@@llutac The idea that shops would be closed on Sundays is unheard of outside of the German-speaking countries. So the fact that you can buy groceries on Saturday does prove that Saturday is a workday, but only because Germany is weird.
Interesting. There's a popular children's story about week days, specifically saturday in German. It's called 'Das Sams' and is based on a pun that I will lay out in German first and then try my best to translate and explain. It goes like this (the protagonist is called 'Herr Taschenbier' so you can keep track): "am Montag wurde Herr Taschenbier von Herrn Mon mit Mohnblumen begrüßt, am Dienstag hatte er wie üblich Dienst, am Mittwoch war Mitte der Woche, am Donnerstag war Gewitter mit Donner, am Freitag hatte er frei, am Sonntag schien die Sonne, und am Samstag kam das Sams." (This is NOT a direct quote from the book, it has been several years since I've had it read to me as a child, so there's very little I actually remember) Anyway, on to the translation, or rather plot summary: 'Mr. Taschenbier (whose name translates to 'Mr. Pocketbeer') just lived out his normal and by most standards, pretty boring life, when he suddenly realized that all the names of the days of the week could predict things that would happen on that day: on monday, a Mr. Mon would surprise him with poppy flowers ('Mohnblumen' in German), on tuesday, it would be an ordinary work day (tuesday is 'Dienstag', 'der Dienst' translates to 'work' or 'service'), on wednesday ('midweek'), it would be middle of the week (even though it's technically not, as the video established), on thursday, there would be a thunderstorm with lots of thunder, friday (Freitag) would be his day off from work (to have a day off is phrased as 'to have free' in German; 'frei' means free) On sunday, the sun would shine (finally one that also works in English) And on Saturday (Sams-tag), a being called the 'Sams' would appear and mess up his life in funny ways. It would have to be called the satur in English. (which would be a mere one letter away from what the day was named after in the first place) Unsurprisingly, very few countries have attempted to translate the story as its wide use of puns and wordplay in a way that is integral to its plot and themes has made it untranslatable in the eyes of many. Still, there are exceptions: in the Netherlands, there's a version called the 'Zater', named after 'Zaterdag'; and in Swedish, it's called 'Lör' after 'Lördag'. There are also versions in Russian and Japanese, proving that it CAN be done, but only with lots of effort and ingenuity.
I read the Japanese one. It’s not a good translation, they simply align the first letters of the days of the week with what happens that day; for example Tashenbîru-ojisan wa KAyoubi de KAisha ni iku (Mr Taschenbier goes to work on Tuesday). Not as interesting, to say the least.
@@TheForcedIntegrity Interesting. I was wondering how one might translate this into Japanese, but apparently, my idea was way off. I just figured they'd do something with the elements the days of the week are named after (something like' on monday, it was a full moon; on tuesday, Mr. Taschenbier lit a fire; on wednesday, it rained; ...' and so on), but they obviously didn't do that, since 会社 isn't spelled with 火. 🤷
That reminds me of a nursery rhyme - the rhyme has nothing to do with which is the first day - Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace. Wednesday's child is full of woe, Thursday's child has far to go. Friday's child is loving and giving, Saturday's child works hard for a living. And the child born on the Sabbath day Is bonny and blithe, good and gay.
For most Germans Mittwoch is still the middle of the week, as most of us don’t work on Saturday and Sunday. So it fits perfect, as we some kind of celebrate every Friday as the last day of work in a week.
@@silubr1 But this isnt the case here, as Donar is the name used by the northern continental tribes in the germanic mythology and Thor is a pure nordic thing. Kinda the same God but with a lot of names, even the continental germanics had different names (Thunaer). Interesting aspect though
Am Sonntag scheint die Sonne, Am Montag kommt Herr Mon, Am Dienstag hat man Dienst, Mittwoch ist die Mitte der Woche, Am Donnerstag gibt es Donner, Am Freitag hat man Frei und Samstags kommt das Sams
I have half a mind to just read through a bunch of DINs recreationally ...just to see all the stuff that is regulated by them. Although most of it would probably be incredibly boring.
hö? It's not, though? Maybe in some region of Germany or like several decades ago? (There's all sort of weirdness going on in Good ol', eh.) But for traffic signs, the post office and Behörden and such, Werktag is Mo-Fr. That's how they count e.g. "Bearbeitungszeiten". Sa-So is Wochenende...
