# I am from <Madrid,> Spain.



## Olivia Ehlers

Hello everybody
I have a question, maybe it seems silly, but I hope you can help me out as it has been bothering me for quite a long time.
*Where are you from?*
Can I say '*I am from Madrid, Spain.*' ?
Or do I have to say '*I am from Spain.*' ? 
Thank you in advance.


----------



## Rover_KE

It depends who's asking.

Please tell us who is asking the question, and in what circumstances.


----------



## Olivia Ehlers

Suppose that two people meet for the first time and chat with each other.


----------



## Rover_KE

We use contractions all the time in conversation, so say '*I'm* from Madrid'.

You can assume that most people know that Madrid's the capital of Spain, so you only need to add that if they reply 'Where's that?'

Otherwise, say 'I'm from Malaga in Spain'.


----------



## london calling

I agree with Rover. I usually reply "I'm from London". Not many people think I mean (for example) London, Ontario, given my accent.


----------



## kentix

When you tell them your name is London Calling that's probably a clue, too.

The OP sounds fine to me because I come from a land where we're trained from birth to give two-part answers, to avoid ambiguity. We don't always say both parts, but it's very natural to do so. So Madrid, Spain sounds fine to me.


----------



## london calling

Yes, I've noticed that. Paris, France, for example, which no European would ever say. There's no chance anybody will think you mean Paris, Texas, I suppose.


----------



## Cenzontle

If the conversation occurs outside of Spain—even in a community that is somewhat international-minded—
I think the most natural response would be "I'm from Spain."
Then they may or may not ask "What part?"  And _then_ you can say "Madrid."
There's nothing wrong with "I'm from Madrid, Spain", but it's more information than most people expect, in my opinion.


----------



## kentix

If I say to someone I'm talking to that I'm going to Athens next week, 99% of the time that will mean I'm going to the Athens that is 60 miles down the road from me in the state I live in. Of that other 1%, 95% of the time I'll likely be referring to (one of) the Athens in the state(s) next door, which I will then have to specify. 

"I'm going to Athens, Kentucky next week to visit an old friend of mine."

So if I want to bring Greece into the conversation, I really need to mention it. "I'm going to Athens, Greece next week for a conference." After a lifetime of that, you don't think much of it.

Of course, if you talk about going to Greece first and then later mention Athens, it can stand on its own.

"I'm going on a scuba diving trip to the Greek islands next week. At the end, we'll spend two days in Athens."


----------



## london calling

Yes, whereas if I say I'm going to Athens everyone on this side of the pond will think I mean Greece. That's the difference.


----------



## Hermione Golightly

Surely we place the bigger item first?
"I'm from Spain, Madrid."


----------



## reno33

Hermione Golightly said:


> *Surely we place the bigger item first?
> "I'm from Spain, Madrid."*


Really?  Not in my "dialect".

Would you really say:  I'm from England, London or     "I'm from California, Los Angeles....or for that matter.....I live in England Manchester.......


----------



## Language Hound

@reno33 :  I agree with you, but maybe it's different for people who come from the land of *Bond, James Bond*_!_


----------



## reno33

Language Hound said:


> @reno33 :  *I agree with you, but maybe it's different for people who come from the land of Bond, James Bond*_*!*_



Perhaps, but I've worked alongside Brits for decades and I never came across that they were from "England, London" or some  such.


----------



## Language Hound

If you think of the comma in "I'm from Spain, Madrid" as a pause (as opposed to "Madrid, Spain" where there's barely a pause),
it seems like a plausible response to me:  The person decides to be more specific about where in Spain s/he's from.
It might be more obvious if written:  _I'm from Spain...Madrid._


----------



## lingobingo

reno33 said:


> I've worked alongside Brits for decades and I never came across that they were from "England, London" or some  such.


I find that word order most unlikely too — although I can imagine someone using it if they were adding London as an afterthought. And certainly we Brits would never feel the need to say it the American way (London, England), as lc explains in #5.


----------



## Loob

i can see where Hermione's coming from.

