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Why does Esperanto have unique names for the months?

de bryanhaydukewich, 2009-junio-04

Mesaĝoj: 42

Lingvo: English

bryanhaydukewich (Montri la profilon) 2009-junio-04 04:53:21

Why are the months given names like "januaro, februaro" rather than 1monato, 2monato, etc? Same for days.

The latter is the way months are named in Korean.

Senlando (Montri la profilon) 2009-junio-04 06:08:14

bryanhaydukewich:Why are the months given names like "januaro, februaro" rather than 1monato, 2monato, etc? Same for days.

The latter is the way months are named in Korean.
haha, i've often asked myself this same question. because in mandarin the months are also named the same way. (number+month) and days of the week are also like that (weekday+number). it makes things a lot easier.

i figure that Zamanholf didn't have much knowlege with mandarin or korean, and the idea probably never crossed his mind.

but i agree with you, it would be much easier and international, if months and days of the week where named by numbers.

I remember when i was around the age of 3, and i learned when my birthday was, by my mom showing me 2 full hands, one hand's fingers represented the month, and the other represented the day of the month, so i never forgot my birthday was on the fifth day of the fifth month(may)! even though english is my main language, i think of months in numbers and not by their english names.

Senlando (Montri la profilon) 2009-junio-04 06:17:54

btw, through the word building method of Esperanto, it should be completely acceptable to use unuamonato, duamonato, triamonato,... am i right? if enough people use a word, it might become accepted as common vocabulary, and perhaps the European names of the months would slowly disappear.

days would be harder, since one would have to differentiate between days of the month, and days of the week. anyone have a suggestion for days of the week?

Oŝo-Jabe (Montri la profilon) 2009-junio-04 06:33:35

@Senlando: Perhaps the words for the weekdays could be 'unua semajnero', 'dua semajnero', etc.

While I doubt compound words for the month will remove the unique month names, people would probably know what you mean when you talk about the 'kvina monato'.

russ (Montri la profilon) 2009-junio-04 10:52:10

Oŝo-Jabe:@Senlando: Perhaps the words for the weekdays could be 'unua semajnero', 'dua semajnero', etc.
A problem with this is that different cultures/languages/calendars disagree about whether Sunday or Monday is the first day of the week.

Rogir (Montri la profilon) 2009-junio-04 11:00:23

Still, it should not be that hard. In English, Dutch and German all days of the week end in -day. At least that could be helpful.

jchthys (Montri la profilon) 2009-junio-04 14:37:56

I've wondered about the days myself.

According to ISO standard, Monday begins the workweek. However, Monday is numbered 0, and Sunday is 6. That doesn't make much sense to me.

In Chinese, Monday is "Week 1" (星期一), Saturday "Week 6" (星期六), and Sunday "Week Sun" (星期日).

In modern Hebrew and Greek, Sunday through Friday are 1-6, and Saturday is called "Sabbath".

So you see that there is no universal agreement. (Personally I'm for Sunday through Saturday, 1-7.)

Donniedillon (Montri la profilon) 2009-junio-04 15:39:24

In all of my travels I have always found that calendars are fairly standardized. This has been a necessity because of international business, travel, communication, etc. Sunday is day 1 and Saturday is day 7. I like the idea of losing the European names and using numeric names instead.

Rogir (Montri la profilon) 2009-junio-04 15:40:49

Starting the week with Sunday is an American convention. In Europe the week often starts with Monday. Without context this could lead to confusion.

llestat (Montri la profilon) 2009-junio-04 16:05:07

About using numbered months.
Although used in Korea and China I think it best if months are given names. Businesses often use period 1,2,3... to describe accounting periods that often (not always) coincide with the month (jan,feb,mar...). I find it useful to use a numeric month vs. a named month (jan,feb,mar) when I want to be certain people understand I'm talking about a business month/period. In general conversational use I see no problem in using either method as long as the conversation does not have a business topic.

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