# inner suburbs of Melbourne



## eni8ma

In Australia, a city is composed of a city centre and many suburbs, grouped as inner suburbs and outer suburbs.

пригород seems to mean a small satellite town

район = district
A district in Australia is a country town plus the surrounding area

What word in Russian has the same meaning as an Australian suburb?
How do I say "inner suburbs"?


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## gvozd

eni8ma said:


> пригород seems to mean a small satellite town



Not necessarily a small town, it denotes all the inhabited territories surrounding a city.


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## eni8ma

So, if you could liken a city to a fried egg:
The city centre and inner suburbs are the yolk.
The outer suburbs are the white.
Apparently прогород is the tomatoes and bacon that is beside the egg. (yes?)

I want a word for the yolk.  It seems that I may have been mislead about the meaning of район.  It seems to mean "area", so I guess I could call the inner suburbs the "inner area" or внутренний район.


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## djwebb1969

Is the word предместья only of historical reference?

To the OP: I think it will be impossible to insist on finding one-for-one translations of terms that relate to social realities of other countries. For a start, in English, the word "district" doesn't just refer to country towns and surrounding areas, even if it is so used in Australia (and I would take quite some convincing that the phrase "urban district" is unknown in Australian English). District just means district - even if some English-speaking countries choose to label some districts districts and some districts boroughs, and so on - and so it doesn't make any sense to claim that район can't mean district because in Australia you label "only" country towns in that fashion.


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## djwebb1969

This link: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...wAQ#v=onepage&q="внутренний пригород"&f=false

has внутренний город, внутренний пригород, внешний пригород. It is talking about divisions in ancient times - but shows such phrases can be used.


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## igusarov

djwebb1969 said:


> Is the word предместья only of historical reference?


Yes, this word is hardly ever used these days (at least in everyday conversations).

We have a word for the regions just inside the borders - that's "окраина".
We have words for residential area - that would be "жилой район" or "спальный район".
But I don't think we have a common phrase for a residential suburb area just inside the borders of the city... Typical words are:

"Центр" - the central part of the city, whether historical, business or residential.
"Окраина" - a part of the city near its border, but still inside the city.
"Пригород" - outlying areas of the city that may stretch as far as the next city/town. This word may include uninhabited areas as well.
"Район" is very context-dependent. It could mean a part of the city. It could mean a part of "область" (~= part of the the county).
"Спальный район" - a residential area, which is typically located near the border of the city.
"Предместье" - an outdated word for residential areas outside the city,  which are either adjacent to the city or in close proximity. Now this  word belongs to old books.


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## eni8ma

I'm looking for a term that means "inner suburbs" or "inner area", specifically, the city centre plus inner suburbs.

For now, I'm using внутренний район.


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## Evgeniy

igusarov said:


> "Предместье" - an outdated word for residential areas outside the city,  which are either adjacent to the city or in close proximity. Now this  word belongs to old books.


I think the difference between old words and modern words of the modern language is not whether they are used or not, but why they are used. Words that are not used do not belong to the language, they are not "old words". Now, in a newspaper this word would be probably a mauvais-ton, but in colloquial speech anything goes, so if that's exactly what one wants to mean, then this word is both handy and good. On the other hand, if one does not need such precision, then ближний пригород is also fine (for example, what do you call Khimki in Moscow?)


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## Evgeniy

eni8ma said:


> I'm looking for a term that means "inner suburbs"  or "inner area", specifically, the city centre plus inner  suburbs.


Городской центр и прочие районы города. Все районы внутренние, они другими не бывают, так что нет нужды добавлять слово «внутренние».


djwebb1969 said:


> as внутренний город, внутренний пригород, внешний пригород. It is talking about divisions in ancient times - but shows such phrases can be used.


"Внутренний город" is weird, at least I think it does not mean anything that one could find in a modern city. Внутренний пригород is understandable though may need an explanation. Внешний пригород is superfluous, any пригород is by default external in respect to the city (or town, which is the same in Russian).


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## Maroseika

Внутренний пригород sounds oxymoron, because пригород by definition means regions beyond a town.
I'd suggest *ближний и дальний пригороды*. It may very well work if Melbourne has no clear border (like a ring road or something like that).
Спальный район for inner suburb sounds good, if only this is really what is called спальный район in Russia.


