Remembering Indonesian weekdays

Senin, Selasa, Rabu.. I've been struggling to remember those for months. Of course I listened to THE song, but that didn't help: the word for "days" were too far from the base languages I know. Plus I needed a few seconds to sing myself the song all the way to Friday to find the translation — not great.

That's until I read this reddit post, which made it all clearer.

So, sunday is Minggu, which comes from the Portuguese word Domingo 🔉, which in old Melayu became Dominggu, then became simply Minggu at the turn of the 20th Century. Easy, right?

From there, the next four days of the week are pulled from Arabic numbers. That's because in Arabic, to say "Monday", you literally say "Day 2", Tuesday is "Day 3", and so on for Wednesday and Thursday.

Check out how much each Arabic number sounds like the day of the week in Indonesian!

Friday (Jumat) and Saturday (Sabtu) also come from الجمعه 🔉 and السبت 🔉 respectively — however, those words in arabic aren't related to numbers.

So now we know: days in Indonesian are named after Arabic numbers/days, and Portuguese. I'm curious to know how people described days in Melayu before the Arabs arrived in Indonesia in the 13th century.

Also, why did Sunday get replaced? It used to be called Ahad (from الأحد 🔉), and apparently it still is called that way in Malay and some Indonesians, but for most people it got replaced by a Portuguese word, 3 centuries later. Why? If you know the answer, hit me up!

( Comic credit to Mike Organisciak, Meme credit to u/friedsoyabeanpatty )