Language X within scope of language Y

John Cowan jcowan at reutershealth.com
Thu Jan 27 18:57:48 CET 2005


David Clarke scripsit:

> Strange, my passport's cover includes the words : United Kingdom of 
> Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
> 
> That suggests UK includes GB and Northern Ireland.

The ISO 3166 code for the United Kingdom is GB, because words like "United"
and "Kingdom" are generally not used to form ISO 3166 codes (yes, "US" is an
exception).  "GB" does not refer to Great Britain alone.

Both .uk and .gb are being used as Internet domains, but .gb is restricted
to dra.hmg.gb for historical reasons.

Michael Everson scripsit:

> Which has little to do with the varieties of English spoken on either
> island (never mind the jurisdictions).... Apart from the spelling.
> 
> By the way, I find that Canadian spelling is closest to if not
> identical to Oxford spelling.

Oxford has "tyre", whereas Canadian spelling has "tire".  "Tire centre" is a
shibboleth of en-ca, as we discussed here back in 2003-05.

-- 
Long-short-short, long-short-short / Dactyls in dimeter,
Verse form with choriambs / (Masculine rhyme):  jcowan at reutershealth.com
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