“Last week” refers to “within the previous seven days”.

There is an ambiguity in the rules.  “A Colonist who is a Peasant may change their Job to any Job whose criteria they have met within the last week.” doesn’t actually restrict when a job may be changed, but rather allows it at a particular time, if its criteria has been met.

Each job also says when it may be gained, for example “Any Colonist can become a Peasant at any time”.  This allows someone to become a Peasant even if they haven’t met the criteria to become one in the previous week.

Another example is “A Colonist who has performed the Fish task three times in one week may become a Fisher”.  Thus, anyone who fishes 3 times in a week is allowed to become a Fisher at any time.  Had the clause read “A Colonist must perform the Fish task 3 times in a week in order to become a Fisher”, then Keba’s interpretation would be correct, in my opinion.

@ Darth Cliche: Doesn‘t “last year” refer to 2009 (for now)? Why should “last week” refer to the last seven days then? Even if you think it does, it‘s defined in the Glossary. “week” never means a period of seven days, but always a Monday to Sunday period (for the purpose of the Ruleset).

@ Tiberias: I assume these “at any time”, “who has performed the Fish task three times in one week may become a Fisher” etc. are meant as a Job‘s criteria in “A Colonist who is a Peasant may change their Job to any Job whose criteria they have met within the last week.”

I would agree to “If you fished three times a week, you may become a Fisher all next weeks, even if you haven‘t fished last week.”, so this might need fixing…

@Keba: If “last X”, where X is a period of time, is preceded with “the”, then it means “previously within the current X”. It’s a matter of syntax.

@ Darth Cliche: This may make sense logically, but “Week” is a keyword and so overwrites the “normal English” meaning of this word.

Yes, but “last” is not. Thus, the normal English meaning of “within the last week”, that is, “previously within the current week”, still applies. It’s just that “week” in “previously within the current week” has the BlogNomic definition, but this has no relevance here.

If it was just last week, it would have meant the week before this one, but within the last week is very much interpretable as from the beginning of this week until present time (as opposed to “within this week” which to me sounds more like “from present time until the end of the week”.)

@Put: Exactly. The only difference is that here we have a rigid definition of “week” (it definitely begins on Monday as opposed to Sunday, for example).

In the absence of a special definition for “week”, I would normally interpret “within the last week” as “within the 7 days that immediately precede today”.

You may interpret “Within the last week” as anything you want to. I would interpret this at the last period of Monday to Sunday even without the Glossary. It is _last_ week. It‘s like last year…

“Within one week” is _any_ period of 7 days…

But I cannot understand why we discuss how to interpret “last week”. It‘s defined as a keyword in the Glossary. This overwrites the normal English definition of that word. You may say there is an issue in the Glossary, that does not make any sense, but it is defined that way…

Well, mabye I will CjJ’ed this later, but I want to gather opinions first. I would be really interested in Purplebeard’s opinion…

@Keba: The term “within the last” is not a keyword, so it retains its normal English usage. “Within the last year” refers to (as of now) the period from April 6, 2009 to now.

Given the rules as stated, my interpretation of the various phrases are:

“week”: a period of seven days that starts at 00:00 UTC Monday
“last week”: The period of seven days that ended at the most recent 00:00 UTC Monday
“this week”: The period of seven days that started at the most recent 00:00 UTC Monday
“next week”: The period of seven days that starts at the next 00:00 UTC Monday
“one week”: Any period of seven days that starts at 00:00 UTC on a Monday

I believe that the jobs are legitimate because their descriptions don’t contain a restriction on when they can be taken, due to a wording issue with the rule.  I disagree with anyone who claims that “last week” means the part of this week that has already happened.

Right. Per “A Colonist who has performed the Mine task three times in one week may become a Miner.” DC has performed the task three times in one week and may become a miner, even though he hasn’t performed the task three times within the last week per the definition of last week.

@ Darth Cliche: I never said “within the last” is a keyword, but “week” is. So “within last week” is equal to “within last period from Monday to following Sunday”.

@ Tiberias: I agree to your interpretation, but I think “A Colonist who is a Peasant may change their Job to any Job whose criteria they have met within the last week.” explicitly refers to the last period of 7 days ended last Monday.

@ Clucky: Right, but has he “met the criteria” last week? There were no such Rule last week, do he can’t…

@Keba: In standard English usage, “within the last X” means “previously within the current X”, as I’ve already said. So “within the last week” still means “previously within the current week”.

@Keba: In standard English usage, “within the last X” means “previously within the current X”, as I’ve already said. So “within the last week” still means “previously within the current week”.

Oops, double post.

@Darth Cliche: I’m a native English (American) speaker, and have never encountered that usage.  I have encountered “within the last X” meaning “within the period of time with length X that ended a moment ago”.

Well, this does not lead to anything right now. I have an opinion and other Colonists have their opinions as well. I am quite sure no Colonist is able to convince others here, so we should simply try to fix this issue.

BTW: I have asked some people in a (German) IRC channel, whether “last year” refers to 2009 or the last twelve months. It was the same discussion like here, many people have many opinions to that point… This issue IS arguable.

@Tiberias: Do you live in the Eastern US? If so, it may be restricted to the West.

@Keba: The inclusion of a “the” makes all the difference.

@Darth Cliche: Dallas for a very long time, and San Francisco for the last year and a half or so.  I agree on “last year” and “the last year” being two very different things.

Oh, my English knowledge might be not good enough for seeing a difference between “the last year” and “last year” directly. I assume the languages (English and German) differ at that point.

Generally, Germans use articles much more often and I would translate both “within last year” and “within the last year as “innerhalb des letzen Jahres” (so with an article). This phrase without an article would sound really strange…

“Within last year” also sounds strange to an English speaker; perhaps it would be better phrased as “within 2009”, or “within the previous year”.

As far as I can tell, the use of “the” does make a difference, but I’m not sure what it is. (IMO, this is an argument for nomic language to be defined to something clear, whether or not it matches typical English usage.)

“Last week” is an entity. If something happened last week, it happened in the week preceding the current one.

“The last week” is a duration. If something happened within the last week, if happened in the period of time with duration equal to a week that ends at the current moment.

E.g. If it’s currently Wednesday, something that happened Monday happened within the last week, but didn’t happen last week.

Weirdly, “within the last day” isn’t correct English, not for any grammatical reason, but just because native speakers don’t talk that way. (Similar to getting on a plane but in a car.) Native speakers would instead say “within the last 24 hours”.

@ais Put up a proposal. I’d be interested to see what you have in mind, because I can’t think of anything myself. (Except changing to official language to Loglan, I guess, but that’s a terrible idea.)