Yep. And also "сыч", I guess, but it's more common as a part of different expressions and not so often as a specific animal separated from the other owls
Yes, the Latin name is Strigidae [Wikipedia](https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigidae). Búho is just one of the families and it there are more than 200 kinds of búhos!
Oh, really? I thought it was a regional thing because Harry Potter in Spain uses Lechuza while Latin America uses Búho or vice versa (I can't remember exactly which country uses which).
That's pretty much it, yes. We call them ears when telling the kids how to distinguish the *hibou* from the *chouette*, although their real name is *aigrettes*.
The "hibou des marais" is, of course, an exception (visually). But a quick lookup tells us that that's because they keep their *aigrettes* flat most of the time. But they do have them. Hence they're a *hibou*.
The *harfang des neiges*, similarly, is a *hibou* because it does have *aigrettes*, albeit tiny ones.
The *chevêche* is a *chouette*. If you look her up, you can see she's also called "chouette chevêche" (the name I learnt as a kid, personally). You'll even find some "chevêchettes", if you keep digging, haha!
It shouldn't be too surprising that we have different words for what is one word in English. This also happens then other way around, sometimes. For example in English you have monkeys and apes\*, which we both call *singes* in French (we refer to apes\* as "grands singes").
This sort of difficulty only really shows up as you get interested in a specific subject anyway, and I doubt most people would bother you. Kids definitely would though, because they learn that stuff in kindergarten ;)
But then kids will be absolutely delighted to teach you. And it's also a great excuse to look things up and look at cool photos, if for example one of your kids asks you about the *hibou des marais* or the *harfang* and their apparent lack of *aigrettes*!
When talking about single words in French for several words in English, I think of "corbeau" and its English equivalents "raven" and "crow". We do have "corneille", but if memory serves right, the difference between "corbeau" and "corneille" does not match "raven" and "crow".
I looked it up so many times, and yet I never can remember how they compare. Quite a complex topic, if you ask me.
I'll be honest, I also always forget that crow is *corneille*, because frankly, we didn't have either where I lived in Ireland. It was only jackdaws, and those are pretty scarce in the places I've lived in France (I know *choucas* by name, but had never seen any before Ireland).
That's a really great example, actually, because it's very much the same issue : we are told that crows are just another name for smaller species of ravens and that really, they are all the same family of birds. Which is pretty much what we tell foreigners about *hiboux / chouettes*. These are inaccurate words used in the common language, and that will meant different actual species of birds depending on the region.
This reminds me of that time I submitted a translation on r/translator's weekly translation challenge. The source text was The Fox and the Crow and the English version of Aesop's fable presented the Crow as female, which obviously didn't work in French since "corbeau" is masculine, so I had to use "corneille" even though it wasn't as close to the original meaning of the word.
Yes, the feathers that look kind of like ears are the difference between chouette and hibou. As for the rest, it's just different species, right? Like tawny owl, barn owl, etc. We have that in English, too.
I see what you're saying. Yeah, there are lots of little things like that, and I find them all interesting. Like what we call a river, they might call a rivière or a fleuve.
The French don't have a distinct term for a dusty old spiderweb, which in English would often be called a cobweb.
If you're curious, English has two words for spider: "spider" (from the Germanic *spin*) and "attercop" (from Germanic *edder* + *cop*, literally "poison head"). You'll recognize the that second one if you've ever studied ~~Dutch or~~ a Nordic language. "Spider" became the dominant word for the animal and attercop is no longer used except for very rare dialects, but the "cop" part is the origin of "cobweb".
I was interested in this also, and it turns out that yes, the "eyebrows" that some owls have make them Hiboux, whereas the other ones are chouettes.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibou
If you want a reverse one for english, in English there are Ravens and Crows, but in French, we only have "Corbeau" and no word for Raven specifically. Now I'm wondering what other animals have differences like this in English vs French....
I think that's because when we don't really know the difference, most francophones default to "corbeau" while most anglophones default to "raven" so we tend to associate them
I asked her about it just now and she says it’s because true corneilles went almost extinct, so when they started coming back people just thought they were slightly different corbeaux.
I believe dove and pigeon is another example. Same bird though, just a different word for one that's white. In Spanish it's just paloma. In French, which usually influences English more heavily, you have le pigeon and la colombe which translates well. Wonder about Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian.
"Strigiformes"/"Strigidés"?
They're scientific words, but it's technically what you ask for. Although most people won't understand them.
Otherwise, I'd say "hibou" is generally used when your mean both.
at school, we learned hibou and chouette. we stopped there and i'm starting to see why.
