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Telling the time in other languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5909 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 9 of 18 29 November 2009 at 1:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I would say that in common use, the 18th century would definitely be January 1st 1700 - December 31st 1799. That's consistently what I've seen in history textbooks as well. It may be a year off, but I still very much doubt people would refer to the entire year 2000 as being in the previous century and by extension the previous millennium. It gets problematic when you go all the way back to year 1, but that doesn't really change how the terms are used in daily life.
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 18 29 November 2009 at 2:04am | IP Logged | ||
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This is funny. Cordelia is two hours off Russian time, and Gusutafu types the wrong century and get a gold star according to Roman chronology. ;)
Now, in the languages I have studied... 1:05, 1:15, 1:30, 1:40, 1:45, 1:50 In Spanish you add or subtract minutes/quarters/half hours (one and five/one and a quarter/one and half an hour vs. two minus twenty/two minus a quarter/two minus ten) In German you say "after" or "before" instead. (five after one/a quarter after one vs. twenty before two/a quarter before two/ten before two). 1:30 is "halb zwei", as in Swedish. In Mandarin you basically add to the hour, including minutes close to the hour, 1:59 is "1 点 59 分". Same thing with quarters (刻; 1:15/一点一刻), half hours (半; 1:30/一点半) and so on. It's also possible to subtract quarters or minutes before the hour. At the moment I can't remember how time is expressed in Irish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5521 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 11 of 18 29 November 2009 at 8:42am | IP Logged | ||
But I still don't understand what was meant by that comment. For one thing, the (West) Romans didn't give years in reference to the birth of Christ, as far as I know. Moreover, I can't see how the statement that they "didn't have any zero" would make my typo correct. It seems to me that they would be calling the 1st century 'century 1'. My point was really to emphasise the subtle but crucial difference between "the 1st century" and "century number 1". In the former case, it doesn't matter if you "don't have any zero", the century starting at the birth of Christ is by any standard the first century. It is entirely logical and you couldn't really call it anything else. In the same way, most existing ways to give the time are logical, if you consider what they are abbreviations for, lik the Russian "quarter third", which is only strange until you realise what words are missing. "A quarter into the third hour" is of course 2.15, in any language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 18 29 November 2009 at 5:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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I didn't get that Roman thing either. As you say, the concept of "a quarter into the third hour" isn't that strange. For us Swedes it's not much weirder than "a half-hour into the third hour" (->halv tre).
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 13 of 18 29 November 2009 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Telling the time in Hungarian took me some time to get used to, but it's fairly regular so that even a native speaker of English should be able to catch on to the idea after a little bit of practice.
When expressing time in speech outside formal settings, things are lined up according to a suitable quarter hour or upcoming hour. 10:00 - tíz óra (ten hour) 10:15 - negyed tizenegy (quarter [of the way to] eleven) 10:30 - fél tizenegy (half[-way to] eleven) 10:45 - háromnegyed tizenegy (three quarter [of the way to] eleven) 10:05 - tíz múlt öt perccel (~ past ten by five minutes) OR: negyed tizenegy lesz tíz perc múlva (~ it will be 10.15 in ten minutes). 6:28 - fél hét lesz két perc múlva (~ it will be half[-way to] seven in two minutes) OR: tizenhárom perccel múlt negyed hét (~ by thirteen minutes past quarter [of the way to] seven) 4:50 - öt perccel múlt háromnegyed öt (~ by five minutes past three quarter [of the way to] five) OR: öt óra lesz tíz perc múlva (~ it will be five o'clock in ten minutes) It is also possible to tell the time in a similar way as we often do in English (e.g. 5:30 = "five thirty"; 11:55 = "eleven fifty-five"). Despite the method's simplicity and familiarity to people who speak languages which tell the time in this way, this is used rarely by native speakers of Hungarian unless used in officious settings where it's the norm (e.g. when announcing arrival/departure times at a railroad station). 10:00 = tíz óra 10:05 = tíz (óra) öt (perc) (ten five) 10:15 = tíz (óra) tizenöt (perc) (ten fifteen) 10:30 = tíz (óra) harminc (perc) (ten thirty) 10:45 = tíz (óra) negyvenöt (perc) (ten forty-five) 10:50 = tíz (óra) ötven (perc) (ten fifty) 1:30 = egy (óra) harminc (perc) (one thirty) [understood to mean 1:30 AM) 13:30 = tizenhárom (óra) harminc (perc) (thirteen thirty) [understood to mean 1:30 PM] 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| elvisrules Tetraglot Senior Member BelgiumRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5469 days ago 286 posts - 390 votes Speaks: French, English*, Dutch, Flemish Studies: Lowland Scots, Japanese, German | Message 14 of 18 31 December 2009 at 10:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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A few months ago I was talking to a great-uncle from central Scotland who grew up speaking Scots (he's now in his 80s). He told me how his grandparents and parents told time the Germanic way (i.e. half-ten = 9:30). It was only through English schooling that his generation didn't. This way of telling the time is non-existent in modern Scotland (I think?). I wonder whether this way of telling the time also lasted that long in English dialects, and whether it's still used anywhere in Britain.
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 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 18 03 January 2010 at 7:37am | IP Logged | ||
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To my way of thinking it is quite logical for "half eight" to mean "half an hour before eight", since a half is supposed to be less than the whole. This logic is found in Swedish and German. I'm not sure about Dutch but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same there.
The "half" marking a point above and beyond the whole, as in the English "half eight" is just illogical to me and took some getting used to, needless to say. What is really weird to me though, is starting into the next hour right from the first quarter "a quarter into the eighth hour", which I was aware they do in Catalan "un quart de vuit" "a quarter of eight" = 7:15, and apparently, as mentioned above, it works the same way in Russian (EDIT: Oh, another one, Hungarian too). In Sweden it's also very common to chop up the references even further at the bottom of the hour. People say things like "five to half eight" = 7:25 and "five past half eight" = 7:35. I'm not fond of doing this myself (it registers as a form of child-speak in my ears) but a Swedish person once told me the limit between one and the other was exactly at 22 past and 22 before the hour. This means that at 7:22 she would say "22 past 7" but one minute later, at 7:23, she wouldn't say "23 past 7" but "7 to half 8" instead. Edited by Hencke on 03 January 2010 at 8:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| genini1 Senior Member United States Joined 5468 days ago 114 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 16 of 18 03 January 2010 at 8:07am | IP Logged | ||
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The calendar that we use today is the Gregorian calendar which was created by a pope, which one eludes me, sometime in the 1500's. As a result they based the calendar on the Anno Domini system which starts with the year AD 1 and the system itself was created until the year AD 500 or so. The Romans would not have used the naming system however as people looking back calling AD 1 the first century makes perfect sense.
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