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Blazinghand
United States25555 Posts
A Weekend is Not a Surface
Language Log talks about the way we think about times and dates.
Last night at dinner, several Americans and a Canadian got into a discussion with an Irishman and an Australian about weekends. Since all of the participants were linguists, the discussion centered on prepositions: Were we having dinner on a weekend in February or at a weekend in February? The North Americans voted for "on", a choice that the Irishman found preposterous. "A weekend," he observed, "is not a surface."
But he was forced to admit that the appropriate usage is on Saturday, not at Saturday, and on Sunday, not at Sunday. "So," countered one of the Americans, "Saturday is a surface, and Sunday is a surface, but their combination is not a surface?"
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This all hints at a coherent metaphor: hours and other short periods of time are places; days are surfaces; months and longer time periods are containers. But it seems that only North Americans apply this logic to weekends.
Read more.
I only speak English and French so I can't comment too much about differences in how we talk about time since the languages are so similar and my French is so bad. In English we typically use "at" for talking about time ("I'll meet you at noon") implying we think about time as spacial coordinates, but sometimes we use other words ("See you on Sunday!") and since I'm a native speaker I'm not really aware of what the rules are for this. I just know them. French typically doesn't use anything special in terms of prepositions ("Je vais le voir lundi prochaine") except for when it does ("Je vais manger à midi") but it mostly seems to stick to the no-prepositions thing. I may not know enough French though to really talk about this; I rarely speak about long term plans in French without mangling things horribly anyways.
So French seems to not use prepositions or to think of times as places. English thinks of them as surfaces or containers or places depending on how large or regular the times are. Does anyone else have any data points for what metaphors are used in other languages?
Edit: Endy in comments adds insight about French:
On March 04 2014 10:46 endy wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2014 04:27 Blazinghand wrote:
So French seems to not use prepositions or to think of times as places. English thinks of them as surfaces or containers or places depending on how large or regular the times are. That's wrong. Except for week days French always uses à or en (at or in/on) to designate a period of time. Examples: A precise time: "à 5 heures" A month: "en Octobre" A season: "en hiver" ("l'hiver is also correct though") A year: "en 2010"
 
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I've thought about this concept several times but could not come to a conclusion on what the right way of speaking is, and just accepted that most often we instinctively know how to say something without adhering to any specific rule sets. My native language is Afrikaans and it doesn't differ that much from English either.
But he was forced to admit that the appropriate usage is on Saturday, not at Saturday, and on Sunday, not at Sunday. "So," countered one of the Americans, "Saturday is a surface, and Sunday is a surface, but their combination is not a surface?"
That sums it up quite well for me
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Blazinghand
United States25555 Posts
On March 04 2014 04:45 Kupon3ss wrote:
les fins de semaine?
le week-end is how I learned it actually. Not sure if that's how it is supposed to be used but that's how I have heard it said.
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Week's are harder for me to properly "preposition" than weekends. It's "on" a weekend (yeah I'm canadian) but weeks seem to be "over" in most of the sentences I can think up. "in a week" has a separate meaning, "at a week" makes no sense, and neither does "on a week".
Part of it is because weeks seem to lack identity. Months are obvious proper nouns, as are days of the week, but individual weeks are a bit hard to describe or nail down.
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On March 04 2014 04:46 Blazinghand wrote:le week-end is how I learned it actually. Not sure if that's how it is supposed to be used but that's how I have heard it said.
When I was learning french I was told that people usually used le week-end until at some point the Academie Francaise decided to protect the french language by unapproving a wide variety of "franglais" and coming up with Gallic equivalents.
I'm still unsure what the proper usage would be.
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Blazinghand
United States25555 Posts
On March 04 2014 05:00 Kupon3ss wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2014 04:46 Blazinghand wrote:On March 04 2014 04:45 Kupon3ss wrote:
les fins de semaine? le week-end is how I learned it actually. Not sure if that's how it is supposed to be used but that's how I have heard it said. When I was learning french I was told that people usually used le week-end until at some point the Academie Francaise decided to protect the french language by unapproving a wide variety of "franglais" and coming up with Gallic equivalents. I'm still unsure what the proper usage would be.
Maybe in formal language there's a word but I've always heard "le week-end" but the people I know who speak french all use horrible anglicisms in their french so maybe it's just them. They're all ex-pats so less likely to care about that sort of thing I guess.
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This is very interesting discourse. I wonder what the implications are for how we subconsciously view space-time as a singular thing. Time is space and space is time, as it were. To say "I'll see you at 5" means I'll see you at the place in space-time where the time is 5, and "I'll see you on Sunday" means I'll see you ON the place (the plane, not the specific location on that plane) in space-time where the day is Sunday.
In physical language, it seems "at" is used more for a precise location (I'll meet you at the corner of Broad and Main; I'll meet you at Joe's Drinking Shack) whereas "in" is used more for a general place: I'll meet you in London; I'll see you in hell. To that end it seems the difference between "at" and "on" in time follows similar rules to the place-rules for "at" and "in," though I could be mistaken. It's a hypothesis.
