I'm from a country which officially has the first day of the week on a Sunday, which completely messes off with the week-numbering system. Logically it made sense, especially for career folks who really feel the "new week" when Monday comes (yeah, those Monday blues), not Sunday.
(P.S. ISO 8601 sets the beginning of the week on a Monday.)
In my mother tongue, monday is literally "firstday". It follows the patern up to sixthday, too.
Which language is that? In mine, sunday is “first” and it keeps the pattern haha
Probably Lithuanian... (Pirmadienis)
In Hungarian it's similar: Hétfő. It doesn't literally mean first day, but it means something like head or lead of the week.
And Tuesday is "kedd", a variant of the word for second.
In Estonian, Monday is esmaspäev, "first day".
Chinese is one such language. Monday to Saturday is Day 1 to 6.
"Monday to Saturday is Day 1 to 6."
Is Sunday day 7 or 0?
Neither. It's literally Day Sun.
Lithuanian. I was told that sunday is named around some religious processing (sekmadienis, if it followed the pattern it would be septintadienis or similar)
It's not Portuguese, that's for sure. Their word for Monday translates to second, i.e. the ordinal number associated with the number 2.
That's weird, considering other Latin-based languages use gods and sometimes Lord for Sunday.
They have that too. They, like in Spanish, call Sunday Domingo and Saturday Sábado.
German would fit
Monday in German doesn't translate into first day
In my mother language, Wednsday is called "middle of the week" which is only true if the week begins on a Sunday.
The week begins on a Monday in my country and I hate that discrepancy.
It's the middle day of the work week.
Except it was named that way when the work week was 6 days long
Edit: In fact, your reply is used by some management as an argument against transitioning to a 4 day work week
There's an old Dutch rhyme from when we still had a six day work week:
(Thursday, oh Thursday, most beautiful of days! In the morning still half a week, in the evening just two days.)
I thought that you could be German when I read your first comment but now I‘m almost entirely sure
And you would be correct.
In Portuguese, Monday is called Segunda (Second) This goes up to Sexta (Sixth) for Friday. Saturday and Sunday have unrelated names. There is no First day.
Portugal is kinda the odd one out in Europe for not starting on a Monday. It would be odd to ask the weekdays to be renamed or to consider day second to be the first day of the calendar, so it is what it is now.
Living in a country where Monday has always been the start of the week, no I've not changed my calendar!
Me too, though I also prefer my system language to be English, which causes some apps with bad i18n (i.e. Google Maps) to use bad time and date format.
Ensure you're not using "English" because it defaults to US English (Unicode defaults to USA), r/USdefaultism, so you'll have to pick like English (United Kingdom) or better yet the very ISO compliant English (Sweden).
Still not prefect since there's still plenty of software defaulting to US English and anyone suggesting alternatives or it being changed to be more international are ridiculed for suggesting a US company even considering anyone outside of USA.
Seems to be the default in Australian locale, I never really thought about it
Australian locale is peak. UK based dictionary, US keyboard. Correct day for start of week.
Why is the US keyboard peak? Its odd and strange. Why would a normal, average person need dedicated keys for {[ ]}? Wouldn't it make more sense to give higher priority to ()? Why pair up <> with ,. instead of pairing up ;: with ,. like European keyboards? Why even make ; the default over :? Its clear this is a programmer who designed it and not intended for the average person. I'm programming too, but I'm still considerate about the average person.
the unspoken part was "of the keyboards that are currently in common usage for the english language world"
For a perfectly idealised keyboard that either doesn't exist, or hasn't caught on? sure, it has flaws compared to that imagined thing.
Does Australia default to 12 or 24 hour time?
12 hour time
Uff, big L.
Interesting, the UK is 24. So you are a real mix up!
The UK is a mess. If you ask someone the time, they'll look at their watch and see ”14:30", and say "half past two".
Thats been the default for me, never had it different.
