American insists Scotland is not a country

[MilkyWay]

QuizMasterChris' Trivia Pub Quiz Blog & Infoporium

He's quite adamant about it. What do you think?

[ScotSites]

As I said elsewhere about this:

Personally I look upon Scotland as a country, which I reckon most Scots would too (just like most English would consider England to be a country, etc)! If you look at other definitions for "country" you get the following from wiki:

Country may refer to the territory of a state, or to a smaller, or former, political division of a geographical region.

Or looking at The Free Dictionary:

coun·try ... a. A nation or state. b. The territory of a nation or state; land.

So it looks like they both would class Scotland as a country or, in the case of the latter, a constituent country of the United Kingdom (but as that includes the word "country" its good enough for me even if it isn't for quizmasterchris!)

At the end of the day, Scotland is the country I was born in and live in; its also the country that brings together the members of this forum!

[ANDY-J3]

He seems to think that his "poli-sci degree" endows him with some special insight on the topic. I've got an Oxford dictionary which trumps his degree and it gives several definitions of the word country one of which is "a territory distinguished by its people, culture, geography etc." Another definition is "an area of land distinguished by its political autonomy". It's clear to me that Scotland therefore can rightly be defined as a country. His subjective criteria for defining what constitutes a country are irrelevant.

[Duthill]

American trips himself up , falls flat on face in hole , proceeds to dig himself further in .

[Napolean]

What a load of rubbish!

[tig]

hes obviously nowhere as intelligent as he thinks he is.

there could have been half a dozen answers to his question

[ScotSites]

Originally Posted by tig

there could have been half a dozen answers to his question

He knows there's at least one country (hence the question "what European countries lie west of Germany?")... what he was disputing is whether Scotland is a country or not (and he obviously thinks its the latter!)