I think Japanese people are slightly less aware of or concerned with the political correctness nuances of British vs English, and this example reflects that. If you were to actually question a Japanese person, they would most likely be able to correctly tell you that there is a difference, but it’s semantically a more complex issue to remove the association completely. The issue being that because all English people are in fact British, it obfuscates the reality that not all British people are English.
I agree that it should be only defined as “English,” but I also believe that the phrase in question is idiomatically correct in Japanese.
IAC, interesting comment as I never even considered the issue when I saw this vocab word myself. I’m in the US, so it didn’t hit home for me like it did for you.
You’re right about 犬(いぬ) vs. dog. If you search for “犬” on Google Images you’ll actually get a significantly different set of pictures than you would if you searched “dog”, which sort of reflects the difference in what images each respective word evokes in a native speaker’s head.
I’m from Northern Ireland and can confirm what @Ssujh1 has said.
The generalisation is that protestants are unionists, people who agree with NI being part of the UK, and would therefore call themselves British; catholics are republicans, people who disagree with NI being part of the UK, and would call themselves Irish. Of course not all protestants are unionists and not all catholics are republicans.
I’ve also noticed people my age and younger will a lot of the time just say they’re Northern Irish.
In theory I know where you are coming from, I am just saying if you are not Austrian/German/Swiss you wouldn’t know the difference either, so why would you put those kind of nuances into a book/app that tries to teach you a language in the easiest way possible , when it would only lead to confusion for learners and for Japanese people (when you talk to them) because they probably don’t know the difference either.
(btw I have close business relations with a lot of Germans so I never got offended when someone accidentally called me German XDD as long they don’t call me Piefke (=insulting word that austrians use for germans) I am good. lmao)
Rude much.
I’m a British Englishman and I try to keep those two terms separate for the benefit of my Welsh, Scot, and Irish compatriots. However, to most of the rest of the world the two are synonyms. It’s probably because of London being also seen as synonymous with the UK for most foreigners.
I actually can’t think of anywhere else that gets that sort of treatment.
Ah. Those pesky Crown Dependencies.
I don’t think you have anything to fear with that. Most people don’t know the difference between the countries, and in Japan it’s even more so since the language is not shared. イギリス is basically a blanket term that everyone will understand. It’s like trying to explain to someone not from the US which state you live in.
Anyway, I wouldn’t let one translation you don’t like get in the way of studying. There will be many many more. If it makes you feel better you can always add your own translations based on whatever Jisho/JMDict tells you or what you’ve learned from experience.
As someone from Northern Ireland living in Japan, I can confirm that anecdotally, to Japanese people イギリス and England are pretty synonymous.
As a proud Northern Irish person/massive pedant, I mostly take it as a conversation opportunity lol:
When I meet Japanese people and they ask where I’m from, I say: “イギリスから来ました。”
And they reply: “Oh! You’re English!”
And I say: “Haha! No!”
and take it from there lol
Also to answer @davikani’s question, personally speaking, in English when meeting non-UK folk I start from “I’m from the UK” and specify Northern Irish if asked. Depending on the company, I would also say just plain Irish on occasion. For Japanese people, see above, though would use 北アイルランド人 as the final “人” form.
Interesting.
In France, we do have words for every country in the UK but in the end, « anglais » (english) still commonly be used to call all british people. I hardly heard anyone says « he’s britannique ».
And in Vietnam, where the language have some similar traits with Japanese (more Chinese but hey…), we actually have only one word for the UK and England. Other countries’ nationals in the UK will be « people from + country ». Basically like the «country+人». So if Wanikani is for Vietnamese, it would say the same thing.
When I searched I got very similar results for both languages, with more shiba inu with the Japanese search. They were mostly puppies, but also mostly light brown coats. When I searched the Dutch hond, though, I got more variety in coat colour.
I was also a bit surprised when I saw it but I guess Englishman is a common word and if you wanted to translate it into Japanese then i think イギリス人 would be a very natural translation, even though it loses some of the nuance. As an English/British woman I don’t feel annoyed by the inclusion of ‘Englishman’ here because I guess the point is that ‘Englishman’ is a common word. But anyway, I changed this answer to Brit and was a bit surprised that that wasn’t included as an option. I end up adding my own answers to a lot of the vocabulary though to be fair - it’s not a perfect system and the answers are not exhaustive.
I added Brit ages ago, and then for some reason a couple weeks ago decided Briton would be a good answer. Got it wrong.
Yeah, I have trouble remembering what answers I’ve added as well! That kind of thing happens a lot and I just have to keep adding and adding, haha.
There’s a difference between Holland and the Netherlands, but people use each synonymously. In Spanish, they only use the word Hollanda.
Uh, no? We have “Países Bajos”=Netherlands and “Holanda”=Holland.
In any case, Japan calls the Netherlands オランダ and Dutch オランダ語.
anyway, thanks to this thread i’m now apparently confused.
This is a bit of an ongoing discussion in the Netherlands as well, but I think a lot of Dutch people are perfectly fine using the term “Holland” to refer to the entire country when abroad or speaking a foreign language (even if the foreign language also has words for both terms), which makes it different from the discussion about the UK and its constituent parts.
Even the country’s official tourism marketing website is called holland.com all the while advertising plenty of cities outside of the two provinces that actually make up “Holland”, but they do dedicate a section of their website to the terminology. I think it would create a much bigger discussion, however, if the UK were to launch a tourism website that just had England in its name but included ads for Cardiff, Edinburgh, or Belfast.
My mistake. I guess I’ve only ever heard my dad call it Holanda. Again, as in English, some people will just use Holanda as if that’s the name of the country when it’s not.