Weekday Abbreviations in multiple languages [closed]

Question

I am working on designing a piece of software that must support multiple languages. There is a design scheme in English at the moment that displays weekdays using a single character (ie: "S M T W T F S"). I know something similar can be done in french. I have two questions:

1. I need to know if this cannot be done in any of these languages:

   • German
   • Simplified Chinese
   • Traditional Chinese
   • Korean
   • Russian
   • Spanish
   • Polish
   • Italian
   • Swedish
   • Danish
   • Dutch
   • Greek
   • Norwegian
   • Czech
   • Slovenian
   • Portuguese
   • Hungarian
   • Romanian
   • Finnish
   • Slovak
   • Turkish
   • Japanese

2. I am aware that Japanese and Chinese have 3 character names for the week days which basically tranlate to "Star period 1", "Star period 2" etc. and the characters for "Star period" repeat and then the character for the number changes. My question is could you label a column in a table "Star period" and put the character numbers as values in the different rows? Would chinese/japanese people understand this design scheme? Or do all three characters need to be together all the time?

Answer 1

Chinese and Japanese:

Chinese:

In Chinese, Monday to Saturday are from 星期一 to 星期六, which basically just mean "weekday 1" to "weekday 6".

Sunday is an exception, being called "星期天" or "星期日", which mean "weekday (of the) heaven" or "weekday (of the) sun" respectively.

In calendars, they are abbreviated as 日一二三四五六 (sun, one, two, three, four, five, six) for Sunday to Saturday.

Japanese:

In Japanese, each weekday is assigned one heavenly body (there are seven: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn). They translate respectively to 日月火水木金土 (abbreviated forms). The full forms are made by adding the abbreviated form and 曜日. For example, the full form of sunday would be 日曜日.

---

Extra information:

星期 literally means "star period", as the OP suggested.

日月火水木金土 literally translate to sun, moon, fire, water, wood, gold, earth.

Mars is the "star" of fire; Mercury is the "star" of water; Jupiter is the "star" of wood; Venus is the "star" of gold; Saturn is the "star" of earth.

Also, the English names also derived from the same origin, using the gods governing those planets instead. Sunday = sun + day; Monday = moon + day; Tuesday = Tyr's day, where Tyr is the germanic equivalent of the Roman god Mars.

Answer 2

This is implemented using language files. To support a new language, you won't need to update your code, just add a new language file.

For example, The DHTML Calendar has a set of language files already available, published under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License.

For example, Calendar._SDN has the following values:

• Chinese: new Array ("日", "一", "二", "三", "四", "五", "六", "日");

• Korean: new Array ("일", "월", "화", "수", "목", "금", "토", "일");

• Spanish: new Array ("Dom", "Lun", "Mar", "Mié", "Jue", "Vie", "Sáb", "Dom");

  • If you absolutely need one character, you may use D L M X J V S.

Answer 3

So I was trying to implement a scheme like what's in the Android Clock app when choosing which days to fire an alarm off. I when through all the languages in Android and confirmed that it was possible. Basically, every one of those language has a single character scheme except for Hungarian (Magyar) which has the following scheme:

V H K Sz Cs P Sz

But it still fits inside the circles so design wise it didn't break anything.

Here's a screenshot of the app:

Answer 4

Brazilian Portuguese:
D S T Q Q S S
Domingo
Segunda-feira
Terça-feira
Quarta-feira
Quinta-feira
Sexta-feira
Sábado
In Brazil it's common to write and pronounce the ones with -feira without it, so it is commonly segunda, terça, quarta and so on.
I don't know about how it works in other portuguese-speaking-countries, but in Portugal I'm sure is basically the same thing. The order can change, with Segunda-feira being the first or second day, and Domingo being the first or last day, it's somewhat controversial.