Re: The cost of time

William Annis wrote:
>
> In English one "spends" time.  Sometimes you pass time.
An activity can also take a certain 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.
In Dutch, we focus on the action and not on the actor. So we do not say that
"someone spends time on something" but rather that "iets kost je tijd" ie.
"something costs you time". Also, we have a seperate verb "duren" which can
be roughly translated as "to last", which we use frequently, as in "de les
duurt een uur" i.e. "the lesson lasts one hour".

Maarten