One of my websites is a little eCommerce shop where I sell products and then post them off. This means I have parcels to send by registered delivery on an almost daily basis to (usually) the UK and Ireland.
90% of these orders are to England so I didn’t mind too much when the woman at the counter at the local post office would add “ANGLIA” to the end of the address (apparently “United Kingdom” isn’t enough). I started to do the same to save time at the post office, putting “SZKOCJA” or “WALIA” where appropriate. One day I had a parcel for Northern Ireland and so had written “United Kingdom, PÓŁNOCNA IRLANDIA”) on the address. I was quite suprised when she told me I had to put “Anglia” on it. What followed was an extremely strange 5 minutes of argument because I refused to do so, telling her that Northern Ireland is not in England. She insisted that only “Anglia” was a recognised country and it had to be “Anglia”. I asked her if she thought that Scotland or Wales were in Anglia too, at which point some of the increasingly frustrated people queuing up behind me started to join in the argument too.
The situation was resolved by her calling her manager, who reluctantly agreed that we could leave the envelope as it was, but they weren’t convinced that it would get to it’s destination OK. I said I would take the chance.
When I got back home I was so annoyed I wrote a sarcastic email to the Polish postal service (Poczta Polska) asking them if they knew the difference between England, the UK and Great Britain or if they only had problems with European geography in my local branch.
I was suprised to get a letter out of the blue 2 months later stating that they had held an investigation, given the employees some training, and that according to their code of practice the country must be either Northern Ireland (PÓŁNOCNA IRLANDIA) or Great Britain (WIELKA BRYTANIA). As a nice little twist that made me smile, the letter also said that the woman serving me had tried to tell me that it must be “Wielka Brytania” but that I was rude to her. Err, no love. So she seems to have not only a problem with geography but memory problems too….
Tags: poczta polska, polish sevice
Internally , the polish postal system seems decent, but there has been alot of stuff incoming and outgoing that has gone to the “fairies” for me and I remain a little cynical. Plus they refuse to understand we DO NOT have postal codes in Ireland.:)
this might sound bad, but most polish people don’t care, and would use Britain, England or British Isles interchangeably…
in such case Ireland, Scotland, or Guernsey can well be England:)
That’s still better than not knowing whether Poland is in Europe or Asia, which I happened to witness in a Jersey post office:)
That is indeed shocking – which Jersey – channel islands G.B. or the one in the US?
Surely the problem is that most Englisj people also confuse England, Great Britian and the UK.
Also, if you look at your passport, you will see thet Great Britian and Northern Ireland are differnt.
Strictly, Northern Ireland is not in Great Britain, it is in the UK. (See Act of Union 1800, various Government of Ireland Acts, 1921)
However, British is the shorthand adjective meaning ¨from the UK.¨ Therefore, Northern Irelamd is British, but not part of Great Britain.
I think I may have lost you now, so spare a though for the poor Polish post office.
Hi Richard, yes that’s right – you’ll see in my post I refer to NI as part of the UK, not GB.
I totally agree though that it’s confusing that “British” often refers to the UK and not GB.
And you’re totally right that most of us don’t know the difference either.
I was sympathetic with the woman to start with, but not when she decided to argue with me that NI (and Scotland and Wales) were part of “England”.
For most polish people England, UK, Great Britain is the same. They don’t see difference… but if most English people confuse.. that’s not bad ;)
btw. Polish post is the worst post in the world
Actually it doesn’t matter if it’s NI or Wales on the envelope. This information is only for the local polish sorting centre to hand it over to the right postal service, royal mail in this case. and they just use the code to deliver it where you want it. so even putting in Wales would result in a delivery in Northern Ireland. And thats the reason why she probably insestet you to write England – she knew it’s the safest way to get the envelope to royal mail instead of an post or some sheeps or goats in Wales or Scottland:))
Another thing: always use the local language to write the country of destination. in Poland there won’t be a big problem with european countries, but if you send something to Ni from hollidays in India, i’d go for sure and ask someone to put उत्तरी आयरलैंड on the envelope ;)
I agree that in terms of delivery it shouldn’t matter, but it does matter in that somebody might be quite offended to receive a letter addressed to “England” if they live in Wales, Scotland or N.I.
I totally disagree that this is why she insisted on “England”. I am sure the sole reason is simply because she doesn’t know the difference between her arse and her elbow. If she knew the Polish postal rules she should know it is either Great Britain, Ireland, or N.I. and should not need to start arguing with a customer about it.
Yes your last point is especially valid with the ‘funny alphabets’ such as arabic, russian etc.. they recommend both languages.
As difficult as it is to imagine the Polish Anglia, Wielka Brytania and Zjednoczone Królestwo don’t mean exactly the same as England, Great Britain and UK. Words are just words. People ascribe different meanings to them.
The country that you call UK is officially called Wielka Brytania in Polish. Anglia is interchangeable with Wielka Brytania in many Polish official writings. I.e. the Battle of Britain is called Bitwa o Anglię in every Polish history book, even though we know that England is not Scotland or Whales.
It doesn’t mean that we don’t know geography, only that we didn’t have any reasons for updating the terms for political correctness.
We’re not singular in that. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is called Rzeczpospolita (short for Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodów) in every Polish book, but the English term is brand new, the late 20th century. In every English writings from Shakespeare to the 20th century the country is called Poland. Now that Brits became politically correct they do the same favour to others, but it wasn’t an issue for centuries.
Look up in Wikipedia the name of the Battle of Britain in other languages. You’ll see that at least half of them refer to England only.
So it’s just that. Words that sound similar don’t mean the same things. It will probably change in a natural way as we’ll be more and more exposed to the British culture, but in Polish she wasn’t incorrect. Some twenty years ago the term Wielka Brytania was hardly ever used. So we made one step forward, but I still say Wielka Brytania or Anglia in Polish where I’d say UK or Great Britain in English. I do know the difference, just the terms haven’t yet become natural in our language.
Great comment Sylwia – I think you have hit the nail on the head there. I have noticed a number of times (in film subtitles for example) that Britain is often translated as Anglia.
I guess you are right that in Polish as a language she is correct, but I still maintain that as a post office employee she was wrong given that their own rules stipulate it must be either Pólnoc Irlandii or Wielka Brytania and she should have known that.