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On March 04 2014 04:57 Sn0_Man wrote:
Week's are harder for me to properly "preposition" than weekends. It's "on" a weekend (yeah I'm canadian) but weeks seem to be "over" in most of the sentences I can think up. "in a week" has a separate meaning, "at a week" makes no sense, and neither does "on a week".
Part of it is because weeks seem to lack identity. Months are obvious proper nouns, as are days of the week, but individual weeks are a bit hard to describe or nail down.
Of course it does. "On the first week in March, ..."
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That sounds awful to me 
If it took the whole week I'd say "over the first week in march, if it didn't I'd say "sometime in the first week of march" or similar.
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Hm, maybe "In the first week in March" is better than On the first. I'm really not sure.
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"During the first week of March"? That's how I'd say it =P
e: as someone who only speaks English, I would totally think you sounded French if you said 'on the first week of March' =P
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One thing that I think may be pertinent here is what we're talking about when we talk about dates. When someone says over, it doesn't necessarily have to be a surface, because over can mean for the duration of. Time is not a surface, but we say over time to discern duration. If one were to say across time, that would be a surface, and would imply spacial tendencies. That's just a quick philosophical musing though, so I could be wrong.
EDIT: Forgot to add one thing, though I'm no longer anywhere close to how proficient I used to be in Hebrew, I can still read Hebrew and Aramaic. In Hebrew text and Aramaic text, the word would translate to in the second day, rather than on the second day ultra-technically. So the idea of it being a surface isn't universal I'd say. Spanish is pretty similar to French in this regard, so I feel like you already covered it.
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On March 04 2014 04:46 Blazinghand wrote:le week-end is how I learned it actually. Not sure if that's how it is supposed to be used but that's how I have heard it said.
there is no french word for weekend, so yes they appropriated the word from english. The reason they have no words for it is that until very recently, they had a 6 day working week, thus no "weekend" as we have on a 5 day working week
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On March 04 2014 04:27 Blazinghand wrote:
I only speak English and French so I can't comment too much about differences in how we talk about time since the languages are so similar and my French is so bad. In English we typically use "at" for talking about time ("I'll meet you at noon") implying we think about time as spacial coordinates, but sometimes we use other words ("See you on Sunday!") and since I'm a native speaker I'm not really aware of what the rules are for this.
Non-native speakers don't either. You learn it as a complete expression or just copy what you hear from native speakers.
English things of them as surfaces or containers or places depending on how large or regular the times are. Does anyone else have any data points for what metaphors are used in other languages?
I think these linguists are trying too hard to find meaning in random noise. Probably because coming up with explanatory theories (even if they have little basis in fact) carries more prestige than just recording the world as it is.
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On March 04 2014 04:27 Blazinghand wrote:
So French seems to not use prepositions or to think of times as places. English thinks of them as surfaces or containers or places depending on how large or regular the times are.
That's wrong. Except for week days French always uses à or en (at or in/on) to designate a period of time.
Examples:
A precise time: "à 5 heures"
A month: "en Octobre"
A season: "en hiver" ("l'hiver is also correct though")
A year: "en 2010"
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"In" designates a 3D space / location in space-time, "on" a 2D surface / location, "at" a 1D point. "In" can also mean "during," so the question becomes, "When is a time considered 1D, when 2D, and when 3D?"
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
In Japanese it's basically just ni / に for everything time related, but ni is also used in other situations as a particle for indirect objects or location for persons, etc.
I am trying to think of situations in Mandarin when I use prepositions but I can't think of any, so I don't think they are used.
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On March 04 2014 06:40 emythrel wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2014 04:46 Blazinghand wrote:On March 04 2014 04:45 Kupon3ss wrote:
les fins de semaine? le week-end is how I learned it actually. Not sure if that's how it is supposed to be used but that's how I have heard it said. there is no french word for weekend, so yes they appropriated the word from english. The reason they have no words for it is that until very recently, they had a 6 day working week, thus no "weekend" as we have on a 5 day working week
There is also the fact that French people (from France) colloquially use a surprisingly large amount of english words in their speech. For example here in Quebec, very few if any people use the word weekend as opposed to "fin de semaine".
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On March 04 2014 12:02 Louuster wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2014 06:40 emythrel wrote:On March 04 2014 04:46 Blazinghand wrote:On March 04 2014 04:45 Kupon3ss wrote:
les fins de semaine? le week-end is how I learned it actually. Not sure if that's how it is supposed to be used but that's how I have heard it said. there is no french word for weekend, so yes they appropriated the word from english. The reason they have no words for it is that until very recently, they had a 6 day working week, thus no "weekend" as we have on a 5 day working week There is also the fact that French people (from France) colloquially use a surprisingly large amount of english words in their speech. For example here in Quebec, very few if any people use the word weekend as opposed to "fin de semaine".
