"The house has two floors."

Translation: La domo havas du etaĝojn.

[LingvaLupo]

Yes, that explains the concept of "floors," but what about the actual word? It almost seems to derive from "stage," as in the stages of a rocket. It certainly bears no resemblance to "storey" or "floor."

[mizinamo]

French has étage for "floor, storey" - undoubtedly related to the English word "stage" as French initial é- often corresponds to initial s- in other Romance languages.

So this seems to be a straight borrowing from French into Esperanto.

[lyubomirv]

The Bulgarian word for "floor" is "етаж", which transliterated in Esperanto would look like "etaĵ". I actually mess it up in Esperanto as "etaĵo", wondering why it has a 'ĝ' instead of 'ĵ'.

[kbschilling9]

Well, leave it to Esperanto to teach me I've been misspelling ”stories” my whole life...

[mizinamo]

"story, stories" and "storey, storeys" are both correct spellings for the floor of a building. (And even, it seems, "storey, stories".)

"Storey" is apparently a predominantly British form, so I suppose Duolingo (which theoretically uses US English as its base) should show "story" if it shows this word at all, but accept either spelling.

[deactivated user]

new word for me .. "etagxo"
can someone expand the explanation of this for me ^_^ thanks

[mizinamo]

"Storey" or "floor".

For example, if you have a house with a ground floor (where the entrance door is) and then you go up a staircase and there are more rooms there, that house has two storeys or two floors -- la domo havas du etaĝojn.

[domprz]

Why is "La domo havas du da etaĝoj" wrong?

[mizinamo]

Because du is a number, not a quantity.

duo da etaĝoj "a duo of storeys" could work, using "duo" as a noun meaning "a group of two".