IIRC they used a slightly different calendar in Daggerfall, but I guess they changed it to make it less confusing perhaps? I hoestly haven't given it much thought.

It not only keeps things clear for players, it keeps things clear for the writers.

In the old D&D Forgotten Realms campaign (not sure how it is now), a week was ten days. This was according to Greenwood, right in the original Campaign setting. Yet you seemed to have more FR products mentioning or alluding to 7-day weeks than you did products acknowledging the 10-day week. This was mostly due to TSR's sloppiness/laziness in those days, with too many designers contributing to too many products, and many products having very little to do with FR beyond the label on the cover.

Bethesda has multiple writers contributing literature and dialogue all over the game world. Keeping track of the names of the months is enough for them without having to remember things like a week being x number of days.

I dont think there is any quest in game that requires you to know the calendar anyway.

What I find more complexing is 'Why do people always try to over-intellectualize everything in Skyrim?'

It's a game

And this is why I can never understand why people treat this stuff like its Law.

Until Bethesda come along and says `This is how it really is` it`s all twaddle.

Well, I'll take an event I saw in the game as fact, but I don't even take the books in-game as hard fact. Too many of them contradict each other.

And lo, there were lulz.

OP here. I don't think it would be all that hard if they made the TES calender different. They already changed the names of the months and days. Would it be so hard to - for example; have 9 days of the week and 8 months in a year?

But no, they followed our exact calender. 12 months. 7 days. Same number of days our 9th month has as their 9th month. Same leap years. etc.

The same reason why imperials, bretons, nords and redguards look like human beings or why most of the alien races in sci fi resemble humans...
A fantasy setting totally disconnected from our reality makes people less attached to it. It's okay to have walking lizards and cats, it's okay to have two moons but you also have to provide enough 'hooks' to common reality for people to accept it. Besides, changing the calendar is one minor aspect most don't even notice beyond the obvious change of date

Oh yes. They'd have to invent completely new numbers for the solar system, basically. How many days in a year - it isn't a round number - which affects the frequency of leap years. The months are originally based on the cycles of the Moon (hence the name) so they'd have to invent new lunar cycles, etc. Easier to simply use the figures for Earth rather than waste time coming up with plausible numbers for things like that.

It wouldn't need to be plausible. TES lore has a moment in time where the moons Masser and Secunda disappear for two years. Thats just one example of things already in the game that are not plausible.

I really don't think changing a few numbers around would have bee difficult or confusing.

If they made one of the months have 18 days and another month have 45 would that really blow your minds? No, not really.

Leave the calender alone. Its been this way since at least Daggerfall. Changing it now would be, well pointless.

But that would just be an outright nonsensical calendar. The length of months in our own system isn't arbitrary; they were based off the approximate length of time it takes to go from full moon to full moon. They're off, of course, but that's the general idea. What would having one 18 day month and one 45 day month mean? That would be so varied it couldn't even be explained by subsequent modifications, which is why we have some 30 day months and some 31 day months, with one 28 day month.

There's just no point in having an utterly nonsensical calendar based on nothing at all - one that would seem like it was created by Sheogorath, in fact - when they work to make so many other things in the world seem logical and plausible.

Also, the question of Masser and Secunda disappearing was some unusual supernatural event. Calendars are by definition based on regular, mundane, predictable events.

Well all the more reason why they should have come up with another calender. Since Nirn has two moons. Let's thank Lorkan for that.It wasn't my idea for Lorkan to be broken into two and become the moons. *Shrugs*

Another OT question: Why is it in the real world we have different languages, different coinage, different measuring units, but we share the same clock? Everyone uses 24 hour days, 7 day weeks, etc

Well, although it's likely highly unlikely in terms of orbital mechanics, but apparently Secunda orbits Masser, while Masser orbits Nirn. As I say, they're too similar in size and too close to Nirn for this to seem feasible to me in terms of the orbital mechanics, but that I can't really say for sure. Even if they orbited separately, they would orbit at separate rates, and months would likely be based on which ever moon's orbital period was more convenient - or, if they're both similar, which ever one seems larger from the surface of Nirn.

But as I say, Bethesda has two options: (1) create new orbital periods and a new length for the year, and come up with some sort of calendar based on this, or just (2) go with the simpler option and stick with Earth's solar calendar, and just rename the months and days of the week.

They went with the second option and put their efforts elsewhere.

The Catholic Church.

Because mechanical clocks started out in Europe and spread from there, so everybody globally adopted the conventions of the society that created the clock.

As far as days of the weeks go, though, I'm not sure everybody does use a 7 day week. You'd have to look it up, but it wouldn't surprise me if perhaps some Eastern societies don't, but I really couldn't say. If seven day weeks truly are a global cultural feature, it might well derive from there being roughly four 7-day weeks in a month.

bah its just easier

try inventing a new calender based on a totally different solar system, u will go mad and die

In the East, like Russia, they had a different calender but it was do to the Catholic Church and their influence that even the most suborn nations adopted the Gregorian Calender.

LOL

not really

here we use the updated Canaanite calendar (which is pretty standard with different names) AND the islamic lunar calender

it is very confusing (not really )

I think they used the Julian calendar longer, but the fact is that the Gregorian calendar isn't just a cultural feature; it fixed some inaccuracies in the older Julian calendar.

Well actually I'm glad they did put their efforts elsewhere lol. A new calender wouldn't exactly be a big selling point! If having to make a new calender would have made the game somehow less than it is at the moment then I'm glad they went with option 2.

This is true. French is the most "Germanic" of the Latin languages, for historical reasons (and no, I'm not talking about the bad WWII jokes). The Franks were germanic tribes and did influence the Latin spoken in Gaul. Also, more recently, don't forget the shared history of Britain and France when they shared the same monarchs (Normans and all that stuff). French influenced English a lot, and vice versa. Also, modern French is the dialect which was spoken in Paris (langue d'o?l) because it was the language of kings and official documents and such, which had more Germanic influence than langue d'Oc which was spoken in Southern France.

I know I'm simplifying a bit but that's the jist of it.

Do note that today's French has more vocabulary in common with English than with any other language (Spanish, Italian, etc.).

True enough. There have been multiple instances or waves of French influence on the English vocabulary. I can't think offhand of any examples deriving from the Norman invasion (which would have influenced the upper class more than the main body of English society) but certainly more modern examples include words like apartment, department, bureau and the like, which are pretty much straight cognates with their French equivalents, and which largely are no more than about two centuries old or so, at least in terms of English.

What kills me is that the modern French - at least the Academy - is so paranoid about the inclusion of foreign words into modern French. They take this to the point of trying to get people to adopt "French" alternatives to foreign words like "computer" and "email" and the like. People still accept the foreign words in everyday conversation, of course, but if I'm remembering right, there might be some laws against these sorts of words finding their way into official legal documents, advertising, and so forth. Utterly mystifying.