It's raining today. it's also Wednesday.
Sometimes, I'll quiz myself on how to say trivial things in the various foreign languages I'm trying to learn. Today, my quiz was 'Today is Wednesday'. in German, that's 'Heute ist Mitwoch'. Mitwoch, or Wednesday in German, is translated literally into 'mid week' or the middle of the week. In Japanese, it's '今日は水曜日だ', pronounced 'kyou wa, suiyoubi da'. 水曜日, or suiyoubi, is literally translated as 'water day'. I don't know how to say it in Chinese yet. So the Japanese call it water day, the Germans call it the middle of the week, and I don't even know about the Chinese. What in the world does the English word 'Wednesday' mean, if anything?
I think The Japanese are closer to the true meaning of this Wednesday in particular, as I see much wetness about me, however, I might have preferred the German word three weeks ago during dead week of last academic quarter, more just for the sole reason of knowing that it was half way over.
Then again... my favorite Wednesday greeting isn't, "Happy Mitwoch!" or "Happy 水曜日!", or even "Happy Wednesday!" for that matter.
no...
it's "Happy Hump Day!"
more on Hump day another time maybe.
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"The name comes from the Middle English Wednes dei, which is from Old English Wēdnes dæg, meaning the day of the Germanic god Woden (Wodan) who was a god of the Anglo-Saxons in England until about the 7th century. Wēdnes dæg is like the Old Norse Oðinsdagr ("Odin's day"), which is an early translation of the Latin dies Mercurii ("Mercury's day"), though Mercury (the messenger of the gods) and Woden (the king of the Germanic gods) are not equivalent in most regards."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wednesday
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