Just thought you might want to know - it's "per se" not "per say"/variations thereof.
If you don't translate it literally, I'd vote for "in itself". "In itself" (viewed in its essential qualities; considered separately from other things[0]) has a different meaning than "by itself" (alone/unaided). And to me it's clear that "per se" pretty much universally means the former.
"Maybe John is not the boss per se, but we follow his orders"
"Maybe John is not technically the boss, but we follow his orders"
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)
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!
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.
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! ;)