Hi, Alexander!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

ak>  On/in -- yes we think differently. Although Americans, 
ak>  for instance, gave up "in" when they speak about streets. 
ak>  They accept that events happen on the street, like in 
ak>  Russia, not in the street, as the British speakers say. ;)


          As a Canadian I'm used to hearing both, and until now I hadn't given much thought to who might prefer one over the other.  When I consult my memory bank I find a few stock expressions... but as yet it's not clear to me whether there is any significant difference between the two.  In some cases at least I reckon the choice may depend on the nature of the event & the number of people who all want to occupy the same space at the same time.  I can accept "the man on the street" who easily fits on the sidewalk, whereas I also accept "there's panic in the streets" when e.g. Godzilla is laying waste to Tokyo....  :-Q



AH>  Question: I notice that the Orthodox Palm Sunday occurs a 
AH>  week later than ours, and the Orthodox Pascha occurs a week 
AH>  later than our Easter.  How do Orthodox churches calculate 
AH>  such dates & does "Pascha" +/- = "Easter"?  I'm aware of
AH>  phrases such as "paschal lamb" but can't quite connect 
AH>  the dots.

ak>  Paskha is the Russian word for Easter. 

  
          Thank you.

          Allowing for minor variations in spelling, which often tend to occur when somebody is transliterating from Hebrew &/or Russian into English, that's more or less what I expected... but I didn't want to jump to conclusions.  :-)



ak>  Quite often both events happen in one day. 


          Hmm... I reckon that's entirely possible.  In some years the two are about a month apart, though, IIRC.  :-)



ak>  The problem is in ...mathematics and stubbornness. :)


          Nicely put!  Yes, we all have traditional ways of doing things which make perfect sense to us although they may not to others.  I'm very interested in how Russians think because folks like you keep returning to this echo.  :-)



ak>  Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Jews have different 
ak>  mathematics formulas for calculating the passover day.


          Uh-huh.  Having been brought up as a Protestant, I can tell you that Easter occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Equinox. If you say it quickly & it's what you're used to & everyone else you know uses the same calendar it's not that difficult.  But if Orthodox Christians use the Julian calendar & Jewish people use a lunar calendar I'm interested in how the systems fit together.  It does seem that Easter occurs shortly after Passover.

          I'm the sort of person who wants to know why... so when we visited a Russian Orthodox church in Alaska & were given a very nice explanation WRT why they do things the way they do, I understood completely.  Some folks responded to what various popes were doing by going back to the old way of doing things, while others suggested ways of making improvements to the current system.  :-)



AH>  In general we'd say "payday" without using either the 
AH>  definite or indefinite article....:-Q

ak>  However if speak about a particular payday we probably 
ak>  should use "the". < The previous payday of Dec. 15 was 
ak>  partial. >


          Depending on the context, I think that might work....  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+