The rule of thumb isn’t size so much as originality. There is only one Chicago, Los Angeles, or New York (of note) there are several Portlands, Springfields, Washingtons, etc. If it’s the only one you can leave off the state, otherwise it’s safer to mention state with city.
As mentioned above, I’ll bet a lot of Americans don’t know that the city of New York is in the state of New York (and isn’t the capital), and Chicago is in the state of Illinois (and isn’t the capital). Chicago gets ignored a lot because many people know what’s on the coasts: Miami, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco - and consider the rest of the US “fly-over country” even though Chicago is the third largest city in the states.
And the home of the tallest building in the Americas (or Europe).
Heh, I made it from NYC to Reno in 48 hours once, and that’s including the nap at a hotel in Salt Lake City. If we hadn’t napped we could’ve made it all the way to San Francisco in those 48. We had three drivers in heavy rotation and didn’t care much about the car as is it was my wife’s Grandmother’s who wasn’t going to be driving anymore. If you want to catch an idea of the scale of the US drive the entire length of I-80. Another good way to get it though is out west where the lengths are deceptive, because one minute you are flying down the interstate at 90mph through Wyoming, but if you want to go somewhere else in Wyoming it’s all winding mountain state highways.
I don’t think Europeans understand that the United States is bigger than Europe. Going from NY to LA is like going from London to Istanbul.
I suspect she was talking to a complete stranger. IME, you just can’t have the same conversations with Britons (that you don’t know) that you can with Americans.
No. He looked like a typical British business man, up to London for a few days. He did something with either electrical systems or electronic systems-this was 14 year ago, so…
I did not know this, but you do not ask a UK stranger what they do to earn their grub. It. just. isn’t. done. In doing so, I had shown myself (heretofore an attractive, friendly American) to be a nosy, rude pushy Yank. <sigh>
[sub]I didn’t really care what he did. I had just run out of conversation. Stupid Limey bastards…won the war for the likes of you… <walks away, muttering under breath> [/sub]
Before I recently updated my IP blacklist, I used to have a lot of Indian spammers register on the message board I run. One of the registration items was “Location (city/municipality, state/province, country)”. The Indian spammers could be easily identified by the information they put into this field; it was ALWAYS the most recognizable cities in the US, the spelling was often comical, and they were often associated with the wrong state - “the newyork”, “losanges texas”, “shikago alaska”, and so on. It was never something like “Prairie Village, Kansas” or “Mississauga, Ontario” - always NY, LA and Chicago, always with irregular capitalization, and often bad spelling. (FWIW, the Nigerians always used “London” or “UK” by itself; again, never smaller cities.)
FWIW, even though I’m assumed to be geographically illiterate because I’m an American, I associate Canadian, South African and Australian cities with their respective sub-national political subdivisions. I’m not that good with cities in non-English speaking countries, though. Nor India, but I’m learning …
An old stereotype of an encounter by an American tourist overseas is hearing “You American? Chicago bang bang, yes?”, thinking Al Capone still reigns over the city.
Like I said, “Chicago” with various spellings and random states was a favorite fake location of Indian spammers on my message board.
I was under the impression that all Englishmen are taught witty comebacks from birth just in case they’re asked to speak at dinner or speak to a random stranger in a hotel lounge.
Let me offer Charles a line the next time this happens: “Oh, I’m the chairman of the International Business Leaders Forum.”
How do you know Great Falls? It’s neither the capital (Helena is) nor one of the largest cities (Missoula, Butte, and Bozeman are the largest, I think). It’s also, if I may speak as a near-local, not a very interesting city and not in a very interesting part of the state. About the only thing Great Falls has going for it is Malmstrom Air Force Base, which used to be a Strategic Air Command center (long-range bombers with nuclear weapons and all that).
Intuitively, I’d expect a small or duplicate place to have the state thrown in for good measure: so “Bloomer, Wisconsin”, but just “Chicago.” But I seem to overwhelmingly hear or read “Chicago, Illinois”. Like I said above, I’m not complaining about this as it’s cool subliminal education, but it is a little surprising.
If we hadn’t napped we could’ve made it all the way to San Francisco in those 48. 
