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From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Subject: Re: Polish month names
Message-ID: <CxvxBu.2Dy@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <37e8l8INNls2@symiserver.symantec.com> <CxIw5L.MAC@inter.NL.net> <37rkuh$23q@gordon.enea.se>
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 1994 20:09:22 GMT
Lines: 69

In article <37rkuh$23q@gordon.enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>Of course we should ask about Polish month names! When all other 
>languages I've been in contact with (they're European all of
>them) have the month names of the same origin, Polish stands out
>with only marzec and maj from the regular Latin family

The *regular* Latin family?  Are all others irregular then?
This calls for an appropriate response.  <reaches for flametorch>

>and the rest are their own inventions.

Not their own, no.  Not the Polish speakers'.  They are derived from
the Old Slavic month names, which were used, in one form or the other,
throughout the Slavic world, until Russian, Bulgarian and a few others
switched to the `regular' Latin names.  Still, I'd expect a Bulgarian
speaker to recognise _sechko_ `February'; its name has survived in a
couple of proverbs.

You'll be happy to know, however, that Ukrainian and Belorussian share
most month names with Polish, and Czech and Croat have similar systems,
though unfortunately, because of the size of the Slavic-speaking area,
some of the names have come to refer to different months in different
languages (eg _listopad_ is `October' in Croat, as in Old Slavic, but
`November' elsewhere, implausible though it may seem that in the North
the trees lost their leaves one month later than in the South; and
_kve^ten_ in Czech is `May', while _kwiecien'_ in Polish is `April',
although I don't think that flowers bloom later in Bohemia than they
do in Poland).

Apart from that, there is Lithuanian, the Celtic languages and Finnish,
all of which use irregular (ie home-made) month names.  (You ought to
know at least about Finnish, Erland.  It's next door from where you are.)

Btw, here's a TeX macro for writing the date in Gaelic, from my
personal style sheet:


%%% Gaelic date

\def\dateGaelic{\def\today
 {\newcount\l@@
  \ifnum\day=20 Am
  \else\l@@=\day \divide\l@@ by10 \multiply\l@@ by10 \advance\l@@ by1
  \ifnum\day=\l@@ \ifnum\day=1 An \else An t-\fi
  \else\advance\l@@ by7 \ifnum\day=\l@@ An t-\else An \fi\fi\fi
  \number\day
  \ifcase\day\or d \or a \or s
  \else\ifnum\day<11 mh
  \else\ifnum\day<20 g
  \else\ifnum\day=20 mh
  \else d \fi\fi\fi\fi
  de 'n\space
  {\ifcase\month
    \or Fhaoilleach\or Ghearran\or Mh\`art\or Ghiblean
    \or Ch\`eitean\or \`Og-mh\`\i os\or Iuchar\or L\`unasdal
    \or t-Sultuine\or D\`amhair\or t-Samhainn\or D\`ubhlaichd\fi}\space
  \number\year}}


>How come?

How come what?  How come the Germanic languages have borrowed the Latin
month names?  I suppose their speakers were too daft to invent their own.

-- 
`That's yer oan problem, Judas', they telt him.  `It's nae concern tae us.'
Ivan A Derzhanski (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk/chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)  (The G-- G--)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,   Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House E113, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Pk Rd, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
