Re: [lojban-beginners] days of the week

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Tuesday 25 January 2011 10:25:06 A. PIEKARSKI wrote:
> But I don't think you should equate languages with only a 'few' speakers
> to languages with 'many'.  My guide (for fu'ivla, say) always is the
> weighted vocabularies of Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Spanish and
> Russian - which of course is what were used to derive most gismu.

Okay, considering those six (I assume one "Spanish" should be "Arabic"):
Chinese uses numbers to name months.
English, Spanish, and Russian all use words derived from Latin "ianuarius" 
etc.
Hindi month names are from English, though a couple are spelled a bit 
differently (e.g. "Sitember"). Hindi also has names for the months of the 
Hindu calendar.
Arabic has two sets of names for months in the Gregorian calendar. One is the 
Westernized set and is from Latin. The other is used in Syria; most of them 
resemble months of the Jewish calendar and are of Babylonian origin. Arabic 
also has names of the Muslim calendar months.
Without bothering to figure the weights, that's 4.5 votes for words of Latin 
origin. What's the weighted tally? How much of the Arabic-speaking world uses 
the Westernized set?

Pierre

-- 
When a barnacle settles down, its brain disintegrates.
Já não percebe nada, já não percebe nada.

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