I use these all the time, my kids say “just tell me what time it is.”
Seriously, though. It takes less brain processing power and just about the same speech-time to just say the dang time.
If your brain works in digital time, this is true.
Us olds have to translate the other direction.
It’s like hearing someone say “why doesn’t everyone just speak English? Why go through the extra effort of speaking Spanish?” because you assume everyone’s internal monologue is in English.
I did the same thing with my parents, mostly because they’d just say “quarter after” but would never say any number. If you made a word cloud of everything I’ve ever said in my life, “after what” would be gigantic in the center with every other word tiny around the edges.
Old man yelling at clouds checking in. I understand the prevalence of digital, but still can’t wrap my head around younger people not understanding how to read an analog clock.
deleted by creator
Laughs in Austrian.
The convention for (15-minute) fractional hours is to name the fraction of the time from the previous hour to the next one.
eg:
3:15 -> “viertel vier” = “quarter four”
3:30 -> “halb vier” (“hoiba viere” in dialekt) = “half four”
3:45 -> “dreiviertel vier” = “three quarters four”In Finland we use:
3:15 viisitoista yli kolme = fifteen over three.
3:30 puoli neljä = half four.
3:45 viisitoista vaille neljä = fifteen short of four.We also use 24 hour clocks but if the dinner is at 17:30, it will just be said to be at half six and you figure am/pm out of context - if it’s ambiguous, we say “six in the morning / six in the evening”.
In English, when they ask the time, we reply: Puolivälissä ohitti apinan perse. Because in English Puolivälissä rhymes with perse.
I still hear people talk about the top and bottom of the hour all the time.
Do you prefer the top or the bottom?
A quarter to 1400 does sound a bit odd.
[deleted]
