On 'Biweekly' and 'Bimonthly'
merriam-webster.com
merriam-webster.com
Now it’s “this Friday” or “a week from Friday”
Friday Week 26 is certainly less convenient to say or parse, but it’s completely unambiguous. Yes, everybody uses ISO week numbering, it’s what’s on the calendar, it does not matter that you don’t like it. Week ordinal = iso, cope.
Say, I have no idea what week 26 is. I can only suggest it’s probably somewhere in [26/4]=June
I would not even know where to quickly look it up without googling - my calendars do not have this numbering
Still need to supply that setting about whether weeks start on Sundays or Mondays though.
I guess they are going to wonder why the non-danish visits today.
on edit: wrong address oops
Of course, Google's calendar also shows it which is handy.
[1] https://vecka.nu
It’s mostly a foreign concept to Americans.
> Say, I have no idea what week 26 is. I can only suggest it’s probably somewhere in [26/4]=June
So you’re saying that a clear, unambiguous, and standardised system in widespread use is bad because you would have to learn something?
> I would not even know where to quickly look it up without googling - my calendars do not have this numbering
Get a better calendar? Most European calendars have the week number printed as a matter of course, and it should be a simple toggle in the average calendaring software (certainly is in iOS).
But still "nächster Freitag" isn't totally clear for everyone.
It's not uncommon to disambiguate by saying "nächsten Freitag, nicht diesen Freitag" ('next Friday, not this Friday') or just avoiding it by saying "nächste Woche Freitag" ('Friday next week') or similar.
So if on Saturday you said "our dinner reservations are next Friday, not this Friday", that could mean
— "we didn't forgot to go yesterday, we have dinner in 6 days time" (where 'this Friday' is 'Friday of this week') or could mean
— "we're not going to dinner in 6 days time, we're going to dinner in 13 days time" (where 'this Friday' is 'the Friday in this rolling block of 7 days' and 'next Friday' is the one after that).
Sounds very contrived, but people do use it in both ways and neither really has a dominance unfortunately.
Connecting "next" with a German translation of "nähest" ("closest") is just as nonsensical.
I've had the feeling that this etymological connection is more transparent in German than in English, maybe partly because we rarely use the word "nigh" anymore (except in fixed phrases like "well nigh/nigh unto" 'almost', or "the end is nigh"). while Germans use "nah" regularly.
In Romance languages this connection is also very clear. I was confused as an English speaker the first time I was waiting in line in Brazil and someone called out "próximo!" because I thought "huh? closest to what?".
I think English has acquired an kind of intuition that "next" has most to do with sequence rather than proximity, like the .next() method of a sequence or something. For example, when playing a board game one says "who's next?" or "I'm next", although with no connotation at all of physical proximity, but rather of "entitlement according to game rules". (For example, you might be going clockwise or counterclockwise, or some players might be skipped because of the action of a rule, or something.) In German you would say "wer ist daran?" or "ich bin daran", although I'm confused about the extent to which "wer ist der nächste?" is an acceptable substitute or has different connotations.
Totally unrelated, but I just tried pronouncing "dieser" and "nächster" in my only-English speaking brain and it sounds similar if not the same to "this" and "next" (especially the latter). So amazing to see how similar our languages can be sometimes. Despite English being germanic, you generally think they're completely different languages.
I thought, "Obviously next Friday means 'not this Friday, but the one after.'" But, 'next exit' always means the most immediate exit to me. So I suppose 'next Friday' could reasonably mean the most immediate Friday, too.
Language is not easy and full of ambiguity, which is why language majors haven't taken over software development
Applying the same logic to weekdays, if today is Wednesday, then next Friday is the one in two days. And one would never say "this Friday" since it can be called "today".
1) – Vocês vão se encontrar quando? (When will you meet?)
– Sexta-feira (Friday, this Friday)
2) – Vocês vão se encontrar sexta-feira dia 15? (Will you meet on Friday the 15th?)
– Não, sexta-feira agora (No, this Friday)
3) – Quando que você se encontrou com ele? (When did you meet him?)
– Sexta-feira (Last Friday)
4) – Quando que você se encontrou com ele?
– Sexta-feira agora (Last Friday)
5) – Quando que você se encontrou com ele?
– Sexta-feira passada (Last Friday)
One would indeed say simply "sexta-feira" for Friday, and optionally "sexta-feira agora" (Friday now) if more precision is required, but for the Friday in the next week we'd use the set phrase "sexta-feira, sem ser essa, a outra" (Friday, not this one, the next), pretty much spoken as a single word ([sẽj̃se̯ˌɛsɐ̯ˈotrɐ̥])
I've struggled for years in English with "this/next Friday" and ended up just translating the Dutch versions word for word. It's not proper English, but everyone I tried it on understands what I mean when I say "next week Friday" or "Friday next week".
