[tlhIngan Hol] Expressing Anno Domini

[qurgh lungqIj]

On Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 2:55 PM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:

> On 9/22/2017 2:35 PM, qurgh lungqIj wrote:
>
> I feel that same way about AD/BC. If you are a Christian, or familiar with
> Christendom, then those terms make sense. If you aren't familiar with that
> religion, then you'd have to Google this "Christ" person to figure out that
> the dates have something to do with when some people claim he was born.
> Since Greek culture is heavily Christian it makes sense for you, but for
> someone in a non-Christian culture, they won't know what you are talking
> about. There's even some cultures on Earth that don't use the AD/CE-BC/BCE
> calendar at all.
>
> And yet the Skybox cards call their dates *tera' DIS,* as if they are
> used by the whole planet.
>
> As children, most Americans have no idea what A.D. stands for, and some
> don't know what B.C. stands for. That doesn't stop them from saying *AD*
> and *BC,* though. *CE* and *BCE* are largely reserved for publications,
> and then only the more scholarly sorts. You don't need to know anything
> about Christ or Christianity to use *AD* or *BC*, or to use Christ as an
> epoch.
>
> Keeping time is largely a matter of convention, not logic. You don't need
> to understand conventions to use them
>

Yup, the Skybox cards made an assumption and a generalization as well. Just
the same way as the generalization of "Federation Standard" means everyone
speaks English.

As someone who works directly with an American school system I know for a
fact that they teach children these days to use CE and BCE only. They don't
teach them AD and BC at all anymore. If you don't know your calendar has
something to do with Christ, then using the name "Christ" in your date
isn't useful.

Keeping time is a matter of convention, and while you don't need to
understand a convention to use it, you do need to understand a convention
to translate it into something that can be used by another culture. If you
go to Iran, for example, you'd need to know the difference between the
convention of the Gregorian calendar and the convention of the Solar Hijri
calendar to be able to communicate when things happened in the past.

As I said before, I'm not trying to get anyone to use a specific date
system, just to be aware that if you use religious terminology in your
dates that some people may not understand.

qurgh
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