11 March 2010
Julian Day:
2 455 267.00216
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“400 of them!” |
“Pick a language; it’s in there. I originally purchased this book for its coverage of Chinese script, but you’ll get everything from Linear B to Cherokee.” |
“Language extinction is a great tragedy for human culture and for scholarship on all things human.” |
“Of the 6000 or so languages that exist today, more than 90% are endangered.” |
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“Les Très Riches Heures” |
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March |
Here’s today’s date in over 250 languages. I’m
favoring those that are at least a bit off the beaten track, and/or have names for the
months that depart substantially from your run-of-the-mill neo-Roman. Accordingly you
won’t find French, Chinese, or Greek, say, but rather Picard, Manipuri, and
Pontic. (Cool looking numerals are, naturally, an added plus.)
Sliding your mouse over each language’s name will
reveal its pedigree. Brown terms in parentheses ( ) are alternate names for them, while those
in brackets [ ] specify a particular subdivision or dialect shown.
For those languages that expired before the advent of modern place-value numerals
I’m using Roman. For Etruscan I’m using Etruscan numerals (basically Roman
except that they used a lambda for 5) while pretending that those serene, elbow-lounging
folks used the Gregorian calendar and reckoned dates sequentially as we do. Traditional
Chuvash numerals follow a similar scheme, but with the smaller units to the left of
the larger ones, a slash for 5, and a star for 1000. Mokshan resembles Chavash but
uses that lambda for 10 and a kind of reflected sawhorse for 1000.
The only non-Gregorian date I’m showing is an estimate for the
Gaulish, whose calendar was offset by about half a month from that used by their
Roman contemporaries and whose months alternated between 29 and 30 days as opposed to 30 and 31.
For the sake of uniformity the program writes everything out in the continental
fashion of date, month name, and year. (Classical Latin, a special case at least by modern standards, is here.) It’s likely some languages
might require inflectional modifications on the month names or other refinements, so
just let me know and
I’ll incorporate them.
Peter
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Special thanks to:
Can Dai Quang (Cham),
Ansuharijaz (Frankish and Proto-Germanic reconstructions),
George Saliba (Himyarite South Arabian for Jan-Apr and Sep-Dec),
Qinglian Zhao (Naxi), and
Le Projet Babel (Vosgien)
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(din sam)
