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76-614: The name of the town is derived from the Serbian word topola (топола) ("poplar" in English). The first part of the name of the town was given to designate its location in the region of Bačka in contrast to places with similar names, like Topola in Šumadija or Banatska Topola in Banat . The town was mentioned first in 1462 under name Fibaych . This settlement was a part of the Kingdom of Hungary, and

152-489: A Hungarian majority are: Bačka Topola (Hungarian: Topolya ), Bajša (Hungarian: Bajsa ), Pačir (Hungarian: Pacsér ), Stara Moravica (Hungarian: Bácskossuthfalva ), Zobnatica (Hungarian: Andrásnépe ), Bogaraš (Hungarian: Bogaras-Felváros ), Obornjača (Hungarian: Nagyvölgy ), Bagremovo (Hungarian: Brazília ), Gunaroš (Hungarian: Gunaras ), Novo Orahovo (Hungarian: Zentagunaras ), and Kavilo (Hungarian: Rákóczifalu or Kavilló ). Local communities with

228-515: A Serb majority are: Gornja Rogatica , Srednji Salaš , Panonija , Orešković , Bački Sokolac , Karađorđevo , Mićunovo , Njegoševo , Krivaja , Svetićevo , and Mali Beograd . Pobeda (Hungarian: Győztes or Pobedabirtok ) is an ethnically-mixed local community with a Hungarian relative majority . Krivaja , Mali Beograd , and Svetićevo have over 20% Hungarians, as well as other minorities, while Bačka Topola, Pačir , Zobnatica , and Pobeda have over 20% Serbs. The ethnic composition of

304-483: A "similar attitude towards food," whereas Chicago 's link with Warsaw , Poland began with Chicago's historic Polish community . The twinning of Indianapolis with Monza , Italy, is due to both cities' long association with auto racing . A twin towns program was instituted in the United States in 1956 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower proposed a citizen diplomacy initiative. Sister Cities International (SCI)

380-512: A "tuning" partnership based on a shared musical heritage and culture offer, at the initiative of Bristol Mayor George Ferguson . Annecy , France and Nerima , Tokyo have for several years shared a partnership based on their "co-existent animation industry". Toledo, United States twinned with Toledo, Spain in 1931, and was the first city in North America to engage in town twinning. Vancouver, Canada twinned with Odesa, Ukraine in 1944,

456-528: A common etymology . These similarities usually arise from sharing the same or related language or having been a colony or previously conquered. The twinning of towns and cities is sometimes done for political purposes. The Hungarian city Gyöngyös was twinned with the Azerbaijani city of Shusha in 2013, signing the twinning agreement with representatives from the Azerbaijani government; Hungary recognised Shusha as de jure part of Azerbaijan , even though it

532-559: A factory in the Republic of Karelia in Russia and offered the same profit-sharing plan to its Russian employees. China's sister city relationships are managed by the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries , a united front organization. Sister city initiatives are an increasingly widespread mechanism for Chinese public diplomacy . From the early 2000s until 2024,

608-499: A gift of timber from his native country for use in the new Civic Theatre, which when finished was named Belgrade Theatre . The purpose of twinnings was then expanded to encourage trade and tourism or to reflect other links, such as towns sharing the same name or migration links. By the 2000s, town twinning became increasingly used to form strategic international business links among member cities, and may include localities of any scope such as villages, prefectures, or countries. In

684-401: A hierarchical relationship. In the 2010s, Tokyo began to actively promote 'city diplomacy' with other global cities at the initiative of governor Yoichi Masuzoe . Relationships between communities can also arise because of shared names; they may be named after one community (as in the case of Córdoba ), they may share names (as in the case of Santiago de Compostela ), or their names may have

760-600: A link that still exists. Since 9 April 1956 Rome and Paris have been exclusively and reciprocally twinned with each other, following the motto: "Only Paris is worthy of Rome; only Rome is worthy of Paris." Within Europe, town twinning is supported by the European Union. The support scheme was established in 1989. In 2003 an annual budget of about € 12 million was allocated to about 1,300 projects. The Council of European Municipalities and Regions also works closely with

