Lakes are often considered to be large freshwater bodies. “Seas” are large bodies of salt water, usually enclosed or semi-enclosed by land. That is why the Caspian and Aral Seas are called that, even though technically they they are salt lakes.
Why would you not consider the Caribbean Sea, North Sea, Baltic Sea, Red Sea, Bering Sea, Sea of Japan, or South China Sea to be seas? And I have never heard anybody refer to the Mediterranean Ocean.
I don’t know that many people call it the Carribean sea… I have heard it called the Carribean Ocean but more often, simply the Carribean. Your other examples are good ones (one I just didn’t think of off the top of my head) and it just goes to show how wierd English is because some of those we call “sea” are enclosed and some are not.
It’s universally called the Caribbean Sea - look at any Atlas. I live not very far from it, and its always called that (Mar Caribe in Spanish). It is never (correctly) called the Caribbean Ocean, because it is a sea, not an ocean. Oceans are the largest bodies of water on the planet; the only bodies normally called oceans are the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and sometimes the Antarctic.
That is true, but personally I’ve never learned the difference between a hibou and a chouette. Actually, I thank clairobscur for starting this thread and fighting my ignorance. I would probably have called any night bird a hibou (except for the harfang des neiges, which is quite recognizable and well-known), and I think most people I know would do the same.
I read the second Harry Potter book in French once, and if I remember correctly, Hedwig was called a chouette. I certainly don’t remember her being called a harfang.
If clairobscur doesn’t object, I’d like to ask a question (while the ornithologists and francophones are gathered round) that is in the same vein as his OP.
Just like l’hibou and la chouette both translate as “owl”, there are two words in French for the bird that English speakers call a “seagull”: le goéland and la mouette.
For example, the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull is called Jonathan Livingston le goéland in French, whereas Chekhov’s play known in English as The Seagull is La Mouette in French (by Tchekhov, bien sur!).
Are goélands and mouettes differentiated in children’s picture books in France or Quebec, like hiboux and chouettes? Are there different cultural implications, like one being “good” and another “evil” (as clairobscur mentioned)?
Concerning the mouette/goeland : As far as I know, there isn’t any widely known difference in representation between mouettes and goelands. I’ not aware of any particuler belief about either, but actually, but it of course doesn’t mean they couldn’t exist.
Personnally, I would be unable to tell them apart. Though I know both words, I never knew what was the difference.
::rummages around for HP a l’ecole des sorciers::
I only skimmed the beginning parts where Harry is wandering around Diagon Alley and owl-buying, but it seems that owls-in-general are referred to as hiboux, whereas Hedwig(e!) herself is referred to as a chouette (because of her species?).
Harry’s Hogwarts letter states that students may bring
When Harry buys Hedwig, we find the following passage:
And another bit pertaining to owls for your reading pleasure:
Cute book, btw, and definitely worth reading, if only to giggle over the Chocogrenouilles, Poudlard, and Drago Malefoy.
As far as I can tell from the species list, the larger, heavier species of gulls are called goelands, while the smaller, more delicate species are called mouettes. Both terms are used to refer to species in the genus Larus – all goelands belong to this genus, while *mouettes * include species in Larus as well as other genera. Most, but not all, mouettes have black heads, while all goelands have white heads.
Most terns are called sternes, but some are called guifettes or noddis.
Nitpick: it’s le hibou. The “h” in the word is “aspired”, which means that we cannot drop the “e” in the article, and also means that the word is probably of Germanic origin.
As for goélands vs. mouettes, I didn’t know the difference either, but I checked in a dictionary on the Web and it seems that goélands are simply bigger birds than mouettes. (And to confuse things they use the orthography goëland.) That’s pretty much what Colibri was saying. Personally, I usually use mouette to refer to a seagull, and around here most of them have a white head.
Apparently, the word “chouette” comes from the old French word for its cry: “choeter” (in modern French, la chouette chuinte). cite
If I’m reading this right, the word seems to derive from a Gaulish onomatopoeia kaw-, which gives rise to the English word “chough” (related to the crow), and chevêche (another kind of owl, via Low Latin cavannus).
