Months
The various Adaduanan cycles within the year are given a number of appellations, which are not the same from place to place, and of course never quite the same from year to year, since there are fewer than nine and more than eight cycles in any one year. OpƐpon (OpƐ, harmatan, dry season; pon, supreme) for example, more or less corresponds to the Adaduanan which appears about January–February in the middle of the dry season. Every three years or so, one of the nine named Adaduanan is omitted from the year because of the extra thirteen days gained when observing nine cycles a year. The names of the Adaduanan are therefore flexible and vary over time and cline.
Today some of the names for the Adaduanan cycles have been arbitrarily applied to the Gregorian calendar of twelve months by some Akan scholars, although there is no traditional basis for such a translation. For example, Opepon is now used for the Akan word for January even though in the traditional Akan calendar there is no concept exactly corresponding to the Roman month of January (Janus the god facing the past and future). The beginning and end of each Akan year tends to be the various yam festivals celebrated around August or September.
Read more about this topic: Akan Calendar
Famous quotes containing the word months:
“And he was
there in the hall, flat on a sheet of blood that
ran down the stairs. I did appreciate it. There are few
hosts who so thoroughly prepare to greet a guest
only casually invited, and that several months ago.”
—Frank O’Hara (1926–1966)
“And do not pity C. Q. One had to choose between him and H. H., and one wanted H. H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“I’d take the bus downtown with my mother, and the big thing was to sit at the counter and get an orange drink and a tuna sandwich on toast. I thought I was living large!... When I was at the Ritz with the publisher a few months ago, I did think, “Oh my God, I’m in the Ritz tearoom.” ... The person who was so happy to sit at the Woolworths counter is now sitting at the Ritz, listening to the harp, and wondering what tea to order.... [ellipsis in source] Am I awake?”
—Connie Porter (b. 1959)