I've been editing the Esperanto Wikipedia lately, and it seems that there are no accepted proposals for referring to American administrative divisions. For those that don't know what I am talking about, the United Sates is firstly broken up into the fifty states. These states are then broken up into counties, or in the case of Louisiana, parishes, and in the case of Alaska, boroughs. Counties are most often broken up further into "towns" or "townships". These towns sometimes contain villages and cities.

Usono → (sub)ŝtatoj → [counties] → [towns] → urboj/vilaĝoj

What I've seen on Wikipedia is the word kantono proposed for the word county. Cantons in English are the Swiss "states". In Canadian French, canton is the equivalent to "town". I feel that kantono is therefore not a fitting word.

There is also the word kanteo, which is not an official word and is not in the PIV. It does appear in Benson's dictionary. I like this one because it will not cause confusion and is unique to the United States/Canadian counties.

Graflando would be a misnomer in my opinion, because there are no grafoj. Provinco would be confusing because provinces are often larger divisions, equivalent to states, rather than subdivisions of states.

Distrikto could work according to the PIV definiton:

Precize limita teritorio, havanta apartan administran unuecon

If counties are distriktoj, then towns could be referred to as subdistriktoj.

Of course, new terms could be coined for these, including the aforementioned konteo and subkonteo or perhaps taŭno. Urbeto is not a fitting term for the official meaning of town. It implies that there are people living within close proximity of each other, which is not always the case, as towns can contain cities, villages, and hamlets.

If anyone wants to give their opinion, it would be appreciated.

acdibble:What I've seen on Wikipedia is the word kantono proposed for the word county. Cantons in English are the Swiss "states". In Canadian French, canton is the equivalent to "town". I feel that kantono is therefore not a fitting word.

ReVo has kantono as well, and in fact I don’t think such terms necessarily need to mean comparable things when applied to different countries (in any language).

After all, in Austria we even use the same word (Bezirk = district) both for boroughs of a city and for the equivalent to US counties - in the same country, and even this doesn’t cause any confusion.

BTW, might municipo be a good translation for "town"?

darkweasel:

acdibble:What I've seen on Wikipedia is the word kantono proposed for the word county. Cantons in English are the Swiss "states". In Canadian French, canton is the equivalent to "town". I feel that kantono is therefore not a fitting word.

ReVo has kantono as well, and in fact I don’t think such terms necessarily need to mean comparable things when applied to different countries (in any language).

After all, in Austria we even use the same word (Bezirk = district) both for boroughs of a city and for the equivalent to US counties - in the same country, and even this doesn’t cause any confusion.

BTW, might municipo be a good translation for "town"?

municipoj (municipalities in English) can be villages, cities, towns, or some other form of local government. Not every village, city, or town is a municipo, so I think that term is best reserved for true municipalities.

acdibble:municipoj (municipalities in English) can be villages, cities, towns, or some other form of local government. Not every village, city, or town is a municipo, so I think that term is best reserved for true municipalities.

OK, I’m not really knowledgeable about political divisions in the US.

I have always used "kantono" to talk about a county in Esperanto.

There are some Esperanto words that somehow give English speakers "weird vibes", a strange sense that it means something else. But "kantono" in Esperanto means "a territory defined for an administrative purpose" (the second definition is the Swiss canton). It's totally fine to use, I use it all the time.

Sometimes you have to just grit your teeth and remind yourself that it means something different in Esperanto than what your gut is telling you, and use it. And in time you will forget that this word ever caused you a problem.

We had a discussion some time back about a translation for the word "yard", some Americans had a hard time calling their backyard a "ĝardeno" (literally garden). But this is what is done in Esperanto, and in British English as well, for that matter, so we do it.

Esperanto doesn't really have a separate word for "town" as we think of it in American English. We tend to use "town" for places that would be called villages anywhere else in the world. For that matter, since we almost never use the word "village" to describe a place where people live in the present day, in the US (even a town of 100 residents is still called a town), I normally use "vilaĝo" to refer to a place that I'd call a town in English. It's a funny linguistic quirk but I feel that village has a sort of foreign, historical, or traditional connotation in US English. "the village" is maybe a small historic center of a town where someone lives. A "village" is a place where people live in foreign countries. Americans don't live in villages; they live in towns.

I would give your sequence as Usono - ŝtatoj - kantonoj - urboj - vilaĝoj.

