you can give them some bs like he comes from a hamlet nestled ...
although using the word nestled could also indicate ambiguous sexuality on the author's part

Hamlet sounds close (but let's stop using it or we'll have obi here in no time). But if a native speaker says that small community is great, I'm not going to argue :)

Rural?

yeah small community is probably good, for the stated reasons. one note though, small community dwelling sounds a bit strange to me. omit the word dwelling.

Abge is right - sparse is usually used in English for that.

Also hahahahaha at semck

Ways to say group that is small in number

"Puny group"
"Small group"
"Insignificant group"
"Nascent group" (depends if it is going to grow or not)
"Little group"
"Tiny group"
"Miniscule group"
"Feeble group"

you know

If you want to mean like a small town in nowheresville you can just say "Nowheresville" lol

@thuce amber suggested sparse prior to discovering that this is about a hamlet. sparse means low density, probably over a large area, which is probably not what he's going for here.

Uly, the Brits have two amazing resource books for things like this. The one still in print is the Oxford Collocations Dictionary, and the other one is the (something) Dictionary of English Word Combinations. Look up the word you want to use (population?), and they list common words and phrases that are sometimes used in conjunction with that word. A second, harder way to do that would be to access one of the mega-databases of how words are used (mostly in print, although some of them are in speech, and some are both). These are called corpora, and Wiki has an article on them at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_corpus. Finally, here is a website I found by googling "small population" that explains what a small population is, with examples. http://uregina.ca/~morrisev/Sociology/Sampling%20from%20small%20populations.htm. I think one of these should provide a satisfactory answer to your question. :-)

Mujus, those are fine sources which will complement my usage of BNC nicely. Since the translation is a collaborative effort and others are more into American English so it's great that OCD distinguishes between BrE and AmE. However, I know ANC is not yet online; is there some accessible equivalent to it?

Homie come from Plateau Heights, you don't wanna be in that 'hood after dark.

Uly, check out the corpora. Some of them are American English and some are British English. And... some are both.

But it's a lot of work to mine them for their data.

Since you were all kind and helpful, you may look at some old artworks :)

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=172079876163243&set=a.158030307568200.24870.157990267572204&type=3&theater

I think what you had was fine but rural village would be my vote if you are looking for something else.

Whittled?

you're taking out dwelling though right? cause there's no need for that.

It's a verb there, not a noun, so there surely is some need for it.

i thought you were the one asking for advice, now you're going to give me some advice? ok leave it in. then you will win this argument. who cares what the final product is like.

It's not an argument if one of the parties is represented by bloshio.

ok yes, in fact, all my advice was trolling. you didn't believe my hamlet suggestion, my nestled joke or even the fact that "small community dwelling..." sounds awkward. all advice i give on this forum is pure disinformation for trolling purposes.

then again, you did go with "small" in the end which was my initial suggestion. better fix that! find a new word to avoid confirming a point i made.

I won't change the wording just because you happen to support it, sorry :)

haha, oh i'm so disappointed! you will look bad, it's breaking my heart. i'm doing this as a favor to you, jackass.

Yow! Feel the love. ;-)

With bloshio, it's always a labour of love. He's a special, Strange Kind of Woman!

i have seen a lot of decent bolshoi jokes, and a lot of terrible ones. unfortunately your joke just doesn't cut it.

"Nowheresville" is extremely american.

just FYI. and 'small community dwelling' isn't as nice sounding as 'small community nestled' ... but you don't really 'nest' on a plateau methinks (it's fine for smaller enclosed/sheltered regions, which plateaus don't really fit...).

the question of a 'sparely' populated region really depends on the sort of community it is, if you're talking a town/urban area then sparsely doesn't fit very well.

otherwise, if you're referring to a rural-farming or hunter-gather style (nomadic) community then it would be sparse... "scattered" is also good.

"small", "minor", or "self-reliant" (kinda implying small, isolated but a positive connotation).

"obscure" is also nice, with "inconspicuous", "lonesome", "remote", "secluded", or "unsung"...

"tributary" is a great word, but may not be what you're aiming for.

and "Vibrant" is a nice word if you want to use a second adjective to counter the negative connotations of being small...

my 2 cent.

I've seen both dwelling on and nestled in plateaus used but Dendros aren't living there because of some defensive concerns, it's just their ancestral land. The original Czech word was closest to residing/dwelling so I didn't change it.

"Hamlet sounds close (but let's stop using it or we'll have obi here in no time)."

Even days without Internet and 350 miles or so away...

And STILL my Shakespeare Senses lead me ;)

(Though yes, leaving aside the character, that is a decent translation, it sounds like...)