Post Ata4LkglLLVmF4J86a by tomw@mastodon.social
 (DIR) More posts by tomw@mastodon.social
 (DIR) Post #AtD38WMk18ZJ7eR4KG by loke@functional.cafe
       2025-04-18T07:59:28Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       Swedish had a word "dygn" that refers to a 24-hour period. It's extremely useful and I am often very annoyed that this word downy exist in English.English users the word "day" most of the time and just home there won't be any miscommunication, or they use cumbersome versions like "24 hours".It also leads to very silly expressions like "I'll be on vacation there for 3 days 2 nights", instead of just being able to say "I'll be there for 2 dygn".
       
 (DIR) Post #AtD38XFgiqWLs48wyG by koakuma@uwu.social
       2025-04-18T08:14:10Z
       
       3 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @loke tfw Indonesian differentiates between the two senses of "day" (24h period being "hari" and the time when the Sun is up being "siang") yet it still borrows such phrasings like "3 hari 2 malam" :haha:
       
 (DIR) Post #Ata4LkglLLVmF4J86a by tomw@mastodon.social
       2025-04-18T09:34:31Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @loke I have sort of the opposite side of this in that I'm learning Swedish and don't really know where to use "dygn", so just use "dagar" everywhere, which is usually correct but not always. Your explanation here helped a bit but I'm still not sure when this (needing to refer to a 24-hour period) would come up?
       
 (DIR) Post #Ata4LlRuW3E2bIMmau by loke@functional.cafe
       2025-04-18T09:48:31Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @tomw 'dag' technically refers to the time when the sun is up. Obviously '30 dagar' and '30 dygn' is going to be pretty much the same, so using them interchangeably is ok.One case where it's useful is if someone telks you they'll be staying at a resort for '4 dagar'. How long will they be spending there? If you say 4 dygn it's much more clear.Another case is if you, like me, was doing a big upload to a cloud server that was very slow. If I tell you it takes 2 days to upload, that gives you different information than of I say it takes ett dygn.
       
 (DIR) Post #Ata4LmBHnLWOs1b1Jw by tomw@mastodon.social
       2025-04-18T10:23:50Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @loke Yeah that makes sense! For the resort case in English I would probably just say "3 nights" and leave the days out of it, but yeah for that uploading one I guess I would say "24 hours". So it covers both of those phrases
       
 (DIR) Post #Ata4Lmde5uCsHyrfWa by loke@functional.cafe
       2025-04-18T11:01:39Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @tomw I'm not a fan of Saphir-Whorff, but the language you use can probably make a small contribution to how you think about things, especially abstract concepts such as time. This may be one of these cases (but very minor).#linguistics
       
 (DIR) Post #Ata4Lmw4zMx5D9UOG0 by jannem@fosstodon.org
       2025-04-18T11:04:00Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @tomw @loke In normal use I would say you'd use "dag" ("jag är på resa i fem dagar" - I'm traveling for five days), and only use dygn when either there's a risk of confusion or you want to emphasize the 24-hour span for some reason.So with "han har varit försvunnen i tre dygn" (he's been missing for three days) it emphasizes the time span and the seriousness of the situation.