A similar ambiguity that I had to give up on using was “next Friday”. If it’s Monday, half the people think next Friday is the one in next week. The others that it is the next Friday, the one that occurs in five days.
I like to think that we Dutch have this mostly figured out. We say either "upcoming Friday" or "next week Friday". This is perfectly unambiguous except for Sunday and Monday because people just can't agree on what day a week starts :-)
I've struggled for years in English with "this/next Friday" and ended up just translating the Dutch versions word for word. It's not proper English, but everyone I tried it on understands what I mean when I say "next week Friday" or "Friday next week".
Probably not what you have in mind, but in Israel, the week does start on Sunday. (Sunday is also literally translated to "First Day" in Hebrew).
I believe that this is also the case in other countries. I think the weekend being Saturday-Sunday is specifically a Christian thing, with Saturday being a day of rest an originally Jewish thing, and that other countries have different weekends.
The word for Tuesday is "Tyr's day" in Germanic languages, "Mars' day" in Romance languages, "second day" in Balto-Slavic languages, and "third day" in Greek, so it's not even the Catholic/Orthodox division, it's just... weird.
"Friday next week" is perfect English by the way. I (Hiberno-English speaker) would naturally say "Friday week" for the same thing, but have found it doesn't travel well :)
Does the Dutch approach work if it's, say, Saturday and you are talking about "next week Tuesday"? Is that the Tuesday in 10 days' time or the one in 3?
We have the word "prochain" which means "next. It comes from the word "proche", which means "close". In other words, "vendredi prochain" means "the nearest Friday".
Unfortunately, depending on regions and oral tradition, ""vendredi prochain" can be understood as "the nearest Friday" or "the Friday next week" (same issue as in English, though we do have a proper interpretation).
So French would not be French if we haven't invented a solution to that: "vendredi en huit", which literally means "Friday in eight" = "the first Friday after 8 days from now". This guarantees that this is going to be "Friday next week".
This does not solve the issue of "vendredi prochain" for those who understand it the wrong way, but then we have "Friday the first to come, you know in three days, not the one after the week-end".
Not in my experience. Because "nächster" means "nähester" ('the closest one'), it would be logical to mean Friday this week, not next week.
It's not uncommon to disambiguate by saying "nächsten Freitag, nicht diesen Freitag" ('next Friday, not this Friday') or just avoiding it by saying "nächste Woche Freitag" ('Friday next week') or similar.
English "next" also etymologically means "closest": "nighest" ('the closest one').
I've had the feeling that this etymological connection is more transparent in German than in English, maybe partly because we rarely use the word "nigh" anymore (except in fixed phrases like "well nigh/nigh unto" 'almost', or "the end is nigh"). while Germans use "nah" regularly.
In Romance languages this connection is also very clear. I was confused as an English speaker the first time I was waiting in line in Brazil and someone called out "próximo!" because I thought "huh? closest to what?".
I think English has acquired an kind of intuition that "next" has most to do with sequence rather than proximity, like the .next() method of a sequence or something. For example, when playing a board game one says "who's next?" or "I'm next", although with no connotation at all of physical proximity, but rather of "entitlement according to game rules". (For example, you might be going clockwise or counterclockwise, or some players might be skipped because of the action of a rule, or something.) In German you would say "wer ist daran?" or "ich bin daran", although I'm confused about the extent to which "wer ist der nächste?" is an acceptable substitute or has different connotations.
What's nonsensical and what is not is subjective. Different people assume different things about everything that's not explicit. That's why we are having this "this" vs "next" discussion in the first place.
Connecting "next" with a German translation of "nähest" ("closest") is just as nonsensical.
So if on Saturday you said "our dinner reservations are next Friday, not this Friday", that could mean
— "we didn't forgot to go yesterday, we have dinner in 6 days time" (where 'this Friday' is 'Friday of this week') or could mean
— "we're not going to dinner in 6 days time, we're going to dinner in 13 days time" (where 'this Friday' is 'the Friday in this rolling block of 7 days' and 'next Friday' is the one after that).
Sounds very contrived, but people do use it in both ways and neither really has a dominance unfortunately.
> In German it is "dieser Freitag" (this Friday) and "nächster Freitag" (next Friday).
Totally unrelated, but I just tried pronouncing "dieser" and "nächster" in my only-English speaking brain and it sounds similar if not the same to "this" and "next" (especially the latter). So amazing to see how similar our languages can be sometimes. Despite English being germanic, you generally think they're completely different languages.
