English practice - travelling around Europe

[Premium]

Originally Posted by wayfarer

Hello to all,
in order to have some English writing practice, I'll shortly talk about the journeys I took in these last years. Corrections are welcome.

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Rome is very popular all over the world, and many people choose it as their holiday destination. Because of traffic, pollution and poor city planning, though, it is not a very pleasant city to live in. Every time I can, I move away from Rome and travel in Italy and Europe, not in other continents because I don't like long airplane flights. In 2008 I went to Zagreb, Croatia, to visit some friends; in 2010 I went to Paris to visit my sister, who lives and work there; in 2012 I went to London with a friend. London is an enormous city and often we had trouble in finding the correct routes through it: once we went four times back and forth on the same bus!!

I often travel around Italy, also. I'm an experienced chess player and often play tournaments outside Rome. Quite often, these tournaments are played in beautiful places: for example, last June I played in a beautiful city on the mountains of Alto Adige, a German-speaking region near the northern border.

Is Alto Adige Italian for South Tyrol?

[wayfarer]

Yes, Premium, I have been to Südtirol, near the Austrian border. It's a very pleasant region to stay in, I like both the landscapes and the town's architecture, with well-kept and vivid-colored buildings. It's one of the few italian regions that relies on tourism and nature conservation, rather than on useless industries. Luckily for me, they speak also Italian, because I don't understand nearly a word of German!!

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by wayfarer

Yes, Premium, I have been to Südtirol, near the Austrian border. It's a very pleasant region to stay in, I like both the landscapes and the town's architecture, with well-kept and vivid-colored** buildings. It's one of the few italian regions that relies on tourism and nature conservation, rather than on useless industries. Luckily for me, they speak also Italian, because I don't understand nearly a word of German!!

"the town's architecture" is the architecture of the town. Here, you refer to a region and not a specific town, so "the architecture of the towns". However, you are referring to villages, so you really mean "the Alpine style of the villages"

Italian always with I, not i.
I hardly understand a word of German.
**colored USA, coloured UK.

[wayfarer]

Thank you Perikles, you are right, I refer to a region, so the towns are more than one. A built-up area, let's say, of 10.000 people, can be referred to as a town or has to be considered a village?

[Perikles]

Originally Posted by wayfarer

Thank you Perikles, you are right, I refer to a region, so the towns are more than one. A built-up area, let's say, of 10.000 people, can be referred to as a town or has to be considered a village?

'Town' and 'village' overlap quite a lot, but I'd say a village could be up to 2000 after which you'd call it a town. Technically, I think a town is only a town if it has it's own local administration with a Town Hall and so on, but the term is often used without that structure. In England anyway. Others might disagree. Please don't ask me to define a 'city'.

In your post, 'architecture' would refer to specific grand structures, and I guessed you meant more like 'building style' of towns and/or villages.

[poli]

I don't know if this is true in Britain, but the word village in the United States conjures up old-fashioned and quaint communities. Towns are more generic. They may or may not be quaint and old-fashioned.

[wrholt]

Originally Posted by Perikles

'Town' and 'village' overlap quite a lot, but I'd say a village could be up to 2000 after which you'd call it a town. Technically, I think a town is only a town if it has it's own local administration with a Town Hall and so on, but the term is often used without that structure. In England anyway. Others might disagree. Please don't ask me to define a 'city'...

Originally Posted by poli

I don't know if this is true in Britain, but the word village in the United States conjures up old-fashioned and quaint communities. Towns are more generic. They may or may not be quaint and old-fashioned.

There are several words that we use to describe communities within the US: the words village, town and city are the three that are most widely used, but they are not the only ones. Each state has its own laws or customs that define different forms of local government and how they are named.

Outside of legal/political uses, I suspect that these 3 terms are used in broadly-similar manners in most English-speaking areas: a "village" is the smallest of the three, and it consists of only one concentration of residences and perhaps some businesses or public buildings, and it may or may not have some type of locally-elected government; a "town" is larger than a "village" or may consist of two or more concentrations of buildings and often has some type of locally-elected government; a "city" is larger than a town and usually has a locally-elected government and a cheif executive who supervises public employees.