(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: story with Gaiman

[António Pedro Marques]

Jeff Wilson wrote:
> On 2/19/2011 12:11 PM, Fernando Gouvea wrote:
>> The same pun works in Portuguese, and probably in many other languages
>> derived from Latin.
>
> Could you give me a Portuguese example? En Espan~ol, "ahora" means now,
> and "presente" means here. This is also the case in literal English;
> "the present" is short for "the present moment", "the present time",
> "the present day", "the present situation", and other intangibles that
> present themselves the way a person would present a gift to another person.

Sorry, I don't get what you mean. The words, as used, are:

en  now       present time         given present     current place
pt  agora     momento presente     presente dado     presente local
es  ahora     momento presente     presente dado     presente local

Praesens/praesentis is the present ( :g ) participle of praeesse, prae + 
esse, 'in-front be'. So 'present' is that which stands in front of you - not 
at a distance, but directly in your nose. Thus the temporal, spatial, 
exchangeal and other usages are all the same, but not one derives from any 
other, as seems to be suggested.

There's the interesting french word ceans which means 'this place'. So _la 
Cour de Ceans_ means 'the local Court', _la plus belle de ceans_ (funny 
song) is 'the most beautiful girl around'.