Re: Cardinal vs Ordinal Age
| From: | Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, November 9, 2003, 12:39 |
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At 08:26 3.11.2003, dansulani wrote:
>It _is_ possible to use ordinal numbers, as in
>"He is in his tenth year", but it's not usually done
>(at least in the variety of English that I speak).
In Swedish it used to be _Han är på tionde året_,
'He's on the tenth year' = 'he's 9 and going to
be 10', but it has now been replaced by
_Han är tio år_ 'He's ten years'.
The older usage was in its death throes when my
father (born 1933) was a child, and he used to
find it funny when he heard it from old people.
/BP 8^)
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
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