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In Italian, does one use a comma to separate city and country?

For example, in English, one says “Rome, Italy.” In Italian, is this “Roma, Italia” or “Roma Italia” or “Roma d’Italia”? What is the proper way to phrase city and country within a sentence?

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    Welcome to Italian.SE!
    – Denis Nardin
    Commented May 9, 2019 at 7:59

1 Answer 1

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None of those. That is a peculiar English usage, often even with well-known cities (such as “Washington, D.C.”).
In Italian, it is far less common having to specify the country a city is in: for instance, if I mention Berlin, I'll just say/write “Berlino”, assuming that my listeners/readers know that it is in Germany.

If it is important to mention the country (or US State, or Italian region), for instance for a less-known place, the usual way is to use in, possibly after a comma. For instance:

Legoland si trova a Billund, in Danimarca

(Legoland is in Billund, Denmark).

In some cases, in a less “literary” context, you might find the country name (if necessary), in parentheses:

Legoland si trova a Billund (Danimarca).

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    It might be also worth mentioning that we often use two letter abbreviations to denote Italian provinces and foreign countries, instead of the full name (e.g. Montpellier (FR) or Schio (VI)).
    – Denis Nardin
    Commented May 9, 2019 at 7:59
  • Yup, and we do that even when it's ambiguous: for instance, Montpellier (FR) is not in provincia di Frosinone, and Vasto (CH) is not in Switzerland. :) Commented May 10, 2019 at 8:13
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    Yes, that is a frequent albeit “bureaucratic” or journalistic usage; a text with a modicum of “literary” aspiration won't include two-letter abbreviations.
    – DaG
    Commented May 10, 2019 at 10:01

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