  Starting with the premise that the electric charge associated with
fundamental fermions (quarks and leptons) can, under certain circumstances, be
appropriately represented as a real \emph{internal} 2-vector, the mathematical
``machinery'' implicit in the associated internal 2-space is shown to apply to
\emph{all} fundamental fermions. In particular, it is shown that \emph{flavor
eigenstates}, \emph{flavor doublets} and \emph{families} of fundamental
fermions can all be represented in the 2-space, and that such things as
internal \emph{colors}, \emph{family replication}, and the observed
\emph{number} (three) of families, are more-or-less implicit in the new 2-space
description. Moreover, the model predicts that, unlike the case in the standard
model, particles such as the $u$, $c$ and $t$ quarks are characterized by
significant internal (topological and other) differences. Similar differences
may help explain recent observations of (nearly) maximal $\nu_{\mu}-\nu_{\tau}$
mixing.
