Re: The English/French counting system (WAS: number systems fromconlangs)
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, September 16, 2003, 2:52 |
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On Mon, Sep 15, 2003 at 07:57:41PM -0700, Joseph Fatula wrote:
> I'm finding that my own idiolect of English is rather conservative for an
> American version, and this is more evidence to that fact. I say "at a
> quarter of X", and I was born in 1981.
I never say and rarely hear "of"; it's always "'til" or "until".
Which have an interesting distribution, actually; I have never, ever heard
"quarter until" - it's alway shortened to "quarter 'til" - but I have
often heard "five minutes until" and similar.
-Mark
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