Everything is shifted over a language, but the same relationships exist: the word for library is related to book in an-other language, and the word for bookstore contains book in an older form of the same language.
Showing posts with label French. Show all posts
Showing posts with label French. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 5, 2025
Library/Bookstore
Recently, I was thinking about the French words bibliothèque (library) and librairie (bookstore). Both are related to words that mean book: the Greek βιβλίο and the Latin liber. (The Italian biblioteca and libraria are comparable.) The same situation also exists in English with library and bookstore: library comes from the Latin liber, and bookstore contains bōc, the Anglo-Saxon or Old English word for book.
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Conquered French Skill Tree... Yet Again
According to the mobile app, I completed Duolingo's French skill tree yester-day. I usually do French on the web version, though, where I still had to pass checkpoint 10, which I did this morning. In any case, I conquered the French skill tree.
This is the third time I've done it now. (Here's a link to a post about the second time.) Duolingo keeps updating the skill tree and taking my trophy away.
Thursday, December 5, 2019
Conquered French Skill Tree... Again
This morning I conquered the French skill tree on Duolingo for the second time.
I originally completed it something like four or five years ago (it was the second Duolingo skill tree I completed, after German), but recently (in the last year or so) they'd added new skills, so I had to work through all of those before I regained my trophy.
I originally completed it something like four or five years ago (it was the second Duolingo skill tree I completed, after German), but recently (in the last year or so) they'd added new skills, so I had to work through all of those before I regained my trophy.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Friday, August 25, 2017
"One Hundred Percent"
A few months ago, I started re-watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but in order to prevent my feeling like I was just wasting my time re-watching a television show, I decided to watch the whole series with French audio (and English subtitles) with the hope of improving my French (un nouvel espoir, if you will). Recently, I watched an episode in which a character said "One hundred percent." In French, this is "cent pour cent," which got me thinking.
As a phrase, "cent pour cent" epitomizes the perfect completeness of 100% because cent (from the Latin centum) appears twice. It's literally "one hundred for one hundred." In English, however, cent is paired with hundred, which is from Old English. It's still 100 for 100, but there's this melange of etymologies.
As a phrase, "cent pour cent" epitomizes the perfect completeness of 100% because cent (from the Latin centum) appears twice. It's literally "one hundred for one hundred." In English, however, cent is paired with hundred, which is from Old English. It's still 100 for 100, but there's this melange of etymologies.
Saturday, August 5, 2017
Adieu/Adios/Goodbye
A couple months ago, the local Radio Shack (which didn't want to hire me when I applied there last year) closed. While driving by it recently, I noticed that the "RadioShack" sign had been blacked out in such a way that the remaining letters spell "adioS."
It made me realize that the Spanish adiós is a cognate with the French adieu. About a year ago, I read a footnote in a literature anthology that explained that adieu means "to God." Apparently, the full phrase is the Old French "à Dieu vos comant" (I commend you to God). In the same way, adiós comes from a Dios. The other Romance languages have similar words; they're all derived from the Latin ad Deum.
When I read that footnote last year, I also remembered one of the few things I learned in my linguistics class in college: goodbye comes from the phrase "God be with ye." The phrases are sort of going in opposite directions ("I commend you to God" but "God be with you"), but they express roughly the same sentiment. Goodbye also has the same formulation as adieu and adiós; they're all phrases condensed into a single word.
It made me realize that the Spanish adiós is a cognate with the French adieu. About a year ago, I read a footnote in a literature anthology that explained that adieu means "to God." Apparently, the full phrase is the Old French "à Dieu vos comant" (I commend you to God). In the same way, adiós comes from a Dios. The other Romance languages have similar words; they're all derived from the Latin ad Deum.
When I read that footnote last year, I also remembered one of the few things I learned in my linguistics class in college: goodbye comes from the phrase "God be with ye." The phrases are sort of going in opposite directions ("I commend you to God" but "God be with you"), but they express roughly the same sentiment. Goodbye also has the same formulation as adieu and adiós; they're all phrases condensed into a single word.
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
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