836-543: A sister-city or twin-city relationship, but the first officially documented case of such a relationship was a signed agreement between the leaders of the cities of Toledo, Ohio and Toledo, Spain in 1931. However, the modern concept of town twinning appeared during the Second World War. More specifically, it was inspired by the bombing of Coventry on 14 November 1940, known as the Coventry Blitz . First conceived by

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912-409: A sort of international relations that works in parallel to the conventional system involving embassies, ambassadors, and treaties negotiated at the level of nation states . According to Rodrigo Tavares , the earliest formal attempts to establish city diplomacy across national boundaries took place in the 19th century. Only a handful of cities were involved in the 19th-century efforts; it was not until

988-537: A twin town. Twinned towns are often chosen because of similarities between them; thus about 15 towns in Wales are twinned with towns in Brittany , and Oxford is with Bonn , Leiden , Grenoble and other university cities. In Italy, two sets of twins are Rovigo with Viernheim , and Bedford with Tulcea . Many former West German cities are twinned with former East German cities; these twinning links were established before

1064-665: Is clearly a single language with a single grammatical system." It has lower intelligibility with the Eastern South Slavic languages Bulgarian and Macedonian , than with Slovene (Slovene is part of the Western South Slavic subgroup, but there are still significant differences in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation to the standardized forms of Serbo-Croatian, although it is closer to the Kajkavian and Chakavian dialects of Serbo-Croatian ). Speakers by country: Serbian

1140-415: Is in a separate smaller painting (above its main one) showing a beech tree, intended as a symbol of prosperity and from which Carshalton Beeches in the borough derives its name. Another example of the use of public art is the wall sculpture of the partner cities of Munich , Germany. A recent study has concluded that geographical distance has very little, if any, influence upon communities' selections of

1216-458: Is practically the only European standard language whose speakers are fully functionally digraphic , using both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. The Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was devised in 1814 by Serbian linguist Vuk Karadžić , who created it based on phonemic principles. The Latin alphabet used for Serbian ( latinica ) was designed by the Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj in the 1830s based on

1292-517: Is shows that it was in accord with its time; for example, the Serbian Alexandride , a book about Alexander the Great , and a translation of Tristan and Iseult into Serbian. Although not belonging to the literature proper, the corpus of Serbian literacy in the 14th and 15th centuries contains numerous legal, commercial and administrative texts with marked presence of Serbian vernacular juxtaposed on

1368-435: Is the only general historical dictionary of Serbo-Croatian. Its first editor was Đuro Daničić , followed by Pero Budmani and the famous Vukovian Tomislav Maretić . The sources of this dictionary are, especially in the first volumes, mainly Štokavian . There are older, pre-standard dictionaries, such as the 1791 German–Serbian dictionary or 15th century Arabic-Persian-Greek-Serbian Conversation Textbook . The standard and

1444-447: Is twinned with Dorval, Quebec ; Huai'an, China , and Neyagawa, Osaka , Japan. Town twinning begins for a variety of reasons. Generally, partner towns have similar demographics and size. They may arise from business connections, travel, similar industries, diaspora communities, or shared history. For example, the partnership between Portland, Oregon and Bologna , Italy arose from shared industries in biotechnology and education, and

1520-817: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Serbian, written in the Cyrillic script : Сва људска бића рађају се слободна и једнака у достојанству и правима. Она су обдарена разумом и свешћу и треба једни према другима да поступају у духу братства. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Serbian, written in the Latin alphabet : Sva ljudska bića rađaju se slobodna i jednaka u dostojanstvu i pravima. Ona su obdarena razumom i svešću i treba jedni prema drugima da postupaju u duhu bratstva. Article 1 of

1596-619: The Proto-Slavic language . There are many loanwords from different languages, reflecting cultural interaction throughout history. Notable loanwords were borrowed from Greek, Latin, Italian, Turkish, Hungarian, English, Russian, German, Czech and French. Serbian literature emerged in the Middle Ages , and included such works as Miroslavljevo jevanđelje ( Miroslav's Gospel ) in 1186 and Dušanov zakonik ( Dušan's Code ) in 1349. Little secular medieval literature has been preserved, but what there

