Rosharan Weekends

[+AutonomousJoy]

I've been doing a reread of Words of Radiance coming up to Rhythm of War's release and came across this line by Shallan in Chapter 63:

Quote

"Someone who wants to be part of things," Shallan said. "Things more important than stealing from the odd lighteyes, or scamming for a weekend of luxury".

Now we know that Roshar's year is divided into 10 months, with 10 weeks of 5 days each, however I don't believe there's any mention at all of what their weekend would be? Is it that the 5th day of every week is their day of rest, a so-called 'weekend'.

Nobody mentions taking weekends off during work. Seeing as most of our viewpoint characters have been people participating in a war, it is not surprising that they wouldn't think about weekends anyway. 

 

Is there any mention of weekends elsewhere?

 

Edited November 10, 2020 by AutonomousJoy

[datalaughing he/him]

I searched my Kindle versions of the 3 books and Edgedancer, and that's the only mention of weekend that there seems to be.

[+AutonomousJoy]

In that case it could be that this is a result of the fact that the book we read is a translation into English of what the Rosharans actually say and so in their language, Shallan may have used an equivalent word in Alethi.

27 minutes ago, datalaughing said:

I searched my Kindle versions of the 3 books and Edgedancer, and that's the only mention of weekend that there seems to be.

 

[+robardin he/him]

I would think of something like this as "translation convention", like when Elend refers to a "hat trick" to Vin in Mistborn; or the occasional use by characters in Stormlight Archive of the term "dozens" to refer to "a bunch of stuff" when in fact, Rosharans would have a unitized collection term for "tens" that wasn't as awkward sounding as "tens" is in English. It just makes for it to be more natural for us to read "weekend" meaning "a regular but brief period of off-duty leisure time, measured in days".

(ETA: Hey, that last one was actually directly addressed in a WoB!)

As for its in-world structure, I'd guess it was on a 10 day cycle, either 9 on 1 off, or 8 on, 2 off. It could even be 8 on 2 off, but staggered (so that roughly half of people are off on any given "weekend" of a 5 day week), and of course there would be some set of major festivals or holidays being observed by everybody "being off" and celebrating.

Edited November 10, 2020 by robardin

[Bearer of all agonies he/him]

8 hours ago, AutonomousJoy said:

I've been doing a reread of Words of Radiance coming up to Rhythm of War's release and came across this line by Shallan in Chapter 63:

Now we know that Roshar's year is divided into 10 months, with 10 weeks of 5 days each  

 

 

I thought a Rosharan week is ten days, because of the 1,000 day year. Maybe not. My bad then. 

[Guest Somebody from Scadrial]

Just now, Bearer of all agonies said:

 

I thought a Rosharan week is ten days, because of the 1,000 day year. Maybe not. My bad then. 

I'm pretty sure Brandon has said the weeks are ten. Could we get the quote @AutonomousJoy?

[+AutonomousJoy]

Just now, Bearer of all agonies said:

 

I thought a Rosharan week is ten days, because of the 1,000 day year. Maybe not. My bad then. 

So there's the 1,000 day cycle made up of two years. One year which is a light year with no highstorm during the Weeping, and one heavy year, that does have a highstorm in the middle of the Weeping.

[Bearer of all agonies he/him]

Just now, AutonomousJoy said:

So there's the 1,000 day cycle made up of two years. One year which is a light year with no highstorm during the Weeping, and one heavy year, that does have a highstorm in the middle of the Weeping.

Ah. That makes sense. My bad again. Hehe. 

[+AutonomousJoy]

3 minutes ago, Somebody from Sel said:

I'm pretty sure Brandon has said the weeks are ten. Could we get the quote @AutonomousJoy?

From the Coppermind page on Roshar: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Roshar#Calendar

Quote

The Rosharan calendar is divided up into ten months, with ten weeks each. Both the months and the weeks are named after the numbers on the Ars Arcanum, and are sometimes combined into abbreviations. Such abbreviations have the full name of the month and two suffixes, for week and day. Each week is five days, and a year on Roshar is 500 days long, ultimately defined by the time between two Weepings. Although the Rosharan year is 500 days long, these days are shorter than on Earth - coming in at 20 standard hours - and a Rosharan year is equivalent to 1.1 Earth years.As an example Chachel means it's the third day of the week.Interestingly, Kaladin, who gets paid once a week, refers to payday as "third pass". Presumably, this means that another way to talk about days of the week is by saying first, second, third, fourth or fifth pass.

 

Edited November 10, 2020 by AutonomousJoy
adding a link