I always thought that the “week starts on Sunday” was only an American thing. TIL
I believe that this is also the case in other countries. I think the weekend being Saturday-Sunday is specifically a Christian thing, with Saturday being a day of rest an originally Jewish thing, and that other countries have different weekends.
I'd say 10 days but that makes no sense by my own explanation.
"The next stop is X".
This is the same when referring to dates. "Next Friday" often has an implicit "after this week".
Even worse is people trying to communicate how many stops until destination - it's just inviting the listener to be off by one wrt. the speaker. Myself, I gave up on trying to say things like "we're getting off in 3 stops", because my brain just locks up trying to decide whether I should say "in 3 stops", or "in 2 stops", or "in 4 stops".
"Ce vendredi" (this Friday) is unambiguous. For the other one we can use.
- "vendredi de la semaine prochaine" (Friday of next week)
- "vendredi prochain, pas celui la mais l'autre" (Next Friday, not this one, the other one)
- "vendredi en huit" (Friday in eight). "In eight" here means "from day 8", today is day 1, so "in eight" is next week.
I think because one of the two options is unambiguous (near Friday can't be parsed differently), the other option automatically becomes clear as well.
We have the word "prochain" which means "next. It comes from the word "proche", which means "close". In other words, "vendredi prochain" means "the nearest Friday".
Unfortunately, depending on regions and oral tradition, ""vendredi prochain" can be understood as "the nearest Friday" or "the Friday next week" (same issue as in English, though we do have a proper interpretation).
So French would not be French if we haven't invented a solution to that: "vendredi en huit", which literally means "Friday in eight" = "the first Friday after 8 days from now". This guarantees that this is going to be "Friday next week".
This does not solve the issue of "vendredi prochain" for those who understand it the wrong way, but then we have "Friday the first to come, you know in three days, not the one after the week-end".
Fortnight derives from Old English "fēowertyne niht", meaning "fourteen nights"
Are you sure that was not the case for non native speaking folks in living in the UK.
Worse, there was a period of time where Americans would shorten a phrase, then mis-spell it for the lulz. The most famous example is "All Complete" -> "Oll Komplete" -> "OK" -> okay.
Every British tabloid has a regular, very popular column peeving about yet another abomination by the Americans, or the South Africans, or the Australians. Without exception they note what is simply a local fashion lately abandoned locally, but preserved as if in amber elsewhere. The complaints are really about distant people failing to slavishly follow current London trends by abandoning usage London has abandoned.
The peculiar popularity of such peeving could be interpreted as wistfulness for a time when London mattered.
And, by the way, that derivation of "OK" is suspect. It is just as likely to have been (fashionably) sarcastic commentary on well-established common oral usage. Etymologists are generally obliged to rely on written sources, but word origins routinely predate the first written use by many decades. Slang originating in exclusive universities is vanishingly rare.
Hah, this 'word' has a funny history, thanks for using it. I looked it up, and was not aware of the Simpsons joke :)
Also pretty silly for "flammable"/"inflammable" to be synonyms when "combustible"/"incombustible" are antonyms.
Does seem like folks ought to stop using the old definition of "inflammable", but if they must, seems like it ought to be spelled as "enflammable", much like "enrage" displaced "inrage".
["Rebracketing", Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing) has a neat discussion about the interpretation-ambiguity.
I know the right answer, but I still have to stop a split-second to remember it.
As a non expert, I think the general idea is you can see the past, therefor it is in front of you, and the future is unknown, so it’s where you can’t see it, behind you.
Also, no analysis of the semantic chaos of scheduling-related terms in English can be complete without a reference to “tabling”: the act of setting something aside for later discussion (to an American), or the act of discussing something immediately (to the rest of the English-speaking world). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_(parliamentary_procedu...
When you're moving back into the past, you're talking from your perspective about your perspective. But when you're talking about a deadline, you're talking from your perspective about a "stationary" event in the future. Since you are moving forward, but the deadline stays in place, relatively speaking the deadline moves towards you - so you push it back, in its reference frame, into your future.
If this sounds complicated, blame the fact that we use spatial intuitions for timekeeping. For instance, if you compare "step back" to "push back" in a spatial sense, they also mean opposite things, and for the same exact reason.
I do my best to avoid speaking/writing such sentences, but I had a brief moment of frustration when I started to type arrows showing which noun is acting on each. So, [subject] --[verb]-> [object], and [object] <--[verb]-- [subject]. Only much later it occurred to me that the direction of the arrow is also something potentially ambiguous - even in computing, the arrows on the diagrams can mean the opposite of what you'd naturally draw (looking at you, UML class diagram), so they get mixed up.
My current pet peeve are the verbs that not only do not disambiguate between subject and object, but also they mean the opposite thing depending on context. "To rent" is an example in both English and Polish ("wynajmować"). If I say, "I'm renting a flat" (pl_PL: "wynajmuję mieszkanie"), it can mean that I'm either letting someone else live in my flat, or living in someone else's flat, and you can't tell which without context. Ugh.
