- Forum >
- Topic: Russian >
- "Воскресенье — последний день…
"Воскресенье — последний день недели."
Translation:Sunday is the last day of the week.
31 Comments
Actually, this is important because other days' names are derived from numerals. «Вто́рник» comes from «второ́й» 'second', «четве́рг» comes from «четвёртый» 'fourth', «пя́тница» comes from «пя́тый» 'fifth'. It wouldn't make sense if we start counting on Sunday.
According to http://krylov.livejournal.com/2502306.html , Sunday can be found as the first day of the week even in some 1948 calendars. However, at the same time, the names of the days are very old.
Not all of them come from numerals:
- «понеде́льник» is from по + неде́ля 'week'¹,
- «среда́» is from «сре́дний» 'middle',
- «суббо́та» is a loanword (related to the English 'Sabbath'),
- «воскресе́нье» is from «воскресе́ние» 'Resurrection' (originally it referred to Easter/Resurrection Sunday only, but got to mean any Sunday in modern Russian).
¹ Originally «неделя» meant Sunday (from не 'not' + делать 'do', because people don't work on Sundays), so «понеде́льник» meant something like 'day after the Sunday'. But in modern Russian «неде́ля» means 'week'.
The concept of the working week as entity by itself is neither new nor restricted to few people. My grandma grew up in a village and she always insisted on us not working on Sundays when we stayed in her village. She explained this by religion: on Sunday you're expected to go to church and not to work. Since there was much more religious people in the past, I believe this was more strictly observed.
Chinese has a Russian-like numbering.
Originally, Sunday is 禮拜日 [láihbaai-yaht] 'Church service day', Monday is 禮拜一 [láihbaai-yāt] 'first [from] church service', Friday is 禮拜五 [láihbaai-ńgh] 'fifth [from] church service' etc.
Not liking the Christian origin of the week-day names, Chinese people replaced 禮拜 [láihbaai] with 星期 [sīngkèih] 'stellar period'. This works for 星期一 [sīngkèih-yāt] 'first of stellar period'... but Sunday became 星期日 [sīngkèih-yaht] 'stellar period day', which doesn't really make any sense.
Yes, the week starts with Monday in Russian-speaking countries. Some names for the days of the week are derived from the numbers:
- вто́рник ‘Tuesday’ is related to второ́й ‘second’,
- четве́рг ‘Thursday’ is related to четы́ре ‘four’,
- пя́тница ‘Friday’ is related to пять ‘five’.
Here’s how the calendar for the current month looks like:
253
Actually: Воскресенье - первый день недели In reality, Christ was raised on the First day of the week. The Russian word for Sunday is translated from the Greek language meaning Resurrection Day.
17
Christianity says that the first day of week is Sunday. Russia's main religion is Christianity