Sebastian Hagedorn wrote:
>
> > 15 km SE of Montréal, Québec
> > I am more interested in the structure that the actual character or
> > language encoding here.
>
> Actually I think that in Germany you might not even specify the state, so
> that you would have only one level. You only specify the state for
> little-known places. You would *never* say anything like "Köln, NRW".
Montréal is a nice small town in France, near Toulouse, in the department
of Gers IIRC. We happen to meet them at rugby when I was a young boy ;-).
And we never say to them that they were living in "Montréal, Gers". Only
"Montréal". Because there cannot be any place for doubt...
BTW by Toulouse I mean the French city, not Tolosa in Spain. Etc.
This reminds me of a good story with Spanish friends; when my girlfriend
explained to them that she was living in Paris, they were asking "París
de la França?" And my girlfriend was to laugh loudly, because she cannot
imagine Paris anywhere outside France. I am sure that every people in the
U.S.A., on the other hand, certainly can imagine other places...
Bottom line: it depens of the situation. I agree with Sebastian that
mentionning the state is rarer in Europe that it appears to be in Northern
America. But I disagree about being systematic; context is more important.
Antoine
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