Here’s my interpretation of what you mean by semantic associativity: “Bi-” is another way of saying “two,” and the confusion with “biweekly” arises because it’s unclear if the “two” should be taken to mean “two occurrences per week” or “two weeks per occurrence.”
Meanwhile, “semi-” means “one half,” and in normal conversation it’s not common to say that an event occurs “one half of a time per week”. So it’s unambiguous that it must refer to “one occurrence per half week.”
bi(weekly) = double once per one week interval = 2/7 day^-1
(semiweek)ly = once per half-week interval = 2/7 day^-1
semi(weekly) = half of the rate of once per week interval = 1/14 day^-1
So, we end up with the same two meanings in the end.
I think it has the same issue as biannually or biweekly.
The problem is whether "half as much as annually" is interpreted as twice as frequently (your view, and the accepted one) or half as frequently (my natural inclination).
"Bi-" is more specifically a factor of 2, while "tri-" is a factor of 3, etc., though "semi-" can be a looser qualifier.
If someone said that they did something "bi-annually", that'd sound more like they mean twice-per-year (even if that's an estimated average rate). By contrast, if they said "semi-annually", that'd sound more like they mean usually-several-times-per-year.
(Or the inverses rates, due to the other ambiguity.)
In the Netherlands it seem to mean both, depending on which part of the country you were from.
It's the latter, btw.
I don't think I've ever uttered the phrase, "this Monday". Ever.
The soonest Monday in the future is always "next Monday", because it's always in the following week. So, if I'm talking to you on a Thursday, I'll say "next Monday" to refer to the day four days hence. If we're talking on a Sunday, then it's just "tomorrow".
But with a day like Friday, the this/next thing comes into play. I'll use "this Friday" to talk about the future Friday that shares the week we're in, and "next Friday" to refer to the one that occurs in the following week. So for example, June 12, 2021 will become "this Friday" tomorrow morning. But right now, it's still "next Friday", because the weekend ain't over.
This comment is mostly me trying to add structure to a stream of consciousness realization that just hit me. Reading the phrase "this Monday" knocked me off balance a bit and I couldn't articulate why at first.
I agree with you, "this <weekday>" means the upcoming day this week, and generally changes to "last" if referring to the past, and "next" if referring to next week. "Next week Monday" or "a week from Monday" could both refer to "Monday, a week from now" though the first one might be confused if sent on a Friday...
Really, the answer is to skip English entirely and use calendar events and hope time zones don't change between when you plan the event and when it occurs. ;-)
After writing my previous comment, I keep coming up with exceptions and variances to those exceptions. Like—as I write this—I would refer to June 9 as "this Wednesday", but June 11 as "next Friday". So I suppose I "glue" Fridays to the weekend? And right now it's still the weekend so June 4 retains the "this" title until tomorrow?
Starting to feel like I have epicycles of rules similar to the adjective ordering we all know, but never explicitly learned ("big red bouncy rubber ball" is okay; "bouncy red rubber big ball" is NOT OK)
I'm glad I don't write either dictionaries or voice-based/natural language apps for calendar appointments. ;-)
* bimensuel/elle : twice a month
* bimestriel/elle: every 2 months
And trimestriel and semestriel for every 3 and 6 months respectively.
It's strange that English left this ambiguity in usage when the semi- prefix exists.
We use it all the time here in Australia - eg "This is a fortnightly meeting" / "Lets meet back up in a fortnight and discuss progress".
I consider teaching "fortnight" to americans a gift I insist on giving to every american colleague I work with. Its already in your dictionaries, after all. Please use it, and you're welcome!
It's good for that, but we're in the same position Americans are if we're trying to talk about something happening every two years.
...the ambiguity exists whether or not you use fortnight!
Fortnight combined with semi- will do pretty well, assuming people don't screw up semi-. But you still need an unambiguous term for "every other month" before the problem is solved.
Maybe if you can change the schedule to quarterly?
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=obstreperous
What a great word.
1 : marked by unruly or aggressive noisiness : clamorous obstreperous merriment an obstreperous argument. 2 : stubbornly resistant to control : unruly obstreperous behavior an obstreperous child.
I like there rationale of using this prefix though. In the same vein, perhaps hemiweekly? Like in hemisphere. Same logic applied but the hemi- prefix is less overloaded.
Using an ambiguous word like "biweekly" was very much intentional.
One of my favorites is "ingenuity", used as being clever or inventive. It share the root with "ingenuidad" in spanish, which means "naive" (-ity endings correlate with -idad endings in spanish, the same way than -tion goes with -ción).
The word that means clever or inventive is "ingenioso" which in english should be "ingenious" (-ious goes with -ioso, e.g. "precious" and "precioso"), so as a noun, it should be "ingeniousness".
It confused me a lot when I was learning english.
HTH, HAND.
A) explicit or official approval, permission, or ratification B) to attach a sanction or penalty to the violation of (a right, obligation, or command)
Ugh.
I thought this was going to be about salary though