Quakers used to use only numbers to date things, using Sunday as First Day. So dates would be given as Fifth Day, Sixth Month 2009. If you ever get a chance to visit a Quaker burial ground, you will see this on the marker stones (though only the month rather than the day).

You can still hear some older people saying things like that, though the common usage died out a while ago.

i had the whole night to think it over, and i guess that there is as valed of a reason to have sunday be the first day instead of having sunday be the seventh. I figure that the reason I thought sunday should be the seventh day, is because i grew up thinking that way because it's that way in mandarin. So i guess we have to pick between Chinese, Korean, and perhaps other cultures who call monday the first day. And Jews, Christians, (maybe Muslims?) and other cultures who consider Sunday to be the first day.

i would personally go with the Chinese, cause they probably have the numbers on their side, also, they have the numbers in their weekday names, while western culture don't so it would be more confusing for a Chinese or Korean person to learn the numbers since their language would be different.

btw, who invented the seven day week? I always believed the Hebrews did. Or were they just using a common thing at the time?

Senlando:btw, who invented the seven day week? I always believed the Hebrews. Or were they just using a common thing at the time?

I think the credit goes to the Hebrews.

Wikipedia:The earliest evidence of continuous use of a seven-day week appears with the Jews during the Babylonian Captivity in 586 ʙ.ᴄ., after the destruction of the first temple. A seven-day week is mentioned in the Creation story contained in the Book of Genesis, in the Hebrew Bible, where God is said to have created the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh (Genesis 1:1-2:3). Also, in the Book of Exodus, the fourth of the ten commandments is to rest on the seventh day, the Sabbath (Exodus 20:8-11).

Also, I take “weekend” to mean the ends of the week: the front end and the back end

Must be Hebrew.
Chinese used to work in a ten-day week system,
called "旬" (sjun). Each month haves three "sjun"-oj

And you will see that when most people talk about a certain day in a week, they call them "礼拜X" (Service X), Sunday otherwise being "礼拜天" (Service day),
which is a evidence that 7-day week system came to China only through Christian missionaries.

jan aleksan:

jchthys:Especially in Europe, workers in business number the weeks of the year (from 1 to 52). And some calendars I have seen number the days from 1 to 365, so there must be a use for that.

well, sometimes people uses the week numbers, for example to set a meeting, or in academic calendars. Number of days are very hardly used. It's just to add an added value to the calendars, and justify it's price ^^.

Here’s a section from Wikipedia that says that this system is actually in use, especially in the military.

Here is a link to an ordinal calendar converter published by the US Forest Service.

Rogir: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.

And then the Scandinavian languages too

jchthys:

jan aleksan:

jchthys:Especially in Europe, workers in business number the weeks of the year (from 1 to 52). And some calendars I have seen number the days from 1 to 365, so there must be a use for that.

well, sometimes people uses the week numbers, for example to set a meeting, or in academic calendars. Number of days are very hardly used. It's just to add an added value to the calendars, and justify it's price ^^.

Here’s a section from Wikipedia that says that this system is actually in use, especially in the military.

It's called the "Julian date" and it's a short-hand way of expressing the date (in the US Navy, it's primarily used in the messaging system).

Personally, I greatly prefer the unique names for the months and days. It gives flavor to the language, and it ties it to a great deal of world languages already in existence, as one can compare and contrast how closely the Esperanto name resembles the name of the day or month in a language he already speaks.

Polaris:Personally, I greatly prefer the unique names for the months and days. It gives flavor to the language, and it ties it to a great deal of world languages already in existence, as one can compare and contrast how closely the Esperanto name resembles the name of the day or month in a language he already speaks.

As Esperanto is meant to be an international language, it actually does make less sense to have unique month names. It's similar to the arguments about scientific words: should we import more esperantized latin/greek science words (easier in general for speakers of European languages), or use word-building from existing roots (recognizable by anyone who already knows Esperanto). In the case of months at least, they already exist in the language so it doesn't matter much either way.