I can remember being confused by "Sonnabend" for the first time in primary school. More than two decades later I still couldn't say with certainty which day it meant.
Isn't the english used word "christmas eve" referring to the evenning of the 24th of december because you call the 25th christmas day? So it would be similar to that.
@@nirfz funnily enough, as a German, understanding the English names for days like Christmas Eve and new years eve let me finally understand the Sonnabend as well.
@@nickkohlmann Eingeborener Berliner hier. It's 50:50 for Sonnabend vs. Samstag. Samstag is easier to say, so it's used more in informal settings, while it's Sonnabend for "serious business"
Having the week start on the second day of a period known as the "week-end" _was_ pretty silly. I still get unreasonably annoyed when I see it in American calendars.
Well, both words can trace their etymology back to the same language (either Hebrew or Akkadian, depending on how far you want to trace it back). So, they don't have much in common, but it's more than nothing: The "Sams" in Samstag originates from Byzantine Greek sámbaton, Hebrew "sabbath", and ultimately comes from Akkadian šapattum ("the middle day of the lunar month"). The Sams from the book is a short form of the name "Samuel", and that originates from Hebrew sh'ma ("to hear") and El ("God"). There is an Akkadian cognate as well (šemûm, meaning "to hear").
I think Andrew could have mentioned the fun fact that the word "Samstag" ultimately means "the middle day". Kind of an odd twist, in the context of the rest of the video.
Yeah, the Saturday ... Germany is divided into 3 parts here. The northern and northeastern regions use Sonnabend, the southern, western and southwestern regions use Samstag. But there's another small area close to the border of the Netherlands along river Ems in the northwest, where people use Saterdag in their local dialects. Nice video again. Have a nice day 🖐👴
In den USA ist immer noch Sonntag der erste Tag der Woche. Dadurch werden in manchen Jahren die Kalenderwochen unterschiedlich gezählt. Woche 1 ist diejenige Woche, von der mindestens 4 Tage im neuen Jahr liegen.
As an American I was surprised that he didn't mention this. Calendars generally begin with Sunday on the left and end with Saturday on the right, although I have seen some that begin with Monday and end with the weekend.
This is a bit funny because even the Americans see Sunday as part of the weekend. If Sunday is the first day of the week, the weekend should be Friday and Saturday.
Finnish has the same thing, with Wednesday being called "keskiviikko" (midweek). Interestingly in Swedish it's called "onsdag", which is derived from the same source as the English Wednesday (both are derived from "Odins dag", or Odin's day). That's notably because if the Finnish names of the weekdays had come from Swedish (which for historical reasons is where a lot of loanwords came from) you'd expect the word for Wednesday to be similar to the Swedish one. So it's likely that the Finnish names for the weekdays are actually derived from German.
Moi! Finnish ppl use "moi" as greeting is also interesting. Can be close to northern German standard greeting "moin" +n mooi in dutch = beautiful. Have a nice/beautiful day!. mooi dag
In southern German dialects often „Pfinztag“ is used for Thursday. It goes back to the Greek word πεντε for five and is an example for the High German consonant shift p>pf and t>z. Furthermore, in Bavarian you may find “Ertag” for Tuesday, wich goes back to the Greek god of war Αρης, but also to Arius the founder of Arianism, which was the predominant form of Christianity in the region during the 5th and 6th century. Thus, in Bavarian the only non-christian name of a day of the week is “Freitag”, but this may result from the missinterpretation of Friday as free-day before the weekend.😉
@@Delibro That doesn't mean it is inexistent ;) I'm from a region in Bavaria and in the elder version of the dialect you could hear it. The week would be "Mounda, Irrda, Micha, Dunnaschda, Pfinza, Samsda, Sunnda". Of course that's not how most people speak today, since the dialects are generally on decline.
@@auriocus Ich wollte eigentlich nur korrigieren dass in weiten Teilen Süddeutschlands "Pfinztag" nicht nur nicht oft sondern gar nicht verwendet wird :)
In Brazil the week still starts on Sunday (Domingo, yes day of the lord too). So much so that the other days are basically numbered: 2ª-feira, 3ª-feira, 4ª-feira, 5ª-feira, 6ª-feira. Feira being a very old way of naming the mass service of the catholic church. So: day of the 2nd mass (Monday), day of the 3rd mass (tuesday) and so on. And Saturday also remained with the Hebrew derivate sábado.
