Inspired by a recent post and a long standing amusement at the various ways some Americans display their geography skillz with regard to my home nation and their country of origin in some cases.
defintions:
Geography
1 - The British Isles geographically describes the archipelago lying off Western Europe and includes 'everything'
2 - Britain is a geographic term describing the main largest landmass of the British Isles comprised of 3 countries England, Wales and Scotland
3 - Ireland is the 2nd largest island, followed by myriad other smaller islands all around the coastline.
Political Entities
The British Isles are subdivided politically into 7 distinct entities - The United Kingdom, Ireland (differently defined to the geographic Ireland), 4 x Channnel Islands and The Isle of Man
1 - The United Kingdom (UK) is the largest political entity and is further sub-divided into 4 countries England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The latter 3 have varying levels of autonomy from the United Kingdom Paliament based in London.
2 - Ireland is a completely separate country from the UK with its own government, laws and currency - well.... the Euro that is...Ireland is comprised of 32 counties grouped into 4 provinces. 6 of the counties in the province of Ulster are what is known as Northern Ireland, its own country and part of the United Kingdom, part of the British Isles, yet not part of Britain - getting the hang of the definitions?
I'm glad to have cleared this up once and for all....:-)