5 ms·

How we became weekly

39 points by benbreen 5y ago

shoto_io 5y ago
I have often reflected about this. To me, it feels like that the week is not as "artificial" as claimed in the article. Working 6 days feels like the maximum before a full day of rest is needed for the body and the mind. It's just a feeling though...
- Torwald 5y ago
  The week is related to the phases of the moon. Aproximately four phases per month.
  - shoto_io 5y ago
    But isn't 4 where the randomness comes in?
    - ZetaZero 5y ago
      yeah, but seven 4-day weeks per month seems weird. And not too many other ways to divide 28
    - Torwald 5y ago
      See this comment by another poster: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29431103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29431103
  - exegete 5y ago
    Why four phases? Why not 3 or 10? You can divide the month up any number of ways to create “weeks”. The Romans had 8-day “weeks” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nundinae https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nundinae
    - Torwald 5y ago
      Lunar phases are a natural phenomenon, traditionally you observe four phases. The more detailed model knows eight phases.
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  I think working 6 days requires much more than a single day to recover. All things considered, I'd agree that it is the "maximum", but it isn't really common to work 6 days a week in the IT industry, is it? I know for sure it's very common in retail.
scaglio 5y ago
This is a very interesting topic. The article is well written, but _in my opinion_ the concept of the 7-day-long week is not artificial at all. Like a comment says, it is a fraction of a lunar month. Many of the ancient calendars were based on the Moon. Little self-promotion: I recently started a newsletter with little similar curiosities about culture, religion, myths, and folklore I found around – https://godsip.club https://godsip.club
- scaglio 5y ago
  I reply to myself to add a note, always from my personal notes – I'm almost surely wrong. Here[^1] it is quite well summed up: the Moon was only the beginning, the easiest phenomenon to observe. The fact that seven planets were "easily visible" with no astronomical tools surely helped, and in some civilizations the days were named along these. Religions, finally, "officially" decided that a week had to have seven days. [^1]: https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/days/7-days-week.html https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/days/7-days-week.html
- tshaddox 5y ago
  It is a fraction of the lunar month…about 1/4.2. That’s hardly a nice clean division of the lunar month. You’d be a heck of a lot closer with 5 weeks of 6 days each!
  - Torwald 5y ago
    It's related to the lunar phases, not a purely mathmatical division.
    - rhn_mk1 5y ago
      But lunar phases... are a mathematical division? 1/4?
      - QuercusMax 5y ago
        New moon and full moon are real things you can see, not an arbitrary mathematical division. And then the first / third quarter is just halfway between. Results in about 7 days per lunar quarter.
ftyers 5y ago
In Basque the words for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are: astelehena, asteartea and asteazkena, literally "beginning of week", "between week" and "end of week" respectively. People have thought that at some point the Basques had a three day week with the later days innovations, but I don't think it has been shown definitively. Interesting anyway...
- criddell 5y ago
  What are the words for Thursday through Sunday?
  - ftyers 5y ago
    Osteguna, ostirala, larunbata, igandea. Not sure of the etymologies of those, but Trask's dictionary probably has them.
    - ftyers 5y ago
      Thursday: ortzegun (L LN HN), orzegun (L LN), ostegun (G HN LN), ostégün (Z), ostégun (R), orzégun (R) n. ‘Thursday’. 1617. + egun ‘day’. This word, which looks so much like a calque of Lat. Jovis dies ‘Thursday’ (lit., ‘day of Jupiter’), possibly provides some support for the idea, discussed above, that the first element might once have been the name of a sky-god or a thunder-god. But a calque along the lines of ‘thunder-day’ also appears plausible. However, M. (1972f: 307) points out that a derivation from bortz ~ bost ‘five’ + egun ‘day’ would be formally perfect, by P9, and semantically acceptable if the days of the week are counted from Sunday. See also ortzirale, below, and see eguen (under egun). Friday: ortzirale (L LN), ortzilare (L LN R), orzirale (L), orzilare HN LN R), ostirale (LN), osti(r)ále (Z), ostrále (R), orziláre (R), ostiral (G) n. ‘Friday’. 1622. Final element obscure. See also barikua {~ bariaku under afari.} Saturday: larunbat (G HN L LN), laurenbat (old B G), laranbate (old LN *) ** n. ‘Saturday’. ** [FHV 95, 491, 501] Many have seen this as laurden ‘quarter’ (see lau [1]) + bat ‘one’, since Saturday completes the week, and a week is roughly one quarter of a month. But M. **{(1971b),} (1977a: 491) cautiously suggests a derivative of lagun ‘companion’, perhaps *lagunen bate ‘gathering of companions’, + -en {[1]} Gen. + a verbal noun from batu ‘get together’ (see bat). Cf. neskanegun (under neska). Sunday: igande (G HN L LN), igánte (Z R) n. ‘Sunday’. 1545. + -te {[1]} NFS (M. **{1971b: 586 n.12}). Though phonologically perfect, this etymology is semantically odd, and it is not certain, but it seems likely. The original sense was app. ‘ascension (day)’. Cf. Russian voskresén’e ‘Sunday’, originally ‘resurrection’. See domeka.* These are all from R. L. Trask (2008) "Etymological Dictionary of Basque".
_xnmw 5y ago
I always wondered about this. If one was lost in the wilderness with general amnesia, one could figure out the month and day eventually, by counting from the winter/summer solstice, but there would no way of figuring out what day of the week it is without consulting a calendar.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  Unlike the rest of the calendar, the week is more a social construct that allows for better coordination and cooperation between people. Like which side of the road you drive on, the exact choice doesn't matter so long as everyone does the same thing.
- _Microft 5y ago
  You might be able to tell the year from astronomical observations, assuming you still know some facts like the dates of earlier eclipses, conjunctions, .... Once you know the year, month and day you could calculate the day of the week using the doomsday rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule
elzbardico 5y ago
The week is merely a convenient integer division of a lunar calendar. We need to stop this bullshit of adding misterious meaning to stuffs and calling everything we don’t understand a social construct. Not because they are not, but because this is basically a useless tautology. Telling that the society socially constructed the concept of a week based on the integer divisors of the duration of the lunar month adds no useful information and distorts language with what by now is just a tired cliché

