Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: weekday names

From: Pierre Abbat <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 29 Oct 2000 13:52:27 -0400

>Many peoples I can think of have a seven-day week. At least the Bible-based=
> cultures seem to regard "sunday" as the last day of the 
>week (following the Biblical Genesis). As this "last" day is different to J=
>ews, Christians and Muslims, I'm wondering how this 
>influences the weekdays sequence respective.

I beg to differ. I don't know of any Christians who regard Sunday as the last
day of the week in Genesis, however they number the days today. If there are
any, they're ignorant. Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese distinguish the Lord's
day (Sunday) from the Sabbath (Saturday); Portuguese agrees with Greek that
Monday is the second day, though both are largely Christian.

>Hungarian:
>(An old culture of eastern heritage, but christianized)
>hét ("seven"=week)
>hétfö ("week-head", week's first, monday)!,
>kedd, (?)
>szerda, (?)
>csütörtök, (?)
>péntek (from Greek? the fifth???),
>szombat (Sabbath),
>vasárnap ("nap"=sun/day; "vas"=iron, "vasár" no obvious meaning; it's diffe=
>rent from"vásárnap", which is "market day").
>
>I have no idea of the etymology underlying - maybe Ivan can help! But, agai=
>n: the counting begins with monday!

Szerda and csütörtök are obviously from Slavic. Péntek looks Greek, but it
disagrees with the Greek numbering, so it's probably Slavic too (Slavic had
nasal vowels, which are preserved in Polish, and the word for "five" had one).
Kedd may be from kettö, though I know little of Magyar so I'm just guessing.

phma