In my experience, living on Mont Blanc for a few winters, that you are correct. They would use english words where I would use the french equivalent description, it took me a while to learn what english words I could use and what ones I couldn't. "fin de semaine" is a description, not a noun like weekend and french is riddled with this mode of speech, I think that is why many English folks struggle with a language that is actually very similar to english, a large proportion of english words have their roots in french after all, who can forget the infamous Bush quote "The French don't even have a word for entrepreneur".
One of the beauties of the English language is that when we don't have a word for something, we make one up. In many languages they just use a roundabout term or description, instead of inventing a new word. I actually love the German word for a mobile phone "Ein Handy" obviously they have a long form Mobiltelefon but then German is even more like english than is french, in my opinion anyways.
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On March 04 2014 04:45 Kupon3ss wrote:
les fins de semaine?
les seins de ma femme
/badjoke
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In German we use "um" which means "around" (in the meaning of going/lying/... around sth in the shape of a circle) for time of day and "am" which is short for "an dem" which means "next to". I never thought about it, but apparently in German you use spacial relations for the description of time as well. Which is interesting, considering that German has a different root of language than French.
English was heavily influenced by German and by French during the middle age, so i am not surprised about the similarity to other languages.
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On March 04 2014 12:02 Louuster wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2014 06:40 emythrel wrote:On March 04 2014 04:46 Blazinghand wrote:On March 04 2014 04:45 Kupon3ss wrote:
les fins de semaine? le week-end is how I learned it actually. Not sure if that's how it is supposed to be used but that's how I have heard it said. there is no french word for weekend, so yes they appropriated the word from english. The reason they have no words for it is that until very recently, they had a 6 day working week, thus no "weekend" as we have on a 5 day working week There is also the fact that French people (from France) colloquially use a surprisingly large amount of english words in their speech. For example here in Quebec, very few if any people use the word weekend as opposed to "fin de semaine".
Well, we use "fin de semaine" quite a lot but it designates the end of the working week in a kinda vague way (aka. some time around thursday/friday) and not the week-end.
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Netherlands6191 Posts
Hmm, interesting discussion. I think 'during the weekend' or 'over the weekend' would be more appropriate than ''on the weekend' or 'at the weekend'. Neither sound correct. But then again I am not a linguist and I am not multilingual. Tbh I don't think there is a 'correct' way to say it, it varies from location to location, how you were brought up, and what languages have influenced and shaped your vocabulary.
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No prepositions at all in mandarin 
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On March 05 2014 00:32 BobMcJohnson wrote:Show nested quote +On March 04 2014 12:02 Louuster wrote:On March 04 2014 06:40 emythrel wrote:On March 04 2014 04:46 Blazinghand wrote:On March 04 2014 04:45 Kupon3ss wrote:
les fins de semaine? le week-end is how I learned it actually. Not sure if that's how it is supposed to be used but that's how I have heard it said. there is no french word for weekend, so yes they appropriated the word from english. The reason they have no words for it is that until very recently, they had a 6 day working week, thus no "weekend" as we have on a 5 day working week There is also the fact that French people (from France) colloquially use a surprisingly large amount of english words in their speech. For example here in Quebec, very few if any people use the word weekend as opposed to "fin de semaine". Well, we use "fin de semaine" quite a lot but it designates the end of the working week in a kinda vague way (aka. some time around thursday/friday) and not the week-end.
this was always how I thought it was supposed to be used, in english we say things like "see you at the end of the week" which is very vague, could mean thursday/friday or it could mean sunday. When you say "see you at the weekend" its more definite. As i said in an earlier post, "fin de semaine" is a description of an idea, not a noun like weekend.
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Netherlands6191 Posts
I guess it makes sense for time to be a place. If you are describing an hour in the future or past, you are placing it AT a point along a timeline. The same could probably be said for days, months and years. I'm very curious now as to how years and months became containers. I have been puzzling this over all night. 'At 2012' and 'at February' just doesn't sound right.
'I will meet you in 3 hours'. 'I will meet you after 3 hours.' 'I will meet you at 3 hours'.
Conclusion: Time is tricky.
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In French the duration is usually expressed without any preposition (or at least it doesn't need to be). For instance you would say:
Je pars en vacances 3 jours (I am going on vacations for 3 days/ I take a 3-day-vacation).
And we use a lot of English words, that's true, but no English expression. Whereas in Quebec (at least it felt like it), people translate English expression into French: typical: bienvenue (for you are welcome, bienvenu meaning welcome) instead of de rien (as a reply to thanks).
So basically you d go: thanks! and they d answer welcome. (and not you are welcome, which is very confusing at first)
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Baa?21244 Posts
Funny blog, thanks
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United States889 Posts
People curious about this sort of thing should definitely check out Stephen Pinker's "The Stuff of Thought". It's full of information about language metaphors with respect to time-as-space, and the reverse.
On the broader point of course many languages don't even have prepositions so this is a very Indo-European sort of thing.
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EPT
