On that vein, the Teadious Isles?
West Doggerland Heights?
Let’s leave doggers out of this. That’s something very different.
I think it’s more correct to say that there’s a distinction between the name for the country, an area of land defined by geography, the ethnicity or culture of the inhabitants, or otherwise, and the name for the state, a political institution established for the government of a country. Thus we have France, Germany, Italy (names of countries) and the French Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Italian Republic (names of states). Sometimes the name of a country is the same as the name of the corresponding state; examples have already been given in this thread and I suggest the USA is another example.
The distinction between the name of the country and then name of the state is brought out by the fact that the latter may change but the former rarely does, and by the fact that in many cases the name of the country was established and in common use long before there was any state at all to correspond to it - Ireland, Germany and Italy being prime examples.
The complication in the Irish case is that, for political reasons, in 1936 the state adopted the name of the country, although it governed only a part of the country (and claimed a right to govern the rest). Also for political reasons, in 1936 it choose not to adopt a name identifying the state as a republic although it was, in substance, a republic. When it was decided, in 1948, to identify the state as a republic, this was acheived not by changing the name of the state (which would have required a constitutional amendment and a referendum) but by adopting an official “description” by parliamentary legislation. The name of the state, however, is unchanged, and is much more used than the description; it is the name that appears on coins, postage stamps, passports, official correspondence and publications, treaties, etc. The description is only used for disambiguation, and in formal contexts the need rarely arises, since there is no other state called “Ireland”.
For a few decades official discourse was poisoned slightly, in that the UK refused to accept “Ireland” as the name of the state and usually used “the Irish Republic” (which is neither the name nor the description) while the Irish government insisted on referring to “Great Britain” rather than the United Kingdom. But they have both got over that, fortunately.
This is soooo perfect! Love it. “+1” and all that.
And yet so veddy veddy British.
:smack:
Shame on me.
And see post 66.
If we’re talking about Ireland now, my English friends routinely used the term “bogtrotters.”
Moderator Note
I really don’t think we need to start trotting out every offensive and insulting term for Irish people. Let’s refrain (speaking as an Irish-American).
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Perhaps this ought to be a thread on its own rather than tangential to this, but that’s an odd (to me) trope I’ve noticed some Americans use. Where does it come from? There’s no conceivable British accent that could sound like that.
Just to mention, one of my great-grandmothers was a Patrick, so I’m one of the diaspora myself.
“Veddy, veddy interesting” is the catch phrase of a WWII German character on an American comedy show from the 1960s. (“Laugh-In”).
I remember Laugh-In but not Arte Johnson saying, “Veddy veddy.” It was more like “Ver-r-r-ry in-ter-est-ink.,” with “very” drawn out. But it has been awhile since I saw it.
Parody of a very clipped Noel Cowardesque (already parodic) upper class accent that people may have heard at the pictures?
That’s what I wondered. That voice could include an over-enunciated (theatrical projection!) rolled or trilled “r” but I can’t see how anyone could hear a “d” in there. And of course it’s disappeared nowadays.
You had to go there, didn’t you!
It’s actually a pretty common American English approximation of how trilled or tap "r"s in between vowels sound to our ears. I didn’t quite get it at first, either, as I grew up with Polish which has this type of “r”, but when I realized they are articulated in the same place (or nearly so) in our mouth as our intervocalic "t"s and "d"s in words like “better” and “wetter” (which sound like “bedder” and “wedder” to folks who do not use the intervocalic aveolar flap), then it started to make a bit more sense. Even the IPA symbol for the “tt” sound in the American (and many other) pronunciations of “better” looks like a modified “r.” See voiced alveolar tap.
There’s a little more info here I just dug up.
I’ve honestly heard this “veddy veddy” more in conjuctions with Easter European accents, like Zsa Zsa Gabor, but same idea.
I know we’ve been around this block before, my friend, but I can find as much in that article to support me as to support you.
We live and learn. Thanks for that: I’ll stop getting into a rhotic flap about it.
