το άνευ κλίσι Ελληνικό: time

The same division of the day into 24 hours and hours into 60 minutes was as widespread in WHAT as it is among us. Technology has developed to a similar state so that we have both anolog and digital timepieces. The seven day week became standard in WHAT with the adoption of Christianity. The only main difference are the months.

In WHAT the Roman calendar never became used outside of Rome, and even there it was replaced at an early date by the Macedonian calendar. Both calendars, however, were at that time lunisolar, i.e. months were determined by lunations, but the year was adjusted to the solar cycle by intercalating a 13th month whenever necessary. In WHAT, thanks to a century of political instability and civil war, the calendar became as confused there as it did here. Eventually in the 40s BCE it was regulated in an analogous way to the Julian reformation here, i.e. lunations were abandoned together with the intercalation of the 13th month; instead the months were slightly lengthened and the system of the 'leap day' introduced. However, in WHAT the starting point was the old Macedonian calendar, not the old Roman one.

[το ημέρο (The day)] [το εκ το εβδομάδο ημέρο (The days of the week)]
[το έτο (The year)] [το ημερολογισμό (The date)]
[το περί το χρόνο φράσι (Expressions of time)]

το ημέρο (The day)

The ΤΑΚΕ word ημέρο means 'day', both in the sense of a 24 hour period and also meaning 'daytime' as opposed to 'night'. The various parts of the 24 hour period are:

ορθρο (dawn)
δείλο (afternoon)
μεσό νυκτό (mid night)

πρωίο (morning)
εσπέρο (evening)

μεσό ημέρο (mid day)
νυκτό (night)

Just a here, so in WHAT, the ancient system of dividing daylight into twelves hours, subdivided into 60ths known 'minutes' was retained. Night was variously divided into four 'watches' or twelve hours. Eventually, with the development of mechanical clocks, the system of twenty four equal hours was adopted, though the clocks displayed only hours 1 to 12. The ΤΑΚΕ words for the units of time are:

ώρα (hour)

λεπτό (minute)

δευτερόλεπτο (second)

To ask the time, one says:
τίνο ώρα ες; (What time is it? What's the time?)

When telling the time, there is a 'traditional' system which was used with analog clocks, and more modern system used with digital timepieces, on timetables etc. The table below illustrates the way time is told in ΤΑΚΕ.

Analog clock		Digital clock, timetables etc.
(ες) ενό (ώρα)	(It's) one o'clock	(ες) δέκα τρία (ώρα)	(It's) 13.00 hrs (It's 1.00 pm)
τρία (ώρα)	three o'clock	τρία (ώρα)	3.00 hrs (It's 3.00 am)
τρία και πέντα	five past three	τρία και πέντα	3.05 (am) ^*
τρία και ενό 'κ τέτρα	quarter past three	τρία δέκα πέντα	3.15 (am)
τρία και δυόδεκα πέντα	twenty-five past three	τρία δυόδεκα πέντα	3.25 (am)
τρία και ήμισυ	half past three	τρία τριάδεκα	3.30 (am)
τέτρα πλην δυόδεκα	twenty to four	τρία τετράδεκα	3.40 (am)
τέτρα πλην ενό 'κ τέτρα	a quarter to four	τρία τετράδεκα πέντα	3.45 (am)
τέτρα πλην δέκα	ten to four	τρία πεντάδεκα	3.50 (am)

^*In the digital/ 24 hour system, και (and) is used only before single digit numbers, i.e. where in English we say "oh" or "zero".

το εκ το εβδομάδο ημέρο (The days of the week)

In WHAT the seven day week was made official when the Hellenic Empire adopted Christianity during the 4th century CE. The days were simply numbered, as in the Greek and Portuguese in our timeline, with the exceptions of the Dominical Day (Sunday), Preparation Day (Friday) and Sabbath (Saturday).

As we have seen on the 'Number' page, Josephos Peanou did not use the ancient ordinal numbers. However, he retained them for the days of the week, treating them as ancient feminine nouns. The days of the week are, therefore:

Κυριακό
Δευτέρο
Τρίτο
Τετάρτο
Πέμπτο
Παρασκευό
Σάβατο^*

Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday

^*For the spelling of Σάβατο with a single beta, see section on gemination on the 'Orthography & Phonology' page.

το έτο (The year)

The four seasons of the year are:

έαρο (Spring)
φθινόπωρο (Autumn/ Fall)

θέρο (Summer)
χειμώνο (Winter)

The Hellenic Empire of WHAT had originally used the Macedonian lunisolar calendar. This consisted of twelve months of alternately 30 and 29 days, corresponding more or less with actual lunations. They intercalated a 13th month over a 19 year period, or Metonic cycle, in order to harmonize the mean length of years with the solar year. Sometimes the 6th month, Xanthikos, was repeated and at other times the 12th month, Hyperberetaios; such months were known as embolismic months (ἐμβόλιμοι μῆνες), but the system for determining when these were intercalated during the 19 year cycle is not clear.

After the wars between the Hellenic and Carthaginian Empires, in which Carthage was completely destroyed and its Empire annexed to the Hellenic one, there was a massive unemployment problem and about a century (from mid 2nd century till mid 1st century BCE) of civil wars followed. During this time the calendar was often manipulated for political purposes, and not always the same way in all provinces. The result was that when a brilliant military commander named Kaisar Philodemos (Καῖσαρ Φιλόδημος), from the little known town of Rhome, brought these wars to a close, united the Empire again, and established himself at Pella as autocrat, the calendar was in a complete mess. Kaisar initiated many reforms including reform of the calendar, which he did with the aid of the Alexandrian astronomer, Sosigenes.