@@leavewe Agreed; as a Cantonese speaker, my home language has this same problem of numbered weekday names. Every weekday, except Sunday, is numbered 1-6; Monday is Day 1, Tuesday is Day 2, and so on until Sunday, where it is Day Sun. And this is why I've come to love the Japanese/Korean names, as their names are (from Monday to Sunday): Moon Day, Fire Day, Water Day, Wood Day, Gold Day, Soil Day, and Sun Day.
It confused me at first when I was in Portugal this summer and tried to make sense at a bus stop. I was searching for the weekday and weekend schedule but all I see was some 2ª- 6ª and other combinations and at first I thought those are the hours.
@@youngwii Interestingly, the Japanese/Korean names are also adaptations of the Babylonian system: this is obvious in the case of Sun Day and Moon Day, but the other five days are also named after the planets. It just so happens that the five planets in question are named after the five elements in these languages, which is how the names of the elements ended up in the names of the days of the week.
nah mittwoch is still in the middle of the workweek, because Saturday, even if some people have to work falls on the weekend. been ages since i thought about it and so i have forgotten the word,..but i remember there being different words for 5day workweeks and the working hours on a saturday.
No, legally Saturday is a work day. That's important if you ever, for example, park in a spot where you need to buy a parking ticket "werktags". If it's free on Saturday _and_ Sunday, it will say "Mo-Fr".
@@rewboss good you mentioned it, thats the word i was missing "arbeitstag" und "werktag" arent the same werktag includes saturday, but arbeitstag ends friday.
@@Brainreaver79 "Arbeitstag" translates as "business day", and is a word that means any day a specific business is open as usual; or, more accurately, the days when emyployees are required to work and which are not public holidays. In factories and offices, this is usually Monday to Friday; but if you work in retail, Saturday is also a business day.
@@rewboss if you work in a bakery, sunday is also a work day. There's always someone working somewhere. I would put the majority of the people as the main indicator for this. Surprise : some supermarkets are also open on sunday.
Very thorough! You taught me several new things in a very short time. There is a European language where all pagan weekdays were successfully eliminated. In Portuguese, the days between the day of the Lord (Domingo) and the Sabbath (Sábado) are named/numbered Segunda-feira, meaning "second mass", Terça-feira, "third mass", and so on: Quarta-feira, Quinta-feira, Sexta-feira. Which I feel must have been easier for foreigners to remember when weeks still started on Sunday.
The Old English bit was nicely pronounced (IIRC Rewboss/Andrew is from the UK's West Country region - at least he has relatives still living there, so maybe the Wessex ancestry is still shimmering in his blood like Cherkov-radiation). The Italian bit needed a long e (since it's stressed and in an open syllable); whether open or closed, depends on the (native)speaker and his dialect. Also, „Sonnabend“ is a word I first heard in the German version of the Nickelodeon series „Doug“. I only use „Samstag“.
As I experienced it, Sonnabend is, if in the first place, only used by older people just like some people might still use a more english sounding pronunciation of Juli e.g. pronounced like 'Yulee' normally and the alternative version being pronounced 'Yuly' so basically like the english version but without the typical J sound at the beginning, I hope that makes sense.
"In a word: Christianity." -- Andrew, you are ingenious as always. I don't like Sundays because there's little you can do in a small village. But a sunny Sunday can be fun in summer. The bloopers were excellent this time. Lads, watch Andrew's videos 'til the end!
The annoying thing about the "Ruhe"tag aka day of silence (Sunday) is just they (the church) makes its ding ding thing as being the noisiest thing. Well besides the motor cycle enthusiast going as herds around or roaring Austin mini and the like. When having a heavy traffic road litterally under my feet, even with three storie beneath.
I am fluid in regard to when the week starts. With Sunday being particularly special in Germany in some respects, I almost see a week as having six days plus one special day. In some ways the week starts for me on Monday and ends on Saturday. In others, like the actual working week, it’s Monday through Friday with the weekend being special. In some regards I see Sunday as the day I start with a clean slate. While Saturday is the day to finish what needs to be done in a given week.