I thought, "Obviously next Friday means 'not this Friday, but the one after.'" But, 'next exit' always means the most immediate exit to me. So I suppose 'next Friday' could reasonably mean the most immediate Friday, too.
After thinking a bit more about it "next exit" is the most immediate if you don't see any exits. If you are getting close to an exit you see and ask "is this our exit?" the answer can be "no, not this but next exit", or when giving directions you can say "not this exit, but next".
Language is not easy and full of ambiguity, which is why language majors haven't taken over software development
I suspect it's something to do with how we bundle days together into weeks. "Next Friday" really means the Friday of next week. It's even less certain when we talk about Mondays and Sundays depending on which day you regard as the start of the week.
Talking about "this exit" only makes sense to me when you are near an exit. If you're well in between exits, then I would think there is no "this exit". There's only the previous exit and the next one. I think it's normal for car navigation systems to say "take the next exit", when you're not there yet.
Applying the same logic to weekdays, if today is Wednesday, then next Friday is the one in two days. And one would never say "this Friday" since it can be called "today".
I'm not 100% sure I'm right about this, but in Hebrew, as far as I know, this is pretty standardized. You have "the 'close' Friday" to mean the Friday happening this week, and "next Friday" therefore automatically means the one in the following week.
I think because one of the two options is unambiguous (near Friday can't be parsed differently), the other option automatically becomes clear as well.
Oh no, it's totally ambiguous, and I hate it. Does "the next stop" mean the one that we're just closing to? Or the one after that?
Even worse is people trying to communicate how many stops until destination - it's just inviting the listener to be off by one wrt. the speaker. Myself, I gave up on trying to say things like "we're getting off in 3 stops", because my brain just locks up trying to decide whether I should say "in 3 stops", or "in 2 stops", or "in 4 stops".
Even here, there is an implicit "after the current stop" in some cases. Hearing the announcer say "now stopping at Y, the next stop is X" is not incorrect but technically the next stop is Y.
This is the same when referring to dates. "Next Friday" often has an implicit "after this week".
Friday Week 26 is certainly less convenient to say or parse, but it’s completely unambiguous. Yes, everybody uses ISO week numbering, it’s what’s on the calendar, it does not matter that you don’t like it. Week ordinal = iso, cope.
I remember using week numbers in MariaDB, I found out I had to provide a second argument to specify what kind of week numbers I wanted. Just like that I was introduced to the strange world of week numbers.
Denmark uses week numbers. Instead of saying that there is a holiday from date A to date B, they usually say Week X or Weeks X-Y. Or for example that Good Friday is in Week 19.
> Week numbering is absolutely foreign concept for most of the world
It’s mostly a foreign concept to Americans.
> Say, I have no idea what week 26 is. I can only suggest it’s probably somewhere in [26/4]=June
So you’re saying that a clear, unambiguous, and standardised system in widespread use is bad because you would have to learn something?
> I would not even know where to quickly look it up without googling - my calendars do not have this numbering
Get a better calendar? Most European calendars have the week number printed as a matter of course, and it should be a simple toggle in the average calendaring software (certainly is in iOS).
Whoa, that was not the most minimalist. Up here in Sweden, where week numbers are very much standard in planning, we use [1] (which, translated, means "week now").
Of course, Google's calendar also shows it which is handy.
I agree that vecka.nu is better on the minimalism, but every now and then I have to use the functionality to find out what week number a particular date is in.
In my dialect of Brazilian Portuguese (Carioca) one would seldom hear "a outra sexta-feira" in an unqualified statement.
One would indeed say simply "sexta-feira" for Friday, and optionally "sexta-feira agora" (Friday now) if more precision is required, but for the Friday in the next week we'd use the set phrase "sexta-feira, sem ser essa, a outra" (Friday, not this one, the next), pretty much spoken as a single word ([sẽj̃se̯ˌɛsɐ̯ˈotrɐ̥])
For last Friday, we would probably use either "sexta-feira passada" (past Friday), which is more 'portable' among dialects, or "sexta-feira agora" qualified with a verb in past tense, or a time phrase. "sexta-feira agora" would mean this (next) Friday if unqualified.
1)
– Vocês vão se encontrar quando? (When will you meet?)
– Sexta-feira (Friday, this Friday)
2)
– Vocês vão se encontrar sexta-feira dia 15? (Will you meet on Friday the 15th?)
– Não, sexta-feira agora (No, this Friday)
3)
– Quando que você se encontrou com ele? (When did you meet him?)
