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Thirteen o clock (EN) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4291 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 1 of 9 09 June 2014 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was talking to an old friend from primary school, and I realised how often that we
have used the 24 hour clock with "o clock", but I wondered if this phenomenon with the 24- hour clock could incorporate itself into common English soon. On UK railway timetables, one sees things like "Depart 16.10 Arrive 17.20", and the same happens in Continental Europe. Instead of the cumbersome "It is four thirty-six in the afternoon", would it start to be common to say, "It is sixteen thirty-six", or instead of "It is six o clock in the evening", just say, "It is eighteen o clock"? Since 1995 or so since primary school, in speech, I used to tell him such things as, "Hey, it is already thirteen thirty mate, you want to come over for video games?" or, "I shall meet you at nineteen o clock for dinner, yeah?" Granted, we are slightly peculiar and use "thou" in speech between each other, but what about the 24 hour "o clock"? Edited by 1e4e6 on 09 June 2014 at 10:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 2 of 9 09 June 2014 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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1 pm or thirteen hundred hours
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 9 10 June 2014 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||
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Letting 'o'clock' follow any number greater than 12 is idiosyncratic and at worst unidiomatic. In any case, it's grammatical albeit officious/militaristic to use something like "seventeen-twenty" for 5:20 PM. Our convention belies what's happens when we divide twenty four hours in a day into halves. Our analogue clocks reinforce these perceptions and conventions.
You'd raise fewer eyebrows by saying "13 hundred (hours)" and similar as Medulin suggests. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 5190 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 4 of 9 10 June 2014 at 1:23am | IP Logged | ||
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We are the digital generation. Since the 1970s we look at our Casio wristwatches and say to each other "It's 15:26. Our train is at 16:11." But o'clock is an analogue expression, it's like, so passé. Stick to the twelve numbers on the analogue clockface... or we'll look at you funny.
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| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 5 of 9 10 June 2014 at 3:21am | IP Logged | ||
Sounds like a (cumbersome) solution looking for a problem. R. == 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4445 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 6 of 9 10 June 2014 at 4:55am | IP Logged | ||
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In this part of the world it is just as common to write something down as 1AM vs. 1PM. We tend to
associate something like "dix-neuf heures" with the province of Quebec where French is spoken. In Chinese we never adopted a 24h clock. To indicate the correct time we'd insert morning (早上) or evening (晚上) in front of the time like we'd use AM & PM. Personally I'm more used to 4 o'clock in the afternoon than 16h. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| AlexTG Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 4639 days ago 178 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Latin, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 7 of 9 10 June 2014 at 1:22pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm what some people would describe as a twat. I use twenty-four hour time by default, though I'll often make
the conversion to 12 hour time to keep others happy. I would never say 16 o'clock , it just sounds too off. Sixteen hundred. And "Sixteen Thirty" half an hour later. If you don't want to appear like a twat you've definitely got to use 12 hour time. It's too bad there's not a nicer sounding way to tell the hour in English. Edited by AlexTG on 10 June 2014 at 1:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4235 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 8 of 9 10 June 2014 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Gosh, I've never thought that it's improper to say fourteen o'clock in English.
In Russian there is just nothing problematic, I even can say that it'd be harder if you try to use AM/PM technique. Of course we can say час дня and that'd be equal to 1:00 PM, but there are uncertainties like 17:00 - it's either day or evening to different folks. And I definitely wouldn't say anything like thirteen hundred, it's soooo out of any logic here (60 minutes per hour and blah-blah-blah). We count in thousands, and yet I have never heard a single person saying "It's 1900 hours" as тысяча девятьсот (one thousand and nine hundred). No, no, no. I better risk being a twat due to my origin. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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