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Lots of ambiguity with “next”. It’s always so hard to describe “next Wednesday” if it’s Monday or “next week” if it’s Saturday. My friends from non English co

Lots of ambiguity with “next”. It’s always so hard to describe “next Wednesday” if it’s Monday or “next week” if it’s Saturday. My friends from non English countries get very confused that somehow “next Wednesday” when it’s Monday might not mean two days from now but 8 days from now. And how two days in that instance would be referred as “this Wednesday” or “this coming Wednesday” Which is different way of talking. If you were sitting by the road counting cars and you are at car “n”, Saying “the next car” would refer to car n+1. If your counting wednesdays you experienced “next Wednesday” technically refers to n+2 I stopped saying “this <day>” or “next <day>” and now just say “Wednesday the 25th” for instance.

deleted 2y ago
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pxc 2y ago
> It’s always so hard to describe “next Wednesday” if it’s Monday 'Next Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of the calendar week following the current calendar week; doesn't matter what day of the week it currently is. 'This Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of current week on the calendar— even if that day is in the past. Is it quirky that this expression doesn't instead mean 'the next Wednesday that will occur'? Yes, definitely. But I don't see how it's difficult to describe what it actually does mean. > I stopped saying “this <day>” or “next <day>” and now just say “Wednesday the 25th” for instance. I love this. Indexicals in general can be tricky, and I love expressions that rely less or very little at all on context. Sometimes when a friend is telling a complicated story I'll ask them to repeat something tbey just said but with no use of pronouns, for instance, and it always makes interpretation much easier. As much as I think the actual idioms are perfectly describable, they are somewhat prominently misused. One of my pet peeves is how YouTube's search filters uses its time restriction phrases incorrectly: it says 'today' to mean 'within the past 24 hours', 'this week' to mean 'within the past week', 'this year' to mean 'within the past year', etc. It's Tuesday, and when I search for videos with an upload date from 'this week', I get results including videos uploaded 4 days ago, but this week is not yet 4 days old under any standard convention (e.g., starting the week on Mondays rather than Sundays)... -_-
- anon84873628 2y ago
  Your pattern of: '<term>' is always <my definition>; doesn't matter <other factor>. Is never going to be true in spoken language. Otherwise we wouldn't be having conversations about confusion and ambiguity in the first place.
  - pxc 2y ago
    At any given time, the lexicon is evolving and some idioms are expanding or on the verge of extinction. Still, there are uses of words and phrases that can reasonably be described as simply wrong at a given time, based on a failure to understand the idiom whose invocation is being attempted. Errors that are sufficiently popular and persistent will eventually just reshape the language, but for a time even an error that is pretty popular or fairly long-lived is still recognizable as an error. By my intuition, I'd say the uses of 'this week' and friends I described as improper qualify handily, not being all that widespread yet. A couple more marginal examples that stand out to me because erroneous uses are much more common: 'let alone' (which is binary and often used with subject and object reversed), the distinction between envy and jealousy. You can take up a radical descriptivist position, e.g., that anything spoken by adult native speakers of normal faculties is never erroneous, or re-scope my assertions by saying that I'm gatekeeping speakers who see such usage as correct from my perceived language community or tradition, whatever, but imo the first is trivial and the second boring. Sometimes specialists misappropriate methodological constraints from their discipline as general ontological or social principles, often discounting an inherent normativity in the way people actually relate to the things those specialists study. I think that's essentially at the heart of the most inflated and controversial uses of concepts like cultural relativism and linguistic descriptivism, and probably applies to nonspecific objections like the one you make above (as opposed to pointing at some specific dialectal variation in the use of such phrases or something like that).
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  > 'Next Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of the calendar week following the current calendar week; doesn't matter what day of the week it currently is. 'This Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of current week on the calendar— even if that day is in the past. Nope. This is highly contingent on "which day of the week starts a week" conventions. If it is Sunday, then "next Wednesday" does not clearly mean the day 10 days from now ... and which one you lean toward will depend (in part) on "week starts on Monday" or "week starts on Sunday".
marcellus23 2y ago
I've taken to saying "Wednesday" or "this Wednesday" to refer to whichever Wednesday is coming up, and then "the Wednesday after this Wednesday" to refer to the following Wednesday. It is a bit wordy but at least it's unambiguous.
snowfarthing 2y ago
And in reading your comment, I just realized there's a difference between casual conversation and writing something down. I can easily say "Hey, let's meet next Wednesday!" and you may reply with "Oh, great, I'll put it in the calendar, the 8th it is!" and you reply with "No, I meant the 15th" -- and this reduces the ambiguity. This kind of thing would be happening in "real time", so being perfectly clear isn't as important. However, if you write "next Wednesday" in a contract, and then complete it on the 15th instead of the 8th, and it's taken to Court ... it's a lot harder to figure out what the the original conversation was like, that led to the writing of the contract! Hence, it makes sense to use as unambiguous language as possible when writing a contract.