I'm much more likely to say _I'm from England [pause ...] Gloucester, _than I am to say_ I'm from_ _Gloucester, England._

My answer to Olivia's original question is "You should give as much information as you think the person you're conversing with needs".

If you're talking to an American, then I think it would probably be a good idea to say that you're from "Madrid, Spain".  If you're talking to a Brit, then "I'm from Madrid" would be sufficient.


----------



## Szkot

If I thought it was necessary to specify the country, I would use 'in' before the country.


----------



## JulianStuart

In general in Europe there isn't much duplication of major place names (Athens, Paris, London etc) while it is very common in the US.  Hence the difference in reference format.  

BE speakers would certainly have to expand if they were from say, Newton. There are (at least) 21 of these so you might have to say "I'm from Newton, Shropshire" - or some such. A girl I once dated came from Newton near Wisbech but the only one listed in the wiki list is _another_ one in Cambridgeshire (Newton  Near Cambridge) , so it was always "Newton near Wisbech" (my research now tells me it's also "Newton in the Isle")!!


----------



## kentix

What if you came to some kind of international camp and everyone was sitting around the campfire and the leader said he wanted everyone around the circle to take turns and say what city they came from? Maybe there's a contest for the farthest traveler. 

I would feel strange just saying Chicago (not my city, just an example). I would also feel strange saying Chicago, United States. I would probably say: Chicago, Illinois - in the United States.


----------



## Loob

kentix said:


> What if you came to some kind of international camp and everyone was sitting around the campfire and the leader said he wanted everyone around the circle to take turns and say what city they came from?


If we're really talking "international", then I'd probably say _I'm from England - a city called Gloucester._

But that's because Gloucester isn't as well known as Madrid.

If I lived in Madrid, I'd probably say "I'm from Madrid, in Spain". (I see I'm agreeing with Szkot.)


----------



## natkretep

You really need to gauge how good the hearer's geography is! And whether there are alternative cities in the vicinity (as in Kentix's example). I think there is a Madrid in New Mexico and a New Madrid in Missouri. And although think the American Madrids are pronounced differently (stressed on the first syllable, as opposed to /məˈdrɪd/ for the Spanish one), it probably makes sense to mention Spain to Americans.

Sometimes I don't bother to include the country because it might be obvious from other cues. I might say, 'I'm going to Perth' without mentioning the country even though the people in my circle are familiar with the one in Australia and in Scotland. It's often obvious which one I meant from what I'm talking about.


----------



## You little ripper!

I don’t have to say ‘Australia’ when I say  that I’m from Perth. The fact that I don’t have a Scottish accent usually makes it obvious.


----------



## reno33

You little ripper! said:


> *I don’t have to say ‘Australia’ when I say  that I’m from Perth. The fact that I don’t have a Scottish accent usually makes it obvious.  *



If you were in America, you'd definitely have to say " Perth, Australia" because if you simply say "Perth" almost all Americans would immediately ask..."Where's that"??  And....if you have  a heavy Australian accent, you'd probably have to further explain that you mean "Australia"......not "Austria"......and in some cases, you'd have to explain the difference between those two.  (I ain't kidding)


----------



## You little ripper!

reno33 said:


> If you were in America, you'd definitely have to say " Perth, Australia" because if you simply say "Perth" almost all Americans would immediately ask..."Where's that"??  And....if you have  a heavy Australian accent, you'd probably have to further explain that you mean "Australia"......not "Austria"......and in some cases, you'd have to explain the difference between those two.  (I ain't kidding)


I thought that sounding like Paul Hogan and not Billy Connolly would have been enough!  I’ll make an exception for Americans in future. 

I don’t really sound like Paul Hogan.


----------



## natkretep

Erm, Billy Connolly's accent is Glaswegian, and no Scot would think that someone with that accent hails from Perth!

But, ripper, if you're speaking to an American in Singapore, I think you'll be all right omitting 'Australia'. Americans abroad will have had their geography stretched.


----------



## You little ripper!

natkretep said:


> Erm, Billy Connolly's accent is Glaswegian, and no Scot would think that someone with that accent hails from Perth!


I’m not sure I understood, nat, but I did say that I didn’t sound like Billy Connolly, from Perth in Scotland or any other part of that country.


