Bon dimanche ! Happy Sunday!
This is my first Semimonthly. Its topic: how to keep track of time.
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Tracking Time and How our Calendar Came About
Today we’ll talk about tracking time and how our calendar was born.
Even though we’ve been engaging in exchanging goods and knowledge around the planet for eons, differences on how countries deal with the notion of time in general may be confounding. In this article we’ll specifically compare how the American and the French systems work.
First to indicate the hour of the day:
The American procedure counts only 12 hours, using the a.m. and p.m. which stands for the Latin ante meridiem and post meridiem, respectively meaning before noon and after noon to cover an entire day. The French method uses 24 hours, i.e. continuing counting after 12 noon, 13, 14, 15 etc. up to 24.
The disparities continue in the way minutes are reported:
literally
It’s 9:15 am Il est 9 heures et quart (9 hours and a quarter)
It’s 3:12 pm Il est 15 heures douze (15 hours twelve)
It’s 9:30 am Il est 9 heures et demie (9 hours and a half)
It’s 8:45 am Il est 9 heures moins le quart (quarter to 9 hours)
It’s 8:50 pm Il est 21 heures moins dix (10 to 9 hours)
Though familiarly, you’ll hear the French say: Il est sept heures du matin, il est sept heures du soir, ou encore, deux heures de l’après-midi et deux heures du matin. It’s 7 o’clock in the morning, it’s 7 o’clock in the evening, or still, 2 o’clock in the afternoon and 2 o’clock in the morning.
Initial capital letter versus lower case:
Next, in English you write the seasons, the months and the days with a capital letter. In French, these words are lowercase:
Winter – l’hiver January – janvier Monday – lundi
Spring – le printemps February – février Tuesday – mardi
Summer – l’été March – mars Wednesday – mercredi
Fall – l’automne April – avril Thursday – jeudi
May – mai Friday – vendredi
June – juin Saturday – samedi
July – juillet Sunday– dimanche
August – août
September – septembre
October – octobre
November – novembre
December – décembre
It does not end there:
You may have noticed that I started listing the days of the week with Monday. This, because in France Monday is the first day of the week and Sunday the last day contrary to the United States where Sunday is the first day of the week and Saturday the last day.
I’m diverging a bit here but I wanted to point out that the Islamic countries start their week on Saturday. On the chart below you can see clearly which country follows which system. The countries in yellow follow the ISO 8601 (International Standard for Organization) which group France belongs to.
But why are these various options in existence?
Clay tablets found in archaeological excavations of what is now Iraq, show that the Babylonians were practicing astronomy and astrology. They had recorded the rhythm of the celestial bodies visible to the naked eye and established a 7-day week where each day was associated with one of them. The 7-day week was based on the phases of the moon which take 29.5 days to complete.
They handled the remaining 1.5 days by adding leap days to keep in sync. This knowledge spread to ancient Greece and Rome and subsequently to the Germanic and Norse population. Each in turn matched the days after the Gods associated with each heavenly body.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday kept the Germanic or Norse appellations.
Sunday > Sun (Old English sunnandæg, translation of Latin diēs sōlis)
Monday > Moon (Old English mōnandæg moon’s day, translation of Late Latin lūnae dies)
Tuesday > Mars (Middle English tewesday,Old English tīwesdæg [cognate with Old High German zīestac,Old Norse tȳsdagr], originally phrase Tīwes daeg Tiu’s day, translating Latin diēs Mārtis day of Mars)
Wednesday > Mercury (Middle English Wednesdai,Old English *Wēdnesdæg, mutated
variant of Wōdnesdæg Woden’s day; cognate with Dutch Woensdag,Danish onsdag; translation of Latin Mercuriī diēs day of Mercury)
Thursday > Jupiter (Middle English; Old English Thursdæg, from Old Danish Thūrsdagr, literally,“Thor’s day”; replacing Old English Thunres dæg; cognate with Dutch donderdag, German Donnerstag (all representing Germanic translation of Late Latin diēs Jovis.)
Friday > Venus (Middle English; Old English Frīgedæg Freya’s day, equivalent to Frīge genitive singular of Frēo) + dæg day; Frēo is identical with Old English adj. frēo free)
Saturday > Saturn (Middle English Saturdai;Old English Saternesdæg, partial translation of Latin Sāturnī diēs Saturn’s day; cognate with Dutch zaterdag,Low German saterdag)
The French names derive from Latin and mean the following:
(from latin)
Monday – lundi le jour de la lune (lunis dies) – The day of the moon
Tuesday – mardi le jour de Mars (Martis dies)
Wednesday – mercredi le jour de Mercure (Mercuri dies)
Thursday – jeudi le jour de Jupiter (Jovis dies)
Friday – vendredi le jour de Vénus (Veneris dies)
Saturday – Samedi le jour du sabbat (sambati dies) – The day of rest
Sunday– dimanche le jour du Seigneur (dies dominicus) – The day of the Lord
The initial day of rest for the Christians as for the Jews was on Saturday from which the name derives. The Christians start celebrating Sunday as their day of rest to honor the Christ’s resurrection. They were persecuted for it until the year 321 when the Emperor Constantine the Great who was the 1st Christian Roman emperor set Sunday as the day of rest for the entire empire.
This switch is the reason why most of the old world ended using Monday as the first day of the week.
Sources: Encyclopedia Britannica Dictionary.com
Larousse.fr Chartsbin.com timeanddate
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