Hey everyone,
What's up with {za'o}?
It is defined as "continuing too long after natural end of ...".
Maybe I just misunderstand that definition, however,
many things {ba'e} don't have a natural end and people seem
to use it more as "continuing past some salient point in time"
(probably often "now") or simply "continuing".
I find that usage of za'o is in general pretty sloppy. I think that it is incorrectly used by many as a translation for "still", e.g. "She's still asleep" -> {.i za'o sipna}. In *some* cases, it does work there, if the she in this context was supposed to wake up. But given the context where 'she' wasn't supposed to have awoken, using za'o is wrong, IMO.
Another incorrect example of za'o use arises in the chapter 10 picture of the CLL, showing someone skateboarding off a pier with the caption {za'o klama}. Of course, the drawing is meant in jest, but that doesn't make it any less wrong. klama defines a destination and an origin of travel and saying that someone who skateboarded off a pier "travelled for too long" is a bit of a stretch, pe'i.
As for "for too long", I believe that's the ideal gloss for {za'o}. All the other ZAhO are about fundamentally temporal relations, and using them otherwise is metaphorical at best. We have {fe'e} to convert temporal tenses into spatial tenses, after all.
Using {za'o} implies that there is some kind of natural ending point. If someone is given six months to live due to some terminal illness, if they survive any longer, then they are {za'o jmive}, pe'i. Likewise, if someone anticipates finishing their homework at 20:00, but only finished at 4:00, then they are {za'o zdakemkulgu'a} until they complete that work.
From a human perspective, it seems like almost any event can be construed to have some kind of natural ending point, but perhaps that lies more in the realm of belief than anything else.
As for incorrect uses of za'o as translating some instances of "still", {ca'o} is usually better in my experience.
.i mi'e la tsani mu'o