Talk:Thirty days hath September
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[edit] Alternate Lines
The way I was always taught this rhyme had some different lines, which are bolded:
Thirty days hath September
April, June, and November
February has twenty-eight alone,
All the rest have thirty-one.
Except in leap year, that's the time
When February days have twenty-nine.
Think this could be added? -- RattleMan 08:48, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
- Interesting. I'd never come across that variant, but Google shows quite a few people using it. And it has a very interesting feature, which I've commented on in the article. — Haeleth Talk 12:47, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Other mnemotics?
Believe it or not but I had never heard of that mnemotic rhyme before!
The way I learned the duration of the months back in kindergarden was to look at my right hand, fist closed.
It works like this: count the months over your knuckles and the grooves between them.
The knuckle of the index is January - it sticks out, so it's a "long" month (31 days).
February is the groove between the index and middle finger knuckle (a "short" month).
March is the middle finger knuckle (a "long" month) etc.
When you reach the pinkie (July, "long"), start over at the index (August, "long" again) and continue...
Simple, right? Sure, it doesn't tell you that February has 28 or 29 days rather than 30 but I never found that hard to remember.
71.240.26.227 19:10, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
- Other calendar mnemonics are discussed in the main article on mnemonics. It has one like that, but using both hands instead of going over one hand twice. — Haeleth Talk 21:54, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
-
- I don't see anything about "knuckles" in the current version of the mnemonics page. How about putting a mention of it here? Here's a book from "Google books" that talks about it:
- Lardner, Dionysius (1855). (Encyclopedias and dictionaries), Walton and Maberly, 152. “If the months be reckoned in numerical order from the beginning of the year, the odd months, as far as the seventh, and the even ones afterwards, are those which have thirty-one days. Thus, they are the first, third, fifth, seventh, eighth, tenth and twelfth, which are January, March, May, July, August, October and December.
"When we close the hand there are four projecting knuckles of the four fingers, with depressions between them. If we give the knuckles and intermediate depressions the names of the successive months, recommencing from the first knuckle, after having once gone over them, we shall find that the months of thirty-one days are those which fall upon the knuckles.”
- Lardner, Dionysius (1855). (Encyclopedias and dictionaries), Walton and Maberly, 152. “If the months be reckoned in numerical order from the beginning of the year, the odd months, as far as the seventh, and the even ones afterwards, are those which have thirty-one days. Thus, they are the first, third, fifth, seventh, eighth, tenth and twelfth, which are January, March, May, July, August, October and December.
- I suggest saying something short, such as "There is also a mnemonic using knuckles to remember the numbers of days of the months," with a footnote to the above citation, so that the quote appears in the footnote. --Coppertwig (talk) 21:40, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
- I don't see anything about "knuckles" in the current version of the mnemonics page. How about putting a mention of it here? Here's a book from "Google books" that talks about it:
[edit] Other languages
Since the Gregorian Calander is used world wide, how do the mnenomics go in other languages?
Tabletop 11:37, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
There was a time I only knew the German version. I speak English natively, but studied German in high school. I don't remember the whole thing anymore, but it started "Dreisig tage hat September". MichaelCrawford (talk) 08:34, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] A rhyming version
I've only ever known one and it rhymes better than any of the others:
Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November; Thirty-one the others date, Excepting February, twenty-eight; But in leap year we assign February, twenty-nine.
So I've put that in.Hilesd 06:35, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] why the knuckles?
The knuckle stuff really doesn't belong in an article about this poem.
It's a completely independent method for remembering the length of the months and doesn't depend on or support the poem in any way. It should be in it's own article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.142.184.113 (talk) 05:05, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