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pxc 2y ago

> It’s always so hard to describe “next Wednesday” if it’s Monday 'Next Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of the calendar week following the current calendar week; doesn't matter what day of the week it currently is. 'This Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of current week on the calendar— even if that day is in the past. Is it quirky that this expression doesn't instead mean 'the next Wednesday that will occur'? Yes, definitely. But I don't see how it's difficult to describe what it actually does mean. > I stopped saying “this <day>” or “next <day>” and now just say “Wednesday the 25th” for instance. I love this. Indexicals in general can be tricky, and I love expressions that rely less or very little at all on context. Sometimes when a friend is telling a complicated story I'll ask them to repeat something tbey just said but with no use of pronouns, for instance, and it always makes interpretation much easier. As much as I think the actual idioms are perfectly describable, they are somewhat prominently misused. One of my pet peeves is how YouTube's search filters uses its time restriction phrases incorrectly: it says 'today' to mean 'within the past 24 hours', 'this week' to mean 'within the past week', 'this year' to mean 'within the past year', etc. It's Tuesday, and when I search for videos with an upload date from 'this week', I get results including videos uploaded 4 days ago, but this week is not yet 4 days old under any standard convention (e.g., starting the week on Mondays rather than Sundays)... -_-

anon84873628 2y ago
Your pattern of: '<term>' is always <my definition>; doesn't matter <other factor>. Is never going to be true in spoken language. Otherwise we wouldn't be having conversations about confusion and ambiguity in the first place.
- pxc 2y ago
  At any given time, the lexicon is evolving and some idioms are expanding or on the verge of extinction. Still, there are uses of words and phrases that can reasonably be described as simply wrong at a given time, based on a failure to understand the idiom whose invocation is being attempted. Errors that are sufficiently popular and persistent will eventually just reshape the language, but for a time even an error that is pretty popular or fairly long-lived is still recognizable as an error. By my intuition, I'd say the uses of 'this week' and friends I described as improper qualify handily, not being all that widespread yet. A couple more marginal examples that stand out to me because erroneous uses are much more common: 'let alone' (which is binary and often used with subject and object reversed), the distinction between envy and jealousy. You can take up a radical descriptivist position, e.g., that anything spoken by adult native speakers of normal faculties is never erroneous, or re-scope my assertions by saying that I'm gatekeeping speakers who see such usage as correct from my perceived language community or tradition, whatever, but imo the first is trivial and the second boring. Sometimes specialists misappropriate methodological constraints from their discipline as general ontological or social principles, often discounting an inherent normativity in the way people actually relate to the things those specialists study. I think that's essentially at the heart of the most inflated and controversial uses of concepts like cultural relativism and linguistic descriptivism, and probably applies to nonspecific objections like the one you make above (as opposed to pointing at some specific dialectal variation in the use of such phrases or something like that).
PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
> 'Next Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of the calendar week following the current calendar week; doesn't matter what day of the week it currently is. 'This Wednesday' is always the Wednesday of current week on the calendar— even if that day is in the past. Nope. This is highly contingent on "which day of the week starts a week" conventions. If it is Sunday, then "next Wednesday" does not clearly mean the day 10 days from now ... and which one you lean toward will depend (in part) on "week starts on Monday" or "week starts on Sunday".

marcellus23 2y ago

I've taken to saying "Wednesday" or "this Wednesday" to refer to whichever Wednesday is coming up, and then "the Wednesday after this Wednesday" to refer to the following Wednesday. It is a bit wordy but at least it's unambiguous.

snowfarthing 2y ago

And in reading your comment, I just realized there's a difference between casual conversation and writing something down. I can easily say "Hey, let's meet next Wednesday!" and you may reply with "Oh, great, I'll put it in the calendar, the 8th it is!" and you reply with "No, I meant the 15th" -- and this reduces the ambiguity. This kind of thing would be happening in "real time", so being perfectly clear isn't as important. However, if you write "next Wednesday" in a contract, and then complete it on the 15th instead of the 8th, and it's taken to Court ... it's a lot harder to figure out what the the original conversation was like, that led to the writing of the contract! Hence, it makes sense to use as unambiguous language as possible when writing a contract.