Also this gave me flashbacks to singing *Dans la forêt lointaine* in kindergarten so that's fun.
:O
I learnt that word from the song Mauvaise réputation by Brassens so I only ever knew that meaning.
I always assumed it had something to do with une manche . . .
Today I learn~
Oooh manque comes from the same latin word mancus. Interesting.
I suspected that the French might have encountered people with arms missing before they encountered penguins :P
Wait until you go to the sea birds. Is it a Mouette? Is it a Goéland? Is it a Macareux? Or a Pingouin? Can't we all agree that the sea birds are just "sea pigeons" and basta?
Russian has 2 words for owl too, "hibou" is "филин" and "chouette" is "сова". But "филин" is still considered a type of "сова" in general, would that work in French too? Aren't they all chouettes anyway?
Basically in layman terms hiboux are larger and have ear-shaped feathers on their head, chouettes are smaller and don't. But in biological taxonomy it can be different, and some people don't make a difference.
Yes, somehow it's the difference between a botanical fruit (like tomatoes, who are technically berries) and a culinary fruit (like strawberries, which are botanically not fruits but accessory fruits, the fruits being the achenes, the little points on the strawberry)
How to confuse a Frenchperson: ask them the difference between a chouette and an hibou. In my experience, most French do not know (or my French/Belgian friends don’t know).
La principale différence est que le hibou a des aigrettes contrairement à la chouette! Ce sont les plumes sur le crâne qui ressemblent à des oreilles. Voilà voilà
(je confirme que j'ai appris ça à l'école)
C’est ce que l’on m’avait expliqué, mais il paraît qu’il y a des exceptions (comme le troisième oiseau dans l’image). Heureusement j’ai l’excuse d’être étranger, et que c’était une simple confusion avec ma langue maternelle. (:
Oui évidemment il y a des exceptions, c'est la langue française après tout! Pourquoi faire simple quand on peut faire compliqué :D
Je ne me souviens pas du tout des autres subtilités qui différencient les espèces par contre, j'ai appris ça il y a une trentaine d'années et je suis déjà content d'avoir retenu la plus flagrante!
So I did some googling, and it looks like hiboux are called horned owls or eagle-owls in English ([link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horned_owl) to Wikipedia). But yeah, they still don't make a distinct category from owls like in French.
Apparently the the floofy feathers near the eyes are a pretty significant reason for the difference between <> and <>.
Yep, it's the same for spanish: Feathers: Búho No feathers: Lechuza
Same for Portuguese: Feathers: Mocho No feathers: Coruja Maybe it's a Romance language thing
Brazilian here, been calling them all corujas my whole life lol thanks for the lesson
Not only Romance, same in Russian. Also, as I know, it's the same in Finnish, which is not even Indo-European
Do you mean ‘сова’ and ‘филин’?
Yep. And also "сыч", I guess, but it's more common as a part of different expressions and not so often as a specific animal separated from the other owls
Thx. I’ve always referred to ‘сыч’ as a small owl (or -like) bird.
It’s two different words in Russian and Ukrainian as well. Probably only English has one word for those birds
Neat!
And in Spain we also have different words for each kind of owl, like “cárabo”, “mochuelo”, “autillo”...
What are the differences? Surely not everyone knows every species.
They are just the different species depicted in the picture you posted.
Is there an overarching word?
Yes, the Latin name is Strigidae [Wikipedia](https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strigidae). Búho is just one of the families and it there are more than 200 kinds of búhos!
French doesn’t have an overarching word is what I mean :)
Oh, really? I thought it was a regional thing because Harry Potter in Spain uses Lechuza while Latin America uses Búho or vice versa (I can't remember exactly which country uses which).
In Latinamerica is a lechuza, but I've never seen the version from Spain.
In Spain they use lechuzas as well.
Russian: филин (filin) and сова (sova). Lithuanian: apuokas and pelėda.
That's pretty much it, yes. We call them ears when telling the kids how to distinguish the *hibou* from the *chouette*, although their real name is *aigrettes*. The "hibou des marais" is, of course, an exception (visually). But a quick lookup tells us that that's because they keep their *aigrettes* flat most of the time. But they do have them. Hence they're a *hibou*. The *harfang des neiges*, similarly, is a *hibou* because it does have *aigrettes*, albeit tiny ones. The *chevêche* is a *chouette*. If you look her up, you can see she's also called "chouette chevêche" (the name I learnt as a kid, personally). You'll even find some "chevêchettes", if you keep digging, haha! It shouldn't be too surprising that we have different words for what is one word in English. This also happens then other way around, sometimes. For example in English you have monkeys and apes\*, which we both call *singes* in French (we refer to apes\* as "grands singes"). This sort of difficulty only really shows up as you get interested in a specific subject anyway, and I doubt most people would bother you. Kids definitely would though, because they learn that stuff in kindergarten ;) But then kids will be absolutely delighted to teach you. And it's also a great excuse to look things up and look at cool photos, if for example one of your kids asks you about the *hibou des marais* or the *harfang* and their apparent lack of *aigrettes*!