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1672-679: The Serbo-Croatian language mainly used by Serbs . It is the official and national language of Serbia , one of the three official languages of Bosnia and Herzegovina and co-official in Montenegro and Kosovo . It is a recognized minority language in Croatia , North Macedonia , Romania , Hungary , Slovakia , and the Czech Republic . Standard Serbian is based on the most widespread dialect of Serbo-Croatian, Shtokavian (more specifically on

1748-465: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Town twinning A sister city or a twin town relationship is a form of legal or social agreement between two geographically and politically distinct localities for

1824-684: The World Economic Forum . In addition to C40, other organisations facilitating city diplomacy include the World Cities Summit , City Mayors Foundation , the Smart City Expo World Congress , the Strong City Network and 100 Resilient Cities. As of 2016, there were over 125 such multilateral networks and forums to facilitate international collaboration between different municipal authorities. A Bill introduced in

1900-563: The 1990s, when the Nottingham City Council in the UK considered installing a tram network, it consulted experts from its twin city of Karlsruhe , which has one of the most extensive and efficient tram networks in Germany. With assistance from Karlsruhe's specialist engineers, Nottingham completed its second tram line in 2013. In 2014, Bristol and New Orleans announced their intention to form

1976-405: The 2006 Constitution . The Latin script continues to be used in official contexts, although the government has indicated its desire to phase out this practice due to national sentiment. The Ministry of Culture believes that Cyrillic is the "identity script" of the Serbian nation. However, the law does not regulate scripts in standard language , or standard language itself by any means, leaving

2052-521: The 2019 session of the US Congress would have legislated for a City and State Diplomacy Act to create a new Office of Subnational Diplomacy at the Department of State . H.R.3571 - 116th Congress (2019-2020): City and State Diplomacy Act. Recently, the field of city diplomacy has taken a step beyond city-to-city exchanges to target the facilitation of dialogue between cities and multilateral organs, such as

2128-583: The Czech system with a one-to-one grapheme-phoneme correlation between the Cyrillic and Latin orthographies, resulting in a parallel system. Serbian is a standardized variety of Serbo-Croatian , a Slavic language ( Indo-European ), of the South Slavic subgroup. Other standardized forms of Serbo-Croatian are Bosnian , Croatian , and Montenegrin . "An examination of all the major 'levels' of language shows that BCS

2204-502: The Dutch city was still occupied by the German Army in the final months of the war, and children from each city took part in exchanges in 1945 and 1946. Similarly, in 1947, Bristol Corporation (later Bristol City Council) sent five "leading citizens" on a goodwill mission to Hanover . Reading in 1947 was the first British town to form links with a former "enemy" city – Düsseldorf ,

2280-576: The French town; formal twinning charters were not exchanged until 1986. The practice was continued after the Second World War as a way to promote mutual understanding and cross-border projects of mutual benefit. For example, Coventry twinned with Stalingrad and later with Dresden as an act of peace and reconciliation, all three cities having been heavily bombed during the war. The city of Bath formed an " Alkmaar Adoption committee" in March 1945, when

2356-817: The Latin alphabet whereas 36% favors the Cyrillic one. Latin script has become more and more popular in Serbia, as it is easier to input on phones and computers. The sort order of the ćirilica ( ћирилица ) alphabet: The sort order of the latinica ( латиница ) alphabet: Serbian is a highly inflected language , with grammatical morphology for nouns, pronouns and adjectives as well as verbs. Serbian nouns are classified into three declensional types, denoted largely by their nominative case endings as "-a" type, "-i" and "-e" type. Into each of these declensional types may fall nouns of any of three genders : masculine, feminine or neuter. Each noun may be inflected to represent

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2432-410: The Latin script predominates, although both scripts are commonly seen. The Serbian government has encouraged increasing the use of Cyrillic in these contexts. Larger signs, especially those put up by the government, will often feature both alphabets; if the sign has English on it, then usually only Cyrillic is used for the Serbian text. A survey from 2014 showed that 47% of the Serbian population favors

