h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Is it only in the UK that the term 'bungalow' is used to describe single-storey houses?

The word certainly exists in other English-speaking countries, but estate agents tend to favour an alternative form of words. It also exists in non-English-speaking countries, as the word means 'a house in the Bengali style', and comes from either Gujarati or Hindi.

In Ireland, a bungalow is a modern single storey free-standing house. Bungalows have large windows that are wider than they are tall. Older single storey houses are usually called cottages, although that word can also be used for old two-storey houses in rural settings.

Ta - helpful These terms seem a little ill-defined...

'Bungalow' isn't too badly defined, except when considering a *dormer* bungalow - ie a one-and-a-bit level building with the roofline coming down to the top of the ground floor, but with some rooms one floor up which have windows poking through the side of the roof.

Distincly unnerving to be sitting in the car whilst your son is practising his driving, to have one come around a corner at you on a low loader!

hmmm, here in the states, one level houses are usually called "ranchers"

The one+half storey type with dormers is a 'bungalow' in Canada.
(Ranchers are people in Texas.)
A 'cottage' is traditionally one storey and originally one room (aka cabin) but today any vacation home or second home, especially in a sub-suburban scenic rural setting, is called a cottage even if it's a twenty room lakeside manor with pool, tennis courts and airstrip.
Usage, or the subjective perception arising from usage, invariably dictates the nomenclature these days.
The old English terms Townhouse and Rowhouse are now usually interchangeable here, both being very narrow, two or three storey apartments attached to many others side by each in high density urban redevelopment schemes.

peace
jwf

Rowhouse? Never heard of this one in the UK, is it equivalent to our terrace houses?

Bungalow certainly entered the English language via the Raj era.

Rowhouses would refer to any row of joined houses here. The term 'townhouses' refers to the fancier, more expensive ones.
The English notion of a 'town house' never meant much here except to a very few, very rich, Victorian landowners. Usually, the merchant classes and professionals who might afford a second home lived in the city and built a rustic cottage by the sea or a lake in the woods.

But I know in England there are both fancy rows made of brownstone (Is Seville Row among them?) and the working-class rowhousing, a la Coronation Street. Are they all called terraces?

Perhaps it's because of the once-available space in the new world that ajoined housing was rare here except in the inner cities. In recent years however near-suburban developments and urban re-developments have become much more high-density consisting of apartments and rowhousing. The traditional single-unit family-homes are now constructed only beyond the city limits.
jwf

Yes, it sounds as if rowhouses and terraces houses are the same and generally the term can be applied to any type of terrace.

But tell some one in Harley Street or the Royal Crescent that they live in a terrace and you would get short shrift!

The distinction between terraced and town houses is that terraced houses have two or three floors, whereas town houses were built with four or more so as to accomodate servants. Oh, and terraced house tend to have less stucc

Terraced housing, just like Corronation St jwf. Just like the house I was born and brought up in.

The subject line of this thread begs a comprehensive list of other one storey dwellings from cultures beyond our own.

As a Canuck, may I start with the 'igloo', which I'm sure you'll all recognise as a domed structure formed with blocks of hard packed snow. Body heat and a small whale oil lamp produce enough condensation inside to create a perfectly insulating skim of ice on the interior walls or a trickle of fresh water, depending on needs and the time of day.

peace
~jwf~

For my own experience, whenever someone said "house" I thought of a single story, somewhat spread out structure. Whenever I travel to Europe, or to any number of cities and towns east of the Mississippi, it never ceases to amaze me, all the houses with multiple stories, attics, and cellars or basements. I'd never lived in a house with more than one story until my family lived in Santa Rosa, California in '76-'79. Somewhat after that was our only other one that was part of a multi-level Villa we rented from some really nice folks in Sicily, Italy.

It's probably a due to how spread out and open it is (though some cities, particularly gold-rush founded or industry fueled cities, are quite crowded and have very different housing in the "downtown" areas) out here in the Western USA. There was rarely a need for any structure to be built with more than one floor, though European immigrants frequently did so for the town centers, obviously drawing on experience and knowledge of how to best use the space. Of course, there are quite a few large farmhouses with multiple levels, but even those are somewhat rare. Cellars are common in the "tornado alley" part of the West, and the Northwest has more homes with multiple levels (perhaps again due to the nature of the people who settled there as well as the time in which they settled).

I've still yet to live in a proper house with more than one story, unless you count apartments (sorry, flats - Ah! NOW I know where that term came from!). Consequently, no one has a special name for the types of homes out here that are single-story. Heck, it's not uncommon to find houses out here without even an attic, and I've never been in a house with a basement or cellar.

A term that IS used a lot out here is "adobe," but that of course refers to the material the house is made with, and has been somewhat abused into referring to the "look" of an adobe house, or the style. Since it's like saying a "brick" house, the only real indication that one has of the layout of a true adobe house was the fact that it was impossible to build more than one-level homes with true adobe, at least in the past.

Just my $2.02 worth for this part of the World.

Am I correct in thinking the Spanish/Mexican term 'pueblo' means house? I think 'ranchero' is a Hollywood creation isn't it? And it refers to the whole 'estate' not just the 'ranch house' itself.
jwf

Pueblo can mean anything from a nation down to a village in Spanish. In America it might refer to the construction style of the Pueblo Indians, as it impressed the trans-Atlantic interlopers considerably.

Ranchero is an American construction based on rancho, and just means a rancher, in the same way that caballo and caballero are horse and rider.

Is pueblo like 'people' then? We the pueblo...?

I'm serious. Many languages refer to the people, the nation, the village, the community, the 'Us', with a single word/concept.

The word 'Canada' was written phonetically by a Latin-writing jesuit as the answer given by natives when asked for the name of their country/nation. It could have meant Us, this village, we the people of this community, we who live here.

peace
jwf

Pueblo is exactly like people or populace and has that scalable quality you mention. In the case of the Pueblo Indians it specifically referred to their villages, which are pretty impressive - particularly the Petra-like cliffside ones - but it was in more of a 'them' than an 'us' context.

Yeah, what Mycroft said.

The Spanish word "Pueblo" is roughly equivalent to the English word "village," with both connotations of a group of houses as well as the group of people that lives in them. So, "pueblo" was given to the types of Native Americans that (unlike many other Nomadic tribes) were far more centralized and settled in one area here in the Southwest USA, like the Taos, Hopi, Zuni, and many others. They are all descendents of the Anasazi - at least I think that's the latest school of thought. The Americanism of "Pueblo Indians" refers to all of these tribes that populate much of the Southwest, and have been here thousands of years. I think maybe the Spanish settlers gave them that name since they were quite different from the nomadic tribes across much of the rest of the USA.