Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 October 19

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October 19

Businessman that only speaks Scots

I remember reading about a successful businessman that can only speak Scots. He can read and write English but only speaks Scots. I can't remember his name. Can anyone find this out for me? Munci (talk) 10:19, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

If you mean Scots language including Modern Scots and Lallans, then these are generally mutually intelligible with English. You can annoy people by calling them dialects. It's a fuzzy line between those and Scottish English. Scottish Gaelic is a different kettle of fish. Alansplodge (talk) 11:53, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Assuming that Scottish Gaelic is meant, there is an organisation, Club Gniomhachas nan Gaidheal, which consists of Gaelic-speaking businessmen in Scotland. Some more information here and here - they appear not to have a website. But, it leads to the suggestion that perhaps the OP was thinking of Iain Noble - more here. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:27, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

The number of monolingual speakers of Scottish Gaelic is reported at Scottish Gaelic#Number of speakers. There may be a very few pre-school children who have been taught only Gaelic at home. Thincat (talk) 19:52, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

All this information would have been useful to other people but, as a multilingual Scot with interests in linguistics and reasonable reading ability in Gaelic as well as ability in Scots and Scottish English, I know all that already. You can call them mutually intelligible all you want but, if I speak Scots to people who speak fluent English but have never been to Scotland, they don't necessarily understand.

I think he was probably a Doric speaker. I remember reading about him in the comments section of a Herald article online. Munci (talk) 07:15, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

How to express "8th day of the week" and "13rd month of the year" in English?

Hello, in Chinese language, week was expressed as Week 1 (星期一), Week 2 (星期二), Week 3 (星期三) ... and Week Sun (星期日, we don't say "Week 7" but intelligible), so we can say "week 8" in jokes or so. Similar, the months are from Month 1 (一月) to Month 12 (十二月). But in English, there is Monday and January, there are no obvious one, two, three, so are there any special words to express that concept?--Zero colon colon zero (talk) 14:50, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

January is month 1 and December is month 12. There is no named 13th month on the Gregorian calendar, but the name of a 13th month could be borrowed from a different calendar system; e.g. Ve'Adar is a 13th month.

Numbering weekdays varies regionally, with preferences for either Sunday or Monday as the 'first' day of the week. Based on Latin derivation, Sunday is the first day of the week, because Saturday [sabatto] is derived from the Sabbath, which is the 7th; however, under ISO 8601, Monday is considered the 'first' and is usually also the first day of the working week. It is rare for other weekdays to be considered as the first day of the week.

I'm not aware of any single word in English to express an '8th day of a week'. The concept of 8 weekdays appears in the song Eight Days a Week, derived from an intended humourous effect.--Jeffro77 (talk) 15:34, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

In Christian theology, Sunday is the first day of the week, whatever the ISO says; "On this day, the first of days, / God the Father’s Name we praise; / Who, creation’s Lord and Spring / Did the world from darkness bring." [1] Alansplodge (talk) 17:05, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Lousy Smarch weather. Mingmingla (talk) 18:46, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if Sir Paul McCartney edits WP. We could always ask him what his original conception behind "Eight Days a Week" was. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 19:38, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

He would agree 110 percent. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:36, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Or you could just look up the article about the song I already linked where two similar origins both given by McCartney are already provided, both of which are intended humourously.--Jeffro77 (talk) 00:20, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that's right. Thank you. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 09:54, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

The answer to the question is, no, there are no conventional names for a putative 13th month or 8th day. Various works of fiction (especially science fiction) have included names for additional days or months, but I'm not aware of any which would be widely recognised. --ColinFine (talk) 23:27, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the names "Mercedonius" and "Undecimber" for a thirteenth month have been in circulation for some time, though neither one was ever really an officially-adopted name for a month of an historically-authentic calendar. In Latin, the eighth day of an eight-day week could be called "Nundinae"... AnonMoos (talk) 00:19, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

James Vogh (John Thomas Sladek) wrote a book called Arachne Rising, which is about how there really are, supposedly, 13 signs of the zodiac but one got suppressed by the establishment. Here's a review. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:13, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

There's the lousy month of Smarch. μηδείς (talk) 00:50, 20 October 2013 (UTC) (MY Bad, I see Mingminla got this.)

I suppose this means "never". But there is the 13th monthly wage which is quite real (it is a premium year-end wage in some organisations).--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 02:47, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

In English, the names of the days and the names of the months are not based on a simple count. The concept of an 8th day of the week or a 13th month therefore make no sense except in humour. Perhaps the closest in concept is February 30 or February 31. Astronaut (talk) 19:40, 22 October 2013 (UTC)