Fire Day, 3/22/13
Though that’s actually incorrect.
For years I went around telling people Friday was “Fire Day”, in the same way that Saturday is “Saturn Day” and Sunday is “Sun Day” and Monday is “Moon Day”. Those are all correct. But Friday has no relationship with Fire, and I’m uncertain when I first started that association or why, besides the obvious similarities between “fri” and “fire”.
It’s actually Frīġedæġ, or “The Day of Frigg”, named after the Goddess Frigg, whom you might know is the wife of Odin. So all the Nordic and Germanic languages incorporate that root into Friday, so you have Fredag in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, Freitag in modern German, and Vrijdag in Dutch.
In the Romance languages, though, “Friday” is very different. Vendredi, venerdì, diēs veneris, vineri, etc. That’s because many cultures around the heart of Western civilisation traditionally associated the day with the goddess Venus, and as the Romance languages share Latin as their root, “diēs veneris” or “Day of Venus”, is reflected in all the Ve/vi prefixed words for “Friday”.
Incidentally, how many Romance languages are there? Lots of people confuse this. Romance languages are actually very particular. Firstly, they are called such because they are the languages that were spoken and evolving across the rapidly growing Roman empire, so they are literally the languages of Rome from about the 500-900AD period. Growing up, of course, many people assume we call them “Romance” languages because of the kind of cultures that speak them– the French, the Italian, the Spanish– you know, the romantic places. You don’t usually associate Germany with “Romance”, for instance, and it makes intuitive sense to us that German is not a “Romance language”, but the reason is more particular than how we portray culture. Germans can be quite Romantic… right?
Maybe?
The main Romance languages are just French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and… the one everyone forgets but that makes the most sense of all… what is it?
What could it BE???
Romanian. Duh.
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I slept deeply last night, making up partially for what I missed the night before. I did train yesterday, despite being sleep deprived, and though I didn’t have full power it was still worthwhile. I got a good pump going and getting in the water felt good. Back in the pleasantness of former lifestyles. We would often be sleep deprived while swimming, so yesterday was kind of a return, and felt pretty good. I was sore, but the strokes stretched me out well and it was nice to push myself through the water while tired. There are times I feel that I could probably swim indefinitely. I don’t get that same feeling from running.
Today I have one meeting scheduled, and I have lots of writing to do, so with coffee on one side, and a large slightly cracked-open window to the other, it’s time to get started.
Have a great Day of Frigg– please do something you really want to do today so when you crash tonight you feel complete and satisfied.
