I would say “at home,” but there is also some strong ethnocentrism on the part of anglophone monolinguals, which is occasionally quite unwelcoming. Based on my experience with Wales, at least the Welsh-speaking Welsh are Welsh first, British second, and English not at all — but there’s not always a lot of daylight between “British” and “English” in terms of culture.
A generalisation, though, so exceptions abound.
Yes. When is Burling Day this year?
The Plantations of Ulster with Scottish Presbyterians was absolutely a design to shatter Catholic lords’ power, the Troubles mostly Catholic vs. Presbyterian violence (Anglicans and Methodists were not as involved) was a more modern thing. Presbyterians were still a lesser group to the crown, the Revolution of 1798 was by the United Irishmen, who were initially a Presbyterian group before being joined by Catholics and some Anglicans. It was a liberal ideals revolution.
From the 1960s to nowadays, unionism is dominated by Presbyterians, while most are the pretty standard Presbyterian Church in Ireland, the loudest and most obnoxious (think Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson) are the smaller Free Presbyterian Church.
It depends. The Welsh and Scots have no issue with each other at all, but, well, the English can be unpopular.
I’m English. When I was a small child, about 35 years ago, there was a trend for wealthy English people to go buy holiday homes in rural Wales, as the house prices were so cheap and English wages tended higher. This was meaning local people were being priced out, their kids were needing to move away, and the holiday homes bought no benefit to the area. There were loads of protests, unsurprisingly built a lot of resentment, and it could get taken out on any English people.
My parents bought a site in one of these areas, and were planning on starting a business. They were obviously aware of the holiday home issue, so we’d started learning Welsh. They were assuming that as they were going to be integrating, not just buying a house and leaving it empty and they’d be hiring locals in an area with sky high unemployment, so it wouldn’t be too much of an issue.
They were wrong.
As soon as the local village found out that we were English and had hired an English architect for the site design, they started raising objections to absolutely everything; like claiming the disused broken down barn they were removing was a local landmark, claiming belowground works literally not visible from from offsite would be an eyesore. The Welsh consultant my parents had hired (who was not local, very supportive of them and getting extremely frustrated by the situation) said he was literally hearing people boast in the pub about the stupid objections they’d made to drive the English out. The local planning meeting to discuss the objections was held entirely in Welsh- although legally either language should have been acceptable and I’d be amazed if a single attendee didn’t speak fluent English. This wasn’t stated in advance and no translator was available. Permission to build was refused.
Some locals then set fire to the caravan we’d been staying in on site (while we were away- again people were heard boasting about doing it, but no-one knew anything when the police got involved).
At every stage, it was clear that it wasn’t the actual plans anyone had a problem with, the issue was that we were English. In the end, my parents had to sell up at a loss. It took nearly a decade to sell the site.
The same attitude is still there in some places, but it’s far from universal. In other areas, especially larger towns or cities, it’s not an issue at all. There may be some jokes, which can go too far, which is the same Welsh or Scottish people may get in England, but most people really don’t care.
I’m now living in Scotland; I’ve had no issues at all so far, but some other English people I know who have sterotypically posh accents do get problems from locals, mostly stuff like bar staff ignoring them or pretending not to understand them (when they obviously can and had no trouble understanding non-native speaker with a stronger accent). As someone with a less-posh accent, I’ve had lots of people who voted to leave the union go out of their way to tell me their problem is with Westminster (the government) rather than the English people, but I’m sure I’d have issues in some places.
[quote=“Reply, post:18, topic:1026149”]
What about Ireland and the rest… can a Northern Irish person or an English person live and work in Ireland and feel welcome there, or is there still some residual hostility?[/quote]
The reason for the permeability of citizenship, travelling rights and so on was that at independence in 1922, the populations in the different parts of Ireland and the UK were also very mixed. A lot of people of Irish descent in the UK could hardly be told they were suddenly foreigners.
As for the situation now, try watching the comedy series Derry Girls, where an English cousin arrives to live with one of them! More seriously, my understanding is that with EU membership, the Republic has plenty of new residents from other countries.
That’s my perception, or at least each has many distinctive features but also some things in common, from intelligence co-operation, to Westminster-style parliamentary practice, to a sense of humour.
I’m sorry, but this kind of statement may help explain why local Welsh communities were hostile to English folk coming in. It suggests that English should always be the language of local government, even if the majority of the community is Welsh.
What language do all of those meeting-attendees speak at home, behind closed doors, when they don’t need to exclude English people?
It’s not that they would have expected it to be all in English, but that no translation was provided into the other official language of the area, not even of any major points, allowing them no chance to respond to anything. Both languages are officially adopted as legal languages, it’s the norm to be able to request any official communication in either language- this is a requirement for written documents. If the situation was reversed, that would be equally poor, but no-one would hesitate to call it out.
You maybe are not aware that many Welsh people- the majority in fact- do not actually speak fluent Welsh. I grew up right on the border, spent many holidays travelling all over Wales, and it’s honestly rare to even hear Welsh outside of a few areas. Many Welsh people know no Welsh language at all, beyond maybe the commoner road signs.
There’s a whole lot of history to that which adds to the anti-English sentiment, but still, the proportion of fluent Welsh speakers in Wales is under 40%, and -per Wikipedia- in recent surveys only around half of them report actually speaking it regularly. In the 90s, this was probably even lower, there has been a bit of a revival since.
I would willingly bet that if my parents had been from South Wales (which has very few Welsh speakers) they would have been included in the meeting. The locals were quite clear to the consultant that the issue was that they were English, not that they spoke English.