If you’re wondering, “chouette” in the sense of “cool” apparently comes from “choeter” with a slang sense of “to flirt.”
Hibou apparently comes from Norman “houbou,” a deformation of Latin “bubo,” in turn from “ululare,” an onomatopoeic word meaning to wail. English “owl” comes from the Germanic “ule,” and I don’t know if ule and ululare are related or if they are just imitating the same sound.
“Harfang” appears to be a Swedish word originally.
FWIW,
Interesting. Oddly, Spanish buho reverses the consonants of the French version.
The Latin Bubo is the scientific name of the large Eagle-Owls.
tom, I’ve always assumed that the difference actually traces back to the divergence between germanic and romance languages. In germanic languages, words tend to be differentiated by adding on new words. German does this much more than English does, creating long German compound words, but English is still a germanic language, all the vocabulary accretions notwithstanding, and the tendancy is more to use adjectives to differentiate. French, on the other hand, derive from Latin, where the passion for precision tends to specific, unique words.
The estimates I’ve seen indicates that English does have a larger vocabulary than most other languages, but I don’t think that’s relevant to the point I’m making. What I’m saying is that the way English constructs words, either “native” or “borrowed”, tends to be more along the germanic line of building words than unique words.
As for more examples, the ones I’m most familiar with come from the legal area. For example, the two versions of section 8 / article 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms / Charte canadienne des droits et libertés reads:
Now, each are equally authoritative, so why does the English version only use two words, while the French uses three? “Seizure” and “saisie” are much the same, but why is “search” used in English, and “fouilles” and “perquisitions” used in French?
The answer is that the two French words are two different types of searches: “fouilles” refers to searches of “meubles” (like desks or briefcase or cars, or even of the person), while “perquisitions” refers to searches of “immeubles” - houses and other buildings. The drafters of the Charter wanted to make sure that s. 8 applied to all types of searches, and so found it necessary to include both types of searches in the French version.
So in French, by using either “fouilles” or “perquisitions” in a sentence, you can indicate with one word exactly what type of search it was, which may carry legal significance. In English, we would use adjectives or adjectival phrases to make that distinction, for example a “body search”, an “auto search” or a “dwelling-place search”.
I remember reading about other examples in my law-French training books but they’re at my office - I’ll see if I can dig them up.
clairobscur, my impression is that French is by far the more precise language - if you have plenty of time to work on a particular piece of writing, like a section of a statute, the French version tends to be shorter and more compact - I’ve noticed that many times when looking at our federal statutes, which are printed with the French and the English side by side - the French version of a section/article is usually much more compact, because it takes more words to be precise in English. But, if you’re writing a more descriptive or discursive piece, where it’s general concepts that you’re trying to get across rather than an exact meaning, the English tends to be shorter - for example, in judgments of our Supreme Court and Federal Court of Appeal, which are published in both languages, side-by-side. There, the English paragraphs tend to be shorter than the French paragraphs.
Thanks for your input regarding the goéland/mouette distinctions, clairobscur, Colibri, and severus. I’m rather relieved to find out that there are not differences that would be obvious to an educated (but not bird-nerd!) native francophone, since I tend to use both words when referring to what I call a “seagull”.
Yes, thanks. :smack: (Actually, my fingers seemed to hesitate at typing l’hibou. After posting, I had to go out to run some errands and it started to nag at me – as did my recollection of seeing goëland with the diaresis – but not enough to rush back to the computer and make a correction!)
I liked your dictionary link, severus, whose second paragraph gives the handy rule of thumb that if it’s bigger than a duck it’s a goëland, and if it’s smaller than a duck it’s a mouette. [And, naturally, we know from Monty Python and the Holy Grail that if it weighs the same as a duck it’s neither a goëland nor a mouette, but a witch!]
Ah, but what kind of duck? A canard, sarcelle, fuligule, eider, macreuse, harelde, garrot, harle, or erismature? 
Nothing, actually - it simply has the form of a diminutive, so assumed the function of one. Anyway, round those parts, particularly Belgium, they spoke French slightly differently to the standards set by l’Academie Francaise. A local dialect, if you will. I don’t know if they still do.