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Telling the time in other languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 18 27 November 2009 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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This thread is about the joys or horrors of learning to tell the time in a foreign language....
Learning to tell the time in other languages can feel a bit confusing and boring. Then once you put it into practice when speaking the foreign language. mixups can easily occur! I was once an hour early to a date with an English guy.. My (at the time) Swedish-wired brain had translated "half eight" as he said to ""halv åtta" means "half past seven". I just learnt all about telling the time in Russian - had been putting it off for a long time. I remembered from my brief encounter with Russian at school that it was hard... Back then I never got it at all. And well, I remembered right - it is very "different"! "Quarter third" is in fact "Quarter past four" "Ten to ten" is is said as "Minus ten, ten" plus some more of the same! And I'm not even touching the grammatical aspects of it. What's your experience of telling the time in other languages? Edited by cordelia0507 on 27 November 2009 at 10:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Astrophel Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5732 days ago 157 posts - 345 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Cantonese, Polish, Sanskrit, Cherokee | Message 2 of 18 28 November 2009 at 5:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have a hard time with it even in my native language...it took me a LONG time as a child to understand what "a quarter till four" meant. I mentally translate that into the number 3:45. I don't usually make mistakes like your example in other languages because of this, but I have to pause in all of them to figure out how to tell the time, because to me the time is always a number. Two fifty-eight. Three fifteen. Six twenty-five.
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| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 3 of 18 28 November 2009 at 11:32am | IP Logged | |||||
It is actually quarter past 2. If you consider that it's short for "(One) quarter (into the) third (hour)" you'll see why it's just as reasonable as saying "quarter past two". Some people (Swedes for example) think that it is illogical that "the 18th century" refers to the 1700s, but if you think about what it actually says, it is entirely logical. But why is "bez desyati desyat" hard? Like saying "The time is ten, except for ten minutes". It's at least as reasonable as "tio i tio" - "ten in ten"! Edited by Gusutafu on 28 November 2009 at 10:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5909 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 4 of 18 28 November 2009 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The 18th century refers to the 1700s. (Typo, I imagine.)
I always found the slightly mathematical time-telling in the romance languages a little confusing, but at least it has a certain symmetry in how it relates to one hour or the next. I know some foreigners get way confused about telling time in Norwegian - because from 20 minutes past the whole hour, you refer to the next hour, not the previous, and you use the half hour as its own thing to subtract or add to. Literally "ten to/on half four", for example. Trips people up. I've made the same mistake as you Cordelia, the half something. If you tell me half past 3 I have to be careful, because my mind hears 3 and half-something, so 14.30, but it's actually an hour off. I don't really have that problem anymore, but in high school I'd make the occasional mistake. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5585 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 5 of 18 28 November 2009 at 5:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Spanish and Portguese are very Similar, German... I haven't arrived there yet. lol :D
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| Envinyatar Diglot Senior Member Guatemala Joined 5536 days ago 147 posts - 240 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 6 of 18 28 November 2009 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
Not a typo, Romans didn't know about zero so they began with first century instead of zero century. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 7 of 18 28 November 2009 at 10:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, a typo! I was talking about English usage! But I don't see how the comment on the Romans adds up... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5567 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 8 of 18 29 November 2009 at 1:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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The 18th century C.E. refers to the 100 years leading up to the year 1800, that is, 1701 to 1800. The first century of the Common Era began with the year 1. Not necessarily because they lacked a zero; would we have called it the "0th century"? I think it's just what you logically call the first century to pass since the beginning of the Common Era. The year 100 marked the end of the first century, 1800 marked the end of the eighteenth century, 2000 marked the end of the twentieth century, etc. Edited by Levi on 29 November 2009 at 1:32am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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