----------



## boozer

Loob said:


> If we're really talking "international", then I'd probably say _I'm from England - a city called Gloucester._


And then cruelly watch them strain themselves to the limit trying to spell it, just saying 'not like that' from time to time, complacent smile on your face? 

While there is absolutely nothing wrong grammatically with 'I am from Madrid, Spain', I would be just a little irked to hear it (if it was obvious I was talking to a Spaniard). Sounds just a tiny bit patronising, despite the speaker's best intentions. They are not allowed to assume I have no clue where Madrid is.  Now, talking of some other Madrid that is not the capital of Spain is a completely different matter.

In fact, I would be completely baffled at first, hearing someone with a Southern accent saying they were from Paris, without adding 'Texas' - I always forget all European cities can be found in the US as well


----------



## Loob

boozer said:


> And then cruelly watch them strain themselves to the limit trying to spell it, just saying 'not like that' from time to time, complacent smile on your face?


----------



## natkretep

You little ripper! said:


> I’m not sure I understood, nat, but I did say that I didn’t sound like Billy Connolly, from Perth in Scotland or any other part of that country.


Never mind. I thought that the implication of what you said was that if you sounded like Billy Connolly, your hearer would understand that you came from Perthshire. And I just wanted to say, not necessarily so!


----------



## You little ripper!

natkretep said:


> Never mind. I thought that the implication of what you said was that if you sounded like Billy Connolly, your hearer would understand that you came from Perthshire. And I just wanted to say, not necessarily so!


If I heard someone with a Scottish accent, I wouldn’t know where in Scotland they were from. They all sound Scottish to me, with some accents stronger than others.


----------



## sound shift

I knew a Spanish bloke who claimed that his 'I'm from Spain' was interpreted in the USA as 'I'm Hispanic, from the Americas', so he started saying 'I'm from Spain, Europe.'


----------



## Olivia Ehlers

Thank you so much, guys!
The answers seem a little complicated than I thought.
I totally got it.


----------



## kentix

Headline on my news page:

Fatal crash kills Athens teen, police investigate​He didn't speak Greek. He had probably never been to Greece.


----------



## dojibear

kentix said:


> Headline on my news page:


Where did you see this headline? Where was the news page? Was it local to an area that has a town named "Athens" in it? There's one in Georgia, one in Texas, one in Tennesee... If so, it is natural for a headline to refer to the local town. It's not like Greece has a copyright in the name "Athens".

I grew up in the town of Verona, New Jersey. Of course the "Verona" in Italy is far more famous -- it was the location of Shakespeare's most famous play "Romeo and Juliet". But nobody ever seemed confused. The football team from Madison didn't head for Italy. (I wish they had -- we lost badly!)


----------



## kentix

That's my point...augmenting the earlier posts. When you see stuff like that your whole life and it's a local reference without further explanation 99% of the time, then the unusual case _is_ Greece. Or Italy. If it wasn't, you'd have a lot more football teams mysteriously winding up in Italy.


----------



## london calling

Yes. If I had read that headline I would have assumed it was referring to the Greek capital.


----------



## dojibear

I think where the headline is located is more important than where the reader is located.

Then again, I live in the US, so I am accustomed to many place names that are copies of place names in England or other parts of Europe. It isn't for nothing that the northeastern US is called "New England".


----------



## ain'ttranslationfun?

Yep. In upstate New York, if you said "I'm going to Greece tomorrow.", people would think you meant the town. There's an Albany, an Ithaca, a Troy, an Attica ((in)famous for its prison), etc. Once on a tour in Boston (MA, not the original in Old Blighty), the tour guide asked where everyone was from and a couple replied "Lima." "In Peru?" the guide asked. "No, Lima, (state- maybe Iowa??)." they replied (obviouly an old joke for them). Venice, FL & CA, Athens, GA, Cleveland OH, Cairo MO, Manchester, NH: new world, old names recycled... I'm lucky, I just have to say "I'm from New York City." The Spaniard might say "I'm from Spain, Madrid actually.", à la Szkot in #18 & Loob in #31, or something like that. I think most Americans would think first of the one in Spain, not the one in NM that nakretep mentions in #30, unless they lived near that town.


