Re: Expressing ages

Rachel Klippenstein wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I'm trying to figure out how age is expressed in
>Ikanirae Seru, and I'm interested in knowing how other
>languages do it.
>
>The English expression "I am X (years old)" somehow
>seems rather illogical to me.
It makes sense in a "to what degree are you ..." sense. "I am X-degree old"
like "I am X-degree tall", but with different units for "degree".
This would translate in Rhean as |Kubie olec?| "to what degree (are you)
old?" But that's not how they say it. They ask:
"what is your age?" |Z'ulosta kui?|

>My current favourite is to have special verb (let's
>call it "BYEO" - I'm not sure exactly what it'd be)
>that means "am years old", so the expression would be
>"I BYEO X".  That would be a nice short way to express
>the important issue of age, which I suspect would be
>especially important to the inventors of Ikanirae
>Seru, since they are kids.
This verb "BYEO" could be some tense of "to live", which breaks down
into "I have lived X (years)". In fact, now that I think about it, it could
be the *present* tense of "to live". In Rhean a sense of "I have done such-
and-such for such-a-length (and am still doing it now)" takes the present
tense.
Laks'olak z'ulin z'umam.
twenty-two years-ACC live-1SG.PRES

Another option: "BYEO" could come from the word "year" itself, having
somehow been verbed. "I (am) year(ing) 22" / "I have yeared 22"

M