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## Evgeniy

Maroseika said:


> Внутренний пригород sounds oxymoron, because пригород by definition means regions beyond a town.
> I'd suggest *ближний и дальний пригороды*. It may very well work if Melbourne has no clear border (like a ring road or something like that).
> Спальный район for inner suburb sounds good, if only this is really what is called спальный район in Russia.


Well, внутренний пригород is based on the same logic of having no clear border, and if the word пригород is at all to be used, then this logic has to be explained, which makes the seemingly contradictory usage a better one: such usage makes think something is not understood and search for alternative explanations. But Enigma has said that by inner suburbs she means anything beyond the city centre, so it is definitely not a пригород and not a спальный район. I think a proper name can be found only in a context, like in #9 (the context was the phrase, "the city centre plus inner suburbs"). Actually Enigma said that outer suburbs also belong to the city, so perhaps that drives out of this place the городские окраины?.. If so, then we need more context, there is no way to say that without the context or at least the purpose.


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## djwebb1969

Evgeniy said:


> But Enigma has said that by inner suburbs she means anything beyond the city centre, so it is definitely not a пригород and not a спальный район.



That is not the correct meaning of "suburbs" in English - city districts that are beyond the centre, but definitely part of the city, are not suburbs. It has to be definitely on or beyond the outskirts to be a suburb.


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## eni8ma

As I have said, there is the city centre, then the inner suburbs, then the outer suburbs, *all* of which are part of the city.
The inner suburbs are closer to the centre than the outer suburbs.

It seems that внутренний means "inside".  The dictionary said it also meant "inner".

What Russian word means "closer to the middle"?

In Australia, it is easy to say that "trams only run in the inner suburbs".  How do I say that in Russian?


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## Evgeniy

djwebb1969 said:


> That is not the correct meaning of "suburbs" in English - city districts that are beyond the centre, but definitely part of the city, are not suburbs. It has to be definitely on or beyond the outskirts to be a suburb.


Okay, but I'd like to find out what Enigma means. Here I have the Google Map of Melbourne.
Let me check if I understand her correctly now. She means anything that is bordered by M3 from the East, and by an unnamed highway from the West and the North; anything that is beyond that, but still administratively a part of Melbourne, she calls "outer suburbs", and I see it's not an area with many buildings or roads; and she calls places like Carlton and Fitzroy North the "city centre": on the map, that's a place where many roads "collide"; probably, the business life and the historical centre are there, that's its distinctive feature. So, she is asking for a name for the area that is neither inside the city centre nor outside the mentioned highways; if so, then more context is extremely helpful, and maybe she even needs to reformulate whatever she is writing so as to avoid this term (maybe not).


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## eni8ma

djwebb1969 said:


> That is not the correct meaning of "suburbs" in English - city districts that are beyond the centre, but definitely part of the city, are not suburbs. It has to be definitely on or beyond the outskirts to be a suburb.



Actually, in Australia, the entire city *is* divided into suburbs.  The city centre is also a suburb.  A suburb is always part of a city.  It makes no sense in any other context that I can think of.

If it is "beyond the outskirts" it isn't part of the city, and nor is it a suburb - it's an outlying town of its own, perhaps what the Russians mean by пригород.

Forget "suburbs".  I just want to say that trams do not run over the whole city, but only the inner areas.  How do I say that in Russian?


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## djwebb1969

Enigma,

I'm pointing out that you're trying to translate poor English into Russian. Even if Australia calls core urban areas of a city "suburbs", they are not suburbs [...]

The Oxford English Dictionary (the full version -- the most authoritative dictionary of English there is) defines suburbs as "the country lying immediately outside a town or city; more particularly, those residential parts belonging to a town or city that lie immediately outside and adjacent to its walls or boundaries".

You should try to translate **the concept** - not the word as such - particularly where the word is incorrectly used by uneducated officials in Australia.

The city centre is **not** a suburb [...] It destroys the meaning of words to use them in such a clumsy fashion.


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## Evgeniy

eni8ma said:


> Forget "suburbs".  I just want to say that trams do not run over the whole city, but only the inner areas.  How do I say that in Russian?


