Is there a mnemonic or trick for remembering?
Apres midi Post midi
But surely the whole point is that midday itself is neither before nor after midday, while midnight is precisely equally both before and after?
I try always to use 12 noon and 12 midnight instead.
What if a plane crashes on my house, between policies, during those two uninsured minutes?
Sure, it's unlikely, but so are all the other things that might cause me to claim on my buildings insurance policy.
The other fact that helps me remember is that 12 hour clocks were invented before the number 0, and afterwards 24h clocks are 0-based, so 12 on an old clock is the start of the am or pm cycle respectively because there is no 0. Really 12 should be 0 and then it all makes sense.
12PM is morning, 12AM is afternoon.
Again, as a Polish person I don't think that's true at all, certainly in Poland it isn't.
In Polish it's 8 rano (in the morning) vs 8 wieczorem (in the evening).
I can't remember which is which in AM/PM, and have to check each time :)
And the issues with midnight/noon are frustrating and 12-hour-clock should just die.
I assume some people (perhaps older people) wear analog 12h wrist watches, and wouldn't translate to 24h after looking at it to answer a random question "what time is it?"
Now I almost never hear "6 wieczorem" it's always 18. I think I haven't heard it used this year in Polish.
Lots of people use analog clocks but they just say 18 when looking at 6.
In my experience in Finland, casual spoken discussion is usually 12h but written is 24h. The xx:xx format always means 24h, whether written or spoken.
When referring to a precise minute 24h is common even when spoken - "train leaves at sixteen thirty-four" - the 12h alternative is "train leaves at four past half five" or "twenty-six to five". Notably, one would never say "four thirty-four" as that refers to 04:34 (24h).
Also, 12h is used when casually written with letters - e.g. it would be "meet you at three" / "nähdään kolmelta", not "meet you at fifteen" / "nähdään viideltätoista".
My exact experience in France as well. “Six heure du matin” for example.
I understand that sometimes they're just trying to interact with locals while on vacation, but it always seems like an odd starter. Depending on my mood you'll get a friendly chat about time displays¹, or a curt "it says 2 minutes 'til next train".
1. 24hr analog clocks worth visiting https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepherd_Gate_Clock , or metric time, or Swatch time, or ... I'm just as boring with strangers as with friends ;)
Siri should just start using "Zulu" time. /s
I wouldn't say "entire countries", but definitely a lot of people. I grew up (in canada) with 12 hour clocks.
I hate 24 hour time so much. I won't use software that can't be configured to AM/PM.
24h time is extremely rare in everyday use in the US.
It's sad, but an ineluctable truth, that this word is almost always misunderstood and misused.
In the (again, regrettable) common usage use of the word -- ie. 'almost all' -- the claim is likely valid.
Sure.
> There are huge swaths of Americans who will literally not know what 17:00 translates to in AM/PM.
1. Same is true for most people in the world
2. Wait, you mean they don't know if 17:00 is early morning or late afternoon??
Seriously, I have a hard time to believe that. I'll believe that most Americans need to convert to am/pm, but not that "huge swaths" literally cannot understand this.
My expectations of the average USA'ian are better than that.
Have you looked at the news lately? Seen any of Jimmy Kimmel's "man on the street" interviews?
Most people will know this is sometime in the afternoon, but honestly a large portion of the population would probably think this is 7PM.
“Men” on the street everywhere have their ignorances. Americans aren’t any smarter or dumber than people anywhere else. If we were talking about “Chinese people __” or “Nigerian people __” we’d complain about it being racist or stereotypical, yet we seem to have no problem casting stereotypes when the subject is American. Europeans especially seem to delight in it. There is this smug superiority that comes in these conversations. But start lifting rocks in European towns and you’ll find that people are equally smart and ignorant across the world. It’s a matter of perspective.
To be fair, it's not that they are less intelligent, it seems to be because they are less exposed to, and perhaps less interested in, other cultures/countries.
A huge part of that is geographic isolation and American cultural/media "dominance".
Is that how you're supposed to do it? All my life I've been subtracting 2 and ignoring the fist digit for PM times (with the exception of post 20:00 times). I just noticed that when I was a kid and been using that all this time
e.g. 17:00 - 2:00 = 15:00 => 5:00
22:00 - 2:00 = 20:00 => 0:00
Which is the same as subtracting 12 (subtracting 2 and then subtracting 10, which is what ignoring the first digit does for times before 20:00).