Counting years.

> Date:         Wed, 5 Jan 2000 07:01:10 +0100
> From: Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
> At 5:56 pm -0500 4/1/00, Nik Taylor wrote:
> >True, but we use zero in ages.  A child isn't "1" at birth, but rather
> >"0", altho we actually say "newborn".
> True, but s/he is in her/his 1st year.  For most of our lives we normally
> say we are 12, 29, 29, 45 etc etc.  But when people reach a certain age and
> are proud to have survived so long, they often change from the use of
> _cardinal_ number of completed years they have chalked up, so to speak, and
> use the _ordinal_ value of the year they are in in, e.g.  "I'm in my 95th
> year" (instead of saying: "I'm 94").
The old usage in Denmark (at least if you believe historical novels)
was something like "She went in her fourteenth summer" --- which would
be true if her thirteenth anniversary day was anywhere from the start
of the previous winter to the end of that summer.

(Cue Boudewijn on how she would be likely to wend).

Current Danish usage is "jeg er 39" (I'm 39), but there's a marked
form "jeg er fyldt 39" (I'm filled 39) which used to be normal. (Now
it means either that I just turned 39, or that I don't want to admit
that I'm 40 very soon now).

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)