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   Elias Mårtenson (loke@functional.cafe)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 17:14:42 JST Elias Mårtenson

   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".

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     Sun Microdevil Pte Ltd (koakuma@uwu.social)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 17:14:42 JST Sun Microdevil Pte Ltd

     in reply to

     @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:

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:, lainy and clacke like this.
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     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Friday, 18-Apr-2025 17:25:28 JST Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:

     in reply to

     • Sun Microdevil Pte Ltd
     @koakuma @loke I think I tend to just say when I arrive and when I plan to leave because both french and english don't do 24h vs. daytime, although I know some also just say "I'll stay for 24/48/72 hours"
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     Janne Moren (jannem@fosstodon.org)'s status on Tuesday, 29-Apr-2025 20:10:52 JST Janne Moren

     in reply to

     • Tom Walker

     @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.

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     Tom Walker (tomw@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 29-Apr-2025 20:10:53 JST Tom Walker

     in reply to

     @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

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     Tom Walker (tomw@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 29-Apr-2025 20:10:54 JST Tom Walker

     in reply to

     @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?

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     Elias Mårtenson (loke@functional.cafe)'s status on Tuesday, 29-Apr-2025 20:10:54 JST Elias Mårtenson

     in reply to

     • Tom Walker

     @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.

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     Elias Mårtenson (loke@functional.cafe)'s status on Tuesday, 29-Apr-2025 20:11:00 JST Elias Mårtenson

     in reply to

     • Tom Walker

     @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

     clacke likes this.