At a maximum, you can use "urbeto" as an in-between word. But the town where my parents live, for example (small enough that I could count the traffic lights and tell you how many there are, though not on one hand), I'd call that a "vilaĝo" in Esperanto, though I'd never ever call it a village in English. With only two supermarkets, it seems too small to call it an "urbeto".

Here in Canada 'village' is a valid designation. E.g. here is a description of what a village is in the Province of Alberta:

Villages in Alberta

Interesting thread. I'd like to build on erinja's post and say that, since Well's dictionary is largely useless here, "kantono" sounds like a pretty good word so long as everyone using it has the same idea of what it means. Kantono, ĝardeno, urbo, vilaĝo are all imprecise words. They mean different things in different cultures.

A "ĝardeno" in southern Florida and a "ĝardeno" in southern Arizona will convey different images, i.e, lush grass and flowers in Florida and possibly a collection of stones with a cactus plant in the center in the desert environment of Arizona. I just finished re-reading James Herriot's "All Creatures Great and Small." A Yorkshireman's idea of a garden in Herriot's book certainly doesn't agree with my idea of a garden. But I understand what the author is describing.

Usono - ŝtatoj - kantonoj - urboj - vilaĝoj makes sense to me but it may not make sense to an inhabitant of Russia, or Turkey, or Brazil or France.

My hometown has a population of about 2200 people -- a small place, really. It has one traffic light, but is the "county seat" -- meaning that the administrative units that govern the county are located there. A major U.S. highway and a major State highway intersect the town and there is a major interstate highway about a mile west of the town. It is clearly an important location but it only has one grocery store. So what word describes my hometown: urbo, urbeto, malgranda urbo, or something else. Locally, we call it a small town. Within this small town we have a "village" -- a small historical section where you can buy antiques, etc. I would have no problem with calling my hometown an "urbeto" or "malgranda urbo".

If Esperantists want to agree that "kantono" is the word that represents a U.S. county, then we will all understand each other. If we cannot agree, then Esperanto isn't working all that well.

erinja:Esperanto doesn't really have a separate word for "town" as we think of it in American English. We tend to use "town" for places that would be called villages anywhere else in the world. For that matter, since we almost never use the word "village" to describe a place where people live in the present day, in the US (even a town of 100 residents is still called a town), I normally use "vilaĝo" to refer to a place that I'd call a town in English. It's a funny linguistic quirk but I feel that village has a sort of foreign, historical, or traditional connotation in US English. "the village" is maybe a small historic center of a town where someone lives. A "village" is a place where people live in foreign countries. Americans don't live in villages; they live in towns.

I would give your sequence as Usono - ŝtatoj - kantonoj - urboj - vilaĝoj.

But there is a problem here, at least in my county. We have, for example, the "Town of Alexander", and located inside of this is the "Village of Alexander". This happens more than once inside of my county. Also, around here, I think people say "I'm going to town.", but people definitely live in villages. In fact, people will often say they live in Corfu (village in Pembroke), because we have a Corfu zip code (14036), but most people with a Corfu zip code don't actually live in Corfu.

Our county seat is in the City of Batavia, which is located inside the Town of Batavia. I (more or less) translated the English Wikipedia into Esperanto for my county, which can be found here. For lack of a better term, I just left "town" with an explanation in Esperanto of what a town is.

acdibble:But there is a problem here, at least in my county. We have, for example, the "Town of Alexander", and located inside of this is the "Village of Alexander".

As I said in my previous message, you could use "urbeto" for "town" if you truly needed to distinguish.

In articles about foreign places it's never a bad idea to put a gloss on a word, anyway.

urbeto [town], vilaĝo [village]

It clearly requires explanation since even within one country, even within one state, designations of places aren't done the same way, as you mentioned in your previous message.

Certainly there is the matter that laws vary so widely from country to country and, especially in the USA, from state to state. In Virginia, the state in which I live, there are counties, cities, and towns. Cities and towns are all municipalities, but which is which is something of a historical and legal accident, as the distinction is not based on size. In my immediate area there is a town which is larger in area and population than a nearby city. In other (US) states, laws differ yet more. In some places, "village" is an informal designation of a small area with a few dwellings and shops. In other places, "village" has a real legal meaning. Given the diversity of meanings, legal and otherwise, and the plethora of terms, from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and nation to nation, I doubt that there is one entirely satisfactory solution to the terminological problem in Esperanto or even in differing national languages.