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From: gadfly@ihuxn.UUCP (Gadfly)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Oriental days of the week
Message-ID: <1287@ihuxn.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Dec-85 00:47:21 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxn.1287
Posted: Tue Dec 17 00:47:21 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Dec-85 02:30:10 EST
References: <174@watmath.UUCP> <262@ho95e.UUCP> <674@spar.UUCP> <635@utflis.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 27

--
> 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)

The French Revolutionary Calendar (adopted in 1794 retroactive to
22 Sept. 1792) did much the same thing.  Each 30-day month (there
were 5 intercalary days each year--6 in leap years--to produce the
necessary 365 or 366 days/year) was divided into three weeks of
10 days each, named "Primedi" through "Decadi" (day 1 through day 10).
The principal motivation was anti-religious, placing the Convention
squarely against the Church and its 7-day Gregorian weeks, making
Sundays fall rather randomly essentially as harrassment.  Primedi
was designated as a secular day of celebration.  Unlike the rest of
the new calendar, however, the 10-day week was very unpopular.  And
for obvious reasons.  Even the most dedicated sans-culottes could not
bring themselves to forsake 1 day in 7 off for 1 day in 10.
-- 
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