Did I save the best for last? You tell me with those votes for your favorites!
Make sure you check out all 4 groups (A-D) as they get put up and vote for all your favorites. Bottom 2 of each group will be bumped, and the top 4 will continue on to the official games. Upvote your favorites below!
The claws here are scary. Do we say claw for owl?
I would call them talons in English
Claws vs talons: what’s the difference?
Thank you. I remember reading about it here now!
It has fierce talons. They look terribly dangerous here.
If I were to have to grab fish for a living, they would be good grabbers to have.
I think they’re called “talons” in birds of prey? (Kind of confusing for French speakers.)
Ah, j’ai répondu à la mauvaise personne. Tu n’as pas besoin d’un cours de français (^_^)
Si, j’ai besoin d’un cours de français apparemment. À l’aide !
Les dictionnaires que j’ai trouvé ne donne rien de concluant non plus :-(
In French talon means the heel, both as the body part and the shoe part. Bird of prey have serres that is the english talon.
Is serre the correct French word for them?
Yes (see @pseudo@jlai.lu’s comment: https://lemmy.world/post/39217899/20687404).
It comes from the verb serrer, which means to grip/hold tight/tighten/clutch, etc.
… Actually, while writing this comment, I’ve begun to doubt whether if it’s really an exact translation of talon. I’ve always kind of thought of those words as synonyms, but from what I’m reading, a talon is really just the claw, while serre seems to refer to the whole foot of a raptor (scary claws included, of course). On the other hand, I can also find several dictionaries in my home that define serres as the claws… I’m very confused right now, make up your minds people.
That is funny you say that as someone with experience with the language.
Google naturally translated talon to heel, as it’s already a French word, and when I searched for something along the line of “what do French people call a raptor’s foot” I got serre and saw it referred to the foot of the bird, but also the grip/tighten aspect you mentioned.
That made me think that instead of being more literal like talon=serre, I thought of it more conceptionally, like serre=a tightly clenching foot, basically like the recent post I called something like “mighty meat grabbers.”
I often read that when trying to learn language it can be a hindrance to think of words as 1 to 1 replacements, and one needs to think of the words conceptionally, as that is what language is doing.
If we see a tree for example, our brain pops the word tree into our heads, or whatever tree is in the language we’re working with. Now if we see a different species of tree, we aren’t immediately confused because we see one leafy tree and one conifer, but we know tree isn’t just one of those, but a tall plant with bark at the bottom and green stuff up top.
So calling a talon a serre or the whole foot a serre at least gets the proper concept in a French speaker’s head.
As I’ve talked to pseudo and others about hiboux and chouettes, if you don’t know the exact name of the owl, you can still give someone a better immediate picture of what you’re referring to and narrow in from there.
Being fluent, I can see how it may add confusion for you trying to see how exactly the words are working, but to me, it feels more flexible and advantageous ☺️