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When saying "Next" in reference to a time "Next" means the soonest occurrence of that. Don't skip one. If today is friday and I say "Next Saturday", that is tomorrow, not 8 days from now.
Eh, I disagree. The closest Saturday is either just "Saturday" or "this Saturday", and "next Saturday" being the one after that. Otherwise, why say "next"?
Edit: but not willing to die on that hill :)
Why use any of those options and not just a number; "three days from now" etc.? Because the flow of language can feel better or more natural using some words over others. You can also notice that the way people interpret it can change based on where in the week it is. On a Monday, "this" and "next" can have the same meaning but not on Friday.
My argument is simply that "this" and "next" should be synonymous under this context since they mean effectively the same thing by that usage. It also would mean that it won't change depending on the point in time of reference.
"Next" refers to the occurrence that follows the current. "This" means the occurrence that is present. I'm regards to days, it usually follows a week to week basis, Monday through Saturday.
If its Friday and I say "this Saturday" it's referring to the Saturday in the current week. Tomorrow. "Next Saturday" would be 8 days later.
"Next" would be completely redundant if the intent is to refer to the soonest occurrence, though. You can just say the day of the week by itself--the context of referring to a future event makes the intent 100% clear.
When we do use "next", we're literally just using it as an abbreviation of "next week's", because using it the word literally would be pointless for the reason stated above.
Well I, for one, would never personally use anything redundant in speech. Otherwise my own, personal intent, may be muddled. Language has never seen pointless redundancy as it would make no sense for there to be redundancy.
Sorry but I had to tease you there. Redundancy exists plenty in common communication, and, to avoid misinterpretation, I do typically refer days in numerical values. However the mothod of using "next" seems to have a varying definition based on who you speak with and if "next" is a pointless word to use in this context, so would "this" in "this weekend". Why use many words when few do trick? People are going to add filler words for flow of speech. Its okay for it to be useless or filler, just as people use " uhh", "but um", and "like". My argument is just that even if it is redundant, the meaning shouldn't change to the way people are effectively using it as a contraction for "next week's"
Edit: I also want to be clear, this is me dying on this hill lmao, just as the OP asked haha
Redundancies do exist, but I think we naturally try to get rid of them, mostly out of laziness probably, lol. That's the whole reason "u" and "r" ever got substituted for the words they're homophonic with. It only saves two letters, but there it is. Contractions in general are the same thing. "Goodbye" is the final form of "god be with ye", and even that is just "bye" the vast majority of the time.
We are a linguistically lazy lot.
Fare thee well!
A South African friend of mine says "Saturday" for the upcoming one and "Week Saturday" for the one that is a week and some days away. I'm not sure how widespread that is, she's the only one I've heard use it, but it does seem more clear.
That sounds a little bit like a language barrier type deal but that does make more sense to me too, since you are prefacing the Saturday with a unit of time to measure by "week"
It's really just a shortening of "a week from Saturday", so more of a dialect than language thing.
If it were a shortening like that, should it not be more akin to a contraction? Because also based on who you talk to, that's also not entirely true, some people feel that the meaning of "next" could mean "this" or "the following" based on what day of the week it is. If it were Sunday and I said next weekend, do you think that is the upcoming Saturday? Or the following Saturday?
My Indian coworkers do something similar, referring to this week as "today week"
Then if it’s Friday, what is “this Saturday”?
Next is frequently used to imply “the day following the upcoming one. Not this one, but the next one.”
My wife does that, I'll ask what she want to do "next weekend" on like Wednesday but that doesn't mean the coming Fri, Sat, Sun to her, that's "this weekend"
I can't deny it does make sense to me somewhat, last is previous, this is current, and next is the one after current, but next and this for weekends are the same until you get to Thursday in my opinion.
Why does it change based on the time of week lmao I'm not upset it just does not compute that the meaning of the word changes simply because the day of the week is different
It's inconsistent but if it were going to vary on anything it would be the current weekday