September 18, 2019
It’s Time to Talk About Moons and Months
By PhilologosWhy the words for both are so similar in so many languages, and why Hebrew has turned out to be the rare exception.
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With the Hebrew lunar month of Elul now in its third quarter, and the lunar month of Tishrei approaching, it’s a good time to talk about moons and months.
The similarity or identity of the words for moon and month in a high percentage of the world’s languages attests to the lunar cycle’s having been a basic measurement of time from the earliest stages of human history. Our English words “moon” and “month” are themselves an example. So, looking now at a few widely divergent tongues, are Swedish måne and månad; Polish miesiąc and miesiąc; Lithuanian mėnuo and mėnulis; Finnish kuu and kuukousi; Turkish ay and ay; Japanese tsuki and tsuki; Chinese yuè and yuèliang; Indonesian bulan and bulan; Swahili mwezi and mwezi; and Mohawk ehnita and ehnita.