After Friday, the day when I publish my weekly Hive and crypto news roundup, I usually take it slower on Hive the next day on the creative side. Even though the roundup itself isn't as much creative work, as much as it is... work. 😀
I listened to a 3-hour podcast earlier in the day that offers a good counter-balance compared to our often rather skewed perspective nowadays strongly leaning toward everything and anything technological. I've often been bothered by the belittling of anything biological and what makes us human and the praises to new tech which will "improve" us (especially if there's nothing wrong with us, as an "upgrade"). Maybe I'm wrong, but as much as I want to keep up with many borderline tech and science discoveries, at least at the informational level, we are moving very fast toward an obscure direction. It's like we discovered a black hole close by, and we are plunging head first into it. Of course, scientifically, that doesn't really makes sense, but as a metaphor, it's probably pretty good for what we are doing.
Anyway, this is not necessarily what I wanted to talk about today but I got sucked into it.
What I did afterwards was supposed to be the topic for my post. You may know I started to learn Chinese (i.e. Mandarin). Small steps, and kind of slow, but it has been going. I took a break over the holidays, and found it quite difficult to re-start the habit in 2025, finding reasons to postpone it more and more. Well, today was the day when I finally restarted.
The AI didn't quite understand my prompt, but I'm not going to wait in queue again for another take at it.
I haven't gone far yet. Guess what I learned today after I reviewed my previous lessons? The days of the week in Chinese.
For most people speaking only modern languages from the West, this is going to sound unusual.
Did you know the Chinese don't have names for the days of the week?
In English, we say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, ... .
I believe all languages formed in Europe have names for the days of the week.
Well, in Mandarin, to say Monday, you say "week 1", meaning the words that mean "week" and the number 1, which is the first day of the week in most countries.
To say Tuesday, you say "week 2". And to say Sunday, you say "week 7". And that's how I learned the days of the week and to count in one lesson...
Now, I haven't gotten to that part in Chinese were one would need to distinguish between Monday and "week 1" as in the 1st week of something. How do they do that? I do not know yet.
What I know is that they automatically removed the need for 7 distinct words in the Chinese vocabulary by doing this. And I know from reading somewhere else this simplification of the vocabulary is done in other ways.
For example, starting from "Niú" (meaning, "ox"), they derive any related words:
- "Niúnǎi" means "cow" (literally meaning "ox" + "milk")
- "Xiǎo niú" means "calf" (literally meaning "young/little" + "ox")
- "Gōngniú" means "bull" (literally meaning "male" + "ox")
- "Shuǐniú" means "buffalo" (literally meaning "water" + "ox")
and so on. You see how the number of words in Chinese seem to drop significantly?
That doesn't make Chinese simpler, or better. Only different.
In the end, I'd like to apologies in advance to Chinese speakers for things I may have interpreted the wrong way for the time being. Please do correct me if I say stupid things, lol.
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Hehe Sunday is a little different, where they don't actually use 7. More like "week sun". Haha.
The terms used are different. When we say "week 1", it's understood as Monday. For 1st week of something a rough translation will be just "1st week".
I guess it also depends where the terms are used. Just like English, there's variations across British and American English. The Chinese terms used by Chinese in China, or Chinese in other parts of Asia might differ slightly as well.
You messed me up! And I though I know to count to 7. Now I only know to count to 6. 🤣
Thanks! Appreciate the feedback! I learned two more things today thanks to you.
You are welcome! :)
Chinese is an intricate language and very old too. I think they'll eventually have ways of identifying days of the week, it's just that perhaps modern day Chinese speakers might just prefer to use money or week 1 as you've mentioned rather than probably looking for the word. I may be wrong though
ChatGPT says they really don't. This is how they denote days of week, they don't have special names for them.
That's rather strange. I wonder how they called it back in the ancient times.
You're thinking perhaps before they adopted the week as a measurement of time? ChatGPT said something about agricultural cycles in its answer to me, but nothing that is close to nowadays division of the year in weeks, and week in days.
Chinese is a pretty old language, and I think it makes sense for them to use numbers. It makes things simple and I agree that they have a lot of different words when combined, mean similar things.
I don't have a problem with the way they use numbers for the days of week. It's a simple system that makes sense. The Western world chose to operate with symbolic names, which is fine too. I'm thinking one favors a better numbers and associations-oriented mind, the other a more memory-focused mind.
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 6/46) Liquid rewards.
Thanks!
We will see a lot of upside this week as well, so here we can take a trade once again, the 50 cents and 53 cents support will play an important role.
Yep, seems like that was the purpose of that latest pump, to recapture the 50c threshold in preparation for the next big pump.
Becoming multi lingual is something I have been trying to do for a while - I tried using Duolingo but found as I wasn’t using the language often enough in a conversational setting I had forgotten it quite quickly, interesting how mandarin works though
I agree we forget languages we don't use often. Happens to me with French, which I learned in school and then used it for a short while in my online ventures.
Hi, I'm new here, today I read you for the first time and I found your publication very funny and informative, I will be watching to continue learning from your publication.
Hola, soy nueva por aquí, hoy te leo por primera vez y me pareció muy divertido e informativo tu publicación, estaré pendiente para seguir aprendiendo de tus publicación.
Thanks for dropping by! I hope you'll find future content to your liking as well.
Interesting... but I believe they are not used to writing poems of love, isn't it?
Hmm, I don't know.
We could easily misjudge oriental cultures. If the stories are correct and not fabricated by the imagination of writers, would you have thought that the samurai had a soft, gentile side?
I know very little about the cultures of the Far East, and I can not judge at all. It's interesting to see this new hobby with you. I wish you all the fun!
Yep, interesting to see it develop also. Although I've been interested to some extent by the Japanese culture (from afar), I haven't shown any significant interest in other oriental cultures until now. But I guess with age I want to learn more, and different things. At least to have a base.
Wow
Their language seem quite easy but almost all the words sound alike
I’ve worked with some of them before
You should hear me pronounce them in sentences, lol. I think I need to record myself and listen to it when I feel down so I can have a good reason to laugh and change my state of mind.
That’s the best way to learn
Can’t wait to see that
Nah, I wouldn't make it public, lol.