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Re: Speaker Relative Adjectives

From:Rhialto <rhialto@...>
Date:Sunday, February 14, 1999, 20:57
[big snip]

To some extent, English already has something like that. 'old', used by a
small child, might mean about 20 years old, used by a 30-something, 60
years.

The difficulty with your word would be how the person perceives himself vs
how the listener perceives him. A person might say 'he is very werku',
meaning old, and the listener might understand that as meaning very young,
depending on the relative ages of all concerned - speaker, listener, and
topic.

As I understand it, 'werku' means 'person who is distant from me in terms of
age'. Right?

So if people who date werku people are strange, how would that be
interpreted if it was a rally old man complaining about the younger
generation?

The arabic example by Vardi, while interesting, doesn't quite feel right
here. Is the pattern productive? Is there a whole class of words used this
way, or is it merely a term of endearment?

---
Rhialto
honjitsu watashi wa genki desu raijitsu kami ga kimeru