Aujourd'hui - What does it all mean??

[The Riff-Raff Element]

I know what it means in the sense that it means "today" but from where does the word come, I've written aujord'hui, I suppose, hundreds of times, but I only really looked at it hard for the first time this afternoon when I was preparing a lesson plan on "time." That strange little apostroph in the middle is very odd. If I look it up in the dictionary I get a definition but no etymology (try saying that three times fast!). I can break it up to "au jour d'hui" but what is "hui?" My dictionary gives no clues.

Does anyone know?

[cooperlola]

Have a look at

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aujourd'hui

You have to click on the hui link for a full explanation but literally, "on the day of today" (on this day)

[Russethouse]

Could it be connected to the word 'huit' and be something to do with a working 8 hour day ?

(Although I would have thought that in days gone by it was likely working days were much longer - perhaps it refers to the 8 hours sleep?)

[Richard T]

There's an interesting explanation (in French and German) at http://www.etymologie.info/~e/f_/fr-kalend.html .

In essence "hui" comes from the Latin word "hodie" meaning "of this day". "Hodie" itself seems to be a contraction of "hoc" and "die", the "die" clearly meaning "day".

Richard T

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Aaaahhhhhh - hoc die. So,  au jour de "hoc die""the day that is this day"

That makes sense. Thank you one and all. I realise now that I could have looked on Wiki Woki Woo, but to be honest I don't quite trust it (there's stuff on Wikipedia that I know to be wrong but I am lacking the ability and the inclination to change it). And there are many well educated people on this forum. And it is quite fun to discuss rather than look everything up.

Interesting that French still has some nice little oddities lurking around.

Thanks again,

[Pixie Toadstool]

Michel Thomas says that they changed from just saying hui (meaning today) to "at the day of today" because hui and oui sound the same - so for clarity of communication the aujourd'hui was used instead.

Pix

[Tourangelle]

But there are so many words in French that sound similar to each other, why change this one?  what about fish and sin? 

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

[quote user="Tourangelle"]But there are so many words in French that sound similar to each other, why change this one?  what about fish and sin? 

[/quote]

Perhaps because "today" and  "yes" are used so much.

English has words like that, that sound the same, but mean completely different things. Read and red for example. And then of course present tense read (same word, different pronounciation just to confuse even more).

What I don't understand is why they didn't just change the word "yes" to "si" like in Spanish or Italian.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote user="LyndaandRichard"][quote user="Tourangelle"]But there are so many words in French that sound similar to each other, why change this one?  what about fish and sin? 

[/quote]

Perhaps because "today" and  "yes" are used so much.

English has words like that, that sound the same, but mean completely different things. Read and red for example. And then of course present tense read (same word, different pronounciation just to confuse even more).

[/quote]

You can imagine the confusion:

"Est-ce qu'il arrive hui?"

"Hui?"

"Hui, oui!"

"Non, je marche tout le temps comme ça!"

I asked my class of 8-11 year olds this question yesterday afternoon in their English lesson. That confused the little blighters - they kept pointing out that aujourd'hui is French. None of them could answer, so their teacher (who confided to me that she didn't know either but would quite like to) set it as a homework!