CHAT: day before yesterday

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 11:20:25 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> * It's always annoyed me that English hasn't got a single word for "the day
> before yesterday", nor "the day after tomorrow". It still happens, as it did
> when I wrote this mail, that I get stuck trying to find the word before
> recalling it simply does not exist.
Indeed; those days are simply named "the day before yesterday" and
"the day after tomorrow", as you not.

Some languages, though, go one further and have a name for "three days
ago" and "in three days' time"; for example, Modern Greek has
αντιπρόπερσι for "three years ago", αντίπροχτες for "three days ago",
and αντιμεθαύριο for "in three days" (but no single word for even
"next year", which it expresses with του χρόνου, literally something
like "of the year".)

German can make do with "vorvorgestern" and "überübermorgen", though
neither is in common use.

Japanese has "shiasatte" (apparently the word for "four" - counting
todays as well, I suppose - plus the word for "day after tomorrow")
for "the day three days hence" and "sakiototoi/sakiototsui"
(apparently the word for "tip, point, previous, former" plus the word
for "day before yesterday") for "the day three days ago".

I'm not sure whether there are consistent ways of writing that in
kanji; any rendition will not map one-to-one to spoken syllables
anyway, just like the names for even "today" or "tomorrow" (I think
this sort of thing - reading a series of kanji purely by meaning,
without putting any particular syllable to a particular character - is
called "gikun"). JWPce gives 一昨昨日 for "sakiototoi/sakiototsui"
(compare 一昨日 for "ototoi/ototsui" -- sometimes also read Chinese-style
["on-yomi"] as "issakujitsu" -- and 昨日 for "kinou" = "yesterday" --
sometimes also read as "sakujitsu"; hm, 一昨昨日 is also given the on-yomi
"issakusakujitsu") and 明明後日 for "shiasatte" (compare 明後日 for "asatte"
-- sometimes also read "myougonichi" -- and 明日 for "asu/ashita" =
"tomorrow" -- sometimes also read "myounichi").

Japanese doesn't let you do this for, say, weeks or months or years,
though, which only have "last X" (senshuu/sengetsu/kyonen) and "next
X" (raishuu/raigetsu/rainen) as well as "X-before-last"
(sensenshuu/sensengetsu/ototoshi - look, separate word! though "year
before last" can apparently also be issakunen) and "X-after-next"
(saraishuu/saraigetsu/sarainen), but not "3 Xs ago/hence" in general,
though I found "sakiototoshi/issakusakunen" for "three years ago".

German doesn't even have single words for "last/next week/month/year"
(and only a dialectal/regional word "heuer" for "this year").

What do your conlangs have? Anything more than "tomorrow" and "yesterday"?

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
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