Talk:List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants (1999 census)

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I liked the alphabetical listing better. It was easier to look up a particular city by name. Backspace 21:52, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Naming

"List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants (1999 census)" - what a mouthful. Surely "List of cities in France" would be simpler, and the intro could clarify its definition of "city". Stevage 06:00, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

There is no definition for a city in France. Commune is present in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). --Bob 00:46, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Title

Is communes the appropriate title? Or was it intended to be communities? Xnuala 11:56, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

"Commune" is actually a French word meaning something like "township". It's unfortunate that many of these French words - département, région, commune etc - have such obvious English cognates. However, using those cognates is very misleading, as you have noticed. Stevage 00:27, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
It is also an English word as per the OED. The title is now accurate. Departments, regions etc have all been moved (or are in the process of being moved) to the English equivalent per WP:UE. This is a huge undertaking, but we are almost finished. --Bob 00:33, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
This completely answers my question, and allows me to confidently state that I have learned something new today! Thanks! Xnuala 01:23, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Consistency

The French Wikipedia fr:Grandes villes de France has a very different list... Which one can we believe? -- lucasbfr talk 11:13, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the French list has exactly the same cities in exactly the same order (as far as they take it, which is a much shorter list at only 30 items). They do have some bad population numbers, though. Notice that Reims (incorrect) has exactly the same figure as Bordeaux (correct). Backspace 21:15, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
And what's with "Brittany"? All the other regions have French names. The Brittany article even says that "Brittany" is not the same as "Bretagne". Backspace 21:02, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
The French list also has updated population estimates in the second column, in addition to the population figures from the 1999 census. As for the Brittany problem, I've replaced all references to the region of Brittany with the administrative region of Bretagne.Reade (talk) 12:04, 7 April 2008 (UTC)