2508-450: The Latin script tends to imply a cosmopolitan or neutral attitude, while Cyrillic appeals to a more traditional or vintage sensibility. In media, the public broadcaster, Radio Television of Serbia , predominantly uses the Cyrillic script whereas the privately run broadcasters, like RTV Pink , predominantly use the Latin script. Newspapers can be found in both scripts. In the public sphere, with logos, outdoor signage and retail packaging,

2584-622: The Netherlands, the term is jumelage , partnerstad or stedenband ("city bond" when providing mutual support). In Greece, the word αδελφοποίηση ( adelphopiisi  – fraternisation) has been adopted. In Iceland, the terms vinabæir (friend towns) and vinaborgir (friend cities) are used. In the former Soviet Bloc , "twin towns" and "twin cities" were used, and in Russian, they use города-побратимы (sworn brother cities). The Americas, South Asia, and Australasia use

2660-566: The Scottish village of Dull and the US town of Boring, Oregon , agreed to twin their municipalities to promote tourism in both places, playing on their names. Recently some towns have made novelty twinning arrangements with fictional or virtual locations. Wincanton , England is partnered with Ankh-Morpork from Terry Pratchett 's Discworld books . Town twinning has increasingly been used to form strategic international business links. For example, in

2736-540: The US). In Japan, the international city relations may be split into multiple terms, such as Sister Cities, Friendship Cooperation Cities, Business Partner Cities (BPC), Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), Sister Ports / Friendship Ports, etc. China mostly uses the term "friendship cooperation cities" rather than "sister cities", as the Chinese words for sisters, "姐妹" (reading: jiěmèi, literally elder sister and younger sister), could imply

2812-515: The United Kingdom, the term "twin towns" is most commonly used; the term "sister cities" is generally used for agreements with towns and cities in the Americas. In mainland Europe, the most commonly used terms are "twin towns", "partnership towns", "partner towns", and "friendship towns". The European Commission uses the term "twinned towns" and refers to the process as "town twinning". Spain uses

2888-813: The United Nations. Not only cities and towns, but also provinces, states, territories, and regions enter into twinning agreements. For example, the Canadian province of Alberta has "sister province" agreements with Gangwon, South Korea (since 1974), Hokkaido, Japan (since 1980), Heilongjiang, China (1981), Jalisco, Mexico (1999), Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine (2004), Lviv, Ukraine (2005), Guangdong, China (2017), and California, United States (2018), as well as policy-oriented (as opposed to economic and cultural) agreements with Nevada, United States (since 2013), Missouri, United States (2015), and Texas, United States (2018). The earliest known town twinning in Europe

2964-429: The alphabets are used interchangeably; except in the legal sphere, where Cyrillic is required, there is no context where one alphabet or another predominates. Although Serbian language authorities have recognized the official status of both scripts in contemporary Standard Serbian for more than half of a century now, due to historical reasons, the Cyrillic script was made the official script of Serbia's administration by

3040-476: The beginning of the 13th century, the entire official correspondence of Dubrovnik with states in the hinterland was conducted in Serbian. In the mid-15th century, Serbia was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and for the next 400 years there was no opportunity for the creation of secular written literature. However, some of the greatest literary works in Serbian come from this time, in the form of oral literature,

3116-439: The choice of script as a matter of personal preference and to the free will in all aspects of life (publishing, media, trade and commerce, etc.), except in government paperwork production and in official written communication with state officials, which have to be in Cyrillic. Traffic signs and directional signs, and place names, on main or international roads are to be written with both Cyrillic and Latin script To most Serbians,

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3192-470: The commission (DG Education and Culture) to promote modern, high quality twinning initiatives and exchanges that involve all sections of the community. It has launched a website dedicated to town twinning. As of 1995, the European Union had more than 7,000 bilateral relationships involving almost 10,000 European municipalities, primarily French (2837 twinnings) and German (2485 twinnings). Public art has been used to celebrate twin town links, for instance in

