postage from France
 

This may seem like a silly question, but if I am posting a letter to an english speaking country from France, can I write the address of the recipient in English?

What other "language" could you write the address in?

If the person lives at 7599 Oak Street, Centerville, Iowa, how would you write that in any other language?

yes, of course, as that is the correct address. I do usually put the country into the local language, but that's not necessary, probably (eg, I put "Etats-Unis" from France, but USA should do). They will know what USA means, I'm sure.

The language of the Universal Postal Union is French. That means that you should theoretically write, in the last line of the address, "Chine" for China, "Inde" for India, or "Etats-Unis d'Amérique" for USA.

So the name of the country should be in French in every country of the world. In real life, most of the major languages can be used, the most important aspect being the idea of getting the envelope or postcard to the correct country. All of the rest of the address can be in Chinese, Hebrew, Thai, or any language that the local postperson can understand.

I should have explained a bit further!
I was meaning the name of the country?
was thinking of city names like Venice, whereby the Italian name is Venezia. I'm posting to Australia, and therefore asking is the French version the same? Sounds like it doesn't make alot of difference?

I posted my previous reply after the first reply. Thanks for clearing that up for me. have found french word "Australie" on wordrefernce.com.
cheers

not that it matters but that should have been http://www.wordreference.com

Sorry, I guess I wasn't totally following. But I don't think it makes much difference if you spell the destination country the way they do there or the way you do where you send it from.

When I send something to Italy from the US I do usually write "Italy" rather than "Italia". I guess I would be more concerned that a local postal employee wouldn't know that Italia is Italy, but certainly anyone living in Italy would know that Italy is Italia. So if there is a difference in the country name, I guess it makes more sense to use the spelling of where you're sending it from, not to.