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11 years ago
paul4ro wrote:Arlandria606 wrote:paul4ro wrote:Arlandria606 wrote:
The fact is that Great Britain is not the same thing as the United Kingdom. Mass appropriation of mis-referencing is not a justification for doing so, the same way millions of people liking <insert popular musical artist you dislike here> does not make them an excellent judge of talent.
Words mean whatever the person who said them meant. From the Oxford dictionary:
"Great Britain is the name for the island that comprises England, Scotland, and Wales, although the term is also used loosely to refer to the United Kingdom."
You may not watch Stephen Fry, but it is the same snobbish misplaced sense of pedantry that he has. That comment you made on something subjective such as "talent" sums it up.
Um. I'm sorry, but you can't say "words mean whatever the person who said them meant" and then quote from the Dictionary, i.e. a book that documents what words mean. Either they mean what they mean, or they mean whatever the person who said them meant. Pick one.
The comment I made about talent was to further explain the idea that the majority doing something or holding a particular opinion does not make it right. It HAD to be about something subjective; it's got nothing to do with pedantry. If you want something less (but still slightly) subjective, take Hitler. He was voted into power. (True, he then refused to fairly give it up, but initially, he was voted in.) The majority voted for Hitler. Does that mean it was the right thing to do? I think it's safe to assume you'll agree with me when I say no, it wasn't. So, the argument of "lots of people say Britain and mean the UK, so we should all do it" isn't sound.
You seem to think in a very black and white manner, when really most things are more nuanced than that. Words only ever get into dictionaries of an evolving language due to common use in the first place.
And "Britain" is used frequently by the the Prime Minister, most politicians, numerous historians, and many publications, including the likes of The Economist which uses it as preferred terminology. Accept it, it doesn't matter. It's the same country, and even back on the 17th century days of the Mayflower the who British Isles was under the power of the Crown, making such pedantic differences just as irrelevant. A similar thing goes for symbols e.g. it is only in recent times where people have come to see the Saint George's cross to represent England in British contexts, as in the past it was used on numerous British territories across the world (and of course in other non-British countries like Georgia where it originated).
Sigh.
You've said "lots of people say it, so accept it" a few times now. My rebuttal to your statement is that lots of people saying something doesn't make it correct. I've had to repeat myself a couple of times now, too. You can continue the discussion by refuting my rebuttal, or you can attack something else I've said. Going back a step and repeating yourself doesn't further the conversation. It's tiresome.
As for "pedantic" differences being irrelevant, that depends entirely on the context. If I were to sell you Great Britain and you bought it because you wanted Northern Ireland, you'd be pretty annoyed when your lawyer points out that Britain and the UK aren't the same thing and you have no right to it. You may feel it's irrelevant to this context. I don't. Perhaps we should agree to disagree on that.
As an aside, I've been meaning to mention that in regards to the flags in the game being correct because they reflect the episode that the item references, I entirely agree with you. (As for whether the flags in the episode are "correct" or not, well, that's a whole other discussion that I'm not going to touch with a 50-foot flagpole.)
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