Homework!

[elfs]

I finished lesson #63 of the Pimsleur's course today, and watched episode one of マリア様がみてる.

様, pronounced "さま", a suffix meaning "Mrs."

春, pronounced "はる", meaning "Spring."

(In case anyone's curious, yeah, I had to master spelling マリア様がみてる so I could ask for it at the bookstore. Important phrase of the day:"マリア様がみてる" が あります か？ ("Do you carry Maria-sama ga miteru?")

I'm going to repeat this for my own benefit. You don't have to follow along, but I keep forgetting. The おん reading of a kanji is the original Chinese reading of the ideogram and to reflect their foreign origins is usually spelled out using カタカア. おん readings are typically used when the kanji is part of a compound. The くん reading, based upon the Japanese reading being tacked onto the ideogram, is used when the kanji is used stand-alone or as an adjectival or verb stem. くん readings are usually written in ひりがな.

月, meaning "month" or "moon." On: ゲツ. Kun: つき. (The latter is useful to me because I'm starting to actually enjoy 月詠みMoon Phase quite a bit.) Common combination: 月曜日 (げつよび)、"monday" (lit "Moon's day of the week") and 一月 "January" (lit. "First month.")

Comments

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

月曜日.

Moon's day.

Moonsday.

Moonday.

Monday.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

That's what it means in English, too. I haven't done the etiology, but given that their calender is based on the English calendar and merely number one through twelve, I have a feeling that their days of the week come from us too. "Thursday" is "Tree's day," for example. Friday is "Golden day," and Freya, after whom Friday is named, was honored with the color gold; it's said that she wept tears of gold when Odin died.

[fubarobfusco.livejournal.com]

The Japanese and Chinese days of the week are named for the sun, moon, and the five naked-eye visible planets (Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn) -- known as the "seven luminaries" in Chinese tradition.

Those five planets are in turn named for the five traditional elements -- Mars is 火星, the fire planet, for instance.

For lots more information, see http://www.cjvlang.com/Dow/dowjpn.html.

[fallenpegasus]

I find it interesting and odd that so many disparate cultures would have a seven day "week". A week has no meaning. A month is a lunar orbit, a year is a cycle of seasons, but what's a week?

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Seven divides 28.

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

One common explanation is that it makes up a day for the Sun, a day for the Moon, and a day for each of the five naked-eye-visible planets, for a total of seven days. In many pre-literate societies weeks were generally considered to be the number of days between market days, which varied between four and ten days, enough time for farmers to collect and transport their produce. Seven days, though, was considered unlucky for an interval between markets, and was avoided. The seven-day week was introduced in Rome around 100 AD by Persian astrologers; it wasn't until Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire during the reign of Constantine that the Judeo-Christian week and the pagan week were combined and the Christian week merged into the Julian calendar.

The ancient Egyptians used a 10-day "week", as did the French Revolutionary calendar. Lithuanians used week of nine days before adopting Cristianity. The Soviet Union used both a 5-day and a 6-day week. In 1929-30 the USSR gradually introduced a 5-day week. Every worker had one day off every week, but there was no fixed day of rest. On 1 September 1931 this was replaced by a 6-day week with a fixed day of rest, falling on the 6th, 12th, 18th, 24th, and 30th day of each month (1 March was used instead of the 30th day of February, and the last day of months with 31 days was considered an extra working day outside the normal 6-day week cycle). A return to the normal 7-day week was decreed on 26 June 1940. The Mayans had two 'weeks' that ran concurrently, a numbered week of 13 days and a named week of 20 days.

[kengr]

There were seven "planets" known to the ancients. One day for each planet. Sun (Sunday), Moon (Monday), Mars (Tuesday "Mardi" in French), Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Saturn (Saturday).

This goes *way* back.

About "-sama"

[malthus25.livejournal.com]

I was under the impression that "-sama" was an extremely respectful suffix and not one in common usage (except in anime, where it's used to express worshipful devotion). Granted, I only took a couple of semesters of Japanese, and that was a long time ago, but AFAIK, that was the usage.

As to the Japanese calendar, it was almost certainly Westernized during the Meiji period.

-Malthus

Re: About "-sama"

[elfs.livejournal.com]

That's a generally correct assessment of "-sama." I just needed to know it because it's used in the anime I watch an awful lot.