Monday is the only logical way of doing it. Depending on your language, Saturday and Sunday are literally "Weekend" or "Wochenende" for English and German. Not Weekendandstart.
I personally prefer having the week start with my first work day. I get to work towards the weekend and have my leisure at the end of the week. If the week starts on Sunday, I've already used up half my leisure time for that week. It doesn't make a difference practically, but the mindset is better imo.
But that depends on which country you live in. Not all countries have traditions deriving from English or German, or indeed Europe or Christianity.
No.
For personal calendar it just doesn’t matter.
Work is the only time the week number ever matters. So I align with my work calendar.
Which is week starting Saturday.
Horrifyingly, Saturday starts on Friday evening at 8pm.
Horrifying indeed.
What's an 8pm? This is ISO 8601 and your comment isn't compliant
Sorry for the partial OT but I never got the reason why some countries consider Sunday as the first day of the week. It’s literally the day where most of the people gets some rest at the end of the workweek/"schoolweek". I’m not religious at all but even in the Bible the last day of creation is Sunday.
So why should it be seen as the first day of the week? Is it a tradition or convention of some sort?
It's actually came from a Christian understanding. Note that Sabbath ("Saturday") was the last day of the week per Jewish understanding that the Creator rested on the Sabbath which is the seventh day.
Sunday rose to prominence due to Jesus' resurrection based from church understanding.
Oh thanks for the explanation!!
Sunday & Saturday are the weekends, as in either end of the week, so first & last day.
🤯 like bookends? In English, we say “the weekend” indicating a cohesive block at the finish. But “weekends” is clever.
I suspect that the singularization (i.e., "weekend" rather than "weekends") is just a result of English's tendency to phonetically simplify commonly-used words even when doing so corrupts its etymology.
No, we do the same in Italian. "Weekend" is a single concept made of Saturday and Sunday. I would have never thought about splitting them to the sides 😁
Except that's not how it works for things moving in one direction. A film has one end, not two. You don't watch the film from end to end, but from start to end. The first day of the week can't be the weekend.
"End to end" sounds acceptably-correct to me, although "start to finish" does sound better.
"Start to end" is jarringly awkward.
Yes and no. The switch took place in the whole country in 1973, when I was in elementary school. Having a personal calendar wasn't a thing at that age yet 😁
Which country?
Greetings from Finland
Greetings from the UK
Yes
My digital calendar is always on agenda view, so it doesn't really have a starting and ending day. Today is Sunday, but it's an endless scroll so I can scroll all the way to Christmas day next year if I like
And as for physical calendar, I just buy whichever one is affordable and has a nice design. I don't fuss over whether it starts on Sunday or Monday. Monday is the first day of the week in my country, but calendars can choose whichever day they want the week to start on
I have never needed to use iso8601 week numbers for any reason.
But this lack of harmony bugs tf out of me. I’m completely mentally wired to read the week starting Sunday, but objectively it’s the least sensible because weekends often have contiguous plans, which would make sense to show in adjacent days. Sunday to Monday is, in reality, the larger transition.
Anyway for work, to save space and to avoid this, I prefer setups that don’t display the weekend at all.
I obsess about calendar layouts in paper planners and on screens and this bugs me so much. Neither week start works for me.
Monday is day 1, Sunday is day 0.
I also do this. Mostly because I learned to calculate the weekday off given dates as a kid and the method I used set Sunday as "None-day", Monday as "One-Day," Tuesday as "Two's-Day" because it was easier to remember. It stuck.
I have my first day of the week set to Saturday
My work sets it's weeks from Saturday to Friday so that's what I use in my calendar.
I did for a while, but it got confusing because no other calendars are set up that way, so i eventually switched back.
Sometimes "weird" programs will have Sunday as the first day.
Weird in quotes because the vast majority of calendars just start on Monday. That's just how it always was ...
saturday and sunday are called the weekend for a reason
Shoot man I start the week on Saturday. Works for pay schedules