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#54434 01/31/02 03:04 AM
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I think PIE (Proto Indo-European) had ceased to be spoken long before the 7-day week reached Europe.

Bingley


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#54436 01/31/02 10:32 AM
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This is way too Germanic sounding to be anything but. Any idea what the other day names are?


#54437 01/31/02 01:29 PM
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Google led me to this huge 'names' site (Max, it looks like a good one for your references page!) but I couldn't find Finnish days of the week on it -- even though google tells me they're there. Any takers?

http://jerryhill.tripod.com/


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Dear Bingley,

obviously, you are a word maven... the seven day work week is 24/7, 22/7 is a coarse pi.

Max, i loved it![/white}


#54439 01/31/02 01:47 PM
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Here's the days from Monday to Friday per this site:

http://www.hut.fi/~tkvopint/topiusage.html

Maanantai      Monday 
Tiistai Tuesday
Keskiviikko Wednesday
Torstai Thursday
Perjantai Friday

Wednesday looks like it might be a loan translation from the German Mittwoch. Well, part loan translation part loan word. Who knows where they got that Perjan for Friday!


#54440 01/31/02 02:35 PM
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Keski-viikko is indeed Mid-week. The others look like borrowings near the proto-Germanic stage: cf German Montag, Sonntag. The Finnish words were borrowed from some Germanic stage at which the genitive endings were still present: *Monan-dag, *Sunnan-dag. But probably after the original ending (in *dagaz) had been lost.

Finnish has no F, nor initial clusters, so Perjan- could be from Freyja (or rather her counterpart in whatever Germanic language Old Finnish abutted).

The Finnish for king is kuningas if I recall correctly; this retains the *-az of Germanic (= Greek -os, Latin -us, still preserved in Icelandic -ur) so was presumably borrowed before the day names.


#54441 01/31/02 02:50 PM
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Keski-viikko is indeed Mid-week.

Interesting, given that I found, whil(e,st) searching for the Finnish day names, the datum that German Mittwoch was a Christian reaction to Mercury-day being named after a pagan god. But why just Woden's day and not the others?

The only Western Gemanic language that I know that lost the -g at the end of day is English but one would expect Finnish to have gotten their loans from a Northern Germanic language. How is it in Scandanavian languages?


#54442 01/31/02 09:39 PM
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mea culpa, mea culpa, mea Maxima culpa..

but i've already been called to task... reading in flat mode as do.. i mis-read it, and though my dear Mr. Bingley didn't understand..

so i am twice at fault!

i am going back to the sheep thread.. i wanted to do some knitting anyway..


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