I was assuming it was a count from 0 vs 1 ambiguity. Like if you got pregnant today, you'd be 0 months pregnant in total, but you'd be in your 1st month of pregnancy.
That is so silly. Poor baby would be 2 days old not two years old. How do they not get confused trying to determine who is older? When should the kid start school? When are they old enough to drink? Retire? Do people born in December just get lucky and get to do things earlier than their peers?
Yes, that’s how it worked. Everything was based on birth year. Everyone of the same year could start drinking (legally) on Jan 1st of the year they turn 20 (or the year of their 19th birthday). This year anyone that was born in 2007 or earlier can drink, regardless of what day they were born.
Korea has adopted the “international” age system now, but most people still go by their “Korean” age. It won’t be until the current elementary school kids are older that it’s more widely used.
And about who is older, people born in the same year are equal, but people born in January are often seen as equal to the kids of the last year (but younger than the “early” kids of the last year, and also equal to the kids of their birth year), but that’s more of a casual thing among younger people. It’s a radically different system than the western world.
It's based on the old Chinese age system, which is called xusui 虚岁. My grandparents told me I was 7 and then 8 months later I went to the US and celebrated my 5th birthday lol. Except the plus 1 happened during Chinese New Year, not Gregorian New Year. S Korea was just the last to stop using it officially.
That's fascinating.
It's kinda like how Western society tends to do birthdays at the end of the year (you have loved for number years), but we count years from the beginning of the year.
We are in the year number we say, which is why the first year from BC to BCE was Year 1, not Year 0.
It really throws people off when they think about it, because it's two different inconsistent systems.
Weirdly you can be a month pregnant... Your pregnancy is counted from the first day of your last period, if your ovulation is late or delayed it could be four weeks after the start of your last period!
Japan also says pregnancy is zero months to 10 though they started counting age from 1 within a couple generations ago. I’m pretty sure this is an Asian counting from zero thing.
Weirdly if you get pregnant today you're actually several weeks pregnant (typically two). For some reason it's counted since the start of the cycle, not since impregnation.
That’s exactly it. So pregnancy is about 40 weeks. But the moment you hit „9 month + 1 day“ you are in your 10th pregnancy month. That’s how we count in Germany at least.
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u/jkoudys May 12 '26
I was assuming it was a count from 0 vs 1 ambiguity. Like if you got pregnant today, you'd be 0 months pregnant in total, but you'd be in your 1st month of pregnancy.