Vicki, I stand corrected -- unless I can get a seat on the Long Island Railroad (LIRR), in which case I "sit corrected".
Perhaps it is more common among residents of Queens, Nassau and Suffolk to hear Manhattan referred to as "New York". On the LIRR, conductors making announcements in Jamaica, Queens use "New York" to mean Manhattan, as opposed to Brooklyn. I hear people in Queens and Long Island say "New York" as often as "the City" to indicate Manhattan, especially when talking about where they work or where they're going for an evening's entertainment.
Context is everything.
Ed Poor
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
Perhaps it is more common among residents of Queens, Nassau and Suffolk to hear Manhattan referred to as "New York". On the LIRR, conductors making announcements in Jamaica, Queens use "New York" to mean Manhattan, as opposed to Brooklyn. I hear people in Queens and Long Island say "New York" as often as "the City" to indicate Manhattan, especially when talking about where they work or where they're going for an evening's entertainment.
Context is everything.
Exactly, and this sort of situation is not limited to NYC. I'm sure that there are other large cities where "going into town" simply means going to the city core of the same city. Unlike NYC they may not have these clearly defined boroughs. Of course, our context is a world context, and we can't expect our readers to understand these things in the same way as a New York City resident.
Rc