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Twin towns and sister cities | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Immersion, Schools & Certificates |  | |
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5776 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 1 of 12 07 March 2012 at 11:53am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm curious to know how many of us here are lucky enough to have this option, and how
many of us who have it actually use it. It's a concept I've known existed for donkey's years, but it's something that up until now, I'd sort of been aware of its existence but done absolutely nothing about it. For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, the concept of town twinning or sister cities means two towns in geographically or politically distinct areas come together to promote cultural and commercial ties. The town I am presently living in is linked with a town in Rhineland-Palatinate in western Germany - and what a great opportunity that is to get to know a] other German enthusiasts (to put it mildly) in my own town and b] get to know Germans who are equally as interested in English and England! I'm looking forward to the trips very much as most of my exposure to German has been almost entirely in the south of Germany and in Austria. They also hold general knowledge quizzes in German (during which I'm terribly competitive) as well as having German conversation evenings which are said to cater for all levels (albeit not half as regularly as I'd like). I've looked into it and there are bi-annual trips to the town in Germany and every other year we invite our counterparts in Germany to visit us here. I've not been a member of this very long (couple of weeks) but I'm getting a bit more German in through using it than I would have normally. My question to you all is how many of you make use of this kind of opportunity to use your target languages? I've not seen a thread mention this sort of thing before and I'm curious. Jack Edit - I've just looked up the town I live in on Wikipedia and have found it is also twinned with a town in France. So I'll be looking into that today too! Edited by LanguageSponge on 07 March 2012 at 11:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5857 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 12 07 March 2012 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my city where I live now I don't do anything with the different twin cities we have. But 30 years ago I was a member of a club called "Städtepartnerschaft Rheinbach-Deinze", where I regularly went to the meeetings and took part in the excursions. Rheinbach is a small town in Nordrhein-Westfalen (Germany) and Deinze is a small town in Flanders (Belgium). In the group I attended I was the only German member speaking Dutch, so sometimes I had to translate some messages from Dutch into German.
Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 07 March 2012 at 12:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5140 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 3 of 12 07 March 2012 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Chicago, where I currently live, has the following sister cities, with Warsaw being perhaps the most obvious:
Accra, Ghana (1989) Amman, Jordan (2004) Athens, Greece (1997) Belgrade, Serbia (2005) Birmingham, England (1993) Busan, Republic of Korea (2007) Casablanca, Morocco (1982) Delhi, India (2001) Durban, South Africa (1997) Galway, Ireland (1997) Gothenburg, Sweden (1987) Hamburg, Germany (1994) Kyiv, Ukraine (1991) Lahore, Pakistan (2007) Lucerne, Switzerland (1998) Mexico City, Mexico (1991) Milan, Italy (1973) Moscow, Russia (1997) Osaka, Japan (1973) Paris, France (1996) Petach Tikva, Israel (1994) Prague, Czech Republic (1990) Shanghai & Shenyang, China (1985) Toronto, Canada (1991) Vilnius, Lithuania (1993) Warsaw, Poland (1960) I grew up in Duluth, MN, which has the following four sister cities: Petrozavodsk, Russia Växjö, Sweden Isumi, Japan Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada I think most of Duluth's sister cities were established after I moved away in 1980. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| wv girl Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5249 days ago 174 posts - 330 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 12 07 March 2012 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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In 2001, I translated a letter of proposed sisterhood for the small community of South Charleston, WV, where I
taught, with another city in Belgium. It also had some complicated business plan for high school students to develop a product together and market it. Our "link" to this other community was 4-5 small houses, called the Belgian houses, where earlier immigrants had settled. I don't think the cities became sisters, but the mayor did attend French classes with the students for a while. Our capital, Charleston, has a sister city in Slovakia. Interesting! I don't know that any activities take place, though. I think it's more for show. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6607 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 5 of 12 07 March 2012 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Obviously, Moscow also has many sister cities... pity there's not much if anything to take advantage of.
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| espejismo Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5061 days ago 498 posts - 905 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani | Message 6 of 12 08 March 2012 at 12:22am | IP Logged | ||
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New York City has restructured its Sister Cities Program into Global Partners, Inc. There still supposed to be cultural exchange, but it seems like most of it is taking place among politicians on the city government level. Edited by espejismo on 08 March 2012 at 2:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5140 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 7 of 12 08 March 2012 at 6:16am | IP Logged | ||
Not to knock Bloomberg (well, OK, maybe a little), but I really dislike this general trend in taking something and giving it a business spin. To me, "Sister Cities" evokes a feeling a humanity and family, while "Global Partners" evokes an image of a bunch of cigar chompers out to make a buck. Solely my opinion, of course. R. == 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6592 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 8 of 12 08 March 2012 at 7:00am | IP Logged | ||
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My town has a bunch of "friend towns", as we call them over here (vänorter). This seems to have nothing to do with cultural exchanges of any kind.
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