[quote=@Prince of Seraphs]
...but at this point in time the line between the two has become blurred to the point that the two words can be used interchangeably.
[/quote]

No... just no. I have to strongly disagree with you there with all the useless knowledge I have acquired in 13 years of German Elite Schools. It may be the case in the US or in the English language sphere, but there is a strong line of separation between fables and fairy tales in Germany and in the German language.

According to G8 websites (G8 being the current Elite curriculum) the strongest point in which Fables are different from Fairy Tales is, that in Fables, ONLY animals act. There are no humans. All the animals are in place of a human.
In fairy tales there can still be an animal who is talking, but in fairy tales characters always fall into two categories, evil and good. There is no neutral. Of course there can be some kind of moral in a fairy tale, but it is mostly up for interpretation what the moral is. Another striking point is, fairy tales generally don't have an author, they are told from mouth to mouth without writing them down, leading to lots and lots of change in the story over time until the Brothers Grimm decided to write the most popular down starting in 1812.

Of course, as is the case with everything German, we also have two words for Fairy Tales. "Volksmärchen" are those who are tales where nobody knows who first told it. "Kunstmärchen" is something an author invented and they are therefor only regarded as fairy tales because they have the same literary features as fairy tales.

One striking difference I just noticed after reading the article again is that fables have characterized characters. Although, depending on how they look (are they a bear or are they a fox), they will have certain other character features, which will be pretty consistent throughout all different fables, especially of a single author. The characters in fairy tales are flat characters. Other than their task or what they strife to do, they have no depth at all. That's because the character could as well be you or me.
Fables also have the goal of teaching somebody while remaining entertaining. Fairy tales have no such goals and such the moral they might have, which not a lot do have (well, unless you can interpret something into it), remains pretty hidden and is not the focus of the story.


By the way, I still apologize for this rant-y-seeming post. I just couldn't help it. My 13 years of German education felt insulted xD
So I just wanted to teach what I know. I know this might not be a big deal on the other side of the Atlantic, it might not even be in the UK, but in France and Germany it is.
As such I have noticed that the English websites, that try to teach this, lack the clarity and straightforwardness of the German ones. I mean, this is something you get taught in 6th grade here and it remains relevant until the A-levels.