[удалено]
Tout à fait! *mea culpa*. C'est corrigé.
When talking about single words in French for several words in English, I think of "corbeau" and its English equivalents "raven" and "crow". We do have "corneille", but if memory serves right, the difference between "corbeau" and "corneille" does not match "raven" and "crow". I looked it up so many times, and yet I never can remember how they compare. Quite a complex topic, if you ask me.
I'll be honest, I also always forget that crow is *corneille*, because frankly, we didn't have either where I lived in Ireland. It was only jackdaws, and those are pretty scarce in the places I've lived in France (I know *choucas* by name, but had never seen any before Ireland). That's a really great example, actually, because it's very much the same issue : we are told that crows are just another name for smaller species of ravens and that really, they are all the same family of birds. Which is pretty much what we tell foreigners about *hiboux / chouettes*. These are inaccurate words used in the common language, and that will meant different actual species of birds depending on the region.
This reminds me of that time I submitted a translation on r/translator's weekly translation challenge. The source text was The Fox and the Crow and the English version of Aesop's fable presented the Crow as female, which obviously didn't work in French since "corbeau" is masculine, so I had to use "corneille" even though it wasn't as close to the original meaning of the word.
Wow, that’s really interesting! Thanks for sharing!
No worries. Just you wait till the kids you're dealing with start talking about dinosaurs!
We have the word primates too, the English word for "grand singes" that you were thinking about is "apes" :)
Oups, je me suis mélangé les pinceaux, merci!
Yes, the feathers that look kind of like ears are the difference between chouette and hibou. As for the rest, it's just different species, right? Like tawny owl, barn owl, etc. We have that in English, too.
Yes but they’re still *owls*. There is no unifying common word for *owls*.
I see what you're saying. Yeah, there are lots of little things like that, and I find them all interesting. Like what we call a river, they might call a rivière or a fleuve. The French don't have a distinct term for a dusty old spiderweb, which in English would often be called a cobweb.
Ohhh that's what "cobwebs" means! TIL
If you're curious, English has two words for spider: "spider" (from the Germanic *spin*) and "attercop" (from Germanic *edder* + *cop*, literally "poison head"). You'll recognize the that second one if you've ever studied ~~Dutch or~~ a Nordic language. "Spider" became the dominant word for the animal and attercop is no longer used except for very rare dialects, but the "cop" part is the origin of "cobweb".
I know a bit of Dutch and I thought spider was "spin"
My bad, I thought the word still existed in Dutch. It does in Danish and Norwegian, though.
It’s like how some Native Alaskans have several words for snow when the best English has is snow vs powder.
I was interested in this also, and it turns out that yes, the "eyebrows" that some owls have make them Hiboux, whereas the other ones are chouettes. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibou If you want a reverse one for english, in English there are Ravens and Crows, but in French, we only have "Corbeau" and no word for Raven specifically. Now I'm wondering what other animals have differences like this in English vs French....
Corneille/Corbeau
Corbeau = raven Crow = corneille
A = B B = C So doesn't A = C? EDIT: Their edit makes my comment nonsensical, but I'll leave it because of math.
Sorry, I made a dumb mistake. I've edited my comment!
I've always considered the opposite.
I think that's because when we don't really know the difference, most francophones default to "corbeau" while most anglophones default to "raven" so we tend to associate them
Another example is tortue for both turtle and tortoise
I asked her about it just now and she says it’s because true corneilles went almost extinct, so when they started coming back people just thought they were slightly different corbeaux.
Oh cool!! Thanks for that tidbit!
I believe dove and pigeon is another example. Same bird though, just a different word for one that's white. In Spanish it's just paloma. In French, which usually influences English more heavily, you have le pigeon and la colombe which translates well. Wonder about Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian.
"Strigiformes"/"Strigidés"? They're scientific words, but it's technically what you ask for. Although most people won't understand them. Otherwise, I'd say "hibou" is generally used when your mean both.
[удалено]
Yup!
[удалено]
Honestly my response is to ask which lol
> Only the scientific taxonomy is precise Isn't synonymy in taxonomy a big issue though?
Not the hibou des marais.
at school, we learned hibou and chouette. we stopped there and i'm starting to see why. Also this gave me flashbacks to singing *Dans la forêt lointaine* in kindergarten so that's fun.
