Eugen Mittwoch Mittwoch was the leading orientalist in Germany, and the founder of a more politically oriented, modern science of Middle East Studies, in contrast to the traditional philologic, apolitical approach very much influenced by Goethe. In 1924, Mittwoch stayed in Jerusalem, where he participated in the founding of a Department for Semitic Studies at Hebrew University. Since he was the leading specialist on Ethiopian languages world-wide, Mittwoch did not lose his academic position in 1933 immediately like almost all his Jewish colleagues in Germany did at that time. This had to do with a special intervention by Mussolini with Hitler on
Names of the days of the week the "first day". This convention is also found in some Austronesian languages whose speakers were converted to Christianity by European missionaries. In Slavic languages, some of the names correspond to numerals after Sunday: compare Russian "vtornik" "Tuesday" and "vtoroj" "the following", "chetverg" "Thursday" and "chetvertyj" "the fourth", "pyatnitsa" "Friday" and "pyatyj" "the fifth"; see also the Notes. In Standard Chinese, the week is referred to as the cycle of the stars (). The modern Chinese names for the days of the week are based on a simple numerical sequence. The word for "week" (which is literally translated to "star day")