On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 5:26 AM, Felix Malmenbeck <felixm@kth.se> wrote:

I'm afraid that doesn't make much sense to me; I read it assomething like "Before dawn happened at ten minutes, I saw a cat."

Personally, I'm a fan of expressions such as «jajlo' wa'maH tup ret» ("the ten minutes ago f dawn"), but I believe such constructs are quite controversial with the community, with many arguing that ret/pIq, Hu'/leS, ben/nem and the like should always be measured with respect to (the speaker's) present.

You could say «qaStaHvIS jajlo' nungbogh tup wa'maHDIch» ("during the 10th minute that precedes dawn"), but that's rather cumbersome.

I was re-reading some of the new words pages from old qep'a'mey (to refresh my memory, you see, it's like bat'leth practice for your vocabulary) and saw something in the new words from 2016 that reminded me of this discussion. Specifically, this:

jIvIbHa'. wejHu' jImev.
I time-travel three days into the past; literally: "I time-travel to the past. I stop three days ago" - that is, I stop three days prior to a time referenced in the conversation, not necessarily three days prior to making this utterance.

That last sentence suggests that, like Sum, "relative time period" nouns like Hu' usually use the speaker as a reference point, but in the right context can be reckoned from another reference point. If this holds, then that suggests that jajlo' wa'maH tup ret (literally, "dawn's ten-minutes-ago") could work as a timestamp for "ten minutes before dawn".