23 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.
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Thank you! I was trying to figure out where the names were coming from. I can't believe I didn't pick up on the actual numbers embedded in there.
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'.
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Thank you for the additional information, that's definitely going to help me remember these as I'm struggling a bit with them.
I did wonder if суббота was related to Sabbath (It seems like almost every time you find two of the same letter together in a Russian word, it's a loanword from somewhere.)
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When I was reading you I have remembered a russian word with 2 and even 3 letters in a row: длинношеее (something that has a loooong neck длинная+шея) Seems it's the only one such word.
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среда́=middle; funny thing is, Wednesday is in the middle only if you consider Sunday the first and Saturday the last day of the week. (Or, of course, if you belong to the privileged few that enjoy the luxury of not working weekends and thus perceiving the work week as an entity by itself.)
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.
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Yep. In Croatian "nedjelja" is Sunday, and in Serbian "nedelja" can be both Sunday and week.
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Thanks, that was fascinating.
Hey, just saying, it's "fourth".
Fixed, thanks :)
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Interesting--Arabic days have names derived from numbers also, but they start with Sunday as "day one."
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Same goes for Hebrew, except in Hebrew ‘Friday’ is ‘Sixth Day’ rather than ‘Gathering Day’.
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.
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Dude, as much as I am psyched to see a Cantonese speaker here, you should point out that it’s Cantonese and not Mandarin...
I never claimed it was Mandarin. :)
請問你講廣東話呀？我學緊，但係而家我嘅中文十分唔好。
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It's interesting to see that every language (and culture) has a different definition of a week- in my mother tongue, Saturday is actually named "First"
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Is this wrong or in Russia the week starts on monday? I thought that in the whole world the week started on sunday.
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:
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Names of days based on numbers is interesting, as is based on the names of celestial objects themselves based on the names of ancient gods :-)
