THREE TIMES NINE
October, summer time, winter time
Linguistics
| 27-10-2021
October is the longest month of the year in the European Union (and some countries that are adapting to it). There are more months with 31 days, but due to the switch from summer time to winter time, the month of October lasts an hour longer. That switch takes place on the last Sunday of October; so next sunday.
If you look at the words October, summer time and winter time in the nine Germanic languages on the images, you will notice how similar these words are in the different languages. In the case of October this isn't very surprising, since it has been adopted by all languages from Latin (it was the eighth month with the Romans, hence octo-), but the words for summer and winter and time go back to a Proto-Germanic or even Proto-Indo-European stem. By the way, summer and winter were the only two seasons that the Indo-Europeans reckoned with. Yet they didn't know the concept of summer time, because that concept probably dates from the end of the 19th century.
If you look at the words October, summer time and winter time in the nine Germanic languages on the images, you will notice how similar these words are in the different languages. In the case of October this isn't very surprising, since it has been adopted by all languages from Latin (it was the eighth month with the Romans, hence octo-), but the words for summer and winter and time go back to a Proto-Germanic or even Proto-Indo-European stem. By the way, summer and winter were the only two seasons that the Indo-Europeans reckoned with. Yet they didn't know the concept of summer time, because that concept probably dates from the end of the 19th century.
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