ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (12/20/85)
>> The 7 days of the week fit nicely into the ancient cosmic scheme with 7 >> (visible) non-stationary astronomical bodies - [ellis] >Maybe you people would like to know how oriental cultures deal with >naming the days of the week. In present day Chinese, the sequence >Mon., Tue ... Sun. is "weekday #1", "weekday #2",...., "weekday of the sun". >Simple, isn't it! (now I wonder why *I* had thought that the week starts >on Monday :-) (In fact Sunday is sometimes called "Weekday #7" for fun) > >In Japanese, they are using what seems to be an old Chinese system >(imported from Western civilisation, no doubt) of naming the weekdays : >using the names of the 5 planets, the sun and the moon. However, >each of the five planets are named after one of the five elements, which are: >Gold (i.e. metal), Wood, Water, Fire and Mud (earth). Therefore, Tuesday to >Saturday are indirectly named after the elements. - Henry Chai Clearly it is no coincidence that the oriental weekdays (when named after the planets) follow the same order as in the teutonic and romance languages (Slavic and Greek number their days, I believe). I do not know whether the planet/weekday associations were invented in Europe or China. Classical Latin and Greek dictionaries do not have any entries whatsoever for the weekdays; somebody else mentioned that the european planet/god day names were assigned after classical times (ie- after 1 AD). So it is possible that the planetary day-names were a Chinese invention. In traditional occidental alchemy there were only 4 elements {earth, air, fire, water}, not enough to correspond with the 5 planets, nor with the 5 Chinese elements. Chinese culture, of course, had a huge impact in the orient. Languages like Japanese and Korean, which are not related to Chinese, all absorbed a huge number of Chinese words and philosophical concepts: Day object element Korean Japanese Hokkien Canton Mand Ancient C. sunday sun - il nichi dzit- yaht ri` *ndzywet monday moon - wol getsu ge?- yut' yue *ngyat tuesday mars fire hwa ka he` fo huo *hua wednesday mercury water su sui tsui` seui' shuei~ *shwi thursday jupiter wood mok moku ? muhk mu` *muk friday venus metal gum kin gkim- gam jin *gkiam saturday saturn earth to to ? tow tu *tu *Weekdays are formed in Japanese by following these with -doobi and in Korean by -yoil. I do not know if the archaic day-names still be formed from the element-names in Chinese. *The names of the planets are formed in Chinese by following the appropriate element with the word for `star'. I do not know how the planets are named in Japanese and Korean. *The marks {` ' -} are used for falling (yes!), rising (yes?), and high-level tones. No tone mark means mid-level. Mandarin has a 4th rising-falling tone { ~ }, and Cantonese has low versions of its tones (indicated by { h } following the vowel) making 8 tones. I think ancient Chinese had 4 tones (they have not been denoted, sorry). *The { ? } in Hokkien {ge?-} is a glottal stop as in Cockney `wa?er' for `water'; Cantonese {eu} is as German umlaut-o; Cant/Mand {yu} are both front-rounded, as German umlaut-u. *Ancient Chinese and Hokkien have 3 series of initial stops {k/gk/g}. In Mandarin and Cantonese, these have been reduced to {k/g} or more accurately {kh/gk}, Wade-Giles {k'/k}. Please flame at any errors in the above.. -michael