NY NY vs NYC

[Lynne Murphy]

>-- This is a confusion NYers have trouble understanding, since we never
>have trouble from context disambiguating the city from the state, but
>others apparently do.  I, myself, refuse to use "New York City" for NY,
>NY since there is no such place :-) ... but I wonder how old NYC is as a
>term: I hear it more frequently now than I ever did (or I'm just getting
>more crotchetty)
>____________________________________________________________________
>David Bergdahl          http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~bergdahl
>tel:  (740) 593-2783
>366 Ellis Hall     Ohio University  Athens, Ohio 45701-2979       fax:
>(740) 593-2818

You mean, this is a confusion NYNYers have trouble understanding,
since as a NYer (of the upstate variety), I understand it perfectly
well!

When people outside the US ask me where I'm from, I say "New York
State" (when they ask what part, I say the part near Toronto), unless
I want them to be afraid of little old me, and then I just say "New
York".  (Then they say "ooh, I won't mess with you, then."  I kid you
not--this happens all the time.)

Lynne
--
Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH UK
phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax    +44-(0)1273-671320