Calendars

[Shachar Shemesh]

Joshua Walker wrote:

>Japanese also use a different system to indicate the
>year. They use the year of the emperor. For example
>today's year is 14 Heisei (The current emperor has
>been in power scense 1990.)  When Emperor Hirohito
>died in 1989, Japanese programmers had to reprogram
>thier computers to deal with the new "year" as many
>were hard-coded for the old emperor. Y2K wasn't much
>of a problem because the Japanese had updated thier
>computers ten years pervious.
>
>Nowadays on computers, they simply list the julian
>year, then month, then day, and then the character of
>day of the week
>
>2002(sei)/05(getsu)/14(hi) (Getsuyobi) 
>
>abbreviated, it looks like this --> 04.05.24
>
>  
>
Don't get me started about representation.

First - the dates. Arabic dates are a bit simpler - it's a lunar 
calender (from moon birth until moon birth), which means that the months 
jump around the year. So, for example, Ramadan, the fasting month, can 
happen during winter or summer.

As for the Hebrew calender....
It's a lunar calender, with a leap MONTH added once every three to four 
years, to make sure it doesn't drift too far away from the seasons. So 
my birthday, which according to the Hebrew calender happens on the 21st 
of the SECOND Adar........

Then there is representation. Numerological letters are used. aleph 
means 1, bet means 2, yod means 10, kaf (the next one) means 20, and so 
on until 90, and then Kof means 100, and Taf (the last letter) means 400 
(22 characters altogether). The numbers are added, so this year is úùñ"ã 
(Taf - 400 Shin- 300 Samech - 60 Daled -4, 764 altogether).

Of course, this is omiting the thousands. The real year is ä'úùñ"ã, or 
5764. I was never sure what it's counting from. Naturally, the months 
are also displayed like that.

Oh, and did I mention that a day ends at sunset? Sabbath is kept from 
the sunset on Friday (actually, half hour before as a safty measure) 
until sunset on Saturday (half hour after).

                   Shachar

-- 
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting
http://www.lingnu.com/