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Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

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Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#221

Post by torstenvl »

FastEatSlow wrote: post #208
retrac wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week /Officially/ almost everyone has standardized on ISO 8601 where Monday = 1 and Sunday = 7. But unofficially, not really. The week is still popularly understood to start on Sunday in English Canada, and probably some other parts of the English-speaking world. A quick check of Wikipedia suggests…

I thought that that in Slavic languages Sunday would be the first day of the week, since the Polish for 'monday' means 'after sunday'. EDIT: got 'monday' and 'sunday' the wrong way round

In Russian, Sunday is "Resurrection Day" and Monday is "The Thing concerning Not-Doing being in the Past-Perfective Tense" (po + ne+del + nik)

It looks like Polish is similar except that Sunday is "Not-Doing"

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#222

Post by int_19h »

bombcar wrote: post #175
ethanbond wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are two ends of any line, one on each side. Not two ends, both of which are on the same side.

Exactly. A sausage has two ends, the beginning end and the end end, and so shall the week

Then it'd be called "weekends", not "weekend".

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#223

Post by ghosty141 »

timbit42 wrote: post #147
gmac wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Saturday and Sunday are the weekend.

Correct. Sunday is the starting end of the week and Saturday is then stopping end of the week.

Or you just say, Sunday is the end of the week and Monday that start of the next one. Funnily enough this is the first time I've heard as Sunday as the first day of the week. I'm from Germany where Monday is the first day and Sunday the last.

This also coincides with the work week where the first workday is Monday, then the weekend ends the week and a new week begins with Monday.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#224

Post by gorbypark »

retrac wrote: post #110
octobus2021 wrote: post #63

This is absolutely hilarious, and despite being long form, fits Twitter format very well, with each chunk funnier than the last :) A few notes: - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week; - US (and maybe one or two English-speaking countries) are the only ones using 12h time, the rest of the world uses 24hrs, however 12h _sometimes_ is…

> Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week /Officially/ almost everyone has standardized on ISO 8601 where Monday = 1 and Sunday = 7. But unofficially, not really. The week is still popularly understood to start on Sunday in English Canada, and probably some other parts of the English-speaking world. A quick check of Wikipedia suggests…

As a English Canadian who works for a company that was bought by an American company and was force switched to Sunday as the first day of the week….what? Maybe we “officially” or legally have Sundays as the first day but my entire life has been Mondays first. Every calendar I’ve had has been that way as well. It still messes with my mind, even four years later, that at work Sunday is the first day of the week.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#225

Post by eyelidlessness »

NorwegianDude wrote: post #181
octobus2021 wrote: post #63

This is absolutely hilarious, and despite being long form, fits Twitter format very well, with each chunk funnier than the last :) A few notes: - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week; - US (and maybe one or two English-speaking countries) are the only ones using 12h time, the rest of the world uses 24hrs, however 12h _sometimes_ is…

Legit question. What is a weekend in the US? Is a weekend in the US Friday - Saturday? Most places consider the week to end with Sunday and the weekend is usually considered to be from after work on Friday(or technically Saturday) until Monday starts. But when an American says "right over the weekend", do they mean Sunday, since the US week starts on Sunday? Or does the week actually start on Monday as in most places…

So, the standard US weekend is Saturday–Sunday, even amongst the Sunday=1 holdouts. I say holdouts, because it helps to understand that this isn’t agreed on even within the US. Not to suggest that the holdouts are a minority, I honestly don’t know but I doubt it. I think, apart from the initial puzzlement of recognizing the inconsistency, most of us don’t give much thought at all to which day is 1. “Weekend” generally is used colloquially to mean whichever two simultaneous days the speaker or audience is off work, insofar as they have two consecutive days off work.

I believe, but I may be wrong, that the inconsistency arises from Sunday being the Christian sabbath. That “starts” the week, but it’s a traditional day off for religious observance. And this tradition goes back well before the 40 hour work week, and the common Monday–Friday work week. Which is to say that “weekend” didn’t originally have connotations about which days were work days, they were typically all work days except for the Christian sabbath. Which as a retcon makes the present colloquial usage even odder, even if it’s (maybe?) more consistent with how other countries/cultures use it.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#226

Post by Cyph0n »

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #86
octobus2021 wrote: post #63

This is absolutely hilarious, and despite being long form, fits Twitter format very well, with each chunk funnier than the last :) A few notes: - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week; - US (and maybe one or two English-speaking countries) are the only ones using 12h time, the rest of the world uses 24hrs, however 12h _sometimes_ is…

In Hebrew the weekdays are named "First", "Second", etc. making "Shabbat" ie Saturday, the last day of the week.

The same roughly applies to Arabic: Sunday (derived from one) to Thursday (derived from five).

The word for Friday seems to be derived from “gathering” (probably due to weekly Islamic mass) and Saturday seems to derived from “sleep” (?).

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#227

Post by skipants »

gorbypark wrote: post #224
retrac wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week /Officially/ almost everyone has standardized on ISO 8601 where Monday = 1 and Sunday = 7. But unofficially, not really. The week is still popularly understood to start on Sunday in English Canada, and probably some other parts of the English-speaking world. A quick check of Wikipedia suggests…

As a English Canadian who works for a company that was bought by an American company and was force switched to Sunday as the first day of the week….what? Maybe we “officially” or legally have Sundays as the first day but my entire life has been Mondays first. Every calendar I’ve had has been that way as well. It still messes with my mind, even four years later, that at work Sunday is the first day of the week.

I'm from Winnipeg originally and considered Sunday the first day of the week. Maybe it's regional or cultural?

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#228

Post by CogitoCogito »

googlryas wrote: post #92
octobus2021 wrote: post #63

This is absolutely hilarious, and despite being long form, fits Twitter format very well, with each chunk funnier than the last :) A few notes: - Per my knowledge US is the only country which stubbornly (and illogically) considers Sunday to be the first day of the week; - US (and maybe one or two English-speaking countries) are the only ones using 12h time, the rest of the world uses 24hrs, however 12h _sometimes_ is…

I'd love to hear the logic of why Monday should be the first day of the week.

It’s totally arbitrary (as well as totally immaterial) whether the week starts on Sunday or Monday (or any other day for that matter). The fact that the US does it differently than many other countries really isn’t a big deal. Your downvotes show the whole bike shedding nature of the issue. The debate is so contentious because the stakes are so low.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#229

Post by selectodude »

mod wrote: post #99
EdwardDiego wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In NZ, all legal weights and measures are metric, yet for some stubbornly cultural reason we still tend to discuss height in feet and inches (ladies on dating apps who are discriminating on height will specify that you need to be 6 foot, not 183cm) the weight of a newborn baby in pounds (but only for newborn babies!), and order our beer in pints, which generally means "a large glass of beer somewhere between 400 and…

"Pint" varies in the US as well, when ordering a beer. You're just gonna get whatever glass they have. They'll probably tell you if they know it's not a true pint, but I expect most bartenders have no idea.

A lot of the shittier bars will have glasses that look like pints but only hold 14oz, 12oz of beer 2oz of foam.

The German system where there's a line on the glass that needs to be reached by beer under penalty of law puts a smile on my face.

Re: Someday aliens will land and all will be fine until we explain our calendar

#230

Post by ghosty141 »

dathinab wrote: post #179
philsnow wrote: post #68

Don't tell the aliens about the missing 12 days in 1752: https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/lifestyle/columns/201...

It's not just days, there is a whole time period of a bunch of years where its not fully clear if they did exist or where skipped. I just forgot when.

This is sadly more of an urban legend. There recently was an article about this which also disproved this theory quite well, best seen in other civilizations that have no connection to the european one.
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