Should also have explained why exactly Samstag is sometimes calles Sonnabend, or Sunday's eve, because yes, it also has to do with Christmas Eve and why Germany celebrates christmas on the 24th and not the 25th of december.
To make matters even more complicated, we have the Arbeitstage (monday to friday) as well as the Werktage (monday to saturday). Both translate to working day 🤷♂ So Mittwoch is still the middle of the week when you only count Arbeitstage :)
"Arbeitstag" translates as "business day". And different businesses have different business days: for people who work in shops, Saturday is an "Arbeitstag".
@@rewboss 70-80% of German businesses do not have you come in for work on saturday. So for the majority of the population, Mittwoch is the Mitte der Woche.
Mittwoch = Wotans tag (Odens dag) in Swedish. The rest are also old gods. We didn't take to christianity until late, and it was easily lost it :-) I do love the idea of "middle of the week-day". It's called "small saturday" in Sweden, so people go out drinking then :-D I don't, as I live in a small village with a single pizzeria that just got closed down for health reasons. Again...
Ich kann mich an zeiten erinnern, als die geschäfte meistens samstag mittags schlossen, außer am "langen Samstag" (1957 bis 1996) de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langer_Samstag
@@boghag Das würde Sinn machen, wenn die Arztpraxen nicht auch Samstags zu hätten. Oder an den anderen Tagen besonders lange geöffnet hätten, was auch nicht der Fall ist.
The German word for thunder "Donner" as well as the weekday "Donnerstag" come both from "Donar" which is the southern Germanic name for the god Thor. Donnerstag used to be called Donarstag.
In Irish Friday is Dé hAoine. This was a day when eating meat was not allowed. There are also many Wednesdays when meat was also banned so it became Dé Céadaoin (Céad-aoin) which means first Friday.
They also got the Irish with their Christianised day names. Dé Domhnach is the Lord's Day. (In fact, in archaic English, it would not be so unusual to hear Lord's Day instead of Sunday.)
In portuguese, its even weirder cause it starts from sunday (domingo - which is the first day of the week in portugal and brasil) and calls monday by its ordinal numbers: 'segunda(-feira)', tuesday 'terça(-feira)', wednesday 'quarta(-feira )' thursday 'quinta' friday 'sexta'. They use ordinal numbers to label days from monday to friday. Note that '-feira' is often omitted in spoken and written forms. Feira means free day meaning that monday would literally translate to 'second free day'. Saturday and sunday are exceptions, (sábado and domingo). Please note that i do not speak and understand portuguese, so please reply in english if possible. I was just reading an article from wikipedia and was interested in how days of the week in portuguese are different to the rest of the romance languages.
Interesting. So only the judeo-christian namings were kept, and the rest simply got ordinal numbers. It would seem the church was successful driving out the pagans there...
Mittwoch is the only name of a weekday that make sense. Because its the mid of the week. (If you count Sunday as the first day.) In the polish language you have even more days with legit names. In english you have just random names for random days.
In some Parts of Thuringia and Frrankonia , Mittwoch is called Bergfest , at the Start of the week you have to climb a Hill, on wednesday you reach the top , and on thursday you go Down to weekend ., Back to valley.
Czech (and other Slavic languages) has named the days of the week pragmatically: * Sunday = Neděle (no work) * Monday = Pondělí (day after Sunday) * Tuesday = Úterý (second day [after Sunday]) * Wednesday = Středa (middle of the week [starting with Sunday]), cf. Mittwoch) * Thursday = Čtvrtek (fourth day) * Friday = Pátek (fifth day) * Saturday = Sobota (Sabbath)
i live in far east Bavaria, on top of a moutain. the days...begin with moday are as follow. mada iada midicha finsda freida samsda and sunda ;) and midicha is translated mid of the work week. the " da" part is translated with day. monday to friday was to working for your income. saturday was for work at home and sunday for working as little as possible. so my grandma told me....she was born in the 1920's. in this time if you wanted to reach the next city it was a long long way to go, because horses or bicycles was for the People that had money. Sorryfor my poor english! greetings:)
The etymology of Hebrew "sabbath" can be traced back further, to Akkadian šapattum, meaning "the middle day of the lunar month". So "Samstag" ultimately means "the middle day". Which is funny, given the topic of this video.
