Something I only just noticed...

[pne]

...about the days of the week, at least when you abbreviate them to one letter: MTWTFSS.

(And yes, I start weeks on Monday, as do most calendars here in Germany.)

Comments

[kait-the-great.livejournal.com]

If only, for that would provide spontaneous and frequent giggles... but I never see 1 letter in real use... around here Thursday is Th to avoid ambiguity. Unless you're my english prof, who uses R to mean Thursday. That was a little disorienting. And WTR isn't funny :-(

[pne.livejournal.com]

Vaguely related: the most common (IMO) abbreviations for weekdays in English are three letters long: Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun.

But in German, the common abbreviations are two letters long: Mo Di Mi Do Fr Sa So.

I wonder why that is. Why not Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su in English? (Or rather, since I'm sure it's been done, why isn't that more common?)

And I wonder what other languages do.

What does Italian do, for example? Do you know?

For French, googling for "lu ma me je ve sa di" gives 841 hits, while "lun mar mer jeu ven sam dim" gives 845 - not very conclusive.

Strangely enough, "lun mar mer jeu ven sam" gives 13100 hits, and "lu ma me je ve sa" gives 4570. (In case Sunday is at the beginning rather than the end.) So perhaps three letters are more common French, too. Or, since a number of the hits on the first SERP contained program code, they're simply copying the English convention and there is no established French convention (e.g. on print calendars).

[http://users.livejournal.com/_etaoinshrdlu/]

mon tue wed thu fri sat sun looks more natural in english so that people can pronounce it in their heads when reading.. i guess! (might also be related to mon-day, fri-day and sun-day)

[tungol.livejournal.com]

I like to abbreviate Thursday with Þ. Of course, that only works when no one else has to read it.

[wingflutter.livejournal.com]

i don't get weeks starting with Sunday, it just doesnt make any sense.

lol love the WTF though!! it's like 'oi, wtf when's the weekend? oh here it comes...'

[leighbug]

I noticed that on my little pill-a-day thingy...I even took a picture. I'll see if I can dig it up (I think I saved it).

I love that.

[pne.livejournal.com]

That's where I saw it -- someone had made a userpic of such a pill-a-day thingy, cropped so that you only saw Wednesday through Friday.

[kake]

I grabbed this screenshot from an episode of Poirot a while back:

[alsatia.livejournal.com]

I abbreviate Thursday with R, as that's how it's done on every course schedule I've ever had. The calendars with Monday at the start of the work confuse the crap out of me. We got one of those as a rehearsal schedule for the play I'm working on, and I still can't read it correctly.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Conversely, I have one calendar which starts its week on Sunday, and it confuses the heck out of me.

(And besides, which two days are usually considered the weekend? Not that that's a valid reason either way for what day traditionally starts a week on a calendar. I'm just used to Monday-first.)

[alsatia.livejournal.com]

I thought I'd replied to this. Oops. I suppose the difference is in the interpretation of "end". To me, a week has two ends (like bookends!) and therefore one of the weekend days goes in each of those positions.

It was very hard not to overuse the word "end" in this comment to the point of making it incomprehensible.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Interesting; I'd never thought of that interpretation, but you're right, "end" does have that meaning as well.

In the end, though, I guess it still boils down to what you're used to :)