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

>Course, any calendar reform inevitably would have the same problem as
>the Julian/Gregorian switchover, of differences between countries using
>the old and those using the new.  The proposals I especially dislike
>involve altering the week cycle, such that there's an extra day at the
>end of the year belonging to no week.  Imagine the confusion of it being
>Tuesday in the US and Friday in Canada.  :-)

Interrupting the week cycle is untenable.  There are too many religious
people in the world for whom the weekly cycle is important to their
worship, and they could never just add a day to make things come out even
at the end of the year.  If that sort of internatioanl standard were
adopted, not only would it be a different day of the month for me, but the
days of the week would no longer match up between the civil and liturgical
calendars.

I remember reading once that the Soviets at two different times changed to
weeks of different lengths, presumably to throw the civil calendar out of
synch with the Church calendar.

Isidora

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