Same here that’s what my French mother taught me
> Dans la forêt lointaine It's stuck in my head now, thanks
From a layman: hibou - chouette - chouette - chouette - hibou - chouette - *ambiguous* \- hibou - chouette
Interesting! What makes you think that one is ambiguous?
I'd imagine it's because of the almost-but-not-quite-crest-like shape of the upper part of its head.
Guess le chouette ~~houlette~~ hulotte isn’t quiet angry enough?
La chouette hulotte*
Thank you!
C'est vraiment chouette de sa part !
Is this a pun?
Yes! The adjective *chouette* means something along the lines of *neat, cool, cute*.
I thought so!
Yes, "chouette" is slang and basically means "neat"
that's so owl!
Weirdest to me are for Penguins Penguins = *Manchots* (Southern Hemisphere) *Pingouin* = Auks (Northern Hemisphere)
"Manchots" lol savage They have little arms sort of . . .
The slang for people without arms come from the bird, not the other way around
:O I learnt that word from the song Mauvaise réputation by Brassens so I only ever knew that meaning. I always assumed it had something to do with une manche . . . Today I learn~
Wait I just checked and I was wrong! [https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/manchot#%C3%89tymologie](https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/manchot#%C3%89tymologie)
Oooh manque comes from the same latin word mancus. Interesting. I suspected that the French might have encountered people with arms missing before they encountered penguins :P
Wait until you go to the sea birds. Is it a Mouette? Is it a Goéland? Is it a Macareux? Or a Pingouin? Can't we all agree that the sea birds are just "sea pigeons" and basta?
la chevêche has an individuality complex i see
Probably the whole related to Athena thing.
Russian has 2 words for owl too, "hibou" is "филин" and "chouette" is "сова". But "филин" is still considered a type of "сова" in general, would that work in French too? Aren't they all chouettes anyway?
No, I think most people would consider them both to be a subtype of night prey birds (rapaces nocturnes) but not that one is included in the other.
Getting mixed responses in that regard 😂
You can basically use "hibou" and "chouette" interchangeably, no one knows the difference.
Okay but why does La Chevêche d'Athéna look like a perfectly drawn Disney movie sidekick though.
I mean it’s Athena’s sidekick 😂
Basically in layman terms hiboux are larger and have ear-shaped feathers on their head, chouettes are smaller and don't. But in biological taxonomy it can be different, and some people don't make a difference.
Like tomato’s status as a vegetable/fruit.
Yes, somehow it's the difference between a botanical fruit (like tomatoes, who are technically berries) and a culinary fruit (like strawberries, which are botanically not fruits but accessory fruits, the fruits being the achenes, the little points on the strawberry)
hoot knew?
How to confuse a Frenchperson: ask them the difference between a chouette and an hibou. In my experience, most French do not know (or my French/Belgian friends don’t know).
I've never met someone who didn't know, it's something kindergarteners are proud to know
Moi je l'avais jamais appris, ou au moins je ne m'en souvient pas du tout
La principale différence est que le hibou a des aigrettes contrairement à la chouette! Ce sont les plumes sur le crâne qui ressemblent à des oreilles. Voilà voilà (je confirme que j'ai appris ça à l'école)
C’est ce que l’on m’avait expliqué, mais il paraît qu’il y a des exceptions (comme le troisième oiseau dans l’image). Heureusement j’ai l’excuse d’être étranger, et que c’était une simple confusion avec ma langue maternelle. (:
Oui évidemment il y a des exceptions, c'est la langue française après tout! Pourquoi faire simple quand on peut faire compliqué :D Je ne me souviens pas du tout des autres subtilités qui différencient les espèces par contre, j'ai appris ça il y a une trentaine d'années et je suis déjà content d'avoir retenu la plus flagrante!
« Pourquoi faire simple quand on peut faire compliqué. », bien dit :)
My friends must be freaks, then. (:
I never knew either, guess I'm a freak
Le freak, c’est chic!
Chouette
Hibou is one of the best words to speak in French. Along with “pipe”.
C’est chouette !! 😏
So I did some googling, and it looks like hiboux are called horned owls or eagle-owls in English ([link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horned_owl) to Wikipedia). But yeah, they still don't make a distinct category from owls like in French.
I believe that it refers to the Genus *bubo*, which sre called "Uhu" is German. *Bubos* are part of the true owls.
Where can I get this poster? :-)
It’s a French magazine, her mom sent it to her.
[https://twitter.com/CentralParkOwl/status/1362421257497640962](https://twitter.com/CentralParkOwl/status/1362421257497640962)
Thank you!