"m of h", "x for y" (Re: A Simplified Number System)

From: Tak To (takto_at_alum.mit.edu.-)
Date: 11/02/04 

Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 18:03:55 -0500

Arnold Victor <arvimide@earthlink.net> wrote:
AV.0> Such usages are arbitrary but internally consistent. In
AV.0> German "halb zehn" does not mean 'half past...anything'
AV.0> but 'half of ten,'

LEE Sau Dan <danlee@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote:
LSD.1> You mean "half TO ten", don't you?

Sean O'Leathlobhair wrote:
SOL.2> In modern English of my dialect, certainly "five to ten", "quarter to
SOL.2> ten" etc so by analogy "half to ten" but I have never heard that used
SOL.2> seriously.
SOL.2>
SOL.2> But "quarter of ten" seems faintly familiar as an archaic or dialect
SOL.2> usage.

Here in the left pond, "quarter of ten" sounds right and "quarter to ten"
sounds overly precise.

When I first heard the "m of h" construction here I did a double take.
To me, the usage of "of" here deviates from how "of" is usually used --
to show a part-of relationships.

On a different note, the usage of "5 for 10" in U.S. sports lingo to mean
"5 success out of 10 attempts" sounds counter intuitive to me. I suspect
that might be related to the general practice of reading "x / y" as "x for
y", as seen in supermarket prices marked as something like 2/$1 and read
as "2 for a dollar". I have always thought that $1/2 would make a lot
more sense.

Preposition, you can't be rational about them.

Tak 

--
----------------------------------------------------------------+-----
Tak To                                            takto@alum.mit.eduxx
--------------------------------------------------------------------^^
  [taode takto ~{LU5B~}]      NB: trim the xx to get my real email addr

Relevant Pages