• Sunsofold@lemmings.world
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    17 hours ago

    It’s far stranger to me that it seems kind of half-assed. January, for the month of the god Janus. February, from februare, for purification, the month of purification. March, for the month of the god Mars. April (not quite as clear) possibly derived from Aphrodite. Possibly just from aperilis, meaning ‘next.’ Things seem to be getting a bit wobbly. May, seemingly for the goddess Maia. June, for the goddess Juno. And then everything goes sideways. July for Caesar, a human, but previously Quintilis, for fifth. August was previously Sextilis, for sixth. Then September, sept for seven, October, oct for eight. Nov, 9. Dec, 10. All those things in the first part, and then they just say, ‘Anyone have any more ideas for the rest? No? Oh well, then. We’ll just number the rest and call it done.’

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      (TLDR: last two paragraphs)

      one of the best nonfiction books I’ve read was A Universal History of Numbers by Georges Ifrah. It goes through the history of numerical writing from scratching notches on a bone to keep track of livestock all the way to the computer age, highly recommend it.

      in it, it goes through counting systems around the world (including using your body, apparently not all cultures always used just fingers to count things) and somewhere around there the topic comes to the intuitive counting that exists in us.

      turns out we can count to 4 in an instant. if I flash a single frame of up to 4 objects on a screen, you can reliably tell me how many there were even if you weren’t expecting it. from 5 objects on it becomes more confusing, and even if you can do it it’s usually due to grouping (maybe you realize there was a group of 3 objects and a group of 2 objects and do the math in your head later).

      anyway this apparently means that even the most primitive counting systems to have at least 2 and up to 4 number words, followed by “many” for 5 and above. but even for those who have more numbers in vocabulary, 2 and up to 4 as a quantity seems to be more significant than anything above. for example a lot of languages have singular and plural forms of words but some languages also have dual or even trial forms.

      one such indicator of significance was apparently how romans named things and even people. in a group of things they seem to have named the first four with proper names, and used numbers for 5 and above. this includes their children, which is why there were names like octavius, apparently, because that’s the eighth child.

      so that’s what they did with the months. named the first four March, April, May, June, then continued with 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 for the rest. January and February were added later to push each numbered month to 2 off. 5 and 6 were renamed after Julius and Augustus. so now we have 7, 8, 9, 10 as the names for months 9, 10, 11 and 12.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        OK but Romans also sometimes just numbered their kids until they got old enough to go from being Primus to getting a descriptive name that was often insulting

        • pyre@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          yeah maybe they just didn’t live long enough to find something insultingly descriptive for the eighth.

      • udon@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        January and February were added later to push each numbered month to 2 off

        The reason for this being that at the beginning of the year, some government officials changed posts, including the ones responsible for the military. March is when the weather becomes nice, so you can go to war again (hence the name). But since March also marked the new year, the people responsible for war management just took office, which was not ideal. So they pushed the two months in to give them some time to prepare before sending out the military everywhere.

        Fun times!

        • pyre@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          that’s great to know, thanks for adding! I’ve known about the two months being inserted at the top for quite a long time but never knew why.

  • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    18 hours ago

    When I was learning english as an inmigrant kid, I was like: why the fuck do they name the months

    Because in Chinese, it was just numbers:

    • January --> 一 1st Month
    • October --> 十 10th Month
    • December --> 十二 12th Month

    月 = Month

    And the characters before are just a number

    Simple

    (Omg I did it again, I went on a rant about language… 🙃)

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 hours ago

        When the calandar is sus

                      ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
                    ⬛🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥⬛
                  ⬛🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥⬛
                 ⬛🟥🟥🟥🟥⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
                ⬛🟥🟥🟥⬛🟦🟦⬜⬜⬜⬜⬛
              ⬛🟥🟥⬛🟪🟦🟦🟦⬜⬜⬜🟦⬛
          ⬛⬛⬛🟥🟥⬛🟪🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦⬛
        ⬛🟥🟥⬛🟥🟥⬛🟪🟪🟪🟦🟦🟦🟦🟪⬛
        ⬛🟥🟥⬛🟥🟥🟥⬛🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪⬛
        ⬛🟥🟥⬛🟥🟥🟥🟥⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
        ⬛🟥🟥⬛🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥⬛
        ⬛🟥🟥⬛🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥⬛
        ⬛🟥🟥⬛🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥⬛
        ⬛🟥🟥⬛🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥⬛
        ⬛🟥🟥⬛🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥⬛
        ⬛🟥🟥⬛🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥⬛
          ⬛⬛⬛🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥🟥⬛
              ⬛🟥🟥🟥⬛⬛⬛⬛🟥🟥🟥⬛
              ⬛🟥🟥🟥⬛    ⬛🟥🟥🟥⬛
              ⬛🟥🟥🟥⬛    ⬛🟥🟥🟥⬛
                ⬛⬛⬛        ⬛⬛⬛ 
        