As an Aussie, I was amazed to learn that most Americans had never heard of fortnight (or maybe knew exactly what length of time it is). I guess the funny thing is that it is a non-obvious contraction of "fourteen nights" - and not "forty nights".
Huh, I was told growing up (in the USA) that it was called this because it was the duration of a soldier's tenure at a fort, so literally a fort-night. Searching online now, I can find literally nothing to back up this (clearly incorrect) etymology anywhere, every single source says fourteen nights. Did anyone else learn this?
Americans were all about shortening words and phrases in the late 1700s / early 1800s.
Worse, there was a period of time where Americans would shorten a phrase, then mis-spell it for the lulz. The most famous example is "All Complete" -> "Oll Komplete" -> "OK" -> okay.
Those were, in fact, thoroughly English foibles only preserved in the colonies. But the English love to complain about that.
Every British tabloid has a regular, very popular column peeving about yet another abomination by the Americans, or the South Africans, or the Australians. Without exception they note what is simply a local fashion lately abandoned locally, but preserved as if in amber elsewhere. The complaints are really about distant people failing to slavishly follow current London trends by abandoning usage London has abandoned.
The peculiar popularity of such peeving could be interpreted as wistfulness for a time when London mattered.
And, by the way, that derivation of "OK" is suspect. It is just as likely to have been (fashionably) sarcastic commentary on well-established common oral usage. Etymologists are generally obliged to rely on written sources, but word origins routinely predate the first written use by many decades. Slang originating in exclusive universities is vanishingly rare.
When I used first used it in Europe, none of my colleagues from Germany or the UK has heard of it either. I changed it to once every two weeks to avoid confusion.
As far as I can remember (many years ago), my UK colleagues were not natives, and have only moved there only just a short time before. That would explain it.
How many youngsters think that you are inviting them for a game of fortnite? I think iOS now has fortnightly as option instead of “every 2 weeks” when scheduling recurring items.
It is pretty silly for "flammable" and "inflammable" to be commonly defined as synonyms.
Also pretty silly for "flammable"/"inflammable" to be synonyms when "combustible"/"incombustible" are antonyms.
Does seem like folks ought to stop using the old definition of "inflammable", but if they must, seems like it ought to be spelled as "enflammable", much like "enrage" displaced "inrage".
Yet another example of temporal ambiguity is the notion of “bringing forward” or “pushing back” a deadline. The sense employed is the opposite of the ordinary use i.e., moving “back” into the past or “forward” into the future.
Also, no analysis of the semantic chaos of scheduling-related terms in English can be complete without a reference to “tabling”: the act of setting something aside for later discussion (to an American), or the act of discussing something immediately (to the rest of the English-speaking world). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_(parliamentary_procedu...
When you're moving back into the past, you're talking from your perspective about your perspective. But when you're talking about a deadline, you're talking from your perspective about a "stationary" event in the future. Since you are moving forward, but the deadline stays in place, relatively speaking the deadline moves towards you - so you push it back, in its reference frame, into your future.
If this sounds complicated, blame the fact that we use spatial intuitions for timekeeping. For instance, if you compare "step back" to "push back" in a spatial sense, they also mean opposite things, and for the same exact reason.
Came here to write the exact same thing!!! We have a very heated/funny discussion in the office (pre COVID) every time I use one of these two. It all has to do with the point of reference, the vector of the arrow of time and the temporal conditions of the situation, but that’s something for another comment :-)
Makes me think of various causality ambiguities in Polish, where a sentence can be written as [subject] [verb] [object], and [object] [verb] [subject], and all three words retain the same form - so you can't tell what's a subject and what's an object from the sentence in isolation.
I do my best to avoid speaking/writing such sentences, but I had a brief moment of frustration when I started to type arrows showing which noun is acting on each. So, [subject] --[verb]-> [object], and [object] <--[verb]-- [subject]. Only much later it occurred to me that the direction of the arrow is also something potentially ambiguous - even in computing, the arrows on the diagrams can mean the opposite of what you'd naturally draw (looking at you, UML class diagram), so they get mixed up.
My current pet peeve are the verbs that not only do not disambiguate between subject and object, but also they mean the opposite thing depending on context. "To rent" is an example in both English and Polish ("wynajmować"). If I say, "I'm renting a flat" (pl_PL: "wynajmuję mieszkanie"), it can mean that I'm either letting someone else live in my flat, or living in someone else's flat, and you can't tell which without context. Ugh.
