[Vocabulary] scenery & landscape

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Landscape - the way an area'a physical features are arranged
*an urban landscape

Scenery - the natural features of an area that are attractive to look at
* The scenery is magnificent
 

bertietheblue

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Landscape - the way an area'a physical features are arranged
*an urban landscape

Scenery - the natural features of an area that are attractive to look at
* The scenery is magnificent

Here's a question: if I'm high up on top of a hill and can see all around me below - valleys, rivers, trees, animals grazing in fields, villages dotted here and there etc - would I say:

What a beautiful landscape!
What beautiful scenery!
Either of the above - and if so, is there any difference in meaning?
 
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Here's a question: if I'm high up on top of a hill and can see all around me below - valleys, rivers, trees, animals grazing in fields, villages dotted here and there etc - would I say:

What a beautiful landscape!
What beautiful scenery!
Either of the above - and if so, is there any difference in meaning?

I would choose the second one.
I was thought by my teacher (a native speaker) to use a word scenery when saying something is beautiful and attractive. And that's what all dictionaries say.
I might be wrong :-?
 

bertietheblue

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I would choose the second one.
I was thought by my teacher (a native speaker) to use a word scenery when saying something is beautiful and attractive. And that's what all dictionaries say.
I might be wrong :-?

So are rivers part of the scenery or landscape or both?

In case anyone else wants to contribute, I'll wait until tomorrow before I say what I think.
 
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Mountains are part of both scenery and landscape, but their use depends on what one's trying to say
 

Tdol

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I think you can use landscape both for the features and to express beauty, etc, but I would use scenery just to express beauty, or other extremes.
 

bertietheblue

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I think you can use landscape both for the features and to express beauty, etc, but I would use scenery just to express beauty, or other extremes.

Yeah, I'd go with that. In other words you could say either, with some overlap in meaning. To me, scenery suggests more the intervention of humankind (the copses, woods, villages, fields of wheat, etc.), whereas landscape suggests nature in the raw, although as fighting spirit points out we would talk about an 'urban landscape'.

I just raised this question in case hitinvo got the impression from fighting spirit's original response:

Landscape - the way an area'a physical features are arranged
*an urban landscape

Scenery - the natural features of an area that are attractive to look at
* The scenery is magnificent
[Edit: sorry, I'm not sure yet how to quote from an earlier response as well as the last response]

that the two were completely different. That is not to say that the fighting spirit's response is in any way wrong.

Bertie
 
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I wrote urban landscape just as an example, of course there are many other uses.

I said I might be wrong, but that's what I was thought and what dictionaries say.
 

Tdol

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I'm not sure yet how to quote from an earlier response as well as the last response

Next to the Quote button, there's a Multi-Quote button. If you click on the posts you wish to quote from they turn orange, then hit the Post Reply button, it will open all the posts in the editor. If the quotes are long, it can look a bit messy, but you can increase the size of the edit box by dragging the bottom right corner, which I find helps. It doesn't work with Quick Reply.

PS The code you had should be like this [QUOTE="Tdol, post: 608887, member: 5"]...[/QUOTE]- no spaces, and the number after the semi-colon refers to the post number- if you remove it and the semi-colon, you'll get the quote box without the little blue button linking back.
 
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Tdol

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I wrote urban landscape just as an example, of course there are many other uses.

I said I might be wrong, but that's what I was thought and what dictionaries say.

It's very often not a question of right and wrong, but preference of tendency, but dictionaries have to give a concrete definition in a short space, while usage can be more flexible. If you follow those definitions, you won't go wrong, but landscape can, I think, be used in both ways. ;-)
 
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OK, thank you. I'm not a native, so there are still things I need to learn.
 

Tdol

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Being a native speaker doesn't mean that there's nothing left to learn. ;-)
 
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