3268-524: The dialects of Šumadija-Vojvodina and Eastern Herzegovina ), which is also the basis of standard Croatian , Bosnian , and Montenegrin varieties and therefore the Declaration on the Common Language of Croats, Bosniaks, Serbs, and Montenegrins was issued in 2017. The other dialect spoken by Serbs is Torlakian in southeastern Serbia, which is transitional to Macedonian and Bulgarian . Serbian

3344-568: The early 19th century, Vuk Stefanović Karadžić promoted the spoken language of the people as a literary norm. The dialects of Serbo-Croatian , regarded Serbian (traditionally spoken in Serbia), include: Vuk Karadžić 's Srpski rječnik , first published in 1818, is the earliest dictionary of modern literary Serbian. The Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika (I–XXIII), published by the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts from 1880 to 1976,

3420-494: The exception of Hungarian occupation between 1941 and 1944 during World War II . Bačka Topola municipality includes the town of Bačka Topola and the following villages: Note: For the inhabited places with an absolute or relative Hungarian ethnic majority, the names are also given in Hungarian. According to the 2022 census results, the municipality of Bačka Topola has a population of 26,228 inhabitants. Local communities with

3496-464: The fall of the Iron Curtain . Famous examples are the partnerships of Hanover and Leipzig , both of which have important trade fair grounds , or between Hamburg and Dresden. The first US-German town twinning was in 1947 between Worthington, Minnesota and Crailsheim . St Petersburg in Russia holds the record for the largest number of partnership arrangements with other communities. In June 2012,

3572-459: The form of seven mural paintings in the centre of the town of Sutton , Greater London. The five main paintings show a number of the main features of the London Borough of Sutton and its four twin towns, along with the heraldic shield of each above the other images. Each painting also features a plant as a visual representation of its town's environmental awareness . In the case of Sutton this

3648-553: The genocide in 2016, some twin agreements such as Edirne – Haskovo were terminated by Turkey. China manages sister city relationships through the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC). In April 2019, CPAFFC president Li Xiaolin said, “Friendship city relations have become one of the important channels to implement the Belt and Road Initiative .” In January 2020, Shanghai canceled its sister city relationship with Prague after Prague's mayor signed

3724-538: The matrix of Serbian Church Slavonic . By the beginning of the 14th century the Serbo-Croatian language, which was so rigorously proscribed by earlier local laws, becomes the dominant language of the Republic of Ragusa . However, despite her wealthy citizens speaking the Serbo-Croatian dialect of Dubrovnik in their family circles, they sent their children to Florentine schools to become perfectly fluent in Italian. Since

3800-407: The most notable form being epic poetry . The epic poems were mainly written down in the 19th century, and preserved in oral tradition up to the 1950s, a few centuries or even a millennium longer than by most other "epic folks". Goethe and Jacob Grimm learned Serbian in order to read Serbian epic poetry in the original. By the end of the 18th century, the written literature had become estranged from

3876-487: The municipality: The following table gives a preview of total number of employed people per their core activity (as of 2016): The most popular local football team is TSC Bačka Topola , which plays in the Serbian SuperLiga (1st national tier). Bačka Topola is twinned with: Serbian language Serbian ( српски / srpski , pronounced [sr̩̂pskiː] ) is the standardized variety of

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3952-415: The noun they modify, but must agree in number, gender and case with the modified noun. Serbian verbs are conjugated in four past forms— perfect , aorist , imperfect , and pluperfect —of which the last two have a very limited use (imperfect is still used in some dialects, but the majority of native Serbian speakers consider it archaic), one future tense (also known as the first future tense, as opposed to

4028-517: The noun's grammatical case , of which Serbian has seven: Nouns are further inflected to represent the noun's number , singular or plural. Pronouns, when used, are inflected along the same case and number morphology as nouns. Serbian is a pro-drop language , meaning that pronouns may be omitted from a sentence when their meaning is easily inferred from the text. In cases where pronouns may be dropped, they may also be used to add emphasis. For example: Adjectives in Serbian may be placed before or after

4104-569: The number of China's sister city relationships doubled. More than one-third of Chinese sister city relationships are with sister cities in the east Asia Pacific region. Town twinning is supported in Japan by the Council of Local Authorities for International Relations , a joint agency of local governments established by the Japanese government in 1988 (similar to Sister Cities International , its counterpart in

