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From: chai@utflis.UUCP (H. Chai)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Oriental days of the week
Message-ID: <635@utflis.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 15-Dec-85 01:21:36 EST
Article-I.D.: utflis.635
Posted: Sun Dec 15 01:21:36 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Dec-85 04:42:24 EST
References: <174@watmath.UUCP> <262@ho95e.UUCP> <674@spar.UUCP>
Reply-To: chai@utflis.UUCP (H. Chai)
Organization: FLIS, University of Toronto
Lines: 47
Summary: 

In article <674@spar.UUCP> ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) writes:
>    The 7 days of the week fit nicely into the ancient cosmic scheme with 7
>    (visible) non-stationary astronomical bodies
>
>Object    French        English     Danish    Teutonic Names
>
>sun	  [dimanche]	sunday      s0ndag    sun
[etc....]


Maybe you people would like to know how oriental cultures deal with 
naming the days of the week.  In present day Chinese, the sequence 
Mon., Tue ... Sun. is "weekday #1", "weekday #2",...., "weekday of the sun".
Simple, isn't it! (now I wonder why *I* had thought that the week starts
on Monday :-) (In fact Sunday is sometimes called "Weekday #7" for fun)

In Japanese, they are using what seems to be an old Chinese system 
(imported from Western civilisation, no doubt) of naming the weekdays : 
using the names of the 5 planets, the sun and the moon.  However,
each of the five planets are named after one of the five elements, which are:
Gold (i.e. metal), Wood, Water, Fire and Mud (earth).  Therefore, Tuesday to
Saturday are indirectly named after the elements.

Object    element 	Japanese	English		Chinese: Cantonese

sun	  (sun)		nitsu-yoobi	sunday      	singkay yud*(sun)
moon	  (moon)	getsu-yoobi	monday     	singkay yud*(1)
mars  	  fire{foh}+	ka-yoobi	tuesday   	singkay yee (2)
mercury   water{suei}	sui-yoobi	wednesday	singkay sam (3)
jupiter   wood{mok}	moku-yoobi	thursday    	singkay say (4)
venus	  gold{gum}	kin-yoobi	friday     	singkay mm  (5)
saturn	  mud{tow}	to-yoobi	saturday	singkay lok (6)

* for sunday the 'yud' = sun has a low tone while for monday 'yud' = 1 has
  a high tone
+ the modern Chinese (Cantonese) pronunciation is in {}'s

Note: yoobi ( the 'o' as in more) comes from the Chinese ['yiu' = to shine] +
      Japanese ['hi' = day]. (the 'bi' is optional in everyday speech)

      singkay comes from ['sing' = star] + ['kay' = period] 
      (in fact singkay == week)

-- 
Henry Chai, just a humble student at the 
Faculty of Library and Information Science, U of Toronto
{watmath,ihnp4,allegra}!utzoo!utflis!chai