Misread. Sorry.
You never heard anyone talk about “U-kay” until quite recent times.
Nitpick: The English Civil War was in the 1640s, well after the Middle Ages.
Unless you mean the Wars of the Roses, which were earlier—but were between competing factions for the English throne instead of the people versus the monarchy.
Both of those followed the Anarchy, but again rival monarchs.
I have a flexible definition of the Middle Ages! 
A fair point, but I should also point out that English is translated into the other official language of the area almost none of the time in such circumstances—Welsh speakers are expected to be able to function in English in the UK, and only in a very few venues is real-time translation into Welsh provided. The general attitude seems to be that English is an essential language, Welsh an optional one. That very perception causes problems.
I know many English people who have settled in Wales and made an effort, and been fine, and plenty of Welsh people who are aggressively anti-Welsh-language. It’s a complicated mix, but because the vast bulk of the power is on one side of the equation, it’s hard to balance things without difficulties.
A local friend is originally from Wales. He’s happy if you refer to him as Welsh, and he doesn’t mind if you call him British. But under no circumstances will he accept being called English. There’s a lot of good-natured ribbing in our circle of friends, but we all know that that is one line we do not cross with him.
We did ask him once what the Welsh language sounded like, so he gave us a few sentences. I don’t know if he is a fluent speaker of the language, but he knew enough to give us a sample of it. Never heard anything like it before; it was certainly interesting!
Think of it this way…
Great Britain is the island that contains England, Scotland and Wales. Those three are separate historical nations that are located on that island. England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are subordinate polities within the UK, sort of similar to US States, but it’s a very imperfect analogy. In many ways, US States have more sovereignty than the constituent nations of the UK. But there is more identity involved being with English, Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish than there is with being from most US States (Texas, parts of Louisiana (Acadiana) and Hawaii may be exceptions), as that’s not only a political identity, but an ethnic identity. Someone is English, and may be a resident and citizen of the UK, for example. I once dated a girl who grew up near Southampton, but who considered herself Scottish, because her parents were Scots, and while she identifed as British and a citizen of the UK, she didn’t identify as English, no matter how classically English her accent was, and the fact that she had grown up in Hampshire.
The United Kingdom is a political entity that comprises the nations of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Island (on the island of Ireland). The UK is the primary international political entity where foreign policy is set, the military is employed, and so forth. The UK is what everyone else thinks of as the “national government”- it’s what is represented in the UN, it’s what is represented in NATO, it’s what is represented in the EU.
The Commonwealth is a entity that isn’t a unified political entity any more, but is a sort of cultural union that is made up of former nations of the British Empire, but after a certain point. For example, India is part of the Commonwealth, but the US is not.
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union of which the UK was once a member. Brexit ended that.
The Crown is everything that is ostensibly ruled by the monarch of the UK- right now, King Charles III. This is the UK and the Crown Dependencies. Part of the uniqueness of the Crown Dependencies is that they’re territories that the sovereign rules in his capacity as the King because of his historical title of Duke of Normandy. Meaning that when William the Conqueror became King of England, he also retained overlordship over the Crown Dependencies.
The British Overseas Territories are places outside of Great Britain and Ireland that the goverment of the UK has authority, although they don’t have Parliamentary representation from what I understand.
Parliament is the UK’s elected legislative body, with the Prime Minister acting as Head of Government, while the King (or Queen) acts as Head of State. This is a weird distinction to Americans, as the President fulfills both roles in the US.
The Crown is a sort of vague, catch-all term for the institution of the monarchy and what it represents, as personified by the King or Queen. So The Crown represents the legal authority of the courts, the military, etc… as personified by the King, for example. It’s an amorphous idea, and one that isn’t easy to explain, but that isn’t too hard to understand.
I think it’s hard to say the England is a subordinate polity when it dominates the House of Commons, based on its population. The current numbers, set in 2010, are:
At the general election in May 2010, 650 members were returned—533 from England, 59 from Scotland, 40 from Wales, and 18 from Northern Ireland. Each constituency returns a single member.
The Commons, dominated by England, can legislate for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
I"m afraid my reaction is “so what?” Language rights in public bodies are generally based on a recognition of the importance of the local language to the community, not how many people can speak it. That’s generally of considerable importance to the individuals who speak the minority language. If the law recognises the right to use either language, but does not require interpretation of the spoken proceedings, that’s a potential flaw in the law.
In my province, anyone can use either English or French in the courts. If someone chooses to file all their materials in French, and only speak French, that’s their right, even if they’re fluently bilingual. It’s up to the court to work to make it accessible to the other parties, and to provide a bilingual judge and clerk.
Although on paper there may be equality between languages, there is usually assymetry between the speakers of the two languages, in practice. Often, the people who speak the majority language are unilingual, while the people who speak the minority language are bilingual; they have to be, usually, to exist in a society dominated by the majority language.
If the practical default is always to use the language understood by everyone in the room, that undercuts the right of the minority to use their language, because it will always favour the speakers of the majority language.
I just meant that there’s not an English representation on the international stage; it’s the UK, even if England dominates it in Parliament.
Well… yes.
I’m not sure how you managed to say that and still completely ignore that this was not done in the situation I am referring to and that is the objection I was making to it. This was an official hearing, carried out in only one of the official local languages with no consideration at all for speakers of the other, which included the people being discussed.
This despite the fact that a decent proportion of the local residents in that area- and in much of the country, including areas less than an hour’s drive away, almost all the residents- do not speak that language. It’s not as though this is an uncommon situation, it has to happen all the time, but no accommodations at all were made.