4180-626: The only completed etymological dictionary of Serbian is the " Skok ", written by the Croatian linguist Petar Skok : Etimologijski rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika ("Etymological Dictionary of Croatian or Serbian"). I-IV. Zagreb 1971–1974. There is also a new monumental Etimološki rečnik srpskog jezika (Etymological Dictionary of Serbian). So far, two volumes have been published: I (with words on A-), and II (Ba-Bd). There are specialized etymological dictionaries for German, Italian, Croatian, Turkish, Greek, Hungarian, Russian, English and other loanwords (cf. chapter word origin ). Article 1 of

4256-440: The purpose of promoting cultural and commercial ties. While there are early examples of international links between municipalities akin to what are known as sister cities or twin towns today dating back to the 9th century, the modern concept was first established and adopted worldwide during World War II . Throughout history, many cities have participated in various cultural exchanges and similar activities that might resemble

4332-413: The second conditional (without use in the spoken language—it should be used for impossible conditional clauses). Serbian has active and passive voice . As for the non-finite verb forms, Serbian has one infinitive , two adjectival participles (the active and the passive), and two adverbial participles (the present and the past). Most Serbian words are of native Slavic lexical stock, tracing back to

4408-433: The second future tense or the future exact, which is considered a tense of the conditional mood by some contemporary linguists), and one present tense . These are the tenses of the indicative mood. Apart from the indicative mood, there is also the imperative mood . The conditional mood has two more tenses: the first conditional (commonly used in conditional clauses, both for possible and impossible conditional clauses) and

4484-466: The spoken language. In the second half of the 18th century, the new language appeared, called Slavonic-Serbian . This artificial idiom superseded the works of poets and historians like Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović , who wrote in essentially modern Serbian in the 1720s. These vernacular compositions have remained cloistered from the general public and received due attention only with the advent of modern literary historians and writers like Milorad Pavić . In

4560-515: The subsequent Mayor Emily Smith – had their names embroidered on a tablecloth along with the words "Little help is better than a lot of pity" and sent it, along with money (each donated six pence), to the people of Stalingrad. The tablecloth can now be seen at the Panorama Museum of the Battle of Stalingrad. The twinning between Coventry and Stalingrad was formalized in 1944 and, after the end of

4636-476: The term "ciudades hermanadas", which means "sister cities". Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic each use Partnerstadt (German), miasto partnerskie (Polish) and partnerské město (Czech), which translate as "partner town" or "partner city". France uses ville jumelée (jumelage, twinned town or city), and Italy has gemellaggio (twinning) and comune gemellato (twinned municipality). In

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4712-513: The term "sister cities" or "twin cities". In China, the term is 友好城市 (yǒuhǎo chéngshì – friendly cities). Sometimes, other government bodies enter into a twinning relationship, such as the agreement between the provinces of Hainan in China and Jeju in South Korea. The Douzelage is a town twinning association with one town from each of the member states of the European Union. Though

4788-454: The term is often used interchangeably with the term "friendship city", this may mean a relationship with a more limited scope in comparison to a sister city relationship, and friendship city relationships are mayor-to-mayor agreements. City diplomacy is a form of paradiplomacy that involves discussions between officials and residents of different cities. Often these cities will be located in different countries. As such, city diplomacy involves

4864-530: The then Mayor of Coventry , Alfred Robert Grindlay , culminating in his renowned telegram to the people of Stalingrad (now Volgograd ) in 1942, the idea emerged as a way of establishing solidarity links between cities in allied countries that went through similar devastating events. The comradeship between the two cities continued, when again in response to the Battle of Stalingrad , 830 women in Coventry – led by

4940-418: The turn of the millennium that it became much more common. The first priority of those carrying out city diplomacy typically overlaps with the core aims of municipal government – improving the lives of local residents. Yet they will often collaborate with peers in other cities to work on issues of planet-wide concern, such as efforts to address climate change . The phrase "city diplomacy" is formally used in

