And there are many definitions of English "for" as well. This would fit the one used in the phrase "if not for this, ..." In other words, for itself = by virtue of itself, through the existence of itself.
Also note in terms of Indo European roots, per is a cognate with English for.
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1. Cue some dude to tell me in 3…2…1²
2. And this knowledge will promptly disappear from my brain five minutes later, sort of like the guy I knew in my 20s whose name was either Jack or Chad and to this date, I still am not sure, but I do know that every single time I called him by name, I got it wrong and it totally wasn’t on purpose even though he didn’t believe me.
I once had a Spanish teacher, who also had problems remembering what that kind of time specification stands for and I came up with maybe a trick to remember. We do the same thing in German, so I guess it translates:
Lets say you have 11:00. That's easy. But what about 11:15? We would say "quarter 12", so I guess the English version is "quarter of 12". How to memorize, that this is 11:15? Well, you can imagine a round clock and the minute pointer has moved _quarter of its way to 12_. So you only have a quarter of that hour "already done". 10:30? We say "half 11". So I guess English is "half of 11", meaning that the minute pointer has moved half the way to 11.
Maybe this will help.
(Actually I personally usually don't use those ways of specifying the time, neither in English nor in German. I just say the 24h format as it is written: "11:15" is "eleven fifteen", 13:35 is "thirteen thirtee five" not 1pm something.)
I recently encountered a German asking for the English phrase equivalent to bis unter, looking for a phrase like "up to below". There isn't one in common use. We just don't count things in equivalent ways.
I feel like either of those could work depending on the context and are common in English.
The English terms would be:
11:15 -> quarter after 11, quarter past 11 (both pretty rare, tbh)
11:30 -> half past 11 (this is the only form that is moderately common)
11:45 -> quarter of 12, quarter before 12 (also pretty rare)
11:15 -> once y cuarto
11:30 -> once y media
11:45 -> doce menos cuarto
edit: and about the subject of the thread, "por sí" or "por sí mismo." "per" afaik is a preposition like "por" that means to pair or match things: so it can mean by, through, around, with, for, and even times("×") i.e. doesn't mean anything in English.
"si" is the 3rd person reflexive pronoun (when placed after the verb), and is probably similar to "se." ("mismo" is a redundant clarification is Spanish, probably because "si" and "sí" are homonyms.)
11:15 -> quarter past 11 11:45 -> quarter to 12
are very normal to me. In fact any number above 5 to or past are normal. Even smaller numbers come up, where, of course, 1 to 1 and 2 to 2 are particular favourites.
Can you please specify the dialect of English you're referring to, instead of falling for the obviously ridiculous notion that there's one English.
I have never heard "quarter of 12", and wasn't aware it was a thing. In Ireland - Hiberno-English, Irish-English, whatever you like - I've only ever said and heard "quarter to 12" for 11.45.
So, serious question: who says "quarter of 12"? It sounds makey-uppy and illogical, so I'm supposing it might be a linguistic development in the old U.S. of A. I don't feel like I've ever heard it in movies or shows though, in spite of having been subjected to a certain amount of U.S. cultural produce, so this is somewhat mysterious to me.
Please, someone englighten me!
Still can't beat stuff like "bi-weekly" which can mean "every two weeks" or "twice a week" or probably some other thing as well.
"You should come to our Linguistics Club's bi-weekly meeting. Membership is open to anyone who can figure out how often we meet." (I mean, you have a 50-50 shot. I wonder if there's any personality insights one could learn from such a selection.)
no such luck w/ months or weeks.
also your username is almost as salient to the topic as mine! ;)