Re: Naming days of the week and months of the year????

----- Original Message -----
From: "Yoon Ha Lee" <yl112@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: 24 April 2001 13:41
Subject: Re: Naming days of the week and months of the year????


> On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, Henrik Theiling wrote:
>
> > Daniel44 <Daniel44@...> writes:
> > > I want to name each month after an animal, flower or plant significant
to
> > > each one of the major cultures of the world, and preferably with some
> > > relation to the month itself. So, if there is a particular flower in
China
> > > that blossoms in May and is special to the Chinese culture, I might
like to
> > > consider naming the month of May after this flower's name (translated
into
> > > Uusisuom of course!)
> > >
> > > As for days of the week, any similar ideas/suggestions?
> >
> > If it's supposed to be simple to learn, give them numbers.  Mandarin
Chinese
> > does that.
>
> Agreed.  I still run into references to, oh, various Western plants or
> foods that I have no idea what they are.  It's hard to learn the name of
> a plant when you can't figure out what it looks like or is or anything.
> And heck, it's frustrating even to read references to *Western* names for
> Korean plants, and to know that I most probably know the plant, but I
> have no clue from the Western name (I mean, in Korea, I hear the Korean
> names...) *which* plant it is.
Someoen once remarked (I think it is also in a sci.lang.japan faq) that the
kanji names for the days of the week have parallels in Western names of the
days. To whit:

en  jp        kanji ar zh pagan
Mon getuyoubi moon  2  1  moon[2]
Tue kayoubi   fire  3  2  ?
Wed suiyoubi  water 4  3  Odin
Thu mokuyoubi wood  5  4  Thor
Fri kinyoubi  gold  6  5  Frey
Sat douyoubi  earth 7  6  saturn[1]
Sun nitiyoubi sun   1  7  sun[2]

Note the problem with numbers: where do you start? Do you agree with the
Arabs or the Chinese? The mnemonic system is better if we are trying to make
it meaningful to real world people. It is at least meaningful to some
people, and no less meaningful than numbers. Numbers would certainly be
meaningful in an absolete sense to more people, but for those who already
use numbers, and there are many, it worse be extremely confusing unless it
matches their own system. I don't have teh Roman values to hand, but I
believe they matched the kanji even more precisely, if you look at the
spheres of influence their gods possessed. I think its also a bit visible in
French. Confirmation, anyone?

[1] Roman god of the earth. A link with the kanji.
[2] obvious link with kanji.

--
Fabian
The human didn't notice. Did other cats have this problem with their pets?

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