15 ms·
I'd love to hear the logic of why Monday should be the first day of the week.
by googlryas 4y ago
I'd love to hear the logic of why Monday should be the first day of the week.
- 988747 4y agoWell, since Saturday and Sunday are called "weekEND", so it logically follows that Monday is a "week start". Most people think about it like this: Monday is a start of a new work-week, and then you get two days of rest at the end of the week.
- ethanbond 4y agoBut there are two ends of any line, one on each side. Not two ends, both of which are on the same side.
- layer8 4y agoIn a ring buffer, you have a start and an end pointer, not two end pointers.
- adhesive_wombat 4y agoIf we think of it like iterators in C++, though, begin() is Monday, and end() is the next Monday.
- bombcar 4y agoExactly. A sausage has two ends, the beginning end and the end end, and so shall the week
- int_19h 4y agoThen it'd be called "weekends", not "weekend".
- bombcar 4y agoWe don’t call it “nights” even though one is split over two days (before midnight and after).
- int_19h 4y agoJust call it "evening" if it's before midnight. That way you get four nicely subdivided periods. 00-06 - night 06-12 - morning 12-18 - afternoon 18-24 - evening Would need to refactor the name of "midnight" tho to minimize confusion. But if we use it as a starting point to count hours in a day from, it doesn't make sense to simultaneously designate it as a middle of anything. (BTW, such subdivision is actually common in many places of the world.)
- Quekid5 4y agoI feel we've just rediscovered why appeals to grammar[0] don't actually solve much of anything. (Not saying you're appealing to grammar, just that grammar is generally not that useful for discerning... anything really.) Anyway, to be a bit more substantive: What really baked my noodle when I was younger is the fact that the seasons and the night/day cycle are much more disconnected than it appears when you live on Earth. Of course, it makes sense when you understand the tilt/rotation thing, but still... it really weirds me out sometimes. [0] English in this case, but any language, really.
- remram 4y agoThat only applies to things that are not obviously oriented. No one would try to argue that when they said "we'll do a recap at the end of meetings", what they meant is both the start and the end. This is not ambiguous at all and I don't even believe you believe in this argument.
- ethanbond 4y agoWell I’d suggest the “obvious” orientation is actually the effect of what you believe the words to mean, not the cause. This is what I was taught, I do indeed think it’s pretty silly, but it wouldn’t even be in the top 100 weirdest things about our language/culture/norms “space.” We’re surrounded by idiosyncrasies!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gmac 4y agoBecause Saturday and Sunday are the weekend.
- timbit42 4y agoCorrect. Sunday is the starting end of the week and Saturday is then stopping end of the week.
- ghosty141 4y agoOr you just say, Sunday is the end of the week and Monday that start of the next one. Funnily enough this is the first time I've heard as Sunday as the first day of the week. I'm from Germany where Monday is the first day and Sunday the last. This also coincides with the work week where the first workday is Monday, then the weekend ends the week and a new week begins with Monday.
- timbit42 4y agoWell, most people say Saturday is the weekend.
- thedrexster 4y agoBecause Saturday and Sunday are the weekEND. edit: lol, too slow
- kklisura 4y agoI'd love to hear the logic of why Monday should NOT be the first day of the week.
- ethanbond 4y agoBecause weekENDs. There are two ends, one at the beginning (Sunday) and one at the end (Saturday).
- worldsayshi 4y agoI have never heard anyone say "have a nice weekends".
- layer8 4y agoBecause then the middle of the week is Thursday instead of Wednesday. ;)
- kuroikyu 4y agoEasy to solve: Thursday is the middle of the week, Wednesday is the middle of the workweek.
- TheBrokenRail 4y agoSilly reason, but I like that Sunday being the first day keeps the week symmetric. You have the first and last day of the week being days off (in most places), and you have Wednesday in the middle. It's not very logical, but neither is any part of our calendar system.
- mcv 4y agoHistorical reasons. Sunday has always been the first day of the week. Because yet another religion than the 4 mentioned before explicitly defines Saturday as the last day of the week, and everybody has always gone along with that. Probably because it was always like that anyway. The recent official standardisation of Monday to be the first day of the week was a mistake.
- dageshi 4y agoMostly because Saturday and Sunday are collectively known as the weekend and it doesn't make a lot of sense to start the week in the middle of what everyone agrees is the end of the week.
- merlincorey 4y agoEvery end is a new beginning, according to an old aphorism. This would imply that a Weekend and a Weekbegin could easily coincide.
- adhesive_wombat 4y ago> everyone agrees Not everyone, Israel has has Friday and Saturday off.
- eps 4y agoIs Sunday a work day in Israel?
- adhesive_wombat 4y agoUsually, yes.
- mcv 4y agoI think it's a bit naive to expect sense from anything related to dates and times at this point. It's all just accumulated history, and historically, Sunday has always been the first day of the week, no matter what people today think about it.
- CogitoCogito 4y agoIt’s totally arbitrary (as well as totally immaterial) whether the week starts on Sunday or Monday (or any other day for that matter). The fact that the US does it differently than many other countries really isn’t a big deal. Your downvotes show the whole bike shedding nature of the issue. The debate is so contentious because the stakes are so low.
- octobus2021 4y agoI'm honestly not sure what "bike shedding" is but numerical values for days of the week very much count when building any software containing calendars (or any dates really) to make sure it works properly in different geographic regions.
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- throwaway06421 4y agoWhat I find interesting is that many Americans consider themselves Christians and that will influence their decisions. So one argument can be made from that point of view (I'm not religious myself). In the Bible it says God designated the last day of the week as a day of rest. From a Christian point of view, it would make sense that Sunday is the last day of the week, as it is the official day of rest. Otherwise they disrespect the Bible and skip the "real" day of rest. I'm not religious or American, so from my relatively objective view it seems as if the people from the majority religion has ignored their holy book.
- dwighttk 4y agoIf you’re interested… the reason Christians worship on Sunday is because Jesus was raised from the dead on the first day of the week. It wasn’t an immediate thing as at first almost all Christians were Jewish and continued the seventh day day of rest and gathering for worship.
- mcv 4y agoThis misunderstanding is probably where the idea that Monday is the first day of the week came from. Biblically, Saturday is the Sabbath, the last day of the week. But early Christians came together before and after work on the first day of the week, the day Jesus rose from the dead, which is explicitly the day after tue Sabbath. Eventually that day was also made a free day amd added to the weekend. But it was always the first day of the week until ISO redefined it.
- mcv 4y agoNo, the biblical day of rest is the Sabbath, the Saturday. The fact that most Christians keep the first day of the week instead of the last day is because Jesus rose from death on the first day of the week.
- SamBam 4y agoYet the word "Sabbath" refers to different things to different Christians. Consider the old nursery rhyme, Monday's Child, which ends with Friday's child is loving and giving / Saturday's child works hard for a living. / And the child born on the Sabbath day Is bonny and blithe, good and gay.
- adhesive_wombat 4y agoIn Chinese, Monday is 星期一 (=1st in week). And the months are numbered (January = "first month"), Who are we to argue with the people who have finally gotten an act together to number it properly?[1] [1]: alright, yes, Sunday is still the odd one out and doesn't have a number.