Mainly just curious to see how many non-US people we have. I know some languages have more than one word for owl.
Where are you from, and how do you say owl where you are from, and what sound do they make?
In his famous Course in General Linguistics, Saussure uses a similar example to demonstrate that onomatopoeia are just as arbitrary as all other signs (words).
Because one could argue that onomatopoeia is where signs seem less arbitrary. After all, those words try to reproduce a seeming objective reality, namely an existing sound. In this case, owls’ hoots. But this image shows that’s not the case, just like Saussure argued.
This post has branched out in so many directions!
I’ve never heard of Saussure before, so I found a quick summary of what you said and it seems to say we simplify a lot of things into something good enough so we don’t need to reinvent our languages to have everything make perfect sense.
I enjoy things that make different cultures unique, and this becomes a more interesting thread with every post so far. I’m learning so many things from you all on a little owl post. But owls have represented wisdom for many people for a long time, so I guess it is fitting!
Lots of people complaining that the English example is too British, but nobody is telling me what sound American owls make!
In Polish ‘sowa’ is owl, and it goes ‘hu-hu’, but if you hear an owl and want to mention it to somebody, you tend to say ‘sowa huczy’ (in the appropriate tense obv) which is ‘the owl is hu-ing’.
Thanks for adding another to the list!
Poland’s most common owl is the Tawny Owl, or Puszczyk Zwyczajny.
Are Korean owls alright?
Owls in Germany: UwU
Native English speaker here: wtf is twit twoo?
Edit: Guess I’m just not British enough.
Yea, we just got “hoo” over here in the states. We were not top of the class for creativity I guess.
I’ve also heard “hoot”
