In the languages of my ancestors, for example, if someone was 14 years old, they would be “14 år gammal” in Swedish (14 years old) and “14 Jahre alt” in German (14 years old), but in Italian, they would say “ho 14 anni” (I have 14 years).
In the languages of my ancestors, for example, if someone was 14 years old, they would be “14 år gammal” in Swedish (14 years old) and “14 Jahre alt” in German (14 years old), but in Italian, they would say “ho 14 anni” (I have 14 years).
It’s just <Number>살 for us. The way the age is counted is a bit different. If you were using the standard way of calculating the age, you add 만 in front of it.
A few years ago, iirc, the Korean government instructed people to stop using the traditional system and to use the international system instead. Has that had much of an effect in practice, or are people largely ignoring it? Or do you think it’s something that younger generations will pick up more over time while older people continue using the traditional system? (This last option being sort of what happened in Australia when we transitioned to metric through the '70s.)
Also, what happens to someone born on 1 January? Are they born du sal, and thus the youngest of their sal, or born han sal and remain han sal for a whole year?
Government docs use the international style for age, but in normal conversations people assume you are using traditional age unless otherwise specified.
Too socially prevalent. Most people know about this change, but they still use the old one. Anything official are now using the standard age, though.
Anyone born on Jan 1st stays one year old for the whole year since people gain age every time the year changes. This does mean that a person can be born on Dec 31st, and be two year old next day.
I suppose then, for any child born around 00:10 on 1 January, there might be some pressure to encourage the doctor to write the birth certificate as something more like 23:50 on 31 December? Because of the social prestige with being older?
Or maybe the opposite, since being physically older than your peers is correlated with better academic and sporting performance?