An "inner area" is not an understandable distinctive feature. I might say трамвайные пути проложены только в центре города и поблизости, but that may be not exactly what you need (or not what you need at all, that may also depend on what we understand by "city"). It is necessary to know what exactly you mean, what makes a city be called a city and what makes an area of a city be called "inner".


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## eni8ma

Evgeniy said:


> She means anything that is bordered by M3 from the East, and by an unnamed highway from the West and the North; anything that is beyond that, but still administratively a part of Melbourne, she calls "outer suburbs", and I see it's not an area with many buildings or roads; and she calls places like Carlton and Fitzroy North the "city centre": on the map, that's a place where many roads "collide"; probably, the business life and the historical centre are there, that's its distinctive feature. So, she is asking for a name for the area that is neither inside the city centre nor outside the mentioned highways.



Not quite.  Carlton and Fitzroy are inner suburbs.  The M3, or Eastlink, is too far out to be "inner".

I mean the city centre plus any suburbs closer to the middle, that's all.  BTW, there are plenty of houses in the outer areas.

Anyway, what's so difficult?

I just mean that trams don't cover the entire city.
They only service the areas close to the middle (plus, obviously, the city centre as well).


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## gvozd

eni8ma said:


> I just mean that trams don't cover the entire city.



Трамваи не ходят на окраинах города.


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## djwebb1969

I shouldn't offer a translation, as the native speakers will know best, but what is wrong with:

Трамваи только ходят в районах ближе к центру города?


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## Evgeniy

djwebb1969 said:


> I shouldn't offer a translation, as the native speakers will know best, but what is wrong with:
> 
> Трамваи только ходят в районах ближе к центру города?


Something like my variant. It is bad because it makes ponder where they run exactly: do they run in the centre, for example?  Gvozd's solution is the best.


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## eni8ma

Evgeniy said:


> It is necessary to know what exactly you mean, what makes a city be called a city and what makes an area of a city be called "inner".



The very first sentence in my first post states my definition of a city.

"inner" is the parts closer to the city centre.  That's all.


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## Evgeniy

Enigma said:
			
		

> The very first sentence in my first post states my definition of a city.
> 
> "inner" is the parts closer to the city centre.  That's all.


The problem was that definition was composed of terms we did not understand (a foreign language, you understand). Anyway, now you explained what you wanted, and gvozd gave you the solution, so I hope it's okay now.


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## eni8ma

Thanks.
I guess I'll ask my Russian teacher tomorrow night.  Since she now lives in Melbourne, and is a Russian native, she'll probably understand what I mean.


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## djwebb1969

But Evgeniy and Gvozd gave you good replies? I would accept what they said.


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## gvozd

eni8ma said:


> she'll probably understand what I mean.



We did understand what you mean, and I gave you an answer. You are still unsatisfied?


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## Evgeniy

eni8ma said:


> I guess I'll ask my Russian teacher tomorrow night.  Since she now lives in Melbourne, and is a Russian native, she'll probably understand what I mean.


What exactly is wrong with gvozd's solution? It's not exact (it may be interpreted as "the trams don't run on the outskirts, bu they run everywhere else"), but it is workable.
The issue is we do not have a term for what you described (a part of the city that does not include all newer and outer areas). At all. So, you need to describe it somehow, and the exact way simply depends. For example: трамвайных путей нет в новейших районах города; трамваи ходят только в центре города и в прилегающих к нему районах (if the adjacent areas are not too vast or their being vast or not vast does not matter), and so on.


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## eni8ma

Трамваи не ходят на окраинах города.
Not exactly what I was after.

трамваи ходят только в центре города и в прилегающих к нему районах.
This sounds ok 

I simply meant that it has been so difficult to explain in a way that people understand.  I can only use the language the way everyone in Australia does.  Since I don't know what terminology other countries use, it was difficult.

Thank you for your help.


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## Evgeniy

eni8ma said:


> I simply meant that it has been so difficult to explain in a way that people understand.  I can only use the language the way everyone in Australia does.  Since I don't know what terminology other countries use, it was difficult.


That's exactly why I referred to the map. It's an universal language.


