5 ms·

Not in my experience. Because "nächster" means "nähester" ('the closest one'), it would be logical to mean Friday this week, not next week. It's not uncommon t

by tcmb 5y ago

Not in my experience. Because "nächster" means "nähester" ('the closest one'), it would be logical to mean Friday this week, not next week. It's not uncommon to disambiguate by saying "nächsten Freitag, nicht diesen Freitag" ('next Friday, not this Friday') or just avoiding it by saying "nächste Woche Freitag" ('Friday next week') or similar.

ganafagol 5y ago
No. On a monday, the closest friday is in the past.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  next implies the future when talking about time. Also for the matching words in other Germanic languages in my experience.
  - another-dave 5y ago
    Yes, but "this" doesn't imply timing either way. So if on Saturday you said "our dinner reservations are next Friday, not this Friday", that could mean — "we didn't forgot to go yesterday, we have dinner in 6 days time" (where 'this Friday' is 'Friday of this week') or could mean — "we're not going to dinner in 6 days time, we're going to dinner in 13 days time" (where 'this Friday' is 'the Friday in this rolling block of 7 days' and 'next Friday' is the one after that). Sounds very contrived, but people do use it in both ways and neither really has a dominance unfortunately.
- tcmb 5y ago
  True, but it's just nonsensical to say "let's meet three days ago". Real-world constraints restrict the meaningful interpretations of sentences.
  - ganafagol 5y ago
    What's nonsensical and what is not is subjective. Different people assume different things about everything that's not explicit. That's why we are having this "this" vs "next" discussion in the first place. Connecting "next" with a German translation of "nähest" ("closest") is just as nonsensical.
schoen 5y ago
English "next" also etymologically means "closest": "nighest" ('the closest one'). I've had the feeling that this etymological connection is more transparent in German than in English, maybe partly because we rarely use the word "nigh" anymore (except in fixed phrases like "well nigh/nigh unto" 'almost', or "the end is nigh"). while Germans use "nah" regularly. In Romance languages this connection is also very clear. I was confused as an English speaker the first time I was waiting in line in Brazil and someone called out "próximo!" because I thought "huh? closest to what?". I think English has acquired an kind of intuition that "next" has most to do with sequence rather than proximity, like the .next() method of a sequence or something. For example, when playing a board game one says "who's next?" or "I'm next", although with no connotation at all of physical proximity, but rather of "entitlement according to game rules". (For example, you might be going clockwise or counterclockwise, or some players might be skipped because of the action of a rule, or something.) In German you would say "wer ist daran?" or "ich bin daran", although I'm confused about the extent to which "wer ist der nächste?" is an acceptable substitute or has different connotations.

by tcmb 5y ago

ganafagol 5y ago

No. On a monday, the closest friday is in the past.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago
next implies the future when talking about time. Also for the matching words in other Germanic languages in my experience.
- another-dave 5y ago
  Yes, but "this" doesn't imply timing either way. So if on Saturday you said "our dinner reservations are next Friday, not this Friday", that could mean — "we didn't forgot to go yesterday, we have dinner in 6 days time" (where 'this Friday' is 'Friday of this week') or could mean — "we're not going to dinner in 6 days time, we're going to dinner in 13 days time" (where 'this Friday' is 'the Friday in this rolling block of 7 days' and 'next Friday' is the one after that). Sounds very contrived, but people do use it in both ways and neither really has a dominance unfortunately.
tcmb 5y ago
True, but it's just nonsensical to say "let's meet three days ago". Real-world constraints restrict the meaningful interpretations of sentences.
- ganafagol 5y ago
  What's nonsensical and what is not is subjective. Different people assume different things about everything that's not explicit. That's why we are having this "this" vs "next" discussion in the first place. Connecting "next" with a German translation of "nähest" ("closest") is just as nonsensical.

schoen 5y ago

English "next" also etymologically means "closest": "nighest" ('the closest one'). I've had the feeling that this etymological connection is more transparent in German than in English, maybe partly because we rarely use the word "nigh" anymore (except in fixed phrases like "well nigh/nigh unto" 'almost', or "the end is nigh"). while Germans use "nah" regularly. In Romance languages this connection is also very clear. I was confused as an English speaker the first time I was waiting in line in Brazil and someone called out "próximo!" because I thought "huh? closest to what?". I think English has acquired an kind of intuition that "next" has most to do with sequence rather than proximity, like the .next() method of a sequence or something. For example, when playing a board game one says "who's next?" or "I'm next", although with no connotation at all of physical proximity, but rather of "entitlement according to game rules". (For example, you might be going clockwise or counterclockwise, or some players might be skipped because of the action of a rule, or something.) In German you would say "wer ist daran?" or "ich bin daran", although I'm confused about the extent to which "wer ist der nächste?" is an acceptable substitute or has different connotations.