From thorild@UPDATE.UU.SE Fri May 12 16:38:30 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 8469 invoked from network); 12 May 2000 23:38:30 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m1.onelist.org with QMQP; 12 May 2000 23:38:30 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO Zeke.Update.UU.SE) (130.238.11.14) by mta3 with SMTP; 12 May 2000 23:38:29 -0000 Received: (from thorild@localhost) by Zeke.Update.UU.SE (8.8.8/8.8.8) id BAA02914; Sat, 13 May 2000 01:38:27 +0200 Date: Sat, 13 May 2000 01:38:27 +0200 Message-Id: <200005122338.BAA02914@Zeke.Update.UU.SE> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] centripetality: subset vs component In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20000512183902.00a6d4d0@127.0.0.1> References: <4.2.2.20000512183902.00a6d4d0@127.0.0.1> X-Mailer: VM 6.34 under Emacs 20.2.2 From: Thorild Selen Bob LeChevalier (lojbab) writes: > Not likely if we are talking dates. If the listener only wants the century, > then giving the date to any greater significance is drowning him in > irrelevance. This brings up another interesting question; how should you specify a century? In English, you usually say "the 18:th century" where a Swede would say "the 1700:s". I admit that the second version is somewhat ambigous, since it could possibly be intended to mean only the years 1700-1709, but, on the other hand, the n:th century style seems kind of off by one, and therefore causes confusion among those who aren't used to it; also, it doesn't look a bit like how you talk about decades in any language that I know, and to be consistent with that style you'd possibly have to consider talking about, for example, the 171:th decade. Does anyone have a good suggestion for how to talk about centuries and decades in lojban? /Thorild