The drawback with nationality is that there are plenty of people who hold a national passport but whose grasp of that country's native language is far from native. Also, "nationality" means something very different in AmE from the meaning in BrE.
Remember - if you don't use correct capitalisation, punctuation and spacing, anything you write will be incorrect.
There is no perfect solution, and one determined by coding geeks will probably be one of the less satisfactory ones. I have lived in many countries and update that, while leaving my home country unchanged. Others may feel differently. The only issue I see is that some users may see you as a non-native speaker. If you're OK with that, then go with whatever definition suits you best among the restricted options provided.Originally Posted by Piscean
What an interesting fact! I had no idea even though I have lived in both America and Britain.
Please explain the difference. Thank you.
Well, for example, my father has a British passport and an Irish passport. He doesn't speak a word of Irish Gaelic. One of my best friends is married to a Spaniard and will, at some point, qualify for a Spanish passport. She speaks it well enough to be understood but she's certainly not fluent and would not be in a position to comment on someone else's Spanish, or make corrections.
"Nationality" in BrE means "the country of which you hold a valid national passport". In AmE, it seems to mean your ancestry or even race. I used to work at an international airport where arriving passengers had to fill in a form before going through passport control. One of the sections was marked "Nationality". Most people filled it in with the correct information (British, Mexican, Israeli etc) but many of our North American arrivals entered "Caucasian/African-American/Israeli" despite the fact that they would present a passport from the United States of America with the card.
Remember - if you don't use correct capitalisation, punctuation and spacing, anything you write will be incorrect.
"Nationality" has the same meaning in North America and Britain. If some North Americans are unfamiliar with it, it's because they're unused to thinking about their own nationality. Living in such a vast country means that large numbers of Americans have never traveled abroad, so those who are confused about how to fill out the form may be doing it for the first time.
I am not a teacher.
I take your point but if the meaning is the same (and doesn't mean anything else), even first-time travellers should have no difficulty completing the "Nationality" section with the correct term.
Remember - if you don't use correct capitalisation, punctuation and spacing, anything you write will be incorrect.
I wasn't sure which word to use the first time I was asked for my race on a visa form.
I would have put down the Derby or the Grand National.
They're unfamiliar with the term and guess its meaning incorrectly.
I am not a teacher.
I was regularly informed by such travellers that the form would need to ask for "Citizenship" if we wanted them to complete it with either "American" or "USA".
Remember - if you don't use correct capitalisation, punctuation and spacing, anything you write will be incorrect.
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