this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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Showerthoughts

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I hear phrases like "half-past", "quarter til", and "quarter after" way less often since digital clocks have became more commonplace. (midwest.social)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Well, you could say "fourteen twenty" too.

But if "fourteen twenty" was a year we would think its "1420".

Likewise, 1400 is "fourteen hundred" and not "14:00"

Some military standards make a lot of sense, there's no problem adopting it if it's clear.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

But 14:00 is what the time is and what the clock shows, not 1400. So I would say 14 o'clock if not 2 o'clock. Would you say "it's nine hundred in the morning" too? Again, it's hours not hundreds. I'm sorry but I don't understand why you're talking about years.

For context my country uses 24h time and I grew up with it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It is objectively wrong to say 14 o'clock, because "o'clock" refers to the orientation of an analogue clock.

Saying "it's nine in the morning" is redundant in a 24 hour system, because nine would never be anything other than that.

To say 'it's nine hundred" reduces the ambiguity slightly (because you can't really say o'clock).

If you simply say "it's nine" then other people might ask "what's nine?"

Is it "nine past nine"? Or are you telling me "no" in German?

Nine hundred is pretty clear, but not to our primitive ears