On Mon, Jun 28, 1999 at 06:10:38AM -0700, Alain wrote:
> A 10:23 99-06-27 -0700, Lars Henrik Mathiesen a écrit :
> >My old encyclopedia (from 1898) agrees, by the way, and mentions that
> >Wednesday is called Mittwoch ("middle of the week") in German for
> >exactly this reason. So Sunday as first day of the week is not just a
> >US invention, it's the way it used to be in all of Western Europe.
Sorry, I missed the original so I am quoting a quote here.
The question is what is "week" when we talk about the middle of the week.
In many Slavic languages Wednesday is also called "the middle day," yet
Tuesday is the called "second day," Thursday "forth day," and Friday "fifth
day."
For example, in Slovak:
pondelok - the day after not working (Monday)
utorok - the second day
streda - the middle day
stvrtok - the forth day (the 's' has a caron)
piatok - the fifth day
sobota - sabath
nedela - the day of no work ('l' with caron)
That seems to imply that Wednesday is the middle between Monday and Friday,
not between Sunday and Saturday. Similar to the English idea of Monday through
Friday being "weekdays" with Saturday and Sunday being the "weekend."
Czech is almost the same. Russian is similar, except it calls Sunday
"voskresenie" - resurrection (but it calls Monday "day after 'nedela'").
Adam
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