Months
In the modern Thai calendar, months (Deuan, Thai: เดือน, meaning "month" or "Lunation") are defined by lunar cycles. Successive months (or lunations) are numbered from 1 to 12 within the Thai year. As in other Buddhist calendars, these months have names that derive from Sanskrit, but for the most part are only known by Thai astrologers.
Two successive lunations take slightly more than 59 days. The Thai lunar calendar approximates this interval with "normal-month" pairs (ปรกติมาสฅ ปกกะติมาด Pok-ga-ti-mat) that are alternately 29 and 30 days long. 29-day "hollow months" (เดือนขาด deuan kàat) are odd-numbered (เดือนคี่ deuan kêe); 30-day "full months" (เดือนถ้วน deuan tûan) are even-numbered (เดือนคู่ deuan kôo).
To keep the beginning of the month in sync with the new moon, from time to time either the normally "hollow" Month 7 takes an extra day, or an extra "full" Month 8 follows a normal "full" Month 8.
Months 1 and 2 are named in archaic alternate numbers, with the remainder being named in modern numbers.
Read more about this topic: Thai Lunar Calendar
Famous quotes containing the word months:
“I’m 65 and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics. But if there were fifteen months in every year, I’d only be 48. That’s the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example. I think they deserve to have more than twelve years between the ages of 28 and 40.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“O months of blossoming, months of transfigurations,
May without cloud and June stabbed to the heart,
I shall not ever forget the lilacs or the roses
Nor those the spring has kept folded away apart.”
—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)
“I find that with me low spirits and feeble health come and go together. The last two or three months I have had frequent attacks of the blues. They generally are upon me or within me when I am somewhat out of order in bowels, throat, or head.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)