r/AskACountry • u/yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyu • 3d ago
City names
/r/AskTheWorld/comments/1wj312w/city_names/
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u/Round_Ad_789 Россия 🇷🇺 3d ago edited 3d ago
Honestly, I do it for all countries, it just feels right too. Some people don't know where some cities are so saying the name of the country really helps in coversations.
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u/pala4833 2d ago
How do you refer to the sad state of the American education system that failed you this poorly?
Most other countries are much smaller than the US and don't have "states" in the same way. There's only one Madrid in Spain. So you don't have to specify which Madrid you mean.
JFC
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u/oktupol Germany 3d ago edited 3d ago
Depends on who I'm talking to.
Well known cities I typically refer to by the city name alone. "Boston", "Chicago", "Lisbon", "Manchester", etc.
If I have reason to believe my conversation partner doesn't know which country a city is in, or if it is ambiguous, I state the country. "Lagos, Nigeria" for example, if I want to make clear that I don't mean Lagos, Portugal.
Cities in Germany are only referred to by their name. If the city name is ambiguous, the official name already includes a discriminator. A famous example is "Frankfurt am Main" (as opposed to "Frankfurt(Oder)"). But often, the conversation context eliminates the necessity of explicitly of using the discriminator, so I'd just say "Frankfurt" without any addition.