39 points by benbreen 5y ago

I have often reflected about this. To me, it feels like that the week is not as "artificial" as claimed in the article. Working 6 days feels like the maximum before a full day of rest is needed for the body and the mind. It's just a feeling though...

Torwald 5y ago
The week is related to the phases of the moon. Aproximately four phases per month.
- shoto_io 5y ago
  But isn't 4 where the randomness comes in?
  - ZetaZero 5y ago
    yeah, but seven 4-day weeks per month seems weird. And not too many other ways to divide 28
  - Torwald 5y ago
    See this comment by another poster: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29431103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29431103
- exegete 5y ago
  Why four phases? Why not 3 or 10? You can divide the month up any number of ways to create “weeks”. The Romans had 8-day “weeks” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nundinae https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nundinae
  - Torwald 5y ago
    Lunar phases are a natural phenomenon, traditionally you observe four phases. The more detailed model knows eight phases.
0xdeadb00f 5y ago
I think working 6 days requires much more than a single day to recover. All things considered, I'd agree that it is the "maximum", but it isn't really common to work 6 days a week in the IT industry, is it? I know for sure it's very common in retail.

scaglio 5y ago

This is a very interesting topic. The article is well written, but _in my opinion_ the concept of the 7-day-long week is not artificial at all. Like a comment says, it is a fraction of a lunar month. Many of the ancient calendars were based on the Moon. Little self-promotion: I recently started a newsletter with little similar curiosities about culture, religion, myths, and folklore I found around – https://godsip.club https://godsip.club

scaglio 5y ago
I reply to myself to add a note, always from my personal notes – I'm almost surely wrong. Here[^1] it is quite well summed up: the Moon was only the beginning, the easiest phenomenon to observe. The fact that seven planets were "easily visible" with no astronomical tools surely helped, and in some civilizations the days were named along these. Religions, finally, "officially" decided that a week had to have seven days. [^1]: https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/days/7-days-week.html https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/days/7-days-week.html
tshaddox 5y ago
It is a fraction of the lunar month…about 1/4.2. That’s hardly a nice clean division of the lunar month. You’d be a heck of a lot closer with 5 weeks of 6 days each!
- Torwald 5y ago
  It's related to the lunar phases, not a purely mathmatical division.
  - rhn_mk1 5y ago
    But lunar phases... are a mathematical division? 1/4?
    - QuercusMax 5y ago
      New moon and full moon are real things you can see, not an arbitrary mathematical division. And then the first / third quarter is just halfway between. Results in about 7 days per lunar quarter.

