The water symbol in mercury (planet) simply relates to the mercury element, as 水銀 translates to water silver, to mean liquid silver, just like quick silver. Jewish sabbath (שבתי, shabtai) also means saturn.
In Hindi, they are named after the same celestial bodies as Latin: Sunday: Ravivār रविवार Sun Monday: Somvār सोमवार Moon Tuesday: Mañgalvār मंगलवार Mars Wednesday: Budhvār बुधवार Mercury Thursday: Guruvār/Brihaspativār गुरुवार/ बृहस्पतिवार Jupiter Friday: Shukravār शुक्रवार Venus Saturday: Shanivār शनिवार Saturn
I made this same connection pretty much immediately after learning the JP days of the week and their associated kanji via the 5 elements and their planetary associations, along with the more obvious Sunday/Monday. I was honestly pretty boggled that such a thing somehow made its way to the far east so long ago but... here we are. Very cool.
0:18 In traditional Javanese calendar, weeks are instead split in 5 days. They're called "Pasaran" or Market (Days), as traditionally markets are open only on certain Pasaran days. Their etymology is unclear nowadays, though. When the 7-day week came around, instead of replacing it, we _added_ the cycle into the calendar. Now the calendar technically have a _35 days_ week, called a "Wetonan" cycle, with the 7-day cycle and the 5-day cycle running concurrently. Nowadays we mostly only use the "normal" 7-day cycle, but calendars still sometimes note which Pasaran day it is. Speaking of that 7-day week, we got it first via Islam, which names Sunday the 1st day, Monday = 2nd, etc etc except Friday, which is "Gathering day". then the Portugese came and slapped their "Day of the Lord" on Sunday. So our (7-day week) daynames are _also_ a mess.
"westaboo" 😂😂😂😭 ... no but like. I have known the planet and day names for AGES in Japanese... and I'm a native English speaker who had to learn the days of the week in Spanish growing up... and I Never. Fucking. Noticed. Even though it's super obvious with the Spanish names too. I've been stuck in like "oh it's 'sun'day and 'mo(o)n'day in Japanese and English!" but I never thought about the rest of them... I think my brain exploded from this video thanks. 👍👍👍
When learning Japanese I really liked how months are named just month one, month two, month three and so on, eventhough I speak 4 languages, and 3 of them use latin based namea for months I STILL CAN'T RECALL WHICH MONTH IS WHICH LIKE YEAH IDK WHICH MONTH AUGUST IS, I hate those. I love your nails tho :3
Same! To me, the month names lack meaning, and that'd be okay if it was just seven of them, like the days, but it's 12 of them! Why would I bother learning which month is which? Even when speaking English or Spanish or German, I default to "X month" instead of trying to remember the names lol.
@@koi596it's even worse when you realise that when you know the meaning of the first 3 words (or "firsr part") of September, October, November, and Decemeber they actually mean 7 8 9 and 10 respectively, but guess what! They are THE 9TH 10TH 11TH 12TH month! Crazy shi LMFAO
@@Bokita_Enjoyer well, the year used to start in March, at some point. And July and August used to be called Quintilis and Sextilis, before being renamed in honor of Julius Caesar and Augustus.
星期一 is the formal/textbook word. In everyday speech Chinese people tend to use 周一 "week-first", 周二 "week-second", etc. until 周日 "week-sun". An alternative old-fashioned name for Sunday is 礼拜天 "worship day".
i noticed this and brought it up to my japanese professor a couple months ago. She said it helped her a lot when remembering the days of the week in french after moving to montreal.
worth mentioning that speaking both mandarin and portuguese, having sunday be "day one" in portuguese weeks as opposed to monday in chinese weeks gets very confusing at times
@@prado1205if ie there were 21 hours in a day, the 7 planets would go cleanly into it and they'd all start on the same planet. but there are three "leftover" hours after 21, so it's misaligned by 3
This is also true in Thai, which got the words from Sanskrit. Also, these 7 words are only used in these 2 contexts (the 'god of xxx' meaning has been lost, or extremely obscure; probably only in astrology if used)
5:26 That calendar is still in use, and its new year is what the "Lunar New Year" or "Chinese New Year" is referring to. (It's actually a lunisolar calendar.) In Mandarin it's called the "Farmer's calendar" (農曆 or, more archaically, 農民曆), and in Taiwanese it's called the Old calendar (Kū-li̍k, 舊曆); the Taiwanese name was imported from Japanese.
