Re: CHAT: The Elven (or Techian) calendar

>From: wayne chevrier <wachevrier@...>
>Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
>To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
>Subject: Re: CHAT: The Elven (or Techian) calendar
>Date: Tue, 14 May 2002 16:53:40 +0000
>
>Jan van Steenbergen nevesht:
>>Interesting stuff to think about. I've always wondered where weeks come
>>from.
>>Most time units have some sort of natural background - days, years,
>>months,
>>even seconds. But weeks? They don't fit within either months or years. A
>>conculturer who would come up with something like that would probably be
>>criticized heavily.
>>Probably just an invention of long-ago trade unions :)))
>>
>Actually, astrology.
>The seven days from the seven planets, the order from the outside in
>(geocentric) for each hour, the days named by the planet of the first hour
>of the day.
>
>-Wayne Chevrier
>
I heard something about how much more sense it would make if we just had 35
ten day weeks a year and five days of some kind of new year celebration. The
problem with any calendar system is that it tries to make a correlation
between three distint phenomena: Earth's rotation (day),  the cyces of the
moon (month), and Earth's orbit around the sun (year). The three things,
originating from multiple time systems, just aren't scientifically related.
I think that anyone making a conculture should just trash that whole system
and start afresh. If it takes place on an 'alien' world, perhaps make a more
even system that divides better. For example, 360 days/year and 36 days/
month, with ten months.
Our calendar is not a convention anyone needs to put very much weight in.

Jake

~Patient is the procrastinator.~

_________________________________________________________________
Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail.
http://www.hotmail.com

Replies