Fun English foibles

[Annie Subjunctive]

avant-hier = literally "The day before yesterday."

I'm trying to figure out why this isn't as cool to me as the Japanese words ototoi and asatte. At first, I thought it was because the words weren't related to the words yesterday and tomorrow at all, but I looked at the kanji and it turns out they are.

?? = kinou = yesterday
= ototoi = day before yesterday (lit: one-previous-day)
?? = ashita = tomorrow
= asatte = day after tomorrow (lit: bright-after-day)

Those aren't cool and original at all.... only their readings. My guess is that native Japanese already had pronunciations like ototoi and then when the Chinese introduced writing, they just assigned some kanji to go with it, rather than give it a new name based on the Chinese pronunciation of the kanji.

[goofy]

So you're looking for words for "day after tomorrow" and "day before yesterday" that are opaque or not analyzable into components or whatever the term is. The Japanese words might have been opaque back in the day.

Telugu has
?valimonna n. the day before the day before yesterday.
? ?valellu??i adv. the day after the day after tomorrow.
?? a?umonna adv. the day before the day before yesterday, three days ago.
?? monna n. and adv. the day before yesterday

[Annie Subjunctive]

Interesting.

Goofy, who are you, by the way?

[goofy]

Interesting.

Goofy, who are you, by the way?

I'm just a guy who reads Jonathon's blog and I sort of invited myself on here.

[Jonathon]

It's not like you needed an invitation. My policy has always bee that anyone's welcome to join, though so far almost everyone here I either know from Hatrack or am directly related to.

[Tante Shvester]

Invitations weren't required?  I'd have been here sooner if I hadn't waited for mine to come.

[Annie Subjunctive]

I didn't mean to sound hostile. I was just admiring your skills of a linguist.

[pooka]

So you're looking for words for "day after tomorrow" and "day before yesterday" that are opaque or not analyzable into components or whatever the term is.

I was going to observe that the german terms are fairly predictable for german morphological habits.  English is the weird one, but I guess that's why this is the Fun English foibles thread.  

I do have a habit of calling my boss' boss and friends of friends grandboss and grandfriend.  Then I can talk about my great great grand boss and so forth.  But it probably annoys people the way it annoyed me how my mom used to stress the penultimate syllable of daffodil.  Freak.

[Annie Subjunctive]

That sounds kind of similar to weird missionary lingo, such as "mom" (or "dad") referring to the companion who trained you. And if you had a new companion your second transfer (when you're still a "new missionary" and thus in your childhood), she is your stepmom. And when you go home you die.

This had some pretty disastrous results when I met up for lunch with some old companions a while ago. "Did you know that Elder C died? I can't believe it!"
"Elder C?! He's DEAD?!"
"Yeah. Shinjirarenai, ne?"

(a third companion:) "He's dead? Oh my heavens. What happened?"
"I know. We're so old!" *pause* "You do know I'm talking about mission dead, right?"
"Oh," visibly relieved. "I forgot. Yikes. I'm glad he's OK."

[Porter]

That sounds kind of similar to weird missionary lingo, such as "mom" (or "dad") referring to the companion who trained you. And if you had a new companion your second transfer (when you're still a "new missionary" and thus in your childhood), she is your stepmom. And when you go home you die.

I've never heard any of that before.

[goofy]

I was going to observe that the german terms are fairly predictable for german morphological habits.  English is the weird one, but I guess that's why this is the Fun English foibles thread.

How is English the weird one? Yesterday and tomorrow are as unalysable as hier and demain, or ototoi and asatte.

Speaking of Japanese, check out this cool phonological/mathematical pattern in the numbers. It's clearer if we look at Old Japanese:
fitö- 1   
futa- 2

mi- 3   
mu- 6

yö- 4
ya- 8

In modern Japanese:
hitotsu - 1
futatsu - 2

mittsu - 3
muttsu - 6

yottsu - 4
yattsu - 8

A change in the vowel indicated a doubling of the number.

[Annie Subjunctive]

...which is really handy unless you have a hard time differentiating between yokka and youka, and you show up for an appointment on the 8th day of the month instead of the 4th.

Japanese numerals are pretty fascinating. A lot of the counters use the native Japanese pronunciations, but a lot use the Sino-Japanese numerals. So  whereas one number concept has one word associated with it in my English brain, in the Japanese brain, "4" can have multiple linguistic equivalents, all based on two basic roots that sound nothing like each other.

[pooka]

How is English the weird one?

Because we have to use a phrase to express  "day before yesterday" and "day after tomorrow" rather than employ agglutinative morphology, which is certainly available in other aspects of the language.  I think it may be more common with Latin stems, though, while our units of time descend from the Germanic line.  

I think I've heard "die" with respect to a last area.  It's the opposite of being green.  We get so many greenies in our area, it's crazy.  More than half, for sure, and we've only had two die in the two years I've been on the mission committee.  One was sneaky and never let on that that was the case.