Re: I should know my own birthday by now. (was: Re: me and my languages)

Robert Hailman wrote:
>Actually, my birthday is in November. You'd think I'd know that by now.
>(And I didn't just copy and paste from Patrick's e-mail, either.)
>
>ObConlang/Conculture: Are the speakers of your conlang inclined to the
>kind of stupidity I've just demonstrated?
>
>The Ajuk aren't.
Given that many Tairezazh planets employ local "years" based on the orbital
period of that particular planet in addition to the official "terran year"*,
I suspect that at least children often find it nigh-impossible to remember
their age. And exactly what kind of "day" is you birthday - a local solar
day, a local clock day (which'd normally be based on the solar day in the
planetary capital) or a standard terran day?

*The official calender is basically a descendant of GMT, but the connection
to the Earth's actual movements was abandoned millenia ago - so it's been
gradually going out of synch. The standard "year" and "day" are therefore
really only arbitrary multiples of the basic unit (the second). Dates are
usually given relative to the Congress of Terra, which formally established
the Federation of Planets about 5,500 standard years before the "present" of
the con-history. (This Federation did never include even the majority of
human-inhabited planets, and collapsed about 2,300 standard years before the
present - the diadoch states includes Taireza and Steiana.)

                                              Andreas

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