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.

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.

Cardinal Directions in Latin

Yester-day, I discovered via the Vulgate translation of Revelation 21:13 that the words for the cardinal directions in Latin start with only two different letters:  aquilone (north), austro (south), oriente (east), and occasu (west) (those are all in the ablative case since that's how they appear in the verse).  Consequently, the directions at each end of the two major axes (north-south and east-west) have the same initial letter, creating a nice balance.

I also lookt up occidens (an-other word for west) in my Latin dictionary and discovered that it comes from the verb occidere, which means (among other things) "to fall" or "to set," as in the sun.  Similarly, oriente comes from oriri, "to rise."  If I'm not mistaken, the Greek words for east and west, ἀνατολή and δυσμή respectively, also come from verbs that mean "to rise" (ἀνατέλλω) and "to set" (δύνω, δῦμι).

Conquered Greek Skill Tree (Again)

I did an extra Greek lesson to-day and conquered the skill tree on Duolingo again:

I first accomplished this in May 2020, but in February last year, Duolingo updated the skill tree and took away my trophy.

Droid

A couple years ago, I was thinking about the word droid from Star Wars.  (I recently started re-watching Star Wars: Rebels but in French, which is probably what reminded me of this.)  The word seems to be an abbreviation of android, although this isn't made clear in the movies.  In Alan Dean Foster's Splinter of the Mind's Eye (which I believe is the first Star Wars book, aside from the novelization of the first film), the word is formatted with an apostrophe ('droid).

Android comes from the Greek άνδρας (man) and the suffix -οιδ (-like); an android is something that is man-like.  (Similarly, asteroid comes from αστέρι [star] and -οιδ.)  What I find interesting about droid is that it's an abbreviation that's not broken along the etymological seam, so to speak.

New Duolingo Greek Skill Tree

When I did my daily Greek lesson on Duolingo to-day, I discovered that Duolingo updated the skill tree and changed it considerably.  I'd conquered the Greek skill tree in May last year; I had all of the skills at least to level 3 (red); and I was more than halfway along in getting them all to level 4 (orange).  It some ways, it seems like I have to start all over.

Here's the new skill tree (with an accident bit of red highlighting).

I'm sure that the blue dots next to some of the skill titles have some significance, but I don't know what it is.

Greek Level 3 Trophy

I earned the Greek level 3 trophy:

Conquered Greek Skill Tree

I did an extra Greek lesson to-day because I was only one away from conquering the skill tree on Duolingo.

Level 16 Greek

Level 16 Greek!

Level 15 Greek

Level 15 Greek!

Level 14 Greek

Level 14 Greek!

Duolingo Levels Update

This morning, after I reached Level 6 Romanian and discovered that Duolingo doesn't notify me when I reach a new level anymore, I compared my current Duolingo levels to the records I have on this blog and discovered that I'd unknowingly leveled up in five different languages.

I'm now on Level 15 Spanish:

Unsurprisingly (because I practice them everyday), I leveled up in all three of the non-Latin alphabet languages I'm learning:

I also got to Level 7 Irish:

Keeping track of when I leveled up in a language is most of the reason I started this blog.  Now that Duolingo doesn't notify me, I'll have to keep an eye on my levels myself.

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EDIT: I realized after posting this that I'd actually reached level 14 Russian back in January.

Level 12 Greek

Level 12 Greek!

"και... και..."

I've fallen behind in my language practicing a bit because of Thanksgiving and NaNoWriMo.  I'm slowly catching up, and to-day I watched the Daily Dose of Greek video on Philemon 1:16:

I was excited to learn that although it's literally "and... and...," the "και... και..." construction is the correlative "both... and...."  Earlier this year, I discovered that this same construction ("and... and..." translated as "both... and...") is in Latin ("et... et...") and Russian ("и... и...").

Level 11 Greek

Level 11 Greek!

Level 10 Greek

Level 10 Greek!

Level 9 Greek

Level 9 Greek!

Yester-day I got two more encouraging messages in Greek, but like the one I got about a week ago, I don't understand what they mean because I haven't gotten very far in the Greek course (I got to level 9 after doing the second lesson in Food, which is only the sixth skill I've started).

Φανταστικό!

On the mobile version of Duolingo, sometimes Duo pops in after a certain number of correct sentences in a row and offers some encouraging word.  In the past, I've had "Your hard work is paying off!" "You're working hard and learning new words!" "Hard work always pays off in the end" and various others.  When I did a Greek lesson this morning, I got one of these messages in Greek!

Unfortunately, I'm not far enough in the Greek course to really understand what Duo is saying here.  I can understand "Φανταστικό!" because it's a cognate with fantastic and sounds essentially the same (just with an -o at the end).  I think "σειρά" is related to series.  There's the numeral "10," and I've occasionally had Duo say something like "Congratulations on getting 6 sentences right in a row."  The bar at the top indicates that I got ten right in a row, so I'm assuming the Greek is something like "Fantastic!  You got 10 sentences right in a row!"

After getting this screen in the Greek course, I did a few lessons in Norwegian to see if Duo would pop in and say something in Norwegian, but I had no luck with that.  I got a significant number of sequential sentences right, but I didn't even get a congratulatory message in English.

Level 8 Greek

Level 8 Greek!

Level 7 Greek

Level 7 Greek