Messages : 40
Langue: English
Vestitor (Voir le profil) 10 juin 2015 21:46:48
Mustelvulpo:i remember in my first year of high school I asked my French teacher why the French say "I have 14 years" rather than "I an 14 years old." Her answer: "Because God wants it that way!" That was a good enough answer for me and I've never asked such a question since.That seems to me a wholly inadequate answer and definitely no reason not to pursue a better one. Whether a person accepts it or not is up to them.
eshapard (Voir le profil) 10 juin 2015 22:05:07
Vestitor:I think you missed the sub-text here. I think he's saying that the sarcastic answer he got was enough to make him realize that no one really knows the answers to such questions, or that there wasn't any use asking such questions (since they obviously irritate teachers).
That seems to me a wholly inadequate answer and definitely no reason not to pursue a better one. Whether a person accepts it or not is up to them.
Vestitor (Voir le profil) 10 juin 2015 22:52:08
Fenris_kcf (Voir le profil) 10 juin 2015 22:59:29
In fact "having" makes much more sense (and you surely know that Esperanto uses this form too). Maybe you can imagine it as "having 14 years on the personal life-counter".
yyaann (Voir le profil) 11 juin 2015 00:20:24
Fenris_kcf:In fact "having" makes much more sense (and you surely know that Esperanto uses this form too).Much more? Surely it also does make sense to say you're old of a certain amount of years just like in German and English?
eshapard (Voir le profil) 11 juin 2015 01:06:08
Fenris_kcf:Oh, c'mon as if "being 14 years" made any more sense than "having 14 years" ...He was 13 or 14 year old when he said that and probably in his first foreign language class. Give him a break!
And can we not argue about which makes more sense? They both make sense. Old is an adjective so, am makes more sense. Years are nouns, so have makes more sense... it can go on forever.
yyaann (Voir le profil) 11 juin 2015 02:10:04
eshapard:And can we not argue about which makes more sense? They both make sense. Old is an adjective so, am makes more sense. Years are nouns, so have makes more sense... it can go on forever.That was kind of my point.
Gotta appreciate the irony of me, a Frenchman, defending the Germanic way and him/her, a German person, championing the Romance way though. Tempodivalse (Voir le profil) 11 juin 2015 04:03:58
yyaann:Or how about Russian - Сколько тебе/вам лет? - How many years to/for you?eshapard:And can we not argue about which makes more sense? They both make sense. Old is an adjective so, am makes more sense. Years are nouns, so have makes more sense... it can go on forever.That was kind of my point.
There are so many ways to express the same, seemingly simple concept ... in Russian the doors will say "on yourself" and "away from yourself" (на себя, от себя), not "push/press" or "pull" as you see in the US.
eshapard (Voir le profil) 11 juin 2015 04:28:01
Tempodivalse:And then (if I recall correctly) to say that you have something you say something like "at my place [exists]". I never did get the hang of when to use the word for exists and when not to, but native speakers all know.
Or how about Russian - Сколько тебе/вам лет? - How many years to/for you?
There are so many ways to express the same, seemingly simple concept ... in Russian the doors will say "on yourself" and "away from yourself" (на себя, от себя), not "push/press" or "pull" as you see in the US.
It doesn't matter how you say these things, as long as it works.
Tempodivalse (Voir le profil) 11 juin 2015 05:01:09
eshapard:And then (if I recall correctly) to say that you have something you say something like "at my place [exists]". I never did get the hang of when to use the word for exists and when not to, but native speakers all know.Yes - "at me [there is] X" (у меня [есть] X). You can say "I possess/own X", but this can sound contrived or too formal.
The rules for when exactly to use есть are not always obvious, and most native speakers don't even think about it (I certainly don't).
However, as a (very) general rule: the presence of есть indicates indefiniteness, while its absence indicates definiteness, kind of like the English the.
For instance:
Спички у тебя? = Do you have the matches?
У тебя есть спички? = Do you have (some) matches?
But, I don't want to digress too much. Let's just be happy Esperanto is more straightforward!