----------



## Myridon

Most of the "Lima"s in the US are pronounce LYE-muh like the bean rather than LEE-muh like the city in Peru.  We have a Bogata in Texas but it buh-GAH-tuh, not bo-guh-TAH. Cairo, Illinois is KAY-ro like the syrup not KY-ro like Egypt.  My great-aunt was born in Italy (IT-lee), Texas.
Cleveland, Ohio is named for a man named Moses Cleaveland (with an 'a') not the place in England. Cleveland, Alabama is named after Grover Cleveland. I didn't check the other 20 or so.


----------



## dojibear

And it's "Noo Yawk City" to the locals. Probably not pronounced like BE pronounces that place in England.


----------



## kentix

There was a TV series where two groups of people agreed to meet at the airport in Portland and one group was looking around the Portland, Oregon airport and the other around the Portland, Maine airport. D'oh! Of course, that's only likely to happen in a TV comedy series, but that's the principle we have to deal with. We don't even have to leave the country to find two major cities named Portland. Airport codes: PDX - Oregon, PWM - Maine. Portland anywhere else is a distant third.


----------



## dojibear

Airplane tickets, and the stickers they put on suitcases, all have the destination airport code in big bold letters.

That is so your suitcase doesn't go to PDX while you travel to PWM.


----------



## Cork Irish

reno33 said:


> Perhaps, but I've worked alongside Brits for decades and I never came across that they were from "England, London" or some  such.


Yes. I've never heard of this either. In fact, I would say it was a grammatical mistake. When I learnt Chinese, I found that in Chinese addresses were indeed ordered from the largest element to the smallest (China, Beijing, Jiefang Beilu), but it is the other way round in English. London, England.


----------



## london calling

Cork Irish said:


> Yes. I've never heard of this either. In fact, I would say it was a grammatical mistake. When I learnt Chinese, I found that in Chinese addresses were indeed ordered from the largest element to the smallest (China, Beijing, Jiefang Beilu), but it is the other way round in English. London, England.


Yes. If I were to say I'm from England, London, the addition of 'London' would be an afterthought. Not that I ever say I'm from London, England.


----------



## ain'ttranslationfun?

sound shift said:


> I knew a Spanish bloke who claimed that his 'I'm from Spain' was interpreted in the USA as 'I'm Hispanic, from the Americas', so he started saying 'I'm from Spain, Europe.'



I wonder how anyone who said "I'm from Spain." could be thought to be from anywhere else (i. e. Latin America/the Caribbean). In many places in the US, though, cities with large Latinx* populations in particular, people say someone is 'Spanish' to mean this (someone from Puerto Rico/the Dominican Republic, a Mexican-American). 
*"Latinx" seems to be the politically correct term _du jour_ for them.


----------



## Cork Irish

london calling said:


> Yes. If I were to say I'm from England, London, the addition of 'London' would be an afterthought. Not that I ever say I'm from London, England.


Yes. I'm from England -- London, actually.


----------



## ain'ttranslationfun?

ain'ttranslationfun? said:


> The Spaniard might say "I'm from Spain, Madrid actually.", à la Szkot in #18 & Loob in #31, or something like that.





Cork Irish said:


> Yes. I'm from England -- London, actually.



Glad you agree with me, Cork Irish!  


Myridon said:


> Most of the "Lima"s in the US are pronounce LYE-muh like the bean rather than LEE-muh like the city in Peru.



Funnily enough, I've heard it pronounced "leema beans" (by a Brit, If I Remember Correctly; perhaps an exception).


Myridon said:


> Cleveland, Ohio is named for a man named Moses Cleaveland (with an 'a') not the place in England. Cleveland, Alabama is named after Grover Cleveland. I didn't check the other 20 or so.



20 or so? So there are more Clevelands than Bostons (a dozen or so) in the US. 


london calling said:


> Latinx? That sounds awful. 🙁



It's pronounced "la TEEN ex" or "la TEE nex".


----------