Which day is supposed to be the Sabbath day? Saturday or Sunday? And if it is Sunday, then why is Saturday named after the sabbath in languages like Spanish and Italian?
@@carultch Saturday, not Sunday. Sabbath is observed from sunset on Friday evening until sunset the following day. The Christian practice to observe a rest day on Sunday is a different tradition.
Now i have to think about the Babilonian that claimed to have "discovered" the sun. "Shut up Fred we didnt need to find that IT WAS ALWAYS THERE" "Okay but do you think anyone has seen the big white sphere in the night sky yet?" "Sometimes i really want to punch you Fred..." xD
The French wanted to introduce the day with 10 hours and the week with 10 days. But the metric system failed. So it stayed at 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours, 7 days a week and 12 months a year.
That had nothing to do with the metric system and everything to do with The French Revolution, which tried to completely redo the calendar with some cockamamie scheme that nobody wanted to use. Redefining the hour so that only 10 of them made up a day went along with that. The metric system didn't come along as an international standard until later on in the 19th Century.
only in 1976 in Germany Montag(monday) was declared as the first day of the week before it was the sunday. wodanstag(Wednesday) was changed by the roman church into mittawecha (mittwoch ) in the 10th century
Great video! Now I'm actually kind of surprised that the word "Samstag" even survived the Nazi era, given its Hebrew background. Btw, I'm German (born and raised) and at 34 years old I genuinely only recently realized that Saturday counts as an official workday ("Werktag") in Germany, because a friend and I almost got a ticket for parking in a spot that prohibited parking on workdays. Always thought that "Werktag" in that context only meant Monday to Friday.
Surprised they consider Saturday a 'work' day, when everything closes at lunch time... which was my main culture shock when I lived there for a few years!
That was changed in, if I remember correctly, the 1990s. Now the shops are open all day Saturday. But the classification of Saturday as a work day has less to do with which stores are open and for how long (that was a joke), but is a legal concept to do with what rights you have as a worker, and how much you get paid for working on that day.
While you can buy groceries on Saturday, most people in offices, the industry and other non-grocery related jobs do not work on Saturday. Of course, hospitals, police, fire department, hotels, baker, fuel stations, etc. are usually open 24/7 anyway and some production facilities have a shift system that also carries through the week. For me Mittwoch was always the middle of the week and for most TGIF is still working. Small thing: The word "Donner" is coming from the Germanic god of thunder "Donar" (which is a bit like Thor, as Wotan is Odin). So Thors Day and Donars Day are both named after the god, not one for the god and the other for his signature sound.
Germany is one of the few countries which (as far as I know) still have laws regulating when you can buy things. Very strange for me living in Sweden there such regulations were scrapped 50 years ago. Why should the State proclaim a certain day of the week as "holy" in some way. All inhabitants are not Christians. There are also Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Atheists &c or just indifferent to religion.
Seems to me that outside of business contexts, Sunday has remained the first day of the week in much of the English speaking world - personally I find it quite confusing when I cannot change American calendar displays to have the week start on Monday, for example because they're web based 😅
Thor is called Donar in the West Germanic languages. So it's not named after thunder but Donar, though both words are related. Thunder got its name from Donar, not the other way around.
Ganz tolles Video !!! Ich liebe Sprache . Ich liebe Sprachen . Und so ein gut recherchiertes Video lässt mein Herz höher klopfen . Thank you for these positive vibrations
I live in Germany and never heard about Sonnabend. Is it only used by old people in certain areas or is it the default ways to say it in some places even for younger people?
Ich lebe in Schleswig-Holstein und hier wird es oft genutzt. Allerdings seltener als noch zwanzig/ dreißig Jahre zurück. Hier spricht man es aber eher wie "Sonnamd" aus.
Ja, es ist eine regionale Eigenart, die im Norden und Nordosten (rewboss sagt, auch in Berlin) verbreiteter ist, den Tag vor dem Sonntag "Sonnabend" zu nennen. Beispiel: "Ich muss bis Sonnabendmittag noch arbeiten, aber am Sonnabendabend hab ich dann frei." (bzw. "Sonnahmd'abend")
In Berlin zB KENNEN das zwar viele, wirklich primär nutzen tun es aber weniger und auch eher ältere Menschen bzw Menschen die wenig Hochdeutsch sprechen.