There's no disagreement about which day is the first. It's monday. If sunday was the first day of the week, the word "weekend" wouldn't even make any sense.
The weird ressemblance between "名前" (namae) and "name" is also an interesting one imo. Although I learned that it may actually be a simple coincidence.
One of my favorite fun facts about the Japanese language. My other favorite related fact is that the element mercury is 水銀 "water silver" which isn't too far off from "quicksilver" aka mercury. And the of course the name of the planet mercury also starts with 水 as well. Honestly makes me wonder which name came first
I'm a Spanish speaker so of course this jumped at me the very second I started learning Japanese. But when I tried to explain this "hack" to Japanese speakers when remembering English days of the week and planets, I suddenly realized that it doesn't really work unless they're aware of Interpretatio Germanica, which of course they probably wouldn't be.
As somebody who hasn't quite firmly memorized the days of the week in Japanese yet, I still use the link between French weekdays and Chinese planets (both of which I _have_ memorized) as a mnemonic exactly the way you describe in 7:12. Specifically the ones I have trouble with are Thursday and Saturday, because they're both right next to Friday and I keep mixing up Jupiter and Saturn.
Presumably it would only be knowable if we have texts from both languages from before they got it, so we can start to see when they began adopting it. Idk if we have those though.
Mercury (Hermes) is named "water star" because it's the only classic metal in liquid form Venus (Aphrodite) is white because of the ancient beauty standard. It's associated with copper because the cooper mirror (later bronze mirror) is the emblem of the goddess Sun (Helios) and Moon (Selene) is gold and silver for obvious an reason Mars is red because war, blood, and festivities are basically intertwined in the dynastic cycle. It's classically associated with iron as war equipment and also the color of rust Jupiter (Zeus) is green to represent wealth, health, fertility. Something that Zeus (and other renditions) is well known for. Lightning often strikes a tree. It's associated with tin (metal) due to the use of tin metal sheet in ancient stage play to produce thunderous noise Saturn (Chronos) is yellow because of the harvest (Earth's bounty). Earth is associated with yellow color in wuxing (Chinese 5 elements). It's associated with lead (metal) due to it's the slowest planet to move around the sky, representing the heaviness lead and the god of time
maybe only tangential to linguistics, but related to the topic of this video: cultures from very far-flung parts of the world (native americans, eurasians and africans, aboriginal australians) all describe the constellation we call the pleiades as sisters and describe the constellation we call orion as a suitor or a group of suitors chasing them. details differ but, incredibly, the core of the myth of orion and the pleiades seems to have originated at least 50,000 years ago and astronomy has preserved it throughout millenia of human migrations. perhaps one of the oldest stories ever told. analysis of names for these two constellations across languages may be interesting!
I wonder why the Germans decided to ditch Wednesday entirely and replace it with the most boring name they could think of, "Midweek". Though calling Thursday "Thunder Day" is pretty badass.
7:10 That was basically how I would remember the Japanese days of the week when I first learned them! I would go English day of the week Spanish day of the week God/planet Mandarin name of the planet Japanese day of the week. After a few years of that I was able to remember them directly tho haha
STOLE? ACTUALLY THEY DID 'NTSTOLE THE GREEKS gods, languages that seems not to be related but the actually are, latin, greek and germanic, that's why they have equivalents to the greek, so romans already had gods similar to the greeks, they just adapted their gods to the greek system in the week
3:23 I meant seven
Why are all linguistics-related channels that are getting recommended to me are run by a polish dude who also studies japanese..?
There are others?
and is a femboy/transgirl
@@pikleman5880 I'd say HowToPolish if you count it as linguistic
The water symbol in mercury (planet) simply relates to the mercury element, as 水銀 translates to water silver, to mean liquid silver, just like quick silver.
Jewish sabbath (שבתי, shabtai) also means saturn.
In Hindi, they are named after the same celestial bodies as Latin:
Sunday: Ravivār रविवार Sun
Monday: Somvār सोमवार Moon
Tuesday: Mañgalvār मंगलवार Mars
Wednesday: Budhvār बुधवार Mercury
Thursday: Guruvār/Brihaspativār गुरुवार/ बृहस्पतिवार Jupiter
Friday: Shukravār शुक्रवार Venus
Saturday: Shanivār शनिवार Saturn
indoneuropean
I made this same connection pretty much immediately after learning the JP days of the week and their associated kanji via the 5 elements and their planetary associations, along with the more obvious Sunday/Monday. I was honestly pretty boggled that such a thing somehow made its way to the far east so long ago but... here we are. Very cool.
