| Archive for langcafe2.myfreeforum.org Come in and have your daily cup of languages! |
| Elaine |
Sister Cities (aka Twin Towns)Out of curiosity, what are your city's sister cities? What do you know about them?
LA's Sister Cities: Athens, Greece; Auckland, New Zealand; Beirut, Lebanon; Berlin, Germany; Bordeaux, France; Busan, South Korea; Eilat, Israel; Giza, Egypt; Guangzhou, China; Jakarta, Indonesia; Kaunas, Lithuania; Lusaka, Zambia; Makati, Phillippines; Mexico City, Mexico; Mumbai, India; Nagoya, Japan; St Petersburg, Russia; Salvador, Brazil; San Salvador, El Salvador; Split, Croatia; Taipei, Taiwan; Tehran, Iran; Vancouver, Canada |
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| fab |
Paris is "jumellée" ("twinified") with only one city, Rome since 1956.
But has signed a lot of "Pactes d'amitié" with a lot other: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris |
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| Deborah |
San Francisco's sister cities:
Abijan, The Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) Assisi, Italy Cork, Ireland Haifa, Israel Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam Manila, Philippines Osaka, Japan* Paris, France Seoul, Korea Shanghai, China Sydney, Australia Taipei, China Thessaloniki, Greece Zürich, Switzerland * oldest sister city of SF - 50th anniversary in 2007 |
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| Elaine |
Taipei is twinned with LA and SF?? I'm sorry, but they need to choose one or the other, not both. 
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| Deborah |
Aw, come on...can't we all just live together in peace and harmony? 
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Birmingham is twinned with the following cities:
Frankfurt, Germany Leipzig, Germany Lyon, France Milan, Italy Chicago, United States Johannesburg, South Africa |
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| Lazar |
Boston is twinned with:
Kyoto, Japan Strasbourg, France Barcelona, Spain Hangzhou, China Padua, Italy Melbourne, Australia Taipei, Taiwan Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana |
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| Loic |
As Singapore is also a country, I suppose we do not have this concept of a twin city. I just realised that to my consternation. | ||||
| greg in noord-frankrijk |
Marseille
Abidjan, Anvers (Antwerpen), Changhaï, Copenhague (København), Dakar, Gênes (Genova — Zena), Haïfa, Hambourg, Kobé, Le Pirée (Πειραιάς) & Odessa. Toulouse Atlanta, Bologne, Campia Turzii, Chongqing, Elche, Hanoï, Kiev, Mostar, N'Djaména, Saragosse & Tel Aviv. Montpellier Barcelone, Chengdu, Fès, Heidelberg, Louisville & Tibériade. |
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| Uriel |
I had never heard of the concept of "twinning" cities until I was driving through England and saw it on various signs. It was a bizarre concept to me. But apparently it does happen in the US -- my mom's city of Athens, Georgia, is of course twinned with its Greek namesake, and Albuquerque, which is named for the Spanish Duke of Alburquerque, occasionally trades jibes with its Spanish counterpart over their divergence in spelling. But as far as I know, Las Cruces has no twin, and when I think of the concept, I mostly think of the border cities that have mirror images on both the American and Mexican sides:
[img]http://www.epausmexicoborder/map/usmxlowres.jpg.gov/[/img] |
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| Elaine |
Another one for Taipei. She certainly gets around. (But in my circle that's called "ambitious"!) 
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| Deborah |
Somehow Atlanta and Louisville seem much less interesting to me than the cities they are among. Does anyone else feel that way about the cities from your own region? |
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| Fredrik |
Bergen's friendship cities:
Åbo/Turku, Finnland Århus, Denmark Göteborg (Gothenburg), Sweden Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK Lübeck, Germany Rostock, Germany Seattle, USA The three Nordic ones were probably chosen because they, like Bergen, are the traditional second cities of their countries. Newcastle shares a ferry link with Bergen, while Bergen's Hanseatic past made the Hanseatic towns of Rostock and Lübeck obvious choices. And Seattle shares a very rainy climate with Bergen. Uriel wrote:
I agree with you. I think the Norwegian term "vennskapsby" = friendship town, or the German "Partnerstadt" = partner town, are better terms. Uriel also wrote:
I don't know what you saw, but I found the way German and French villages and towns list their twin towns/villages in larger letters than their own names on the signs at the village/town entrance truly bizzare and misleading. BTW French and German villages also have inter-French and inter-German twin villages! E.g. a village in the former West Germany has a twin village in the former East Germany, so that the two Germanies can get to know each other on a local level too. I don't know what makes it necessary in France, but it seems to support the Langcafé thesis about France being in two different culture zones! |
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| fab |
Nice is "twinified" with :
- Cuneo, Italy - Edimbourg, Scotland - Gdansk, Poland - Hangzou, China - Laval, Canada - Cezed, Hungary - St Pertersbourg, Russia - Thessalonique, Greece - Nouvelle-Orleans, USA
there are different climatical and regions of different "ambiance". It is hard to speak about "two culture zones". Not more than between northern and southern Norway. |
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| Fredrik |
Well; I was merely stating the arguments of others.
But you are spot on about there being another ambience in Northern Norway! |
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| Didier69 |
Digne twin towns are:
Bad Mergentheim Germany Douma Lebanon Kamaishi Japan Borgomanero Italy |
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| Elaine |
Interesting. I can't say that I've ever heard of them. Btw, is there a difference between Digne and Digne-les-bains? There seems to be a lot of French towns with 'les-bains' tacked on to its name, which I find peculiar. I thought that maybe this naming convention was to differentiate between other towns with the same name (e.g. Aix-les-bains vs. Aix-en-Provence) Since my initial post in this thread, LA has added two more Sister Cities: Ischia, Italy and Yerevan, Armenia. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
St Andrews is twinned with Loches in France. | ||||
| fab |
Loches? That's interesting, I've been there one month ago - it is a VERY little town near Tours.
there is a beautiful castle there 
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| Uriel |
Yeah, ya'll do castles pretty well.
"Of the baths", right? Are there a lot of hot springs involved? I assume it's a lot like our habit of naming nearby offshoot towns something similar to the original city -- West This and East That. I was always thrown off by the existence of both Taos and nearby Ranchos de Taos here, for instance. (I always thought California's two little stubborn towns of Eureka and Yreka were a hoot, but that's a different story, I guess.) How does southern Norway differ from northern Norway, Fredrik? |
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