5016-407: The war, similar links were established to foster friendship and understanding among former foes as an act of peace and reconciliation, with new twinnings between Coventry and German cities: Kiel as early as in 1947 and Dresden in 1956. In 1957, Coventry was officially twinned with Belgrade, even though the link actually dates back to 1953 when then Yugoslav Ambassador visited Coventry and offered

5092-792: The workings of the United Cities and Local Governments and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group , and is recognised by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy . A March 2014 debate in the British House of Lords acknowledged the evolution of town twinning into city diplomacy, particularly in matters of trade and tourism, but also in culture and post-conflict reconciliation. The importance of cities developing "their own foreign economic policies on trade, foreign investment, tourism and attracting foreign talent" has also been highlighted by

5168-560: Was between Paderborn , Germany, and Le Mans , France, in 836. Starting in 1905, Keighley in West Yorkshire, England, had a twinning arrangement with French communities Suresnes and Puteaux . The first recorded modern twinning agreement was between Keighley and Poix-du-Nord in Nord, France, in 1920 following the end of the World War I . This was initially referred to as an adoption of

5244-558: Was controlled at the time and until 2020 by the military forces of Armenia and the unrecognised Republic of Artsakh . An attempt was made in 2003 by Preston city councillors in England to twin with the Palestinian town of Nablus in the name of solidarity. Turkey bans partnerships with any city in a country that recognizes the Armenian genocide . As a result, when Bulgaria recognized

5320-411: Was declared by 34.52% of the population. Standard Serbian language uses both Cyrillic ( ћирилица , ćirilica ) and Latin script ( latinica , латиница ). Serbian is a rare example of synchronic digraphia , a situation where all literate members of a society have two interchangeable writing systems available to them. Media and publishers typically select one alphabet or the other. In general,

5396-498: Was destroyed by kuruc rebels. In 1731, Topola was mentioned as an uninhabited heath. In 1750, the new settlement was founded at this location and 200 Hungarian and Slovak families arrived here from Upper Hungary . It was a district center in Bács-Bodrog County as "Topolya" until 1918, when it became part of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed to Yugoslavia in 1929). It was part of Yugoslavia until 1991, with

5472-475: Was inhabited by Hungarians in the middle ages. The village was destroyed in the 16th century and new smaller settlement was later built at its location. Name Topola was first recorded in 1543, while according to the Ottoman defters from 1580, 1582, and 1590, it was mentioned as a village, whose population numbered between 21 and 23 houses. At this time, the inhabitants of the settlement were Serbs . In 1704, Topola

5548-567: Was originally a program of the National League of Cities , but it became a separate corporation in 1967 due to the growth and popularity of the program. Twin town cultural events include the annual National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C., honoring Washington's twin relationship with Tokyo City . Many twinned towns developed business agreements with their partners. For example, Vermont 's Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream company opened

5624-464: Was the first twinned city in Canada and the second in North America, while Denver, United States , twinned with Brest, France , was the second twinned city in the United States. Liberal, Kansas was twinned with Olney, United Kingdom in 1950, and the cities have run a joint Pancake Day race ever since. Littleton, Colorado, twinned with Bega, Australia, in 1961. Tashkent , the capital city of Uzbekistan,

5700-521: Was the official language of Montenegro until October 2007, when the new Constitution of Montenegro replaced the Constitution of 1992. Amid opposition from pro-Serbian parties, Montenegrin was made the sole official language of the country, and Serbian was given the status of a language in official use along with Bosnian , Albanian , and Croatian . In the 2023 Montenegrin census, 43.18% declared Serbian to be their native language, while Montenegrin

5776-458: Was twinned with Seattle , Washington, in 1973. Rochester, Minnesota , and Knebworth , UK, both centers for primary medical research, twinned in 1967. Ontario, California , has five sister cities around the world. They are Brockville, Ontario, Canada (since 1977); Guamúchil, Sinaloa, Mexico (since 1982); Mocorito, Sinaloa, Mexico (since 1982); Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico (since 1988); and Winterthur, Canton of Zürich, Switzerland. Oakville, Ontario

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