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## gvozd

eni8ma said:


> трамваи ходят только в центре города и в прилегающих к нему районах.
> This sounds ok



This sounds OK for you because you're not a native speaker of Russian. I'm sure you'll provoke mild astonishment of your interlocutors when saying that. Sometimes it's more natural to say that the glass is half empty than half full. Besides, it's not clear at all whether or not "районы" include outskirts.


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## Evgeniy

gvozd said:


> This sounds OK for you because you're not a native speaker of Russian. I'm sure you'll provoke mild astonishment of your interlocutors when saying that.


That depends on the register of speech. I assume she is writing an essay or something like that. If she is not, "в центре города и поблизости" may be the way to go.


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## eni8ma

The reason this arose in the first place, was because I wrote an article about public transport in Melbourne, mentioning trains, and someone corrected it to use "метро".  метро is a subway.  So when I said we don't have a метро in Melbourne, they said, "Oh, so you just have trams", so then I tried to explain that, yes, we do have trains, but they travel above-ground (as opposed to underground).  This only led to more confusion, so I said, no trains are not trams; we have trams as well, but they only travel in the inner areas ... and thus here we all are.


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## Maroseika

eni8ma said:


> we have trams as well, but they only travel in the inner areas ... and thus here we all are.



Here is definition of "suburb" from the Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary (New Digital Edition 2008 © HarperCollins Publishers):

_"A suburb of a city or large town is a smaller area which is part of the city or large town but is outside its centre".
_
If this is what you have in Melbourne, i.e. districts of the city, inner suburb is more or less the same as Russian *спальные районы*. As for the outer suburbs, they corespond to the Russian *пригород*.


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## rusita preciosa

Maroseika said:


> *ближний и дальний пригороды*


I think this is the best option.


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## Evgeniy

eni8ma said:


> The reason this arose in the first place, was  because I wrote an article about public transport in Melbourne,  mentioning trains, and someone corrected it to use "метро".  метро is a  subway.  So when I said we don't have a метро in Melbourne, they said,  "Oh, so you just have trams", so then I tried to explain that, yes, we  do have trains, but they travel above-ground (as opposed to  underground).  This only led to more confusion, so I said, no trains are  not trams; we have trams as well, but they only travel in the inner  areas ... and thus here we all are.


That would help a lot if you explained all that in the very first post (as you may have guessed   , that is called a 'background' to the question which it is necessary  to tell). So, you are now planning to continue formal correspondence, or  you are thinking how to explain the idea in person, or you are asking  this just out of curiosity?


Maroseika said:


> Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary (New Digital Edition 2008 © HarperCollins Publishers)


Enigma lives in Australia, so Collins is not appropriate, and she said that what she meant by 'suburbs' were all the older parts of the city in proximity of the city centre, including the city centre itself. That makes sense, after all: trams is an older transport. Let us not begin these discussions all over again.


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## gvozd

rusita preciosa said:


> I think this is the best option.



Ближний и дальний пригороды are beyond a city, we are talking about the city itself.


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## Evgeniy

Here it is.
Трамваи ходят только близко к центру, а надземная железная дорога охватывает весь город. ( ? )
The first clause is not exact, but the second clause makes the meaning more clear. That is why context is important in natural languages.


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## DrDIT

eni8ma said:


> The reason this arose in the first place, was because I wrote an article about public transport in Melbourne, mentioning trains, and someone corrected it to use "метро".  метро is a subway.  So when I said we don't have a метро in Melbourne, they said, "Oh, so you just have trams", so then I tried to explain that, yes, we do have trains, but they travel above-ground (as opposed to underground).  This only led to more confusion, so I said, no trains are not trams; we have trams as well, but they only travel in the inner areas ... and thus here we all are.



