Normally idioms are language specific, but number of hours and days are the same.

  • @zlatiah@lemmy.world
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    102 months ago

    I have actually never heard anyone say it this way specifically where I grew up… so technically the answer is “no”?

    I tried to dug around and found a Reddit post saying this:

    “The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines the term as “twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week; constantly”. It lists its first reference to 24/7 to be from a 1983 story in the US magazine Sports Illustrated in which Louisiana State University player Jerry Reynolds describes his jump shot in just such a way: 24-7-365.”

    So this might be a fairly new idiom? Which would explain why it’s not really a thing in a lot of cultures… but I assume they have their ways of referring to this.

    number of hours and days are the same

    Ok akktually Japan has a rather interesting 30-hour day thing in the context of businesses… but jokes aside, the 24-hour, 7-day week system is indeed quite universal

      • @zlatiah@lemmy.world
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        22 months ago

        East Asia; again, never heard anyone refer to “24/7” specifically (ok maybe at more hipster places that try to imitate American businesses?)… There might be a similar idiom for it but I genuinely couldn’t think of any off the top of my head

  • Björn Tantau
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    -162 months ago

    Number of days in a week (or the existence of weeks at all) aren’t universal, though. And technically not even hours.

    Only the length of the day, year and moon cycle are universal (or earthiversal).

    • kersploosh
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      662 months ago

      Your first point is technically correct, but 24-hour days and 7-day weeks are a de facto global standard at this point in history. There are outliers, like the Javanese 5-day week or the experimental 5-day Soviet calendar, but they are few and far between.

    • @marcos@lemmy.world
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      142 months ago

      Hum… I think the week is more widely adopted than the solar year.

      But neither is universal. AFAIK, the length of the day is.

      • @HandwovenConsensus@lemm.ee
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        22 months ago

        Is it? I know some cultures have a traditional lunar calendar, but I didn’t know there were many that didn’t also use the Gregorian calendar for business.

        Which cultures have the seven day week without the solar year?

        • @marcos@lemmy.world
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          12 months ago

          use the Gregorian calendar for business

          AKA, to talk to foreigners. Everybody that doesn’t use the Gregorian calendar uses it to talk to foreigners, if that’s the bar, then it’s universal.

          • @HandwovenConsensus@lemm.ee
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            22 months ago

            Well, I only know how it tends to work in China, where the traditional calendar is used for cultural events such as festivals, while the Gregorian calendar is used for just about everything else, including domestic business. I assumed it’s the same in most modern cultures with a different traditional calendar, but maybe I’m wrong.

        • @marcos@lemmy.world
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          42 months ago

          I think it was the Babylonians that created the hour/minute/second and a precursor of the meter on the process. It’s high-tech bronze-age innovation, that got hyped-out so much that it took the entire Old-World by storm, so the Egyptians got them too.

          • @0ops@lemm.ee
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            12 months ago

            Oh neat, that makes sense given the Babylonians base-60 numbering system

          • BarqsHasBiteOP
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            02 months ago

            Meter was recent (historically speaking). They defined the circumference of the world as 40,000 km.