Kaisar decided to ignore the lunations and complicated system of embolismic months, and to have a standard year of 365¼ days in the Egyptian manner. However, he did not adopt the Egyptian calendar but reformed the Macedonian one. He decided to increase each month by one day, so that the odd numbered months would have 31 days and the even numbered one 30 days. However, this would happen only every fourth year; in the other three years Hyperberetaios kept its original total of 29 days. He also changed the start of year. In the old calendar it had, in theory, begun on the new moon following the autumnal equinox (by the middle of the 1st century BCE this had shifted to mid-summer in many areas; indeed, in some places the months now had little in common with actual lunations). Kaisar changed the beginning of the year to mid-winter, making Audynaios, originally the 3rd month, the first month of the year. For some reason, which is not clear, New Year's Day is not the winter solstice itself, but a few days later, corresponding to our 24th December.

This calendar remained then unchanged till the 16th century; by this time it was noticed that the dates of the equinoxes, had shifted somewhat over the centuries and that the 'book vernal equinox', used for determining Easter, differed noticeably from the true equinox. Pope Gregorios XIII (the papal See being in Pella in WHAT) adjusted the calendar to bring the 'book equinox' back in line with the astronomical equinox and modified the rules for leap years so that century years would henceforth be leap years only if exactly divisible by 400.

το εκ το έτο μηνό (The months of the year)

Name	Length	Approximate corresponding dates in our calendar ¹
Αυδυναίο	31 days	24th December to 23rd January
Περίτιο	30 days	24th January to 22th February
Δύστρο	31 days	23rd February to 25th March
Ξανθικό	30 days	26th March to 24th April
Αρτεμίσιο	31 days	25th April to 25th May
Δαίσιο	30 days	26th May to 24th June
Πάνημο	31 days	25th June to 25th July
Λώιο	30 days	26th July to 24th August
Γορπιαίο	31 days	25th August to 24th September
Υπερβερεταίο	29 days ²	25th September to 23rd October
Δίο	31 days	24th October to 23rd November
Απελλαίο	30 days	24th November to 23rd December

¹These are correct only when both the WHAT year and our own year are not leap years. By fortunate coincidence the WHAT leap years normally correspond to our leap (but century endings are four years out).
²But 30 days in a leap year.

το ημερολογισμό (The date)

Note: it's usual in English to give the Macedonian months in the ancient Greek nominative form (or even Romanized as, e.g. Audynaeus).

For, say, the 24th of Audynaios (Audynaios 24th) one could say in full: το εκ το Αυδυναίο δυόδεκα τέτρα θετό ημέρο (Audynaios' twenty-fourth day, i.e. the twenty-fourth day of Audynaios). But that was no more used in ΤΑΚΕ than the full form is used in English. In practice it was expressed thus: το Αυδυναίο δυόδεκα τέτρα. That is, the name of the month followed by a numeral, e.g.

1st Peritios/ Peritios 1st = το Περίτιο 1 (το Περίτιο ενό)
13th Xanthikos/ Xanthikos 13th = το Ξανθικό 13 (το Ξανθικό δέκα τρία)
30th Panemos/ Panemos 30th = το Πάνημο 30 (το Πάνημο τριάδεκα)

After the adoption of Christianity, the Hellenic Empire took to numbering the years from the birth of Christ. However, in WHAT the calculation made in the 4th century was a little different than here. It placed Christ's birth four years earlier than our conventional BC ~ AD (BCE ~ CE) dates. Thus, our 4 BC is their 1 AD. The current year (2007) is numbered 2011 in WHAT.

To express dates in full one could say, e.g. το εκ το εκ το δυοχίλιο δέκ' ενό θετό έτο Αυδυναίο δυόδεκα τέτρα θετό ημέρο (the 2011th year's Audanios' 24th day, i.e. the 24th day of Audanios of the two-thousandth and eleventh year). But that was clearly clumsy and, just as in practice we shorten it in English, so in ΤΑΚΕ it was also shortened. One just gave, as in many languages, the numeral for the year, and the date was expressed as: το δυοχίλιο δέκ' ενό Αυδυναίο δυόδεκα τέτρα, the whole being regarded as a single noun phrase preceded by 'the' (το). This was normally written as:
2011 Αυδ. 13 or 2011/01/13.

το περί το χρόνο φράσι (Expressions of time)

Time 'when' is expressed with the preposition εν, e.g.
εν το δύο [ώρα] (at two [o'clock])
εν το πέντα και ήμισυ (at half past five)
εν το πέντα τριάδεκα (at five thirty)
εν το Δευτέρο (on Monday)
εν το Αυδυναίο δυόδεκα τέτρα (on 24th of Audynaios/ on Audynaios 24th)
εν το έαρο (in Spring).

Other expressions

διά δύο έτο (for two years)
εν δύο έτο από νυν (in two years time; two years from now)
δύο ήδη έτο (two years ago)³
από το τρία [ώρα] (since three [o'clock])
μέχρι το τρία [ώρα] (until three [o'clock])
σήμερον (today)
εχθές (yesterday)
προχθές (the day before yesterday)
αύριον (tomorrow)
μεταύριον (the day after tomorrow)
σήμερον το πρωίο (this morning)
εχθές το δείλο (yesterday afternoon)
αύριον το εσπέρο (tomorrow evening)
εν τούτο το εβδομάδο (this week)
εν το πρότερο εβδομάδο (last week)
εν το ύστερο εβδομάδο (next week)

³ήδη is not a unique 'inposition'; it is an adverb meaning "already, by this time". It may be used by itself or with other adverbs of time, e.g. νυν ήδη (now already, already by this time), τότε ήδη (then already, already by that time). With the meaning of English 'ago' it had the order given here in the ancient language, and this was retained in ΤΑΚΕ by Josephos Peanou.