When i went to school back in the 90s, the tv programm magazine was still in the order that weeks startet with Sunday end ended with Saturday. Is "Zischdig" for tuesday common in your too? In the southwest it is, and it's said that it comes from our germanic forefathers.
In Finland, Saturday is also a work day. Although for most office workers, that's only really noticeable during a holiday, because to have a week of holiday, you generally need to spend six days of paid time off: apart from some exceptions, you need to spend a PTO day on Saturday because it is a work day even though you wouldn't have worked on that day anyway.
Mittwoch, to be honest, is still the middle of a "Government"-Week. Schools, Pre-Schools and public facilities like town halls are just aviable from Monday to Friday. Even medical practices (with exceptions for Hospitals or ermergency-practices) are aviable from Monday to Friday. The Grocery is, in some german cities, also aviable on Sunday. For Example: Cologne, Essen, Aix La Chapelle, Berlin, Hamburg and many more!
Portuguese here. Monday is officially the first day of the week, but it's traditional position as the second day of the week is cemented in it's own name: segunda-feira, second day. The same for all work days, really: third day, fourth day... Saturday and Sunday are Sábado (Sabbath) and Domingo (Dominus).
even thou Samstag is a Werktag, for most people it is not a Arbeitstag (which is kind of dificult to translate, because I think both would be working day)
Always a fun video, guess when I lived in Germany it depended on the job as an office person it was Monday through Friday, and in retail I had Tuesday and Sunday off. Back in the US retail I depending on the time of year I had a 6 or 7 day work week. Now back to office work I have again the weekends off.
Thursday is the more interesting day of the week, because it's "Kleiner Freitag" (little friday) or "Vize-Freitag" (vice-friday) for all those, who usually work Mo-Fr ;c)
Tuesday - Dienstag Yeah, sounds literally the same 😜 Ah it was explained later in the video And an alternative name of Thonar/Thor is also Donar. But yes the association of Thunder to Thor is also a good giveaway for the root of the name
Saturday in swedish is called Lördag which comes from Lögardag which means the day when you wash yourself :). So in order they are day of the sun, day of the moon, day of Tyr, day of Oden, day of Thor, day of Frej/Freja and get clean day.
I work for a US company in Germany and I still get caught out by their system of dates and times. Weeks start on Sunday, d/m/y way of writing dates, 12h time system... The number of calendar weeks are not always identical either, since the standard of when wk1 starts is different. Which is annoying, given how a lot of data for us is broken down by calender week.
Sunday was the first day or the last day depending on where you live. We were taught in North American public schools that our calendar beginning Sunday ending Saturday was only changed by Benjamin Franklin to be different from the rest of the world beginning on Monday and ending on the seventh day Sunday the sabbath… A little bit to clean cut for me with no evidence, but that is what they taught us in the late 90s
In Russian we have Понедельник (translated like "week start") Вторник ("second day"), Среда (translated as "middle", same as "Mittwoch"), Четверг ("forth day"), Пятница ("fifth day"), Суббота (same origin as "Sabbaton"/"Shabbat"), Воскресенье ("resurrection").
"Понедельник" is best translated as "the day after doing nothing". The numbering is interesting, because although it appears to start with Monday as the first day, Wednesday is still the "middle day". The etymology of "неделя" is "не делать", and was originally the name for Sunday before it came to be used to mean "week". That's because Sunday was the start of the week: the numbered days count how many days after Sunday it is. Sunday was changed to "воскресенье", so the week went like this: "Day of the resurrection", "A day after Sunday", "Second day [after Sunday]", "Middle [of the week]", "Fourth day [after Sunday]", "Fifth day [after Sunday]", "Sabbath". But of course it's easier to think that "вторник" is the second day of the week, so we generally say that in the Slavic languages, the week begins on Monday. That's just not how it began.
@@rewboss Yes, "делать" is "to do" and "дело/дела" is "business/things", so it's kind of similar to shabbat as "no business" day. In Polish, Sunday is still "niedziela", and Monday "poniedzielnik". "po" is the preposition for "after".