Check out the Aymara language, where the past is in front of you and the future is behind you!
As a non expert, I think the general idea is you can see the past, therefor it is in front of you, and the future is unknown, so it’s where you can’t see it, behind you.
I've always struggled with text being "in front of" other text. To me, the last word of a sentence is "in front of" the preceding word (which, of course is "behind it"). But also the first word of the sentence, coming first, "went in front" of the remaining words.
I know the right answer, but I still have to stop a split-second to remember it.
Regarding the claim the "semi-" is unambiguous: the fundamental confusion with "bi-" arises from dealing with a rate, and the resultant lack of, if you will, semantic associativity. The same problem can arise in exactly the same way with the former prefix. And there's nothing they can do about it, as avowed descriptivists.
Here’s my interpretation of what you mean by semantic associativity: “Bi-” is another way of saying “two,” and the confusion with “biweekly” arises because it’s unclear if the “two” should be taken to mean “two occurrences per week” or “two weeks per occurrence.”
Meanwhile, “semi-” means “one half,” and in normal conversation it’s not common to say that an event occurs “one half of a time per week”. So it’s unambiguous that it must refer to “one occurrence per half week.”
I disagree. “Semi” means half, i.e., less than. But all things being equal, if a meeting is held “half as much as annually,” I would expect it to occur every 2 years, not twice as often as annually.
I think it has the same issue as biannually or biweekly.
I can see people learning English as a second language struggling, but I don’t think anybody raised with English would take semimonthly to mean every two months. Maybe this is because of how we learn about the prefix, with semicircles (half circles).
I'm a native English speaker and I speak no other language. But my view is just one data point.
The problem is whether "half as much as annually" is interpreted as twice as frequently (your view, and the accepted one) or half as frequently (my natural inclination).
Also, "semi-" might add some quantitative ambiguity.
"Bi-" is more specifically a factor of 2, while "tri-" is a factor of 3, etc., though "semi-" can be a looser qualifier.
If someone said that they did something "bi-annually", that'd sound more like they mean twice-per-year (even if that's an estimated average rate). By contrast, if they said "semi-annually", that'd sound more like they mean usually-several-times-per-year.
(Or the inverses rates, due to the other ambiguity.)
Don't get me started with the (non-English) usage of "half-seven" to indicate either half past six or half past seven, depending on some non-obvious cultural factor.
In German, "half seven" indicates half past six, everywhere. But - annoyingly, there's also "quarter seven", which is a regional thing. And then you're left to decipher whether both are short for "{half,quarter} [left until the hour] seven" or "{half,quarter} [have passed since the hour before] seven".
Should be disambiguated by the fact that quarter to seven is viertel vor sieben, right? So, viertel sieben, halb sieben, viertel vor/dreiviertel sieben, sieben.
If you start thinking about it, yes. But if you are not from a region where it is commonly used, chances are you’ll have to think about it every time you encounter it.
That one has English usage too! "Half seven" is common in British English to mean half past seven. But yes, as you allude, it's a source of confusion for Danish, German, and other foreigners in the UK, some of whom speak a language where "half seven" means 6:30 instead.
You just unearthed something I never realized about my own use of "this" and "next".
I don't think I've ever uttered the phrase, "this Monday". Ever.
The soonest Monday in the future is always "next Monday", because it's always in the following week. So, if I'm talking to you on a Thursday, I'll say "next Monday" to refer to the day four days hence. If we're talking on a Sunday, then it's just "tomorrow".
But with a day like Friday, the this/next thing comes into play. I'll use "this Friday" to talk about the future Friday that shares the week we're in, and "next Friday" to refer to the one that occurs in the following week. So for example, June 12, 2021 will become "this Friday" tomorrow morning. But right now, it's still "next Friday", because the weekend ain't over.
This comment is mostly me trying to add structure to a stream of consciousness realization that just hit me. Reading the phrase "this Monday" knocked me off balance a bit and I couldn't articulate why at first.
If it's Saturday, and you're sending an email or text to confirm Monday's plans, you'd more likely to say "this Monday" than you would say "next Monday," though?
I agree with you, "this <weekday>" means the upcoming day this week, and generally changes to "last" if referring to the past, and "next" if referring to next week. "Next week Monday" or "a week from Monday" could both refer to "Monday, a week from now" though the first one might be confused if sent on a Friday...
