Why do Italians put the word provincia only for provinces in Italy but not for the province names of other countries?
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3What do you mean? We use it, for instance, for Canada's provinces. Which other countries have actual “provinces” (as opposed to states, counties, Länder, cantons and so on)?– DaGCommented Aug 30, 2020 at 12:28
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1I see here "provincia" used for a Spanish province.– Charo ♦Commented Aug 30, 2020 at 12:50
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2The question, as it stands, asks “Why is it the case that X?”, while X isn't actually the case. It should either rephrased to be meaningful or closed.– DaGCommented Aug 30, 2020 at 16:05
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2@FabioSpaghetti: I am confused: the texts I mentioned are written by Italians for Italians. Canadian (or other) provinces are not a frequent conversation topic, but whenever they are mentioned they are called province.– DaGCommented Sep 2, 2020 at 17:14
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2@FabioSpaghetti And what we are telling you is that you should ask your Italian friends what they mean, because we're quite baffled by this statement. Of course we Italians don't call German Bezirke or the English counties "province" (why would we? the names translate to distretti and contee respectively), but beyond this obvious observation I at least don't know what to tell you... Maybe you can add more context to help us figure out where's the mismatch– Denis Nardin ♦Commented Sep 4, 2020 at 14:19
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2 Answers
Canadian (or other) provinces are not a frequent conversation topic, but whenever they are mentioned they are called province. This is confirmed by atlases and reference books, and I can assure you that informal Italian has not coined a different special term for them.
Depends on the case, but if you are speaking about news in Italy about foreign countries there are several possible reasons:
- the province is called something else (county in the UK) or it doesn't always exist
- the foreign country has provinces but their importance and differentiation at the cultural level is way weaker that the one in Italy
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1Welcome to Italian.SE and thanks for your contribution. This post seems to me more like a personal opinion than an answer (but maybe the problem is that we are trying to find some reason to something which doesn't really happen).– Charo ♦Commented Sep 2, 2020 at 17:17
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This is not my opinion, I have heard it from my Italian friends Commented Sep 4, 2020 at 12:12