Et tu Brute
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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When I was learning english as an inmigrant kid, I was like: why the fuck do they name the months
Because in Chinese, it was just numbers:
- January --> 一月 1st Month
- October --> 十月 10th Month
- December --> 十二月 12th Month
月 = Month
And the characters before are just a number
Simple
(Omg I did it again, I went on a rant about language... 🙃)
月
ඞ
I can't be the only one
When the calandar is sus
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Tbh, I was kinda disappointed about this when learning Japanese. (Am from Europe where probably all languages have named months.) The days of the week had these fancy names but months were just "[number] month". If you name weekdays, why not name months?
I mean at least in japanese they used to have names but changed to the numbering system at one point.
You still see the old names pop up from time to time in literature and stuff. btw I found a reference https://blog.japanwondertravel.com/the-old-japanese-names-for-the-months-meanings-and-origins-21973
oh really? good to know!
While in German months have names, when talking about specific dates (getting a dentist appointment for instance) you often use numerals. Does the 15th of the fourth at 11 work for you?
Kannst du ein Beispiel auf Deutsch geben? Ich lerne Deutsch.
Heute haben wir den achtzehnte dritte.
Danke sehr
huh interesting
That's just neat. It even looks cool in markdown.
Lol this is the second time someone linked this. 🤣
(Two Days Ago: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/40007037/17338871)
Despite all her frustration with the language, she speaks it very well. And she's totally right of course, Wikipedia even includes the demonym in the cheat sheet on every country page, just because no one ever knows them.
Numbered months should be much easier, but man my brain just can't vibe with it
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In fairness, July and August weren't inserted, they were renamed from Quintilis and Sextilis, literally the fifth and sixth months of the Roman calendar.
Much earlier, Pompilius (history about whom is largely legendary, and actions attributed to him should be taken with a grain of salt) introduced January and February and set the numbering out of line. These months were previously just lumped in as monthless winter days.
All Julius Caesar did was rebalance the calendar without changing the months. The rename of Quintilis was posthumous.
Gregory XIII then further tweaked it to give us the modern calendar.
Honestly I think we should go back to monthless winter days, would fit my mood during that time so much better.
Mood, sure, but also practicality.
Not until quite recently there was work to be done by the masses during off-season. We used to semi-hibernate. There are still some communities that do.
If those months weren’t months and everyone just assumed it was a wasted timeslot, everyone would be happier.
Humans are not meant to work 40/50 (We are meant to work 20/40 - 20 hrs 30 weeks a year) hr weeks 50 weeks a year
At my work, we pretty much go into hibernation mode from Thanksgiving to New Years anyway hah
We'd need to make that symmetric for the southern hemisphere, though.
True this deal keeps getting better
It's far stranger to me that it seems kind of half-assed. January, for the month of the god Janus. February, from februare, for purification, the month of purification. March, for the month of the god Mars. April (not quite as clear) possibly derived from Aphrodite. Possibly just from aperilis, meaning 'next.' Things seem to be getting a bit wobbly. May, seemingly for the goddess Maia. June, for the goddess Juno. And then everything goes sideways. July for Caesar, a human, but previously Quintilis, for fifth. August was previously Sextilis, for sixth. Then September, sept for seven, October, oct for eight. Nov, 9. Dec, 10. All those things in the first part, and then they just say, 'Anyone have any more ideas for the rest? No? Oh well, then. We'll just number the rest and call it done.'
(TLDR: last two paragraphs)
one of the best nonfiction books I've read was A Universal History of Numbers by Georges Ifrah. It goes through the history of numerical writing from scratching notches on a bone to keep track of livestock all the way to the computer age, highly recommend it.
in it, it goes through counting systems around the world (including using your body, apparently not all cultures always used just fingers to count things) and somewhere around there the topic comes to the intuitive counting that exists in us.
turns out we can count to 4 in an instant. if I flash a single frame of up to 4 objects on a screen, you can reliably tell me how many there were even if you weren't expecting it. from 5 objects on it becomes more confusing, and even if you can do it it's usually due to grouping (maybe you realize there was a group of 3 objects and a group of 2 objects and do the math in your head later).
anyway this apparently means that even the most primitive counting systems to have at least 2 and up to 4 number words, followed by "many" for 5 and above. but even for those who have more numbers in vocabulary, 2 and up to 4 as a quantity seems to be more significant than anything above. for example a lot of languages have singular and plural forms of words but some languages also have dual or even trial forms.
one such indicator of significance was apparently how romans named things and even people. in a group of things they seem to have named the first four with proper names, and used numbers for 5 and above. this includes their children, which is why there were names like octavius, apparently, because that's the eighth child.
so that's what they did with the months. named the first four March, April, May, June, then continued with 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 for the rest. January and February were added later to push each numbered month to 2 off. 5 and 6 were renamed after Julius and Augustus. so now we have 7, 8, 9, 10 as the names for months 9, 10, 11 and 12.
January and February were added later to push each numbered month to 2 off
The reason for this being that at the beginning of the year, some government officials changed posts, including the ones responsible for the military. March is when the weather becomes nice, so you can go to war again (hence the name). But since March also marked the new year, the people responsible for war management just took office, which was not ideal. So they pushed the two months in to give them some time to prepare before sending out the military everywhere.
Fun times!
that's great to know, thanks for adding! I've known about the two months being inserted at the top for quite a long time but never knew why.
Those who understand German might be interested in this episode of the Troja Alert podcast:
https://trojaalert.bildungsangst.de/podcast/tro030-calendar-gods-2/
OK but Romans also sometimes just numbered their kids until they got old enough to go from being Primus to getting a descriptive name that was often insulting
yeah maybe they just didn't live long enough to find something insultingly descriptive for the eighth.
We should simply move new year to the first of March. Fixed.
Congratulations you have invented Nowruz.
September, October, November, and December are named after the Latin numerals 7-10 (septem, octo, novem, decem) because they were originally the seventh through tenth months in the Roman calendar, which began around the spring equinox in March.
Right. A lot of people think new months were inserted, pushing the numbered months back - but actually start of the year was originally March. And that's why February has just the left-over days + a leap year; it's just whatever is left over at the end of the year.
I we are complaining why not OCTember?
That's a hard NOtober from me
No octopus Octember
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