Hacker News Reader

Comment by _tom_ | Hacker News Reader

A similar ambiguity that I had to give up on using was “next Friday”. If it’s Monday, half the people think next Friday is the one in next week. The others that it is the next Friday, the one that occurs in five days.

Now it’s “this Friday” or “a week from Friday”

View on HN

I like to think that we Dutch have this mostly figured out. We say either "upcoming Friday" or "next week Friday". This is perfectly unambiguous except for Sunday and Monday because people just can't agree on what day a week starts :-)

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".

> This is perfectly unambiguous except for Sunday and Monday because people just can't agree on what day a week starts :-)

I always thought that the “week starts on Sunday” was only an American thing. TIL

Probably not what you have in mind, but in Israel, the week does start on Sunday. (Sunday is also literally translated to "First Day" in Hebrew).

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.

As another Dutch person, I've never seen this disagreement here either. I also associate that ambiguity solely with Americans.

I've also suffered similar ambiguity in the UK.

The word for Tuesday is "Tyr's day" in Germanic languages, "Mars' day" in Romance languages, "second day" in Balto-Slavic languages, and "third day" in Greek, so it's not even the Catholic/Orthodox division, it's just... weird.

"Friday next week" is perfect English by the way. I (Hiberno-English speaker) would naturally say "Friday week" for the same thing, but have found it doesn't travel well :)

Does the Dutch approach work if it's, say, Saturday and you are talking about "next week Tuesday"? Is that the Tuesday in 10 days' time or the one in 3?

I'm not sure! Good one!

I'd say 10 days but that makes no sense by my own explanation.

It is even weirder in French.

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".

In German it is "dieser Freitag" (this Friday) and "nächster Freitag" (next Friday).

But still "nächster Freitag" isn't totally clear for everyone.

Not in my experience. Because "nächster" means "nähester" ('the closest one'), it would be logical to mean Friday this week, not next week.

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.

English "next" also etymologically means "closest": "nighest" ('the closest one').

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.

No. On a monday, the closest friday is in the past.

True, but it's just nonsensical to say "let's meet three days ago". Real-world constraints restrict the meaningful interpretations of sentences.

What's nonsensical and what is not is subjective. Different people assume different things about everything that's not explicit. That's why we are having this "this" vs "next" discussion in the first place.

Connecting "next" with a German translation of "nähest" ("closest") is just as nonsensical.

next implies the future when talking about time. Also for the matching words in other Germanic languages in my experience.

Yes, but "this" doesn't imply timing either way.

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.

I am German, with "nächster Freitag" I’d always ask what is meant.

> In German it is "dieser Freitag" (this Friday) and "nächster Freitag" (next Friday).

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.

From a mandarin perspective, they are just different accents.

“Friday” vs “Friday week” is another way to differentiate. Though I don’t often hear the latter form these days.

The same when driving, "are we exiting on this or next exit?"

Oh, wow, that helped highlight my own hypocrisy.

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.

After thinking a bit more about it "next exit" is the most immediate if you don't see any exits. If you are getting close to an exit you see and ask "is this our exit?" the answer can be "no, not this but next exit", or when giving directions you can say "not this exit, but next".

Language is not easy and full of ambiguity, which is why language majors haven't taken over software development

And you're always "in sight" of a Friday, so "this Friday" could always be in play :)

I suspect it's something to do with how we bundle days together into weeks. "Next Friday" really means the Friday of next week. It's even less certain when we talk about Mondays and Sundays depending on which day you regard as the start of the week.

Talking about "this exit" only makes sense to me when you are near an exit. If you're well in between exits, then I would think there is no "this exit". There's only the previous exit and the next one. I think it's normal for car navigation systems to say "take the next exit", when you're not there yet.

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".

I'm not 100% sure I'm right about this, but in Hebrew, as far as I know, this is pretty standardized. You have "the 'close' Friday" to mean the Friday happening this week, and "next Friday" therefore automatically means the one in the following 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.

I usually say 'upcoming Friday', that usually takes care of most ambiguity. But if it's anything slightly serious I'll still name the date.

It's interesting that there this ambiguity because when one is on the train/metro, it is totally unambiguous when the announcer says:

"The next stop is X".

Oh no, it's totally ambiguous, and I hate it. Does "the next stop" mean the one that we're just closing to? Or the one after that?

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".

"At the third stop".

Even here, there is an implicit "after the current stop" in some cases. Hearing the announcer say "now stopping at Y, the next stop is X" is not incorrect but technically the next stop is Y.

This is the same when referring to dates. "Next Friday" often has an implicit "after this week".

Same problem in French.

"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.

A Case For Week Numbers.

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.

I remember using week numbers in MariaDB, I found out I had to provide a second argument to specify what kind of week numbers I wanted. Just like that I was introduced to the strange world of week numbers.

https://mariadb.com/kb/en/week/

Week numbering is absolutely foreign concept for most of the world

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

Denmark uses week numbers. Instead of saying that there is a holiday from date A to date B, they usually say Week X or Weeks X-Y. Or for example that Good Friday is in Week 19.

> Week numbering is absolutely foreign concept for most of the world

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 all we need is relative week numbers. "Friday in week NOW()+0".

Still need to supply that setting about whether weeks start on Sundays or Mondays though.

you can find out what week number it is on https://ugenr.dk/

I guess they are going to wonder why the non-danish visits today.

on edit: wrong address oops

Whoa, that was not the most minimalist. Up here in Sweden, where week numbers are very much standard in planning, we use [1] (which, translated, means "week now").

Of course, Google's calendar also shows it which is handy.

[1] https://vecka.nu

I agree that vecka.nu is better on the minimalism, but every now and then I have to use the functionality to find out what week number a particular date is in.

In (brazilian) portuguese we say just Friday to mean this Friday and "the other Friday", "a outra sexta-feira" for the Friday in the next week.

In my dialect of Brazilian Portuguese (Carioca) one would seldom hear "a outra sexta-feira" in an unqualified statement.

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 think in English that would actually refer to the last Friday. ("last" as in the one most recently in the past, not some final Friday.)

For last Friday, we would probably use either "sexta-feira passada" (past Friday), which is more 'portable' among dialects, or "sexta-feira agora" qualified with a verb in past tense, or a time phrase. "sexta-feira agora" would mean this (next) Friday if unqualified.

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)

Or oxt friday:

https://oxtweekend.com/

Oh man, but try using “this Friday” on a Saturday. Now you’ve entered into a possible third case!

“This Friday” or “not this Friday but the next” is the way to go.

A week from Friday is something very different, isnt it?

Nope, but I can see how it could be taken as next saturday.

A week from Friday could be any day? No?

No, it means exactly one week from friday. It just depends if you count friday as being the first minute of friday or the last minute.

Or “next week’s Friday”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com