Meanwhile in China:
Church day! First day after church, second day after church, third day after church...
Portuguese counts fairs (as in markets): monday is the second fair, tuesday is the third fair, and so on. Saturday and sunday are special, though.
0:18 In traditional Javanese calendar, weeks are instead split in 5 days. They're called "Pasaran" or Market (Days), as traditionally markets are open only on certain Pasaran days. Their etymology is unclear nowadays, though.
When the 7-day week came around, instead of replacing it, we _added_ the cycle into the calendar. Now the calendar technically have a _35 days_ week, called a "Wetonan" cycle, with the 7-day cycle and the 5-day cycle running concurrently. Nowadays we mostly only use the "normal" 7-day cycle, but calendars still sometimes note which Pasaran day it is.
Speaking of that 7-day week, we got it first via Islam, which names Sunday the 1st day, Monday = 2nd, etc etc except Friday, which is "Gathering day". then the Portugese came and slapped their "Day of the Lord" on Sunday. So our (7-day week) daynames are _also_ a mess.
ey new polish linguist guy video :D
(also based rewriting french words into IPA so pronunciation makes sense)
"westaboo" 😂😂😂😭
... no but like. I have known the planet and day names for AGES in Japanese... and I'm a native English speaker who had to learn the days of the week in Spanish growing up... and I Never. Fucking. Noticed. Even though it's super obvious with the Spanish names too. I've been stuck in like "oh it's 'sun'day and 'mo(o)n'day in Japanese and English!" but I never thought about the rest of them... I think my brain exploded from this video thanks. 👍👍👍
When learning Japanese I really liked how months are named just month one, month two, month three and so on, eventhough I speak 4 languages, and 3 of them use latin based namea for months I STILL CAN'T RECALL WHICH MONTH IS WHICH LIKE YEAH IDK WHICH MONTH AUGUST IS, I hate those. I love your nails tho :3
Same! To me, the month names lack meaning, and that'd be okay if it was just seven of them, like the days, but it's 12 of them! Why would I bother learning which month is which? Even when speaking English or Spanish or German, I default to "X month" instead of trying to remember the names lol.
@@koi596it's even worse when you realise that when you know the meaning of the first 3 words (or "firsr part") of September, October, November, and Decemeber they actually mean 7 8 9 and 10 respectively, but guess what! They are THE 9TH 10TH 11TH 12TH month! Crazy shi LMFAO
@@Bokita_Enjoyer well, the year used to start in March, at some point. And July and August used to be called Quintilis and Sextilis, before being renamed in honor of Julius Caesar and Augustus.
星期一 is the formal/textbook word. In everyday speech Chinese people tend to use 周一 "week-first", 周二 "week-second", etc. until 周日 "week-sun". An alternative old-fashioned name for Sunday is 礼拜天 "worship day".
i noticed this and brought it up to my japanese professor a couple months ago. She said it helped her a lot when remembering the days of the week in french after moving to montreal.
Fun to see a naming system that uses elements, here in the Netherlands we have thunderday. Which is pretty cool.
the english has the same meaning, it just eroded most of it, it used to be thunersday
3:22 sure bro whatever you say lol
worth mentioning that speaking both mandarin and portuguese, having sunday be "day one" in portuguese weeks as opposed to monday in chinese weeks gets very confusing at times
3:24 24 is very well divisible by 3, yielding 8. I think you meant it's not divisible by 7.
can you explain to me how that works? why does 24 not being divisible by 7 mean each day starts with the planet 3 hours ahead of the previous one?
@@prado1205if ie there were 21 hours in a day, the 7 planets would go cleanly into it and they'd all start on the same planet. but there are three "leftover" hours after 21, so it's misaligned by 3
@@JustinLe ohhh, thanks
yeah i even have it as 3 in the script, idk what i was on
This is also true in Thai, which got the words from Sanskrit.
Also, these 7 words are only used in these 2 contexts (the 'god of xxx' meaning has been lost, or extremely obscure; probably only in astrology if used)
5:26 That calendar is still in use, and its new year is what the "Lunar New Year" or "Chinese New Year" is referring to. (It's actually a lunisolar calendar.) In Mandarin it's called the "Farmer's calendar" (農曆 or, more archaically, 農民曆), and in Taiwanese it's called the Old calendar (Kū-li̍k, 舊曆); the Taiwanese name was imported from Japanese.
