Re: The English/French counting system (WAS: numbersystemsfromconlangs)

On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Tristan McLeay wrote:
> > So absolutely nothing, other than the fact that Americans saying 'fall'
> > more often than not means Sept.--Nov. i.e. the time occupied by my spring,
> > rather than my autumn.
>
> But, I mean, it's exactly the same as dealing with time zones.  My 12:00
> isn't your 12:00, so why should it be any more confusing that my
> fall/autumn isn't your fall/autumn?
It isn't, and I never meant to say it was.

> > > And doesn't spring start on September *23* for you?
> >
> > I've never heard of that. Most definitely 1 September. We had a Dilbert
> > calendar floating around last year: on 1 September, it had 'First day of
> > Spring (southern hemisphere)' whereas on 23 (or whatever) September it had
> > 'First day of Autumn (Northern Hemisphere)'
>
> Very weird.  If you count 1 September as "First day of spring (southern
> hemisphere)" then shouldn't you count the very same day as "First day of
> autumn (northern hemisphere)"?  Or, conversely, 23 September being both
> "First day of spring (southern hemisphere)" and "First day of autumn
> (northern hemisphere)"?
My guess is that it's because decisions about the northern hemisphere are
best left to northern hemisphereans. Normal people would conisder the
first day of autumn (NH) to be the same as the first day of spring (SH), I
think that calendar was odd in that. I mentioned it because I was showing
that even if one considers the season to begin at the equinox in America,
which is the 'proper' way of doing it there, one considers the season to
begin on the first of the month here, which is the 'proper' way of doing
it here.

> Well, weather-based seasons depends on climate.  :-)  When I lived in
> Florida, I always though of spring as a rather arbitrary, since down
> there it's little more than a brief transitional period between the
> pleasantly cool weather of winter and the unbearably hot weather of
> summer.  Leaves fall in Autumn, but trees don't lose all of their
> leaves, they aren't even noticibly fewer, so there's no visible return
> of leaves, and no drawn-out pleasantness.
You mean leaves of deciduous(sp?) trees? or native ones? (As far as I
know, all Australian trees are evergreen, but foreign ones do leave all
their leaves in Winter here.) Apart from the fact that foreign trees lose
their leaves (often not until June, though), autumn is very much a
transitional period, going from the unbareable heat of February to the
freezing cold of July (where max of 14 C is defined as freezing).

I've seen things analysing Melbourne's seasons into two winters (the first
being April/May and closer to normal autumn), two summers (Nov/Dec and
Jan/Feb/Mar) and two springs (Aug/Sept and Oct/Nov). It seemed to make
some sort of sense, and apparently was closer to how the local Aborigines
did it.

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>

Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
                -- Snoopy

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