Comment on Happy Birthday
unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyz 3 months agoI am fairly certain math and time are well understood concepts in non- English speaking cultures
Comment on Happy Birthday
unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyz 3 months agoI am fairly certain math and time are well understood concepts in non- English speaking cultures
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Idioms and phrasing in English are not.
What’s the literal meaning of “his days are numbered”?
nickiwest@lemmy.world 3 months ago
There are multiple references to this in the Bible. This is the most uplifting one I found.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You think a person who doesn’t speak English has read the Bible in English?
What’s the literal meaning of the words?
BlackDragon@slrpnk.net 3 months ago
It means that you can place a specific number on the number of days left in a person’s life? I’m not sure I understand the question because the meaning of this one is pretty easy to see. Normally it is unclear when your death will be, but if someone tells you that your days are numbered they are implying that they possess the exact knowledge of what number of days you have left to live.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Or the number of days since their birth? That’s the simpler explanation.
“Those apples are numbered” = “we know how many apples there are right now”
If you don’t know the context, you could easily assume that’s the meaning.
BlackDragon@slrpnk.net 3 months ago
No, that does not make equal literal sense to what I said. Because days that are in the past are gone, we don’t have them anymore. We refer to moving through time as “killing” time or as “losing” time, in English we don’t tend to think of the past as something we currently have. The future is something we have or will have, the past is something we had and no longer have.