City and town.

[emsr2d2]

When should I say "a town" and when I say "a city"?

You should use "town" when referring to a town and "city" when referring to a city. If you Google the name of the relevant place, you will find out quite quickly if the place in question is officially a town or a city.

 

[sdgsdg]

Let us be more specific.

All I know is that there is a country, but this country has big and small cities/ towns. There are also villages there.
If we say that the country is divided into regions, is the capital city or a town?

 

[probus]

In some parts of the English-speaking world, the largest settlement of a region is often referred to as the county town. But generally it doesn't matter whether a country is divided into regions. The difference between a city and a town is a matter of population. Cities have more people than towns.

County town - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[sdgsdg]

In some parts of the English-speaking world, the largest settlement of a region is often referred to as the county town. But generally it doesn't matter whether a country is divided into regions. The difference between a city and a town is a matter of population. Cities have more people than towns.

County town - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

To be more specific again. London is the capital of Britain. Is it a city of a town? Washington is the capital of the United States of America. Is it a city or a town?
Is the capital of a country a city or a town?

 

[emsr2d2]

To be more specific again, London is the capital of Britain the United Kingdom. Is it a city of or a town?

London is a city.

Washington DC is the capital of the United States of America. Is it a city or a town?

Washington is a city.

Is the capital of a country a city or a town?

There is no single answer to that question. Being a capital doesn't dictate whether a place is a city or a town.

 

[Skrej]

There is no clear rule on what makes a city a city or a town a town. Forget about trying to classify them by population. At least in the United States, the terms 'city', 'town', and 'village' vary wildly and regionally. The designation is largely determined by differing state standards, and is often based on the form of local governance, rather than population.

For example the state of New York has about 61 cities, and roughly 555 villages. In the state of New York, a 'town' is an geographical area of governance, and may include multiple villages, or may include no villages. In the state of New York, if you don't live in a city, you live in a 'town', even in you happen to live in completely rural location. Towns in the state of New York are more akin to a county (and often follow county lines). The populations of those villages range from hundreds of thousands down to just a few hundred people, yet they're all 'villages'.

Contrast that to my state of Kansas, where classification is far simpler, and everything is a 'city'. Populations of those 'cities' range from around 400,000 down to about 15. Up until 2017, the smallest 'city' had a population of 5, but the residents decided to become unincorporated, so they're no longer officially a 'city'. I grew up on a farm, but the closest 'city' (about 10 miles from our house) had a population of 30. The nearest school (where our mailing address was out of) was in a 'city' of only about 350 people.

In my neighboring state of Oklahoma, they do use population as a rough guideline - any incorporated municipality with a population of 1,000 or more is a 'city', under that and it's a 'town'. Note that there are several 'towns' with single-digit populations as low a 2.

That's just how three states handle naming conventions; the other 47 states have rules which vary just as widely.

In addition, the way people refer to a municipality colloquially often differs from its official designation. For example, even though my tiny hometown is officially a 'city', we always spoke of driving to 'town' not the 'city', or needing to go to 'town' to buy groceries, for example.

The only way to know the official classification is to look up the location in question. Colloquially, towns are typically smaller than cities, regardless of the official classification. When the distinction gets blurry, you just kind of have to go by whatever term locals seem to use if you really think it's that important (which it likely isn't.)

 

[probus]

The American situation described by @Skrej is exactly paralled here in Canada. In my home province of Ontario we have more than one so-called city that consists almost entirely of farmland or a mix of farmland and wilderness. I believe this is because there are some economic or legal advantages to being legally defined as a city, although I don't know in detail what those are.

 

[emsr2d2]

Until a couple of decades ago, the difference between a town and a city in the UK was really easy to work out. If a place had a cathedral, it was a city. If it didn't, it wasn't. There were a couple of exceptions - for example, Birmingham was deemed a city in 1889 and it's never had a cathedral.

 

[sdgsdg]

The existing of the two words is very confusing.

Is the administrative division of province and government authority of district or services such as hospitals and universities determines this?
There are some students in the villages who do not have universities, so they go to the capital or big cities to study.
Here in the Arab countries there are no more than two words to describe this.
Either a city or a village.
The two words are translated from English to Arabic as one word, and there are no two translations for that.

 

[Tarheel]

@sdgsdg I'm afraid you often don't say what you really mean to say. I suggest that you write shorter, simpler sentences for the time being.

 

[emsr2d2]

The existing existence of the two words is very confusing.

It's only confusing if you don't know the difference between the terms. You need a very good dictionary and you probably need to live in a foreign country for years before understanding the true difference.

Is Does the administrative division of province and government authority of a district, or services such as hospitals and universities, determines determine this?

No.

There are some students in the villages who that do not have universities, so they go to the capital or big cities to study.

I'm sure that's true. I wouldn't expect a village to have a university.

Here in the Arab countries there are no more than two words to describe this. A place is either a city or a village.

Well, that's not the case in English, and the terms differ depending on which English-speaking country you're talking about.

The two words are translated from English to Arabic as one word, and there are no two translations for that.

That can't be helped. Stop trying to translate word-for-word from Arabic to English. You need to learn English as an independent language.

 

[sdgsdg]

@sdgsdg I'm afraid you often don't say what you really mean to say. I suggest that you write shorter, simpler sentences for the time being.

I meant to say,
administrative division of province and government authority of district or services such as hospitals and universities determines if this a town or a city.

 

[emsr2d2]

I meant to say no comma here that the administrative division of a province and the government authority of a district, or services such as hospitals and universities, determines determine if this a place is a town or a city.

It doesn't. You need to remember that whether a place is referred to as a village, a hamlet, a town or a city differs from country to country. You're looking for a single answer where there is none.

 

[Amigos4]

@sdgsdg I am curious. Why are you so interested in understanding the differences between cities and towns?

 

[sdgsdg]

Because they have the same translation in Arabic.
No difference in meaning.

 

[jutfrank]

I'd like to highlight the following quote from post #26, which gets to what I think is the salient point here.

In addition, the way people refer to a municipality colloquially often differs from its official designation. For example, even though my tiny hometown is officially a 'city', we always spoke of driving to 'town' not the 'city', or needing to go to 'town' to buy groceries, for example.

I don't think official designation or legal definition is what sdgsdg is (or should be) asking about. The question relates to how these words are most commonly used and what people mean when they use them.

In semantics terms, the conceptual hierarchy is such that 'city' is a hyponym of 'town' (meaning roughly that a city is a 'kind' of town). As Skrej points out, his hometown is officially designated a 'city'. Similarly, think of how London is sometimes called 'London Town' or how we speak of 'Downtown New York'. This is all to say that the two words differ in their semantic intension—the set of properties and attributes associated with a particular word. This is not merely a question of definition.

 

[sdgsdg]

live in a large geographical area and the area in which I live is not a village, but is it city or town? Unfortunately, I don’t know.
The concept of a village here in the Arab countries is that it is a small area with no airport, modern hospital, large parks, or famous universities. It is also very difficult to translate this word from Arabic to English.
Should I translate it as city or town?
Also, is it a city center or town centre?

 

[Tarheel]

In THE Arabic language, there is no DIFFERENCE between the two words.

The following sentence has numerous problems.

 

[Tdol]

When I say a town and when I say a city?

In the UK cities can simply be big or have the status granted to them by the monarch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_status_in_the_United_Kingdom

Different countries have different classifications- on the news I hear of second and third tier cities in China. I have no idea how they measure this, but do imagine that they're big.

 

[jutfrank]

Should I translate it as city or town?

Where exactly is it? Give us the name.