بلدة versus مدينة
While writing a basic text in Arabic today, I wanted to talk about my town/city. At first, I picked مدينة; then I thought it might be clearer to say مدينة صغيرة; and then, based on dictionary definitions, I realised a مدينة صغيرة might actually be synonymous to بلدة. And then I started wondering – where exactly do I draw a line? Is it subjective, or is it up to variations depending on where the Arabic speaker hails from (similarly to how the definitions of ‘town’ and ‘city’ may vary across English-speaking countries)?
Incidentally, in case it helps at all, the population is 29,884, and the municipality has a total area of 595.811 km² (230.044 mi²).