this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2025
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Not saying you're wrong, but I'm curious as to some examples of this. I've heard various languages translating words for a country's subdivisions as things like state, province, prefecture, etc, but I haven't run across a country within a country before (unless you're talking about enclaves like the Vatican).
Germany and Austria are divided into Länder (singular: Land), which literally just means country. (Germany has 16 of them, Austria 9.) This is usually translated as states or provinces in English, but the word in German isn't Staaten or Provinzen, which is what we call the subdivisions of Australia, Canada, and the US.
The Kingdom of the Netherlands is also divided into 4 countries.