German: that toad looking thing has a shield on it

Easy! A turtle is flippy flips and a tortoise is clompy clomps.

Simple!

Turtle: pretty chill dude cruising the East Australian Current

Tortoise: teaching Pandas Kung-Fu

A turtle lives in water, a tortoise lives on land. A turtle's not a tortoise, it's not hard to understand.

Tortoises are Turtles, but not all Turtles are Tortoises.

This isn't an English thing, this is a taxonomy thing. It should be the same in any language, just with different words used.

This is your reminder that taxonomically fish and trees do not exist.

Tortoises are land animals. Simple.

Frogs and toads might be a better one - there's no systematic difference except toads are ugly.

flippers and feet.

The biggest difference is that turtles live in and around water, while tortises are entirely land based.

This is like the hare and rabbit thing... (what are the differences?)

Would be simpler just to call them turtles and landturtles.

They are waaaaaay different what are you talking about..

All tortoises are turtles (but not all turtles are tortoises) from a biology point of view. Tortoises specifically being exclusively land-based members of the turtle (Testudines) order. So there is a difference.

And “spring” doesn’t really have different meanings - as per the root of the word, it always means some variant of “to burst forth”. There’s lots of different definitions for the word but they’re all rooted in the same place, from an etymology point of view.

The season bursting forth from the winter darkness and cold, the metal coil as it bursts forth when released from compression, the source of water as it bursts forth from the ground, bursting forth someone out of jail, etc.

Homographs are the real problem - when two different words, over time, become spelled the same.

Sow, lead, close, bear. All have multiple etymologies where different words eventually became spelled the same. Those are the worst!

English is a truly crazy mashup of Latin, Greek, French, German, Celtic, Norse and more.

English: owl

German: Eule, Uhu, Kauz

French: Hibou, Chouette

If you think "spring" is bad, go check how many different meanings there are for the word "set".

A tortoise is a kind of turtle, just like a toad is a kind of frog.

My box turtle mostly lives on soil, although he enjoys a paddle and soak in his water. But the main difference from a tortoise is that he's omnivorous, needing protein like bugs, whereas they are herbivores.

Well a tortoise could never become a ninja.

One is an animal and the other a military formation, duh.

🤓🪤
The pedant trap has been set…

One has a flat head the other has a plus sign head like the difference between crocodiles and alligators or ravens and writing desks

This title sentence works multiple ways. My cat is unable to speak English, because it has far too many words beyond the word meow.

If you don't know the difference between turtle and tortoise then you are a monkey

not as much as for plants, the non-scientific names.

The spring comment is valid.