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Day & month names (Kash...longish)

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Wednesday, May 3, 2000, 3:15
Indonesia uses the Arabic names, altho Sunday is generally (and in the
textbooks) (hari) minggu, also the word for 'week', < Port. Domingo.  In
more staunchly Islamic areas, it is ahad ('one'); then everywhere (hari)
senen [s@nEn], selasa, rebo, kemis, jum'at, saptu. These are the Arabic
names for 2,3,..,5..,7-- I'm not sure about rebo and jum'at.  The months use
the Western names, adapted from Dutch; of course the Islamic calendar is
also used for religious purposes.  Really complete calendars also include
the traditional 5-day Javanese week, which I think is still followed in
Bali, again for religious purposes.  The Balinese "calendars" are little
works of art, every day is depicted as auspicious (or not) for various
activities.

Obconlang:  Planet Cindu had a pretty bare-bones numbered system until this
thread came along and I've had to think about it.  Also, I haven't posted
some of the basics for a long time (if ever on Conlang; some appeared on
Conculture).

Counting in Kash:  a decimal system.  Zero is tanda; then (combining and/or
fast forms in parens.) mesa (mes), ro, sila (sit), ha, nim, keli (ket), sor
(sot), fanu (fan), sana (san); 10 is mepola; 11 folames, folaro, folasit
etc...i.e. fola+short form; 20 rofola, 30 sipola, 40 hafola, 50 nipola, 60
kepola etc.  The rule here is: if the short unit ends in a Consonant, fola >
pola; understandably, there is a tendency to use -pola in all cases.  100
me/rongo, 200 lo/rongo (#rVr.. dissimilates > lVr..) etc.  1000 mes/amba;
1,000,000 mes/ambraka (< amba raka 'big thousand'); 1,000,000,000 is (mesa)
pambraka (< contracted amba ambraka).  There are more, but I don't yet know
how to say "10 to the 12th power" etc.

Telling time:   The planet orbits its sun in 1 year (pehan) of 464 days
(lero).  Their day = 25h20m terran; they divide it into 20 hours (aro) of 50
minutes (nasa) of 100 seconds (tiki); so in our terms, their hour is 76
mins., their minute is apprx. 1.5 mins., their second is apprx. .9 sec.
Their day, like ours, begins at midnight.
They call a clock pinaro (pinal 'count' + aro), wristwatch pinaci (+ci
'diminutive').

464 days divides nicely into 16 months (ashurak) of 29 days each.  They
divide these into 4 weeks (kelero, colloq. krelo) of 7 days; the extra day
is assigned to the middle of the month (and called cinjurak), is unnumbered,
and always a free day.  The first day of each week(1,8,15,22) is also a free
day.  So their calendar looks like:
week one:1 2 3 4 5 6 7
week two:8 9 10 11 12 13 14 -Cinjurak-
week three: 15 16 1718 19 20 21
week four:  22 23 24 25 26 27 28
and every month, and every year, begins on the same day. (The year begins,
BTW, on the Northern Hemisphere's Vernal Equinox.) In the case of leap years
(apprx. every 20 years) the extra day (called "Waiting day", a holiday) is
inserted, unnumbered, just prior to whichever equinox or solstice is most
off-schedule.  (Frankly, I'm not at all sure of  this .....???)

The names of the seven days are:  1. Lembrim (old < leromin 'our sun'), 2.
Uwam, 3. Kayiñ [kajN], 4. Wuruna (a myth. character and the name of the
larger moon), 5. Imbar, 6. Turat, 7. Lalap (< the name of the smaller
irregularly-shaped moon, Yalalap, ult. < ulap 'stagger, reel' after its
eccentric orbit). And Cinjurak (< cini 'middle' + ashurak)..  The first of
the month is usually called Lero mes, or Mesa; the 28th is called Lero lus
or Lalap lus (lus 'end; last').  The last day of the year is called
Pehandus;  New Year's Day is called Pehangasi (< kasi 'begin'); both are
holidays.  (Note: lero [animate] 'sun', lero [inanim.] 'day')

The month names are compounds of ashurak (ashur- ~shur-) with the short form
of the numbers:  ashumbres, ashuro, ashusit, ashukra, ashundrim, ashukret,
ashusor, ashupran, ashusan, ashuprot, shupromes, shuporo, shupronim,
shuproket.

As nearly as I can figure, Cindu is currently in the year 758 p.w. (pinal
welu, 'new count').   'Old count' pinal marok was abandoned on Pehandus
2703 by decision of the post-nuclear war conference-- that war took place on
10 Ashumbres 2702, yes, just one day.

Bonus points:  Temperature:  a centigrade system, presumably the same as
ours...?
Measurement:  Metric; like ours, the basic unit _li_ is 1/10,000,000 of the
pole-equator distance, which works out to 11,171.79 km; so the li = 1.l7
metres or 43.98 inches.  1000 li called _cili_--- these are Gwr terms, used
worldwide.
The Gwr, of course, had this all figured out long ago-- in their base-8
system.
With much argument and several generations-worth of confusion, they changed
to a decimal system around 2400p.m.