From Nancy B Toney
This Northern Hawk Owl took off from a perch while I was looking at my phone and within seconds had missed the entire flight. Luckily it went back to the same perch and did the entire sequence again.
“Holy crap that’s a fast bird! Is that a hawk?”
“No! No, look, it’s a kind of owl!”
“Dang that’s a fast owl. It needs a name that reflects its speed.”
“How about we call it… a ‘Hawk Owl’?”
That’s one of the things that’s got me looking for more international/non-English content this year, is learning what other people call the same animals.
In German, this looks to be sperbereule/barrow owl, French is chouette épervière/hawkweed owl, Danish is sperweruil/sparrowhawk owl, Polish is sowa jarzębata/northern spotted owl, and cárabo gavilán/tawny hawk in Spanish. So some sound similar, one or 2 sound like it might be something else, and one doesn’t look to even translate to an owl at all. At least from a Google translation of what the words mean.
But until I start bringing it up and having people explain how Google or I am wrong, I won’t know for sure.
The “Sperber” part of Sperbereule is the name for a sparrowhawk. “Eule” is one of the words for “owl.” So pretty similar to “hawk owl.” The link has the pronunciation if you’re curious.
Google Translate usually does well enough, but one trick I like to use is just open the Wikipedia article for the thing you’re interested in. Click on the language icon on the left side. Look for the language you want, look at the title, and there’s the translated name.
I thought I had heard that one before from someone. I always go into the international stuff being prepared to be totally wrong anymore.
Thanks for the Wikipedia tip. I have been browsing the other countries’ pages recently because they’re actually all different it seems, when I had originally thought they were just translations, but they all seem to have unique country specific data on them.
It’s tough going through everything not actually understanding the language and having to decode things as I go, so I just try to show I at least put in some effort to be respectful and I’m genuinely curious about learning things about your languages and cultures.
Yeah, the Wikipedia pages can be totally different in other languages. Sometimes you get a lot more info, or different info. I did see the post from the other day that was originally in German, and I thought that was pretty neat :)
And yeah, it’s kind of weird trying to figure out what something means when you don’t know the language at all. I do that a lot for various reasons.
I’m glad you enjoyed the German post! I was debating including the original text as I don’t think I have many non-English followers, but it’s also not like I could tell because if someone can’t speak English, they might just never say anything here to begin with.
Does it give you a different feeling to come upon a German post, or are you so used to setting a lot of content in English and don’t really notice? If I can do something a little extra that gives someone an extra smile, I’m all for it, but I sometimes worry about coming off as condescending or something since I’m trying something I didn’t really understand.
I forget how it was I stumbled upon a different language Wikipedia and was able to notice the content was different, but that was like I noticed a whole new world existed that I never knew about! 😁
I’m from the US, but bilingual, so I probably can’t answer that as well as someone who grew up in a German speaking country. But each language has its own feeling. Different sounds and memories. Maybe kind of like how listening to different music can make you feel different. Sometimes I’ll switch from one to the other to try to cheer myself up.
I think I can appreciate what you’re saying about the “flavor” of the language. I was friends with a guy from Ukraine for a bit and when we’d talk about languages, many times he’d talk about how we’re much more limited in swear words. I kind of remember him saying something along the lines of in Ukrainian he could kind of string some words together in a way that could turn pretty much anything into a swear if it was deemed necessary. I think he had a bit of undiagnosed depression, because we got along very well because he reminded me much of myself before I addressed my own depression and it helped me calm him down when he was pissing off everyone else.
I think you’ve validated my scrambled thoughts about the painting though. There’s no reason not to include the original text for those who can appreciate it. It’s there for those that want it, and anyone else is free to ignore it, especially the longer ones where I’ve stuck it under spoiler tags so the post isn’t so long visually.
Plus as a bonus, it’s another potential jumping off point for someone to bring up interesting points about those language differences. I enjoy the tangents we go on as much as the owl content. I help you guys learn about the owls, and you guys help me learn a bit about you and parts of your stories.
