Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Problem: ambiguity of date terms like saying "this Wednesday" on a Thursday. Is the speaker referring to yesterday or the coming Wednesday six days from now? Not always clear.
Solution: I propose standardising our understanding of the week as beginning Monday, ending Sunday. At any point in the current week, "this whateverday" refers to that day in the current week, no matter if it's past or future. "Next whateverday" refers to that day in the upcoming Monday through Sunday week.
"This Wednesday", on a Thursday, is referring to yesterday.
"Next Wednesday", on a Thursday, is referring to a day six days from now.
(I also suggest adopting ISO 8601, writing dates in year-month-day order to avoid that ugly ambiguity.)
Better: say "this past" or "this coming" to indicate the direction in time.
There are some words that have fallen out of use that may be helpful. Overmorrow and score ( as in "...fourscore and seven...") come to mind. There may be others and I think it would be interesting to research.
Point being that English may have already solved this problem and forgotten the solutions.
We have the same, and the reason I always ask for a specific date.
"Førstkommende onsdag" = "the first coming wednesday". WHAT? Give me a date.
"Denne helga" = "this weekend". OK, it works, but to be sure I want to have a date for friday, saturday and sunday.
"Ikke førstkommende helg, men den etter" = "not the first coming weekend, but the second." ... Fuck off!