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Re: The cost of time

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Monday, February 11, 2002, 6:18
Wm. Annis wrote:


>In English one "spends" time. Sometimes you pass time. > >It just occured to me I have no way in Vaior to say "I spent much of >today reading." > >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.
Spanish as best I recall is quite similar to Engl.-- gastar tiempo 'to spend time', pasar tiempo 'to pass time' (pasatiempo 'a pastime'); but perder tiempo (to lose time) 'to waste time'. I think _(me, te, le etc) costó (mucho) tiempo_ 'it cost (pronoun) (a lot of time)' i.e. it took a lot of time... (I've always liked _perder el tren_ 'to lose (i.e. miss) the train', but I've never been sure if you can perder an appointment; you certainly can't perder your mother, nor do you perder the target. Oh the insanity of it all) There is a Span. idiom for "it takes (X amount of time) to do/go...' which always flummoxed me. This is _pita (time) vara_ 'to need (time) in order to...' in Kash-- e.g. yapita nim lero vara cosa ri kavatuwe 'it takes 5 days to go to Kavatu (dative)' and many permutations. I don't have the other expressions yet in Kash, either, but they won't be "monetary"; I suspect I'll go with "to lose" for "waste time" and "miss (the train)".