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Re: The English/French counting system (WAS: number systems fromconlangs)

From:Tristan McLeay <zsau@...>
Date:Tuesday, September 16, 2003, 13:50
On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Isidora Zamora wrote:

> >*ANother confusingness of you northerners is that you insist on starting > >the school year half way through. Gah, calendars were invented for a > >reason! :) > > So when do you start school in the Southern Hemisphere?
In Victoria, Primary/Secondary runs from the second week day after Australia Day (26 January) till October/November/December; Tertiary runs from March to October. (Not counting extra holidays: primary/secondary have three two-week breaks: the first normally around easter, the second in early July, the third in mid Septemeber, diving the year into four terms of approximately ten weeks each. Uni has six weeks in June/July and a week at Christmas and in mid September, dividing the year into two semesters.) The case for Uni is the same throughout the country (even to the point of ignoring state public holidays and Melbourne Cup Day,* a PH in Melbourne but not the rest of Victoria, except the two minutes that's a defacto holiday in the entire country). The Primary/Secondary times are approximately the same (except in Tasmania when they have three trimesters). I know it's similar in New Zealand, and I imagine it is elsewhere. * Melbourne Cup Day is a public holiday for a horse race. The Melbourne Cup is probably the biggest (important, not size) horse race in Australia and is alternatively known as the race that stops a nation. It used to be the tradition for regional cups of this nature to cause a public holiday in the city concerned. (Though it isn't official, I imagine the rest of the state shuts down too: there isn't much you can do when the majority of the state isn't doing much. Also, 'Melbourne' here refers not to the political entity of the City of Greater Melbourne, which encompasses the CBD and a few very inner suburbs, but the entire metropolitan area.) So the point is, the academic year corresponds to the calendar year. It means that if you subtracted 1990 from the year, you would know what grade/year I was in at primary/secondary school. (Actually, it means that the summer holidays happen during the summer. I doubt in these days of airconditioning this would be much of a concern, so it's time for you nothern hemisphereans to join us!) -- 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

Replies

Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>