Subject: Re: [lojban] RE: month names

From: Ivan A Derzhanski <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 21:13:54 +0300

[email-masked] wrote:
> Well, actually {la .oktobr} makes a lot of sense. As ivan
> points out, numbered months are ambiguous, depending on calendar
> involved and there are at least five in common usage [...].

Don't get me wrong though: when I suggested that borrowing the
Latin names made sense, I didn't mean to deny the even greater
advantages of referring to them by numbers when the context is
not in doubt.

> But, so far as I can remember [...], most places that use the
> western calendar also use the month names,

Even so, most places. There are a few languages (and varieties
thereof) that have their own month names, mostly derived from
natural phenomena or local festivals, and there are some others
that number the months (Chinese _shi2yue4_ `10-month', ie `October').

> I am not sure what happens in more remote (from me) countries
> where the western calendar is used for civil purposes but
> some other serves for reality (festivals, birthdays, ....).

I'd guess that the fewer uses the Western calendar has somewhere,
the less likely it is that its months will have special names.

> Days of the week on the other hand seem to vary pretty freely,
> so that the "oneday" "twoday"... patterns seems more universalizable
> than any "sunday","moonday", "thundergodday" or whatever pattern.

Unfortunately, that's not quite the case. Languages disagree on
the day on which the numbering should start; Tuesday is Day 2 in
the Slavic reckoning, but Day 3 in Greek and Day 4 in Swahili.

--Ivan