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Everything ok Denmark and France?
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this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2026
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Danish has essentially managed to shorten "four and a half score" to what would be equivalent to saying "half to fives" in English. So it would be "two and half to fives" if we were to do the same in English. (This is also kinda similar to how the clock is read. 8:30 would be "half to nine" rather than "half past eight", which is used in English.)
In swedish 8:30 is half nine (halv nio), wonder if that's with spread.
Same thing in Norwegian, but that shouldn't be a surprise given how similar it is to Swedish.
In catalan it'd be two quarters of nine, usually shortened to quarters of nine (the two, specifically, is implied). You can also add “and five” (minutes) and “minus five", so 8:20 would be a quarter and five of nine, and 8:40 three quarters minus five of nine. 8:05 would be eight and five, and 8:55 would be nine minus five.
We have a contender!
Interesting in NZ we would say half eight; for 8:30. Which when written looks really strange; but it is the shortening of half past eight. But strangely we always say quarter past eight rather than quarter eight.
8:25 would be eight twenty five.
8:35 would be twenty five to nine.
8:45 would be quarter to nine, or more uncommon is just to read out eight forty five.
In Sweden it's also 5 to half 8 / 5 past half 8. Or 7:25/7:35.
Similar to how I know in portugal. But maybe I'm the weird one. Everything else going on on this thread feels super alien.
It is in Dutch.
I think it's just a European thing because Czech has it too
In Russian, 5:30 is also "half of the sixth", but I still hate the Danish numbering system (which I have to live with)
I've always found that baffling. I've always said 5:30 instead, or even better, 17:30.
The hour that starts at 00:00 is the first hour of the day, hence 00:30 is half of that hour, or half [of] one. I think that makes sense. Not like the british who say half one and mean half past one.
Fascinating! Thanks for enlightening me