On 2-2-2010 10:10, Invisible wrote:
>>> He's asking what city you're in.
>>
>> Because I know he lives in Milton Keynes, I doubt if that counts as a 
>> real city.
> 
> WTF?
> 
> It's a major urban center. Of *course* it counts as a city!
> 
> (It even has its own "cathedral" - although IMHO it's not really worthy 
> of the title.)

Perhaps city is used in a slightly different meaning in English than 
here. Actually I would be surprised if we meant the same thing. For me a 
city needs at least an identifiable center with an active cultural scene 
and a general feeling of being more part of the world than of the county 
it happens to be in.
Where I live has a name that suggest that it is a city , 'Zaanstad' 
where 'stad' means city (and 'Zaan' is the name of our river). Everybody 
understands that that is a joke or at best something we would wish to 
be, though perhaps there are a few people paid to try to suggest to the 
world at large that we are a real city. This is simply a collection of 
small towns and villages.

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