WHAOHWOA IVE ALWAYS WONDERED ABOUT THIS
AT LAST A VID EXPLAINING IT WITH UNNECESSARY DETAIL
Order we're all familiar with... Starting on Sunday...???
3:23 "24 is not divisible by 3"... 💀
Omg I love your nails
There's no disagreement about which day is the first. It's monday. If sunday was the first day of the week, the word "weekend" wouldn't even make any sense.
The weird ressemblance between "名前" (namae) and "name" is also an interesting one imo. Although I learned that it may actually be a simple coincidence.
One of my favorite fun facts about the Japanese language. My other favorite related fact is that the element mercury is 水銀 "water silver" which isn't too far off from "quicksilver" aka mercury. And the of course the name of the planet mercury also starts with 水 as well. Honestly makes me wonder which name came first
Sunday and monday kind of beg the question, really
I'm a Spanish speaker so of course this jumped at me the very second I started learning Japanese. But when I tried to explain this "hack" to Japanese speakers when remembering English days of the week and planets, I suddenly realized that it doesn't really work unless they're aware of Interpretatio Germanica, which of course they probably wouldn't be.
>the Japanese Westaboo period
brilliant
As somebody who hasn't quite firmly memorized the days of the week in Japanese yet, I still use the link between French weekdays and Chinese planets (both of which I _have_ memorized) as a mnemonic exactly the way you describe in 7:12.
Specifically the ones I have trouble with are Thursday and Saturday, because they're both right next to Friday and I keep mixing up Jupiter and Saturn.
I'm curious whether Japanese or Korean received this feature first, or if it is even possible to know.
Presumably it would only be knowable if we have texts from both languages from before they got it, so we can start to see when they began adopting it. Idk if we have those though.
Miało być lepiej, ale wyszły z tego dni tygodnia. No cóż, co poradzić.
Mercury (Hermes) is named "water star" because it's the only classic metal in liquid form
Venus (Aphrodite) is white because of the ancient beauty standard. It's associated with copper because the cooper mirror (later bronze mirror) is the emblem of the goddess
Sun (Helios) and Moon (Selene) is gold and silver for obvious an reason
Mars is red because war, blood, and festivities are basically intertwined in the dynastic cycle. It's classically associated with iron as war equipment and also the color of rust
Jupiter (Zeus) is green to represent wealth, health, fertility. Something that Zeus (and other renditions) is well known for. Lightning often strikes a tree. It's associated with tin (metal) due to the use of tin metal sheet in ancient stage play to produce thunderous noise
Saturn (Chronos) is yellow because of the harvest (Earth's bounty). Earth is associated with yellow color in wuxing (Chinese 5 elements). It's associated with lead (metal) due to it's the slowest planet to move around the sky, representing the heaviness lead and the god of time
maybe only tangential to linguistics, but related to the topic of this video: cultures from very far-flung parts of the world (native americans, eurasians and africans, aboriginal australians) all describe the constellation we call the pleiades as sisters and describe the constellation we call orion as a suitor or a group of suitors chasing them. details differ but, incredibly, the core of the myth of orion and the pleiades seems to have originated at least 50,000 years ago and astronomy has preserved it throughout millenia of human migrations. perhaps one of the oldest stories ever told. analysis of names for these two constellations across languages may be interesting!
I wonder why the Germans decided to ditch Wednesday entirely and replace it with the most boring name they could think of, "Midweek". Though calling Thursday "Thunder Day" is pretty badass.
7:10 That was basically how I would remember the Japanese days of the week when I first learned them! I would go English day of the week Spanish day of the week God/planet Mandarin name of the planet Japanese day of the week. After a few years of that I was able to remember them directly tho haha
Eve (and Adam) celebrates her nameday on Christmas Eve. Coincidence? Probably since Anglos don't have namedays
Aún así nos seguiremos burlando de sus unidades de medida
Korean too, i wonder why lol
3:23
STOLE? ACTUALLY THEY DID 'NTSTOLE THE GREEKS gods, languages that seems not to be related but the actually are, latin, greek and germanic, that's why they have equivalents to the greek, so romans already had gods similar to the greeks, they just adapted their gods to the greek system in the week
1:43 th-cam.com/video/9RShQBgXdkU/w-d-xo.html
banger
WHY ARE YOU POLISH