfect fit.

2 [S] a large group of people of the same race who share the same
language, traditions and history, but who might not all live in one
area:
the Navajo nation

Here's a link:

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=52976&dict=CALD

Sadly, despite the possible confusion of the meaning of nation,
Saddam's attempted elimination of the Kurds is not hard to believe.
There have been plenty of others incidents of rulers attempting to
eliminate groups within their same nation / country / state / area
which they control. Also there have been many civil wars.

--
Seán O'Leathlóbhair

.

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