Re: The cost of time

Arnt Richard Johansen wrote:
>On Sun, 10 Feb 2002, William Annis wrote:
>
> > In English one "spends" time.  Sometimes you pass time.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > How do other languages handle this idea?  I'm thinking mostly about
> > natlangs, but conlangs that have avoided the monetary associations
> > would be interesting to me, too.
>
>AFAIK, Norwegian (my native language) has no 'spend' as a separate
>concept.  We say "bruke" both in sentences such as "å bruke en hammer"
>('to use a hammer'), and "å bruke penger" ('to use (=spend) money').  As
>for time, both "å bruke tid" and "å tilbringe tid" are possible.
>"Tilbringe" seems to be similar in meaning to German "verbringen"
>mentioned by Philip Newton upthread.
In at least my idiolect of Swedish, you can _spendera tid_ "spend time",
altho' it's very probably an anglicism. Tangentially, you can also _spendera
pengar_ "spend money". You can _bruka_ both time and money, but using this
verb strongly suggests that you're doing something sensible and productive.
_Att tillbringa en tid någonstans_ "to verbringen time somewhere" is also
possible.

>One can throw away one's time in Norwegian, just as in English.  As for
>passing time, we have a funny idiom: "å slå ihjel tiden" ('to beat time to
>death').  While the former connotes that one is spending a limited amount
>of time unwisely, the latter indicates that one has a surplus of time that
>one has to do away with.
Similarly in Swedish, you can _slå ihjäl tid_ "beat time to death". In my
idiolect you can also simply _döda tid_ "kill time", but this is a bit
jargonish. _Att kasta bort tid_ "to throw time away" is also possible, with
the same connotations as in Norwegian.

AFMCL, in Tairezazh, you would have "read during most of yesterday". I'm
short on vocab to translate the full stentence, but just to show the
construction, here's an example:

Tan stank zó farz dataiks glenévi.

"We danced during the greater part of yesterday"

                                                   Andreas

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