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Levi
Pentaglot
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| Message 17 of 18 03 January 2010 at 8:30am | IP Logged |
Swahili has an interesting time system.
Quote:
(East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, rather than midnight to midday. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock. Words such as asubuhi 'morning', jioni 'evening' and usiku 'night' can be used to demarcate periods of the day, for example:
* saa moja asubuhi ('hour one morning') 7:00 a.m.
* saa tisa usiku ('hour nine night') 3:00 a.m.
* saa mbili usiku ('hour two night') 8:00 p.m.
More specific time demarcations include adhuhuri 'early afternoon', alasiri 'late afternoon', usiku wa manane 'late night/past midnight', 'sunrise' macheo and 'sunset' machweo.
At certain times there is some overlap of terms used to demarcate day and night, e.g. 7:00 p.m. can be either saa moja jioni or saa moja usiku.
Other relevant phrases include na robo 'and a quarter', na nusu 'and a half', kasarobo/kasorobo 'less a quarter', and dakika 'minute(s)':
* saa nne na nusu ('hour four and a half') 10:30
* saa tatu na dakika tano ('hour three and minutes five') five past nine
* saa mbili kasorobo ('hour two less a quarter') 7:45
* saa tatu kasoro ('a few minutes to nine')
Swahili time derives from the fact that the sun rises at around 6am and sets at around 6pm everyday in most of the equatorial areas where Swahili speakers live. |
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A Swahili clock:
Edited by Levi on 03 January 2010 at 8:33am
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| elvisrules
Tetraglot
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| Message 18 of 18 03 January 2010 at 4:21pm | IP Logged |
Hencke wrote:
| 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. |
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Yes it's the same in Dutch, though it can be counted from the hour itself using 'thirty' instead of 'half':
7:30 = half acht = seven dertig
7:35 = vijf over half acht = seven vijfendertig
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