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Comment by jsudhams | Hacker News Reader

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 ?

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> 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.

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.

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