Are you proud to be English? in The AnswerBank: News

Im very proud to be English!

no, i am not "proud" to be english. It's not like i've achieved anything to be english, apart from being born, and lets face it, everyone alive has achieved that

RATTER15

>>>If it is offensive to shorten the word of Pakistanis, then surely it is just as offensive to shorten the word of British by calling us 'Brits'?<<<

its all down to context!

RATTER15

bednobs, don't exaggerate, not everybody alive was born in England!

bednobs

i am not saying they were, i am saying everone alive can say they were born. Where you are born is completely random, so i can't see why i need to be proud of it

nannybooby

Yes I am proud to be English , isnt just where I was born that makes me English its the way you are brought up and the love of your country too.
Most people are proud of their ethecicity (sorry spelling) so why cant we.

MarkRae

Ethnicity: "the ethnic quality or affiliation resulting from racial or cultural ties".

Nothing to do with birthplace...

brionon

When I see interviews with Norwegian or Swedish teens who speak English Far better than our Teens do-I feel ashamed.

tonyav

I'm proud to be a Black Country man.

FredPuli43

I'm with you on Brits. This is an American introduction, I suspect. It suits headline writers. 'Britons' does sound old-fashioned and 'British' is not a noun; pedants might object that we are not 'the British', but 'the Britons', just as 'the Spanish' are, correctly, 'the Spaniards'. But the practice of using the adjective as a noun, the noun it describes being understood, is established in English now.

It is not a term of racial abuse, though. The short form of Pakistani has long been used as a derogatory term; it has probably only ever been so used.

The change from England for the UK or Great Britain to Britain has been gradual. 'England expects every man..' was not 'Britain expects...' and older people, in particular, still use England so. To me, 'England' only means the country as part of the UK, and that's how I use 'England' and 'English'.

alzheimer

Allow me to stir the pot even more....LOL
I am proud to be British - because I was born in Scotland - and to me the term British is inclusive of all those born in the United Kingdom.
As for being referred to as Brits - so what - those of us born in Scotland are referred to as Scots and it doesn't bother us - and certainly it is not an offensive term - just a slovenly modernism.
It is only because there is not an easy shortened version of the word English that those of you born south of the border are referred to as Brits.

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sp1814

Looking at this a slightly different way, couldn't you argue that England doesn't exist as a separate country, but as a constituent part of four territories?

Therefore the terms 'English' and 'British' are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps the problem lies with people assuming that they are interchangeable (which of course is not true). As an example, someone from New York has the option of saying "I'm a New Yorker" or "I'm American" and both would be true.

Regarding the shortening of British to 'Brits', as RATTER15 has correctly pointed out - it to do with context. The shortened term for Pakistani has never been a 'neutral' word. It still has the smell of 70s racism about it.

Also, I don't ever remember it being used specifically in relation to people from Pakistan. It was a derogatory term for anyone 'Asian-looking', which included Indians.

That shortened word for 'Pakistani' sits somewhere between 'w*p' denoting anyone from a Meditterean country and the N word (for anyone darker than say, Leona Lewis).

nungate

I'm in total agreement with Alzheimer - proud to be both a Scot and British. All of us in these islands should be proud to be who we are, be they Scots, , Welsh, English or Irish.

Mick-Talbot

'w*p'

what's that ?