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Comment by Broken_Hippo | Hacker News Reader

I can understand how this happens.

For example, telling time in Norwegian took me viewing time differently. English tends to place importance on the last whole hour that passed: Half past six, six thirty-five, six twenty. It isn't until we approach the next whole hour that we give it any credit: Quarter 'til seven.

Norwegian, on the other hand, seems to focus more on the "now" and the future, orientated around the nearest 15-minute mark and the next whole hour, only focusing on the hour that has passed for the first 15 minute. it is quite possible I've flubbed on the exact phrasing: While my Norwegian is on the upper end of adequate and passed the state tests, I am still far from truly fluent

6:20? Ten 'til half seven. 6:30? Half seven. 6:35? Five over half seven.

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> Half past six, six thirty-five, six twenty. It isn't until we approach the next whole hour that we give it any credit: Quarter 'til seven.

It's sometime amusing to use the "half past" or "quarter to" form but not with whole hours. E.g., if someone asks the time at 6:35, you say "quarter to 6:50" or "half past 6:05". It can perplex people. (Best to only do this with people who already know you are a twit...).

Why is the new generation not using exact time like 6:45 5:30 etc? It is very confusing for non english speaker.Because we have to convert half to 30 and past to past and hour. Hmmm.... in recent trip two times is missed correct time and asked 6:45 or 7:15 tell me exact time. Is it very difficult for the people who are used say in work like half past seven to say 7:30 ?

Even more confusing is when people don't give an indication of which side of the hour they're talking about. I grew up speaking Canadian English, and was completely lost when I asked a Brit for the time and was told "Quarter four".

Is that 3:45, 4:15, or .25*4=1?

"Quarter four" we'd never say, did you mean "quarter to four" - in which case it's 3:45.

Perhaps he meant to write: "quarter of four". As opposed to: "quarter to four".

Which would still be really strange and not understood by most Brits (source: am Brit)

In old-ish French (spoken by my grandparents' generation in some parts of Belgium), you can still hear "la demie de 2 heures" and "le quart de 7 heures", which directly translate to "the half of 2 hours" and "the quarter of 7 hours". They in fact mean 1:30 and 6:45! (am or pm depending on the context).

Also in current Dutch, at least as spoken in Belgium aka Flamish, we say "half twee" which means "half two" and refers to 1:30.

Quarter four in German is 3:15

It's not uncommon in some areas of the UK to swallow the "to", basically poor diction, which to the untrained ear it would sound as "quart'a four". It doesn't happen with "past", but then people often miss off the hour and just say "quarter past".

In Russian as I was taught in high-school they refer to the coming hour, like "15 minutes of 3" is 02h15.

> Why is the new generation not using exact time like 6:45 5:30 etc?

New generation? My grandparents said things like "half past" and "quarter till" and they were born 100+ years ago.

> Why is the new generation not using exact time like 6:45 5:30 etc? It is very confusing for non english speaker

I completely understand why it is confusing. It isn't limited to younger folks, however. The reason for this is simply because exact time often doesn't matter.

The first thing I learned in the US: nobody says half past or ten to or any of those things. They only make sense on analog round clocks.

What people say is stuff like "six twenty", "four fiftyfive" etc

I grew up being taught how to say "half past or ten to" in school, but I think people stopped doing it when digital clocks became cheap and ubiquitous (in the 90s).

For a while, as a joke, I used to say stuff like "it's 5 till a quarter past X" or "it's 20 past a quarter to Y". It tends to throw people off.

> The first thing I learned in the US: nobody says half past or ten to or any of those things.

I hear people say those all the time. Somewhat less with people under 30 or so.

> They only make sense on analog round clocks.

Actually, 10 minutes til <hour> makes perfect sense as a description of time independent of any mechanism of displaying the time.

It's not a natural way to read a digital clock, but not all discussion of time proceeds from reading clocks. Also, analog round wall clocks (and watches, and digital faces for smart watches that simulate them) still exist, and aren't that uncommon, taken together.

Yes we do. What we don't do is the German- we don't say "halb sechs" (half to six, 5:30). We would say "half past five".

Many people are used to telling precise time from being insanely overworked all the time, so you need to say it is precisely 5:33 because 5:27 is a world of difference.

FWIW I once missed a flight because I remembered that my flight was at "half past" and there was a flight to the same destination at 6:25am and at 6:30am. At the same terminal. On different gates.

Didn't even keep reading the board after I spotted the 6:25 flight. It was the wrong one.

I think that's beside the point though. I think the point being presented is more: if you are visualizing what time it is in your head, what is the visual representation of time that you have, as presented by your language? In english, if it's 4:23, I feel as though I'm "in" the 4:00 hour, 23 minutes past it. 4:45? Well then I feel like I'm still "in" the 4:00 hour but now 45 minutes into it. Even 4:59 still feels like the 4:00 hour!

The very construct of how a different language presents that time may cause that perception to differ. At least that's how I think of it.

Dunno why you're being downvoted. American here and I honestly can't remember the last time I've heard "half past" or "quarter til", and I don't think I've ever said it. It's essentially always "five thirty" or "six forty five".

It's probably mostly a British thing. We use it a lot in Australia too - 'twenty to four' 'half past nine' - probably a little less common than saying it like 'six thirty' or 'two twenty-five' though.

It's very generational in the US. I hear it mostly from those over 40

In English we have expressions like "a quarter till five" too. But usually, everything up to and including the half-hour is reckoned in terms of the past whole hour.

To make it slightly more ambiguous you could say "quarter till", but I suppose to know that you'd have to know basically know that the next hour is 5 in your example, although a scenario could exist where you know how much time till the next hour but not what the current time is.

To me, "quarter 'til" assumes the listener knows the next hour, not that the speaker doesn't know the next hour.

Same w/ German. Halb Neun (Half Nine) is 8:30. Half to nine.

In some regions they even use "Viertel Neun" (Quarter nine) for 8:15; but "Viertel über Acht" (Quarter past eight) is also common.

This is the same in my language where one might say "quarter of the ninth". The idea is that [00:00,01:00) is the first hour so [08:00,09:00) is the ninth hour.

Really? I've only heard "viertel neun" to mean 8:45.

Actually "viertel vor neun" means 8:45 (literall "quater before nine"), while "viertel neun" means 8:15.

Use seems to be different by region. I once met somebody from western germany who was late by half an hour as he was not familiar with the "viertel neun" semantics. He claimed that only eastern germans would use that term.

Viertel neun for 8:15 and drei viertel neun for 8:45 are commonly used in Austria.

I don't know if you can do it in Norwegian, but in colloquial Polish it's possible to specify how much time will pass until the next full hour without specifying what hour it is.

So, it's possible to say, for instance: „Jest dwadzieścia po” [It is twenty past X] or „Jest za dziesięć wpół do” [It is ten till half X], regarding your first example.

Same for colloquial Spanish indeed

I've heard this in colloquial English too, e.g. "It's quarter to, I'd better get going".

You can do it in swedish in a similar way, so I would think this is possible, too, in norwegian (the languages are really quite similar).

I know it is possible in English, and one assumes the other know the whole hour one is referring to. I'm not sure about Norwegian - that bit isn't something that has cropped up in my personal vocabulary yet. :)

In the Dutch language, and probably others, people tell the time similarly.

That sounds really clumsy. Like how the French still say "four score and ten" (in French).

It seems really clumsy until you get used to it. My spouse - a Norwegian - thinks the opposite about English time phrases. Clumsy and inaccurate.

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