@@angelsjoker8190 It's 'poniedziałek' in Polish, but close enough:) I always thought 'niedziela' means 'doesn't divide' as 'dziela' sounds closer to 'dzielić' (to divide) than 'działać' (to work). It made sense in my head as Sunday is the day that doesn't divide week on any parts, but just ends/starts it (I knew that Sunday was first day of the week some time ago, I still remember some calendars beginning with Sunday).
@@blinski1 You are, of course, right with "poniedziałek". While writing, my mind jumped between Russian and Polish and in the end mashed both together 😅 Interestingly, while writing, "dzielić/делить" (to divide/separate) also came to my mind, but both, in Polish and in Russian, I've independently learned that etymologically, it comes from "to do/business", which also makes sense as on Sunday you were not supposed to work or do stuff.
Thanks for this. I always wondered how Wotan (or Wodan) got kicked of a calendar in his home territory and yet remains on the calendar over here in the States.
Very interesting. Also, when I was growing up in the 1960s/70s, spending a lot of my summers visiting and staying with my grandparents in Hannover from the UK, Saturday was indeed referred to by everyone as “Sonnabend”. In fact then, the TV listings magazines used title the page for that day as Sonnabend/Samstag. However, now that I go back to Hannover, 40-50 years later, my girlfriend there tells me it has gradually fallen out of most peoples’ use there, is deemed a bit ‘old-fashioned’ with most people now says: “Samstag”
Christians celebrate Sunday as the first day of the week because it was on a day after Shabbat that Christ was resurrected from the death. Therefore Sunday is their day off working.
In countries with working as a quasi religion the counting of the days accordingly pays tribute to this option. Reminds me of the way East Frisians drink tea.
a little adendum, Saturday wasn‘t a regular working day when I was young. I am in my 30s now. When I was young all the grocery Stores had to close at 2pm except once or two times a week. And this is still in the memory of german people and that is why most germans do their grocerys at saturday morning.
I was gonna say. Here in Argentina, culturally speaking, you're taught the week starts on Sunday. Though I assume the international ISO probably applies in specific areas like foreign commerce, etc.
In Hungarian Szombat (similar to your pronunciation) is the Saturday. SzombatON would mean on sunday. And then they say Hungarian is like no other languages, when in fact, learning it for 9 years now I often come across some sililarities to German and English and speaking German and English, wuite a few things do make sense in Hungarian to me. Not sure whether this is a general thing or just my own way of thinking/approaching thinking
Let me tell you that most Germans working from Monday to Friday, and Mittwoch is still known as Middle of the week and many towns and regions have a little tradition the "Bergfest"(Mountainfest?)(its actually not a real festival it is more or less smth for your own)so have drink in the evening and students going out for party (at least everything you can do with a beer in the hand :P) , wich is better explain as a methapher, so its like celebrate the Top of the mountain, because going down is much easier.
Schön, ich habe dir vor Jahren die Frage geschickt, warum der Tag im Englischen und Deutschen so anders heißt. Man muss nur warten und man bekommt bei dir auch die Antwort, auch wenn meine Frage nicht unbedingt die Ursache für das Video war. Damals habe ich aber auch noch gefragt, warum es in England nie eine Sprachreform gab, in der man das Geschriebene auch der Aussprache anpasste. Es gibt ja Orte in UK wo nicht mal die Muttersprachler wissen, wie man die auspricht. Wie hier auch schon erwähnt wurde gibt es einfach zuviele stumme Buchstaben in wednesday.
Deutschland wurde erst 1871 effektiv vereinigt und erst ca. 1901 konnten sich die Sprachwissenschaftler auf eine einheitliche Schreibweise (für Schulen und Behörden) einigen. Das ist noch nicht allzu lange her. In England gibt es ca. seit Heinrich VIII, Elisabeth I und Shakespeare eine dominante zentrale Regierung in London, die auch die "richtige" englische Schreibweise benutzt. Seitdem hat sich an der geschriebenen englischen Sprache kaum etwas geändert. Nur die Nuschelei ... äh, Spracheffizienz ... äh, Sprachentwicklung ist weitergegangen.
Nice video but saying that all of northern germany uses Sonnabend is a bit generalizing. Almost everybody I know uses Samstag. If you use sonnabend almost everybody will understand what you mean but it is not really in common use anymore. At least in my nick of the woods
