Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 May 5

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May 5

Get 'a' divorce

What is the function of 'a' in that construct? Is 'divorce' countable? Or supposed to be? Thanks for comments. Omidinist (talk) 05:34, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

The "a" is a normal indefinite article. "Divorce" is a count (countable) noun in this context and can also be a mass (uncountable) noun in other contexts. The question about "supposed to be" is meaningless. --174.89.12.187 (talk) 06:13, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

It's just one of the many inconsistencies of the English language that you can either get divorced or get a divorce but you can only get married and not *get a marriage. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:38, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

"a marriage" is perfectly cromulent. The sentence "I have had three marriages and two divorces" is perfectly reasonable. And yes, "divorce" is a countable noun, as I just demonstrated. --Jayron32 12:43, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Mahagaja -- You can "get a marriage license", "officiate at a marriage", or "hold a wedding ceremony". AnonMoos (talk) 19:12, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

I never denied that marriage is a countable noun, I'm just asserting that no one says "I'm getting a marriage" to mean "I'm getting married" the way people say "I'm getting a divorce" to mean "I'm getting divorced". —Mahāgaja · talk 07:39, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Hmm? --Jayron32 23:57, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

That doesn't preclude "getting a marriage certificate" etc. Nardog (talk) 06:19, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

One could also "get a spouse". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:24, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Looking for logic in English usage can sometimes prove to be a fruitless exercise. Alansplodge (talk) 11:51, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Cartellverband

I'm reading the list of member fraternities of the Cartellverband. Apparently their names are in Latin and somehow refer to their respective territory/city. Some of them are transparent, such as: Badenia, Bavaria, Carinthia, Guestfalia, Palatia, Rhenania or Saxonia, but a few of them are quite mysterious, in particular: Aenania, Alcimonia, Algovia, Ascania, Tuisconia/Tuiskonia, Makaria, Moenania, Novesia. Do you have any idea about their meaning? 79.26.53.210 (talk) 07:16, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

I think Algovia refers to the Allgäu and Moenania to the River Main. Ascania probably refers to the House of Ascania, whose name apparently comes from the Latin name of the castle in Aschersleben. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:56, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Aenania refers to the river Inn (de:KDStV Aenania München). Alcimonia is probably related to Alcimoennis and/or the river Altmühl. --Wrongfilter (talk) 08:12, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Tuisconia is from Tuisto (de:Karlsruher Burschenschaft Tuiskonia). Makaria is named after a poem by Theodor Körner, Greek Μακαρία meaning "happiness". --Wrongfilter (talk) 08:18, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Finally, de:Novaesium is the Latin name of Neuss; however, neither the article de:KDStV Novesia Bonn nor their website make that connection (or say anything at all about the name). --Wrongfilter (talk) 08:25, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Why does Sunday have a special name in Chinese?

Names_of_the_days_of_the_week#Days_numbered_from_Monday explains that days of the week in Chinese are "Stellar Period" followed by a number, except for Sunday.

Why does Sunday have a special name and not just a number like all the others?

Is having a 7-day week a relatively recent introduction by westerners who were more likely than not, missionaries?

Thanks, cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 09:24, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

The name for Sunday is likely a retainer from the original East Asian system mentioned elsewhere in the article. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:21, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

The situation seems similar to the developments in Icelandic, Portuguese and Modern Greek, where the older system was (mostly) replaced. In the European cases, it would largely have been due to Christian views on paganism. In Chinese, it seems that the modern system basically originated with the founding of the Republic of China in 1911. The founders mostly seem to have been revolutionaries and nationalists, but not strictly communists, so I guess the older system might have been seen as convoluted and superstitious. The old name for Sunday might have been kept, as it was exceptional as a resting day. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:50, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Sadly, Week#Adoption in Asia sounds like a promising place to find this information, but what is there is a) very scant and b) entirely unreferenced. --Jayron32 12:41, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Days of the Week in Chinese: Three Different Words for 'Week' says that a seven-day week was a fairly recent innovation based on Christian worship.

Before they adopted the Western-style week, the Chinese used a ten-day cycle known as a 旬 xún in ordering their daily lives and activities. Although the Christian week was not unknown (it was known, for instance, from contact with the Jesuits in the 16th-18th centuries), the seven-day week as we know it first became widely familiar in the 19th century with the coming of traders and missionaries from Western powers.

The present terminology was adopted in 1912 at the founding of the Republic of China. Alansplodge (talk) 17:28, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Well, actually the seven-day week arrived in China quite a while ago. From the Cihai: 中国在4世纪时有此法。("This reckoning [the seven-day week] existed in China in the 4th century", i.e. Jin dynasty). Buddhists and Manichaeans from the Western Regions probably brought it in again in the 8th century, i.e. Tang dynasty. The site you link to describes all of this when discussing the weekdays in Japanese. The recent innovation was actually adopting the 7-day week for the daily schedule. When China and Japan did this, Japan put the traditional planetary names in daily use, whereas Chinese replaced them with numerical names.

For completeness, Korean uses the same Chinese-character names as Japanese (but read in Korean and mostly today written in Hangul), whereas Vietnamese rather follows the Portuguese pattern (numbered days with special Sunday, and Monday as the second day), as do the traditional names used by Chinese Catholics. Double sharp (talk) 22:49, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, everyone, for the excellent insights. I wonder what can be added to Week#Adoption_in_Asia or Names_of_the_days_of_the_week#Days_numbered_from_Monday to help future readers. Cheers, cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 05:08, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with the traditional ten-day week. Sunday is a special day in the Christian religion, which was the introduction vector of the seven-day week. It might be worth considering that the second syllable of the word "week" (xingqi) is homophonous with the word for "seven". I could see the pronunciation being misparsed, especially as time terms tend to come at the beginning of the sentence in Chinese and thus are easily miscontextualised. No references. Folly Mox (talk) 12:26, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the table here I've only encountered the informal 禮拜 in Cantonese, in Hong Kong in particular where it is the usual form. Interestingly in Cantonese 一 and 日 are a minimal pair, both pronounced "yat" but with different tones. So 禮拜一 and 禮拜日 are both "laibaiyat", only distinguished by their tones, a particular problem for anyone trying to get by without tones. 92.40.5.34 (talk) 09:09, 7 May 2023 (UTC)