  Just a sidenote on this. I've been to Sydney (and very much enjoyed my visit to Australia), and I assume the public transport in Melbourne is similar. I've also had diffuculty explaining "Sydney trains" in Russian. The trams and buses are perfectly clear since what we have is exactly the same. The trains in Sydney are similar to our "электричка" (suburb train) or to the RVR system in Paris, but the difference is that in most Russian cities (and in Paris, Chicago, Barselona, and many other cities I've been to) these trains are not intended for commuting within the city: they link the suburbs to the downtown. There are similar train links in Moscow, for example, but few people would take them to travel within the city; they use the metro instead. In some sense the public transport in Sydney and Melbourne is one-of-a-kind, and takes more than one word to explain. When asked I'd say something along the lines "электричка, которая ходит по городу". I know of just one Russian city, Novomoskovsk, with the similar train service where электрички carry passegers within the city.
  Another funny sidenote: Tula, the city I live in, has had a railed network since the 19th century: first horse trams, then electric. Till the early 1970s the system's official name was "City Railroad" (Городская железная дорога) and the trams were called "trains". Then to avoid confusion it was renamed to "Tula City Tram" and later to "Tula City Electric Transport" since now the company operates both the extensive and well-maintained tram network (100 km of tracks), and the electric buses. So the same ambiguity has existed in Russian as well.


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## Boyar

In this particular context I think the word _inner_ could be best translated as _прилегающий к центру_ (also possible: примыкающий к центру, расположенный вблизи центра; ближайший, близлежащий [по отношению к центру]).


eni8ma said:


> ...there is the city centre, then the inner suburbs, then the outer suburbs, all of which are part of the city.


... есть центр города, затем идут прилегающие к нему [жилые] районы, затем - отдалённые районы, причём все они входят в состав города.


Also, when referring to the city centre and inner suburbs as a whole, one can use _центральные районы_ (in plural):


eni8ma said:


> In Australia, it is easy to say that "trams only run in the inner suburbs". How do I say that in Russian?


Трамваи есть только в центральных районах [города].

However, if there is a need to talk about the city centre and the inner suburbs as separate things, one may refer to these areas as _городской центр и близлежащие районы_.


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## Unreadable

igusarov said:


> "Предместье" - an outdated word for residential areas outside the city,  which are either adjacent to the city or in close proximity. Now this  word belongs to old books.



I think there is a difference between a literary term and an archaic one. "Предместье" belongs to the first category, but not to the second.


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## lenchikthebest

I would say трамвайные пути проложены только в центральных районах города


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## fuzzy logician

Boyar said:


> Also, when referring to the city centre and inner suburbs as a whole, one can use _центральные районы_ (in plural):
> Трамваи есть только в центральных районах [города].



I think this version is most appropriate.

I humbly suggest that this discussion has been made more tricky by a quirk of _Australian _English, which I think may not have been recognised by the OP and some of those contributing. Maroseika's identified definition of "suburb" is how I would understand it in American or British English - it's (generally) the vaguely-defined circle of lower-density residential areas that surround a city. пригороды would usually be the best word. *

However*, in Australia a suburb is a strictly-defined geographic area that is often (but not always) used for the administrative purposes of local government. The entirety of a city (including the very centre) is divided into "suburbs" with defined borders - so someone could say "there is a good bookshop located in the suburb next to mine", which would be hard to say in American/British English. It also doesn't matter whether the land is residential, commercial or industrial in character: see for example this real life usage: "Industrial suburb proposed near airport" http://www.coffscoastadvocate.com.au/news/industrial-suburb-proposed-near-airport/2348786/ 

I think explains the confusion around the term "inner suburbs" which sounds odd in American/British English. For these reasons район would be a better word in this context.


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## yarique

Having had some experience with both Russian and Australian city planning, I can't help adding my 2 Aussie cents (or shall I say 2 kopeks?) to this thread. The main difference to keep in mind is where the city limit is. E.g. Sydneysiders like to define Sydney as 'a city of villages,' and say Richmond and Campbelltown are regarded at least by some as Sydney suburbs because there are people commuting from there to the Sydney CBD. In Russia the city limit is, as a rule, much closer to the center of a city. The larger parts of a city are referred to as "районы" (rayons) simply reflecting the administrative lingo. However, almost nobody will call the city center itself a rayon, probably because living as close to the town center as possible has been a status thing in Russia. Beyond a Russian city's limit lie suburbs (пригороды), i.e., villages from which it's practical to commute to work in the city.

As far as the OP's question is concerned, 'центральные районы города' for 'inner suburbs' (and 'окраинные районы' for outer suburbs) sounds spot on to me. However, 'центральные районы города' would imply a smaller urban area to a Russian than 'inner suburbs' to a Melburnian or Sydneysider.


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