check it, ive had this argument with numerous Taiwanese youths… i say pregnancies last 9 months… they say 10… have i lost my mind? like its 9 months right?
Maybe it depends on the definition of month ? 30 v 28 days ? and also on the definition of ‘nine’, you know how Taiwanese add a couple when they calculate dates.
How long is pregnancy anyway ? I looked up ‘pregnancy’ on google and got hundreds of sites on trimesters and breastfeeding, no pregnancy sites seem to say how long it is. One online encyclop
I was curious about this too. When my wife was pregnant we found that the Taiwanese calculate using the lunar calendar - eg every 28 days equals 1 month. So, a common 280 day pregnancy would be 10 months. My wife is very proud of me knowing this.
I’m pregnant now and am very annoyed at the different ways of counting pregnancy days. I never know what to tell people when they ask how far along I am!
Doctors are using the 40 week system nowadays: start counting from the last day of the last period (I guess that’s considered the age of the egg that is starting to get released).
To make a long story short, 40 weeks really is 10 months, and we usually say weeks now, not months. The ‘old’ system (when we said it was 9 months) was actually 9 1/2 months, I think.
AVERAGE PREGNACY= 266-270 DAYS.
9 MONTH X 30 DAY (AVG)= 270 DAYS.
MAKES SENSE TO ME.
OR IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY MATH? :saywhat:
The difference is accounted for by the definition of a month.
Based on 37
There’s really no mystery. In western countries we say that pregnancy lasts nine months. In Asia (or at least in Taiwan and Korea, the only countries in Asia where I’ve had a conversation about this) they say it lasts ten months. The difference is in how they calculate a month. A human pregnancy lasts for 40 weeks, give or take. Counting lunar months, where 4 weeks is a month, this adds up to ten months. However, we don’t usually pay much attention to the lunar calendar in the West, do we? If you count months as in January, February, March, etc., where each is 30 or 31 days, you will end up with 40 weeks equalling about nine months.
You might also note that a year has 52 weeks, and that 52 minus 40 is 12. Twelve weeks is about three months, so therefore the Asians evidently think that a year has 13 months. And by the lunar count, it does. By the normally used western calendar, it doesn’t. There’s no point arguing about it. Just be careful when you’re translating anything about pregnancy.
My Korean friends looked at me likeI was insane or stupid the first time I mentioned a friend’s pregnancy of nine months, and corrected me. This was about the same time as the appearance of the movie ‘Nine Months’ in Korea. I wondered at the time what they thought the title referred to - a premature birth? Afterwards I realized it was just a cultural difference.
The average month is 30.4375 days.
If the average pregnancy is 40 weeks, then that is 9.2 months.
If the average pregnancy is 270 days, then that is 8.87 months.
Anyone who says different can’t do math (or is talking about lunar months).
Brian