Great Britain is the larger of these two islands, on which lie the three main divisions of the United Kingdom: England, Scotland and Wales. England is the largest, most populous and generally speaking the richest section. So people tend to use ‘e799bee5baa6e58685e5aeb931333335333737England’ and ‘English’ when they mean ‘Britain’ and ‘British’. But it is not acceptable to the Scots and the Welsh, because they have a culture and a language of their own and they do not regard themselves as English. Ireland is the smaller of these two islands. It is divided into two political units: Northern Ireland, which is the fourth division of the United Kingdom; and the Republic of Ireland (Eire), which is an independent country on the southern part of Ireland since 1949 and its capital is Dublin.