Foreign Day Wheels

Foreign Day Wheels

Many vintage watches have foreign day wheels, some will even have a dual day wheel fitted, making it easy to switch between two languages, like Seiko models. 

Most of the watches I buy have English day wheels, but some of my watches have foreign day wheels. At first I did not like them too much, but once I learnt the foreign language abbreviations their charm grew on me. I think it is important to understand various days of the week in other languages so we can set our watches correctly. Below is an Omega with a Spanish language day wheel. The day of the week is Domingo which is Spanish or Portuguese for Sunday.

The chart below has the English day in the first column and the various days of the week opposite, in the most popular languages. The first three letters are used as an abbreviation of the day; as in the above picture.

The chart below is Russian and USSR day wheel translations. The Cyrillic languages are often written in Cyrillic and latin so this can be confusing. What makes it more confusing both are abbreviated for the days of the week. Slava or  Слава is the only watches I have owned that have used a day wheel. Like this Slava (Слава) below the day displayed is Thursday (Четверг) using the cyrillic abbreviation ЧТВ.