Monday is first in Britain, which makes for annoying Web ui when the site isn't localised properly (and it's easy to leave it in en_US and not realise the problem).
I once booked a flight on the wrong day because part way through the booking process the first day of the week in the calendar changed.
Well... it's true that Chinese generally consider Monday the beginning of the week, but that's not evidence. The days of the week are 一 (1)、二 (2)、三 (3)、四 (4)、五 (5)、六 (6) and 天 or 日 (day). Does day come before 1 or after 6 when you count?
Sure, Monday through Saturday are numbered 1 to 6, but Sunday is "weekday Sky" or "weekday Heaven", which is considered to come before "weekday one".[1]
Portuguese uses ordinal numbers to name days from Monday to Friday, starting from Sunday: Monday is segunda-feria (second day), Tuesday is terça-feria (third day), all the way to Friday, or sexta-feria (sixth day).
Interestingly, there's no first day: Saturday and Sunday are sábado and domingo, respectively.
- That map is factually incorrect. Sunday is considered the end of the week in China, not the beginning. I note in passing that the image file is attributed to "own work" -- we all make mistakes.
- The 天 of 星期天 doesn't have the sense of "sky" or "heaven". It has the sense (well, originally had the sense) of "day", the unit of time. Compare 天天 "every day"; 今天 "today"; 明天 "tomorrow". We know that this is the original sense because the name descends from the Christian term 礼拜天 "the day of worship". Consider also that 周天 alternates with 周日, and while 日 shares the sense "day" it does not share the sense "sky".
Thank you for this! I NEVER knew this was something that could/would be different too. But I will have to keep that in mind if I ever store a wday value; or i guess even present a calendar! wow.
Well... it's true that Chinese generally consider Monday the beginning of the week, but that's not evidence. The days of the week are 一 (1)、二 (2)、三 (3)、四 (4)、五 (5)、六 (6) and 天 or 日 (day). Does day come before 1 or after 6 when you count?
edit: the map lower down in the thread ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Week#/media/File:First_Day_of_... ) shows China as beginning its week on Sunday. That does not agree with my experience, or with the Chinese people I've asked this question of.