ftyers 5y ago

In Basque the words for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are: astelehena, asteartea and asteazkena, literally "beginning of week", "between week" and "end of week" respectively. People have thought that at some point the Basques had a three day week with the later days innovations, but I don't think it has been shown definitively. Interesting anyway...

criddell 5y ago
What are the words for Thursday through Sunday?
- ftyers 5y ago
  Osteguna, ostirala, larunbata, igandea. Not sure of the etymologies of those, but Trask's dictionary probably has them.
  - ftyers 5y ago
    Thursday: ortzegun (L LN HN), orzegun (L LN), ostegun (G HN LN), ostégün (Z), ostégun (R), orzégun (R) n. ‘Thursday’. 1617. + egun ‘day’. This word, which looks so much like a calque of Lat. Jovis dies ‘Thursday’ (lit., ‘day of Jupiter’), possibly provides some support for the idea, discussed above, that the first element might once have been the name of a sky-god or a thunder-god. But a calque along the lines of ‘thunder-day’ also appears plausible. However, M. (1972f: 307) points out that a derivation from bortz ~ bost ‘five’ + egun ‘day’ would be formally perfect, by P9, and semantically acceptable if the days of the week are counted from Sunday. See also ortzirale, below, and see eguen (under egun). Friday: ortzirale (L LN), ortzilare (L LN R), orzirale (L), orzilare HN LN R), ostirale (LN), osti(r)ále (Z), ostrále (R), orziláre (R), ostiral (G) n. ‘Friday’. 1622. Final element obscure. See also barikua {~ bariaku under afari.} Saturday: larunbat (G HN L LN), laurenbat (old B G), laranbate (old LN *) ** n. ‘Saturday’. ** [FHV 95, 491, 501] Many have seen this as laurden ‘quarter’ (see lau [1]) + bat ‘one’, since Saturday completes the week, and a week is roughly one quarter of a month. But M. **{(1971b),} (1977a: 491) cautiously suggests a derivative of lagun ‘companion’, perhaps *lagunen bate ‘gathering of companions’, + -en {[1]} Gen. + a verbal noun from batu ‘get together’ (see bat). Cf. neskanegun (under neska). Sunday: igande (G HN L LN), igánte (Z R) n. ‘Sunday’. 1545. + -te {[1]} NFS (M. **{1971b: 586 n.12}). Though phonologically perfect, this etymology is semantically odd, and it is not certain, but it seems likely. The original sense was app. ‘ascension (day)’. Cf. Russian voskresén’e ‘Sunday’, originally ‘resurrection’. See domeka.* These are all from R. L. Trask (2008) "Etymological Dictionary of Basque".

_xnmw 5y ago

I always wondered about this. If one was lost in the wilderness with general amnesia, one could figure out the month and day eventually, by counting from the winter/summer solstice, but there would no way of figuring out what day of the week it is without consulting a calendar.

anonporridge 5y ago
Unlike the rest of the calendar, the week is more a social construct that allows for better coordination and cooperation between people. Like which side of the road you drive on, the exact choice doesn't matter so long as everyone does the same thing.
_Microft 5y ago
You might be able to tell the year from astronomical observations, assuming you still know some facts like the dates of earlier eclipses, conjunctions, .... Once you know the year, month and day you could calculate the day of the week using the doomsday rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule

elzbardico 5y ago

The week is merely a convenient integer division of a lunar calendar. We need to stop this bullshit of adding misterious meaning to stuffs and calling everything we don’t understand a social construct. Not because they are not, but because this is basically a useless tautology. Telling that the society socially constructed the concept of a week based on the integer divisors of the duration of the lunar month adds no useful information and distorts language with what by now is just a tired cliché