Blind society calendar system
Aug. 12th, 2011 09:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
steorran_woruldeI think all that research and brainstorming was enough to give me a good idea for how timekeeping works in my blind society (I really should come up with enough of their language to give them a name...). I think there's a chronological development over time.
In an early period, before the time that I'm focusing on, they marked parts of the year according to formal ecological timekeeping, and also had a 7-day week cycle. By the time I'm focusing on (but maybe not many centuries in the past), they had developed a 4-week unit, which I may as well call in English a month. Months were ecologically-named, and there was an ecologically-determined year start. They knew that a year normally contained 13 months. I'm still deciding how intercalation worked - whether they intercalated weeks or months. A solar year is roughly 365.25 days long (that's the Julian not-quite-correct approximation, but it will do for this purpose). A year of 13 28-day months is 364 days long - that's 1.25 days short. That would mean that an intercalary week would be needed every 5 or 6 years:
5 years * 1.25 days short = 6.25 days short in 5 years
6 years * 1.25 days short = 7.5 days short in 6 years
An intercalary month would be needed every 22 or 23 years:
22 years * 1.25 days short = 27.5 days short in 22 years
23 years * 1.25 days short = 28.75 days short in 23 years.
I suspect initially, their ecologically-based year start determination isn't very precise, which means realizing that an extra month is needed is more likely than realizing that an extra week is needed.
Days are not normally consecutively numbered within months; rather they're identified by which day of the week and which week of the month they are, and since weeks and months are aligned, this is a consistent designator. Weeks in a month are numbered; I suspect days of the week are generally referred to by name, not number.
The system of ecological timekeeping without months may still survive to some degree - either formally for ritual purposes, since ritual purposes tend to be conservative, or informally with people still making use of ecological period-names because they represent something in their experience that isn't captured by the system of months.
Eventually, after the period I'm focusing on, they develop more sophisticated measurement and observation technology, including methods for observing the sun with greater accuracy than just feeling on your body which direction its warmth is coming from, and they likely ultimately switch to a solar-based year start rather than an ecologically-based one, and may determine a calculated scheme of intercalation rather than an observational one.
In an early period, before the time that I'm focusing on, they marked parts of the year according to formal ecological timekeeping, and also had a 7-day week cycle. By the time I'm focusing on (but maybe not many centuries in the past), they had developed a 4-week unit, which I may as well call in English a month. Months were ecologically-named, and there was an ecologically-determined year start. They knew that a year normally contained 13 months. I'm still deciding how intercalation worked - whether they intercalated weeks or months. A solar year is roughly 365.25 days long (that's the Julian not-quite-correct approximation, but it will do for this purpose). A year of 13 28-day months is 364 days long - that's 1.25 days short. That would mean that an intercalary week would be needed every 5 or 6 years:
5 years * 1.25 days short = 6.25 days short in 5 years
6 years * 1.25 days short = 7.5 days short in 6 years
An intercalary month would be needed every 22 or 23 years:
22 years * 1.25 days short = 27.5 days short in 22 years
23 years * 1.25 days short = 28.75 days short in 23 years.
I suspect initially, their ecologically-based year start determination isn't very precise, which means realizing that an extra month is needed is more likely than realizing that an extra week is needed.
Days are not normally consecutively numbered within months; rather they're identified by which day of the week and which week of the month they are, and since weeks and months are aligned, this is a consistent designator. Weeks in a month are numbered; I suspect days of the week are generally referred to by name, not number.
The system of ecological timekeeping without months may still survive to some degree - either formally for ritual purposes, since ritual purposes tend to be conservative, or informally with people still making use of ecological period-names because they represent something in their experience that isn't captured by the system of months.
Eventually, after the period I'm focusing on, they develop more sophisticated measurement and observation technology, including methods for observing the sun with greater accuracy than just feeling on your body which direction its warmth is coming from, and they likely ultimately switch to a solar-based year start rather than an ecologically-based one, and may determine a calculated scheme of intercalation rather than an observational one.
no subject
Date: 2011-08-15 08:14 am (UTC)Arguably, that is numbering them consecutively, using a base-7 numbering system: the fourth day of the second week is essentially "day 137". (Assuming zero-based indexing. If the first day of the month is day 117 and the last day of the first week is 207, then "day 247".)
no subject
Date: 2011-08-15 03:53 pm (UTC)I suppose you could look at it that way, although then it uses a numbering system different from the rest of the language, including names of the numbers (that is, weeks of the month are numbered according to the usual numbering system, but days are primarily named in a naming system that's not related to the usual numbering system, although arguably they're numberlike since they have an order and a starting point.)