numbers - Do we use odd day pronunciations outside of calendar ranges?

After reading @jkerian's comment in this post, I started thinking about this. Here's the comment in full:

On a side note, all days ending in '4' are also irregular, and use ~よっか. So the 14th is じゅうよっか, the 24th is にじゅうよっか, even though all the other days >10 switch over to ~にち

Obviously the most calendar days is 31, but does this rule apply if I want to refer to the 34th day? Or 84? Or any number of day that ends in 4? Or twenty (はつか - ２０日)? Or do these rules only apply to so-called "calendar" speak?

I realize there are probably better ways of saying such things, but here are some examples:

• 事故から４４日目　→　The 44th day since the accident. （よんじゅうよっかめ or よんじゅうよ（ん）にちめ?）


• 裁判長は犯人に120日間の懲役を申し渡した。　→　The judge sentenced the criminal to 120 days in prison. (ひゃくはつかかん or ひゃくにじゅうにちかん?)


• 宇宙探査機が2374日間で往復した。　→　The spacecraft made its round-trip in 2374 days. (にせんさんびゃくななじゅうよっかかん　or にせんさんびゃくななじゅうよ（ん）にちかん?）

Answer

We actually asked my teachers this question (all native speakers, PhD'd professional language teachers) , and they had to confer.

They concluded that if you were counting days in the year (like some business calenders do), day 364 would have been さんびゃくろくじゅうよっか.

Note that this example is still basically "a date" ('calender-speak', as you said), so I'm not sure about your examples that specify time periods, and I was taught that these variants were limited to dates. I can't speak authoritatively, but I would use にち for every one of your example sentences.