Catriona McDermid (asker) Sep 26, 2013:

Thank you very much everyone! All very interesting and helpful.

Charles Davis Sep 26, 2013:

Neil It comes from Old French canton meaning corner, derived in turn from Italian cantone.

But the crucial point here is that this is Guatemala, and "cantón" has a meaning or meanings there that it doesn't have in other places. If you look up "cantón" in the DRAE, you find it can mean several different things, the first being "esquina". As a territorial unit, the definition is "cada una de las divisiones administrativas del territorio de ciertos Estados, como Suiza, Francia y algunos americanos". That's fine for those countries. But they say it also means "pago (pueblo pequeño) in El Salvador (not just in El Salvador, in fact). That's the relevant meaning here, and you can't apply other meanings to this case. It's crucial to translate terms like this in relation to the context. If the text were from Costa Rica or Ecuador, "cantón" would mean a large district, the second-level subdivision of a province. But in Central America (apart from Costa Rica) it means a very small settlement.

Neil Ashby Sep 26, 2013:

Cantón Doesn't "cantón" come from the French word "canton" which is defined as "canton, an administrative district" there are 3883 in France. In Canada (Quebec) in can mean "county, municipality, region, commune"
http://www.wordreference.com/fren/canton

So in English is could be a few things! I think 'ward', 'county' or 'district' would be applicable from UK English.

Charles Davis Sep 26, 2013:

Paraje Just let me add that this use of "paraje" seems to be specific to Guatemala and neighbouring countries, and the normal meaning of "paraje" in Spanish is not applicable here. Elsewhere it is not used to denote a kind of settlement, as far as I know.

Charles Davis Sep 25, 2013:

Order Paraje < caserío < aldea. But the tricky one is cantón, which can be a village on the outskirts of a town (poblado) or an area of a town or city (some parts of Guatemala City are called cantones and some barrios). It's difficult to gauge the size of a cantón compared with paraje/caserío/aldea.

Here's a quotation which gives a hint of how slippery these terms are (it's referring to Guatemala City):

"El Cantón Jocotenango, conocido antaño también como caserío, se constituye hoy como un barrio ubicado al Norte de la ciudad capital, en la zona 2."
http://cultura.muniguate.com/index.php/component/content/art...

Here's the relevant article (4 [b]) from Guatemala's Código Municipal. There are more terms than just these, and all are subdivisions of a municipio:

"Las entidades locales de ámbito territorial en que el municipio se divide, tales como: aldea, caserío, paraje, cantón, barrio, zona, colonia, lotificación, parcelamiento urbano o agrario, microregión, finca, y demás formas de ordenamiento territorial definidas localmente."
http://www.unicef.org/guatemala/spanish/CodigoMunicipal.pdf

There's a PhD thesis in this.

patinba Sep 25, 2013:

order The order is as they have been given to you. I would suggest settlement/hamlet, village, town, neighborhood, municipal district

Sara Ruiz Sep 25, 2013:

Paraje isn't synonym of caserío, caserío is a house, paraje is a place, normally without houses, so, inhospitable but it can be not isolated.
The biggest cantón: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantón
Aldea is the smallest but it can be isolated or not.
And caserío is the most isolated house because it usually is in an isolated place, a paraje.

Catriona McDermid (asker) Sep 25, 2013:

paraje/caserío, aldea, cantón Does anyone know which of these three/four would be the smallest or most isolated? Or the biggest/least isolated?
Thank you!