Really, the answer is to skip English entirely and use calendar events and hope time zones don't change between when you plan the event and when it occurs. ;-)
If given a binary choice, I think you're right. I'd use "this Monday." But really I'd just say "Monday" or "on Monday" in that case. As in, "Just confirming that we're going to update the confabulator settings on Monday."
After writing my previous comment, I keep coming up with exceptions and variances to those exceptions. Like—as I write this—I would refer to June 9 as "this Wednesday", but June 11 as "next Friday". So I suppose I "glue" Fridays to the weekend? And right now it's still the weekend so June 4 retains the "this" title until tomorrow?
Starting to feel like I have epicycles of rules similar to the adjective ordering we all know, but never explicitly learned ("big red bouncy rubber ball" is okay; "bouncy red rubber big ball" is NOT OK)
Yeah, the "weekend-ness" of Friday is interesting. Actually I could extend that to the last couple days, in relative time. For example, if it's Thursday, and I said "last Monday", that would actually be kind of confusing, just as if it were Sunday and I said "last Friday". I'm much more likely to say "On Monday," or "On Friday," if it's within the current week or the current weekend, and use the sentence context to figure out if I meant the previous weekday or the upcoming one.
I'm glad I don't write either dictionaries or voice-based/natural language apps for calendar appointments. ;-)
Its strange American English created this ambiguity in usage. There's a perfectly good english language noun which means "2 weeks". The word is "Fortnight".
We use it all the time here in Australia - eg "This is a fortnightly meeting" / "Lets meet back up in a fortnight and discuss progress".
I consider teaching "fortnight" to americans a gift I insist on giving to every american colleague I work with. Its already in your dictionaries, after all. Please use it, and you're welcome!
I don't think it's at all peculiar to American English. Fortnight solves only one of the six situations spoken of in the article (twice a week/month/year, once every two weeks/months/years).
It's good for that, but we're in the same position Americans are if we're trying to talk about something happening every two years.
> Its strange American English created this ambiguity in usage. There's a perfectly good english language noun which means "2 weeks". The word is "Fortnight".
...the ambiguity exists whether or not you use fortnight!
Fortnight combined with semi- will do pretty well, assuming people don't screw up semi-. But you still need an unambiguous term for "every other month" before the problem is solved.
Maybe if you can change the schedule to quarterly?
Italian has exactly the same distinction: {bi,tri,se}mestre is always a period of 2,3,6 months, and the suffix -ale make it an adjective. Bi-mensile/bi-settimanale, which directly translates to bimonthly/biweekly, mean twice a month/week
but I wouldn't be surprised if they would cause confusion even in Italian. I can't think of any specific adjective for a two weeks period.
Still, in French, you should avoid or clarify what you mean by "bimensuel" when it is important, as many people understand/use it for "bimestriel". "bimestriel" is not ambiguous however.
1 : marked by unruly or aggressive noisiness : clamorous obstreperous merriment an obstreperous argument. 2 : stubbornly resistant to control : unruly obstreperous behavior an obstreperous child.
To me semiweekly sounds like “somewhat” weekly (the same interpretation as in “semiconscious”). With that reading, semiweekly would mean it’s basically weekly but not quite. Maybe it’s not every week, there could be some exceptions.
I like there rationale of using this prefix though. In the same vein, perhaps hemiweekly? Like in hemisphere. Same logic applied but the hemi- prefix is less overloaded.
One of my favorite podcasts, Hello Internet (hosted by CGP Grey and Brady Haran, though currently on hiatus) had this section called the "biweekly weigh-in" where every sometimes the hosts would talk about their health gains.
Using an ambiguous word like "biweekly" was very much intentional.
These are all latin-style words, there are much worse horrors in english importing them.
One of my favorites is "ingenuity", used as being clever or inventive. It share the root with "ingenuidad" in spanish, which means "naive" (-ity endings correlate with -idad endings in spanish, the same way than -tion goes with -ción).
The word that means clever or inventive is "ingenioso" which in english should be "ingenious" (-ious goes with -ioso, e.g. "precious" and "precioso"), so as a noun, it should be "ingeniousness".
It took me a while to realize that in italian we don't have a word to day "every two weeks".
bisettimanale means twice a week, bimensile means twice a month and bimestrale every two months.
Back in the dark ages before direct deposit, it was much better to get a paycheck biweekly (every other week) than bimonthly (15th and last day of the month).
When I worked at Google I maintained a list "is bigger better" or something like that. Bug priorities 1 is higher than 2. Network priorities? 2 is higher than 1. The list went on and on...
Now it’s “this Friday” or “a week from Friday”