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Comment by azepoi | Hacker News Reader

This is the infamous Wuppertaler Schwebebahn. What's with people calling cities and towns in foreign countries villages? Being unbeknownst to you doesn't mean it's a village. Wuppertal is home to 350 thousands inhabitants an counting. Wuppertal is the result of th fusion of several existing cities including Ebersfeld which had over 100 thousand people in 1895 and considered then a Großstadt.

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I come from a town of (then) about 350 people in California. After living in Europe for a while I started calling it a village. Americans always look at me funny... but there's a town of 3,000 nearby that calls itself a "small town" and the town next to that, with 13,000, also calls itself a "small town," so how are we supposed to differentiate?

So hunch is that some people think of "town" as covering anything from 1-250,000 people (arbitrary upper bound mine) and think "village" is something foreigners have instead of towns.

That said, it's absurd to call Wuppertal a village, the pictures are obviously not of a village, and Schweben is not Fliegen! :-)

Where I'm from, Northeast US, town vs. city is a matter of how the government is organized. I grew up in a city of 10k people, and later lived in a town of 50k. Here, at least, a village is a designation often used to indicate the "town center" or more densely developed areas of otherwise fairly spread out towns.

It’s legislated in Germany ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_town_law

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadtrecht

The Stadtrecht phenomenon is what makes people call Dutch cities cities too. Legally, the term 'city' ('stad') doesn't even exist nowadays here, so it mostly a term used intuitively and according to historical legacy.

Interestingly, the Dutch province of Frisia famously features eleven cities (all historically holders of Dutch stadsrechten) of which the smallest has just over 700 inhabitants, whilst the biggest 'village' in the province boasts over 45,000.

It's worth noting that, if you're in New England, "town" carries a different meaning than in much of the rest of the country: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_town

I spent a lot of time in New England. There, it tends to be all municipalities are legally designated towns, and if the town has a certain minimum population, it can choose to reorganize as a city. The two differ primarily in style of government: towns are run by boards of selectmen (or aldermen or selectperson .. there are many terms for the same thing) via the town meeting, whereas cities are run by a mayor (which may or may not also have a council which runs similarly to the board of selectmen). Town and city are the only legal designation, and things like village and hamlet carry no such ramifications. “Village” might simply be part of the name of a municipality (e.g. Sturbridge Village), or it may refer to a particular neighborhood within a larger municipality [0]. We sometimes call small municipalities by the ocean a fishing village, but again village has no legal meaning there.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_villages_in_Massachu...

Perhaps calling a foreign place a village is a way of downplaying it, so that the listener does not feel that they were expected to know the place by name, perhaps?

Ok, we've de-villaged and Wuppertaled the title above.

Often people who are non-native speakers of English don't know the difference between town and village. I hear plenty Dutch people say that they're from a village, while town would probably be a better word.

Only because once you leave the Netherlands, the true size of things suddenly becomes clear.

I doubt town and village are used consistently in the Anglosphere either. They tend to be used fairly consistently in New England (though I can think of exceptions) where it's not so much about absolute size but whether they have a town government or are part of a larger entity.

In Illinois, the distinction is one based on how the municipality was incorporated:

The town of Cicero, the village of Winnetka, the city of Evanston—though some of these designations seem quainter than others, they have nothing to do with population or size. “It really all depends on which statute under state law the municipality incorporated under,” says David Bennett, executive director of the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus, an association of 272 area leaders who convene to collaborate and converse about the health of the metro area. Towns are municipalities that were created prior to the 1872 passing of the Cities and Villages Act, which set out standards and guidelines for incorporation. Established in 1867, Cicero happens to be the only town in the Chicago area. The distinctions between the terms city and village are more ambiguous. In states such as New York, “cities and villages can differ according to how the state defines them, in terms of the procedures for setting them up, the governance structures and the powers allotted to them automatically by the municipal code,” says Joshua Drucker, assistant professor of urban planning and policy at DePaul University, who researched the topic when he moved to Illinois four years ago. “But in Illinois, there’s very little difference. The largest remaining difference is that villages must have exactly six trustees, whereas cities may have six or more aldermen.”

https://www.timeout.com/chicago/things-to-do/city-village-to...

I live in a village (Oak Park) with population 52,381 adjacent to a city (Berwyn) with population 54,391 and a town (Cicero) with population 80,796

Townships in New York are county subdivisions that are large enough to encompass multiple villages. Not what is conventionally considered a town.

> In South Africa, the terms township and location usually refer to the often underdeveloped racially segregated urban areas that, from the late 19th century until the end of apartheid, were reserved for non-whites, namely Indians, Africans and Coloureds.

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Township_(South_Africa)

I was somewhat confused when I first heard about townships in the US ;)

I think it's similar in Pennsylvania where I grew up. The small groupings within a township (or that can straddle townships) are apparently officially census designated places according to Wikipedia. But the same articles seem to refer to them colloquially as towns or villages interchangeably. I'm pretty sure we called them towns when I was growing up.

There is quite a variation of governmental divisions within the US and what's important or even what exists in one state or region may not be so in another state or region. And informal nomenclature varies as well.

Where I live a village is what real estate agents call the massive block of suburbia they just built in the middle of nowhere. Or some sort of outdoor shopping center.

That's because "tuin" which sounds exactly like Town means something totally different in Dutch (garden)

Since we're on the grammar train.

Infamous means: well known for some bad quality or deed, such as "an infamous war criminal".

What is the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn infamous for?

No, no, no... infamous just means you are so famous you are IN famous.

Merriam Webster disagrees: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/infamous

Definition of infamous

1: having a reputation of the worst kind : notoriously evil an infamous traitor

2: causing or bringing infamy : DISGRACEFUL an infamous crime

3: convicted of an offense bringing infamy

I think that was a reference to the movie The Three Amigos. The characters misunderstanding the word sent them off on their unintentionally heroic adventure.

Ahh.

I had actually wondered if it could also just mean "famous" (but not necessarily in a bad way) like notorious can but apparently not. I had to look it up to be sure.

Maybe you're thinking of "inflammable," which due to confusion has mostly been shortened to "flammable."

Well at least SOMEONE got the reference!

It is infamous for the 1950 publicity stunt in which they put an elephant on board. The elephant got scared and jumped out.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi

It's a train that travels through through the same region but misusing 'village' or 'infamous' are not cars on the grammar train.

>What's with people calling cities and towns in foreign countries villages?

I dunno. Why do we call them neighborhoods when hardly anyone knows their neighbors?

Because even if you don't know them they're still your neighbors.

Why do we call them “drive ways” when we park in them? Why do we call them “parkways” when we drive on them?

The amount of traffic on some parkways can make one feel as if they park there though.

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