Is it strange to assign gender to days of the week? I tend to think of Wednesday as feminine, I suppose in part because in Japanese the word is 水曜日, and water is associated with the feminine. On the other hand, I definitely think of 月曜日 as masculine, even though the moon is also a traditionally feminine symbol. Friday, Saturday and Sunday are feminine in my mind as well, while Tuesday and Thursday are masculine.
今日私のともだちはsynesthesiaのこうぎをしました。たくさんけんきゅうをしました。今私はsynestheteだと思います。
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
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Hmmm... in German all the days of the week are masculine. I believe this is because they all end in the word "Tag" (day) and Tag uses the article "der" which is the masculine article (in German compound words take on the article of the last word in the combination). It's sort of funny though because Friday is "der Freitag" even though the "Frei" comes from "Fria" which is the goddess of love.
おもしろいですね。男の人はしゅうまつがありませんね！！
In Japan, many movie theaters and gas stations have days for women. For example, every Wednesday is women's day at the movie theater in my hometown. They pay only 1000yen for a movie every Wednesday while they usually pay 1800yen. My question is, why isn't there men's day?? (There is no men's day...) I also want to watch a movie for 1000yen!!
あなた は synesthesia の こうぎ は たくさん けんきょう が ある と言っていました。
けんきょう ＝ "distortion of facts" ... と思います。
Is that right?
それから、どんな けんきょう です か？
Brittany:
I actually knew that about Friday, although I didn't know that all German week days are masculine. I don't know much about German, although a couple of my good friends study the language. I had assumed that Germanic languages tended not to assign gender to words as Romance languages do. Is this true in other instances as well?
Hamada:
Actually, since I made that post, I've been noticing that Sunday tends to switch genders in my mind, though this is not true of any other day. It seems like Sunday feels feminine when I see the word written but masculine when I hear it. Maybe Sunday is a woman with a deep voice?
I too have noticed that businesses tend not to have women's days but not men's days. I think perhaps this stems from the idea that women need special treatment. I suppose there is some logical basis in this in that for many years it was (and still is, though to a lesser degree) far more difficult for a woman to support herself than for a man. Also, if the man is buying for himself and a woman -- say, when taking his girlfriend to a movie -- he would probably appreciate the reduced price. Of course, this is just a theory. Either way, I can't complain.
Nic W.:
I believe the type of synesthesia is known as ordinal-linguistic personification. It can also happen with letters, ordinal numbers, months, etc.
To continue the comments on the making words masculine and feminine...
German does that to everything! It's really annoying. I never understood the point of it. I'm actually really happy that we don't have to learn if chairs are masculine or feminine in Japanese. Why assign a gender to them? Maybe there are masculine and feminine chairs. You never know. In any case, I can't say that I've ever thought of the days of the week being a particular gender. It is interesting though. How about months? Months seem mostly feminine to me. Except June..and August. and Novemember and December. and February. and october. Hmm...mostly cold months. Interesting...
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