'sall relative (in time!)

Today someone randomly asked me if in other languages, there were more efficient ways to say "day after tomorrow" and things like that. I was happy to report that I knew...yes!

Well, efficiency is subjective, but I at least knew that Mandarin and Japanese had terms that were special to terms like "day before yesterday" and "day after tomorrow", even if just prefixes.

But because I had already forgotten what most of the terms were, I had to confirm at work (and my new work computer can display east asian characters. so happy!).

So here are the Mandarin terms (copy and pasted from About.com):
today - 今天 - jīn tiān
yesterday - 昨天 - zuó tiān
the day before yesterday - 前天 - qián tiān
tomorrow - 明天 - míng tiān
the day after tomorrow - 後天 - hòu tiān

See, no matter what, two character words!

Japanese is a slightly more complicated issue, and I don't know if I'm just biased because it seemed so hard to learn in general, especially at 8:30am, but I feel that Japanese has many many alternatives to saying every little thing.
But here's what I think is common (copy and pasted from random dictionaries I could find online):

today - きょう - kyou (and fun fact: the kanji in Japanese is 今日, which is similar to the Chinese one above, but not quite...annoying, huh)
yesterday - きのう (昨日) - kinou
day before yesterday - おととい (一昨日)- ototoi
tomorrow - あした (明日) - asita
day after tomorrow - あさって (明後日) - asatte
two days after tomorrow ("in three days time") - しあさって (明明後日) - siasatte

As you can tell by the characters, the terms for things beyond yesterday and tomorrow are more or less derivative from the main terms. But they are more like prefixes, and I think still more effective than saying "day after tomorrow". I do realize that saying "in two days" is the same as "the day after tomorrow", and that it's not exactly a cumbersome phrase. But it's still seems less cool. :-)

Since I never studied Chinese formally, I don't know if the terms are related in the same way. They all end in the word for "day" (天), if you were wondering. Also the word used in the kanji in Japanese, 日, does actually also mean "day" in Chinese, but in different contexts. I can't give great examples, but 日 can also mean "sun" (it looks like a sun, eh? =P) and 天 is more related to the heavens and sky. But both are used in Chinese in terms that mean things relating to days, daily, routines, etc.

When I was thinking of the Japanese terms though, in my head I thought I had remembered that the prefixes were more blatant. But I realized I was thinking of the German terms! (I realize that mixup doesn't make much sense, but I learned those languages within a year of each other so...that explains a little.)
today - heute
yesterday - gestern
day before yesterday - vorgestern
tomorrow - morgen
day after tomorrow - übermorgen
two days after tomorrow überübermorgen

Anyway, I got so excited about knowing something that I felt I wanted to write a blog post on it, even on this old one that no one reads anymore. :-)