Thursday, July 21, 2011

Next July, Last Friday, This Tuesday


When Is "This Friday"?










  1. I think "this" by itself is quite vague. This coming Wednesday I will start using JRuby. This past Wednesday I used Groovy. I'm not much of a language person though.

  2. Scott: Agreed...I think "this" is perhaps the most confusing without any strict definition, since sometimes people mean "next", sometimes they mean "this week" and sometimes they mean "last time that day occurred." I like that my system specifies that "this" always means "this week" even if the day is in the past, and if you want to specify the other days using "this" you must add another modifier.

  3. Sounds like a good enough system to me. Actually, it's not about having a good system, it's just about having one, really.

  4. Hi

    I'm not an english speaker (my native languages are catalan and spanish, but learning english teachers always say that if it's Monday and you say next Wednesday it is your this Wednesday (the one contained in the current week).

    I thing you have the same problem as we have in catalan or spanish from different places.

    Kind regards


  5. gem install chronic ?

  6. Anonymous 1: I'm sure the problems of expressing relative time versus absolute time span languages. I know some of them dodge it a bit by having blurry notions of past or future (Chinese)...

    Anonymous 2: Actually that's an interesting point...I wonder what rules chronic uses for "next" and "last".

  7. same problem in the german language, same ambiguity. for me, "this" is the upcoming event, like "this thursday" is the upcoming thursday. "next" is the one after "this" one. and "last" is the first back in time.

    1. In Swedish we have basically the same problem. However, in the south of Sweden, mainly amongst the older generations, they have a way of modifying the statements if confusion can arise. Let's say it's currently Monday:

      Speaker A: - Next Saturday I will go to France.
      Speaker B: - Next Saturday? Do you mean this week, or the next week?
      Speaker A: - Oh, I mean Saturday eight-days.
      Speaker B: - I see, next week then.

      "Eight-days" means that it is at least eight days until that day comes, i.e. it is not the first coming Wednesday but the next one.

      The need to resolve the confusion seems to have been around for quite some time and in many languages...

  8. "this X"
    always means "this coming occurance of day=X"

    "next X"
    When the first occurance of X is 4 days or more away it means the same as "this X", otherwise it means "not this coming occurance of day=X, but the next one"

    "last X"
    when the last occurance of day X is 4 days or more away, it means "the last occurance of day=X"
    otherwise, it means "not the most recent occurance of X, but the one before that"