tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Aug 05 18:49:00 1996
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Re: indicating age
- From: "Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: indicating age
- Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 18:49:00 -0700
Someone (I forget who) wrote:
> > Is there canon for indicating age?
And Daniel Noll replied:
> There's nothing canon, but here's a suggestion:
>
> wa'maH Soch tera' DIS vIghaj [I have seventeen earth-years]
And I need to blow the whistle. This is an idiomatic expression. Sure, in
English (and a good number of other languages) years are something you can
"have" but that's the way English does it. There are certain verbs that often
take on funky uses, and you should be on the lookout for them. Typically
they're HAVE, DO, and BE.
My point being, you can HAVE your cake, but not your age. In Spanish you can
HAVE your hunger (tengo hambre) and you can have you cake too (which is good,
since you're hungry).
But it's all idiomatic. Don't do this again or I'll have to turn you into the
idiom authorities, and they're a nasty bunch.
Lawrence
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