Re: Opinions on English

On Sun, 17 Sep 2000, Roger Mills wrote:

> Kash:
> On Cindu, the day has 20 hours (aro, pl. arosh), of 50 minutes, (nasa, pl.
> nasash). The day begins at midnight, called aro angasi (... beginning), or,
> aro mesa (... one), or 0100 in officialese. (Yes-- that could be confusing
> to us)
I suspect that *if* I ever get my boyfriend to calculate some celestial
mechanics for me and figure out the planet, moons, etc. the language will
divide the daylight hours into equal units and the night-time hours into
equal units, without caring that the two come out differently.  I think I
read somewhere that the Romans did this but I honestly can't remember if
that's the right source.

> "It's 8:10/ten after eight":  aroni fanu (i) mepola (...eight (and) ten)
> 0810- you can also say "teka" (tick, or "o'clock") instead of aroni.
> Since 50 is not evenly divisible by 4, they have no real way of specifying
> "quarter of an hour", though you could say e.g. "fanu ri kuha" eight at
> (one)fourth".  Rather, they  specify 10min. intervals with "kunim"(fifth) ,
> which in Terran time would actually be around 17 mins.
Neat!  :-)

> I suspect the Kash and Gwr, being relentlessly decimal,  count 400 degrees
> to the circle, so each of the twenty time zones covers 20 degrees.
> Unfortunately I drew maps based on 360 before realizing this.
<wry g>  I've drawn geographically impossible maps and then had my friend
the son of 7 generations of geologists (his parents are geology
professors at Cornell) help me figure out what to fix.  I haven't done
anything nearly as sophisticated as time zones, though.

> I think I've posted on their calendar before, but if elsewhere, a recap:
> pehan 'year' 464 days (their day = approx 25+ Terran hours); 20 aro to the
> lero 'day', 50 nasa to the aro, 100 tiki to the nasa.  16 ashurak 'month' of
> 29 lero.  There are 28 numbered days (4 sotero ~trelo of 7 days), with an
> unnumbered, free day, cinjurak, between 14 and 15.  Days 1,8,15,22 and also
> non-working days, in addition to various religious and political holidays.
:-)  Sounds fun.

I think number symbolism may show up in holidays and in *poetry* with
primes, pythagorean triples, and anything involving 5 (Chevraqis'
"magical number").  I haven't worked out anything in detail, though.

YHL