3 ms·
> If you travel to NRW North Rhine-Westphalia? (Don't live in Germany, took me a while.)
by aix1 3y ago
> If you travel to NRW
North Rhine-Westphalia? (Don't live in Germany, took me a while.)
- hnbad 3y agoYes. The official/technical abbreviation is apparently NW because German Bundesland abbreviations are two letters, but colloquially (and even formally on most occasions) everyone calls it NRW. Incidentally when GP said the police "use" the guns at train stations, what they meant was "carry". The German "einsetzen" is more ambiguous about whether something is part of the loadout or actively used (I guess "deploy" is the closest equivalent). I'm fairly certain the guns aren't actually loaded (they're just too big to holster) but at times the Bundespolizei (the federal police responsible for train stations and ports of travel) will indeed carry H&K machine pistols.
- nibbleshifter 3y agoThose MP5's they (some German cops) carry are loaded. Negligent discharges happen every now and then. Usually only injuring other cops.
- hnbad 3y agoWait, you mean that cop I asked lied to me? Huh.
- usrusr 3y agoThat one. It's the only Bundesland commonly referred to by an acronym and I guess we are lucky that the English toponym still matches. The other three-letter candidate (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) is more commonly just shortened to Mecklenburg which isn't an option for NRW because the non-Westphalia part is the more important by far but "north-Rhine" wouldn't really work as a standalone name. Acronyms for our various Saxonies would be rather awkward because both prefix-Saxonies would collide prominently with an acronym already taken by nazism.
- wink 3y agoI'd say you see RLP in written form from time to time, but yeah, not "commonly". Also BaWü isn't an acronym but you're right, compared to other countries we're not really big on abbreviating the states it seems.