    • EddoWagt@feddit.nl
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      15 hours ago

      Numbered months should be much easier, but man my brain just can’t vibe with it

      • Klear@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        In Czech we have:

        after no work
        second (archaic)
        middle
        fourth
        fifth
        Sabbath
        no work

      • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        16 hours ago
        • 星期一 --> (Day of the) Week: 1 (Monday)
        • 星期二 --> (Day of the) Week: 2 (Tuesday)
        • etc…
        • except Sunday, which is:
        • 星期天/星期日 (Sunday) (日 = Sun ; 天 = Sky ; Both are interchangeable in the context of days of the week)

        星期 = Week, but if you add a number after it, its not Week 1, but 1st day of the week

        Week 1, Week 2, would be:

        • 第一个星期 --> First Week
        • 第二个星期 --> Second Week
        • Johanno@feddit.org
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          16 hours ago

          Sunday is actually the first day of the week. This is the the reason Wednesday is in the middle of the week and is called “Mittwoch” (Middle week) in German.

          • jaxxed@lemmy.ml
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            5 hours ago

            Sunday is the first day for those who inherited Saturday as a holy day.

          • umbraroze@lemmy.world
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            6 hours ago

            I’m in Finland, the week starts at Monday, Wednesday is “keskiviikko” (mid-week), and I always thought it was called that because it’s in the middle of the work week. Because naming the middle of the work week is very important, and nobody gives a damn about the calendar in the weekend, because it’s time to chill.

          • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            15 hours ago

            Achtually, it depends on the country. Wednesday is still in the middle of the work week if you start on Mondays

          • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            16 hours ago

            Well from some countries’ point of view, Monday is the first day of the week.

            I mean, the word we use to describe Saturdays and Sundays is Weekend (周末), so it actually makes sense for Monday to be the first of the week.

            Btw, Calandar apps have this option in settings:

            Which has a dropdown menu of options:

            Apparantly, some countries use Saturday as the first day of the week? 🤷‍♂️

            • pyre@lemmy.world
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              15 hours ago

              I prefer Monday as well, but “end” doesn’t always mean “last point in a series”. it also means the furthest point of something, but could be on any direction, hence “both ends” is a thing. so weekends can mean the two days on either side of the week, Sunday being first and Saturday being last.

              I know that Arabic also has numbers for most days, 1 for Sunday, all the way to 5 for Thursday, but instead of 6 and 7 they named Friday “congregation” (the day Muslims congregate to pray together) and Saturday “sabbath” interestingly enough.

              • Tja@programming.dev
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                5 hours ago

                But a weeks ARE a series of days, and thus have a beginning and an end. A stick can have two ends, a week has a clear beginning. And it’s on Monday.

              • Rubanski@lemm.ee
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                15 hours ago

                But wouldn’t it have to be called “weekends” for your explanation to work?

                • pyre@lemmy.world
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                  14 hours ago

                  probably. but then weekends as we say today would have to be called weekendses.

    • stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      18 hours ago

      Tbh, I was kinda disappointed about this when learning Japanese. (Am from Europe where probably all languages have named months.) The days of the week had these fancy names but months were just “[number] month”. If you name weekdays, why not name months?

  • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    September, October, November, and December are named after the Latin numerals 7-10 (septem, octo, novem, decem) because they were originally the seventh through tenth months in the Roman calendar, which began around the spring equinox in March.

    • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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      15 hours ago

      Right. A lot of people think new months were inserted, pushing the numbered months back - but actually start of the year was originally March. And that’s why February has just the left-over days + a leap year; it’s just whatever is left over at the end of the year.

  • egrets@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    In fairness, July and August weren’t inserted, they were renamed from Quintilis and Sextilis, literally the fifth and sixth months of the Roman calendar.

    Much earlier, Pompilius (history about whom is largely legendary, and actions attributed to him should be taken with a grain of salt) introduced January and February and set the numbering out of line. These months were previously just lumped in as monthless winter days.

    All Julius Caesar did was rebalance the calendar without changing the months. The rename of Quintilis was posthumous.

    Gregory XIII then further tweaked it to give us the modern calendar.

    • makyo@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Honestly I think we should go back to monthless winter days, would fit my mood during that time so much better.

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        5 hours ago

        We’d need to make that symmetric for the southern hemisphere, though.

      • SolarMonkey@slrpnk.net
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        16 hours ago

        Mood, sure, but also practicality.

        Not until quite recently there was work to be done by the masses during off-season. We used to semi-hibernate. There are still some communities that do.

        If those months weren’t months and everyone just assumed it was a wasted timeslot, everyone would be happier.

        Humans are not meant to work 40/50 (We are meant to work 20/40 - 20 hrs 30 weeks a year) hr weeks 50 weeks a year