Re: R: Re: New to the list

On Fri, 13 Oct 2000, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> On Fri, 13 Oct 2000, Adam Walker wrote:
>
> > Which brings me to an ob/conlang: how do you say I'm X years old in your
> > conlang, and does that mean that you have had X anniversaries of your
> > birthdate (as in English) or that you have lived in all or part of X number
> > of years (as in Chinese).  Do you count from birth, conception or some other
> > event?
>
> Haven't done the word for "year" yet, isn't that silly?  But you don't
> use "year" per se anyway in Chevraqis, you use the season you were born
> in, and add a year for time spent in the womb (Chevraqis-speakers are
> human, and they round the 9 mos. up to a year).
>
> Probably you'd say something like "I have 14 summers," though I'm still
> figuring out how to express "to have" (probably going to use the verb
> "to exist" instead of creating a new verb).  This would only count the
> summers you'd lived through, plus the womb-time.
YOu could do what Biblical Hebrew does:

yesh li sus
There.is to.me horse
I have a horse

I've always found that elegant.

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