Re: Why not 13 months? (Was La Systeme Metrique)
Mr N.P. Bradshaw (npbrad@ic.ac.uk)
25 Aug 1995 17:31:09 GMT
In article <19950816.122359.15@ramtops.demon.co.uk> dweller@ramtops.demon.co.uk writes:
>This is getting silly. I am in England, here the week starts on
>Monday -- at least according to the calendars I have and the way people
>talk. (Any chance this is a religious thing and the devout Christians
>among us see Sunday as the first day for religious reasons?)
>And then of course, there's the 'weekend' -- Sat and Sun.
That's interesting. I live in England and always have done, but when I was at
primary school we were always taught that Sunday was the first day of the week.
The same thing was true at university where the weeks in the term were numbered
1 to 8 with the week beginning on Sunday.
I assume it is religious since Saturday (Sabato/Savatto in other languages) is
the "seventh day" in the story of the creation and hence the Jewish Sabbath.
The special nature of Sunday for Christians derives from its being the day of
the resurrection - perhaps the opposite of the day of rest.
With all these interesting facts pertaining to religions it almost seems a shame
to not believe a word of them.
(Weekend clearly refers to the end of the 5 day week. If the word in its current
sense is more than 150 years old I'd be surprised.)
Yrs. etc.,
Nick
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