Submitted 11 months ago by NoneYa@lemm.ee to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
I noticed that I and Alexa say “six ‘oh’ five a m”, but is that the correct way of saying the time? Specifically the “oh” part?
Kind of like when speaking out a phone number, how we might say “my number is one two three, six ‘oh’ six…” but really, that’s not an “oh” like the letter O even though it looks like an O, but everyone knows the person is saying “six zero six”, which is the proper way of saying that.
I’d typically say something like: “One billion, seven hundred and one million, sixty five thousand, one hundred seconds since the epoch.”
Damnit chat-gpt. Who gave you a threadiverse account?
A what-i-verse?
I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t answer that.
"Five past 6"
55 to the hour
I found this:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=KozLFLwhLac
And this other answer that goes into more detail on the Middle Ages part:
“Whereas the Latin alphabet has been used for English from the earliest times, the numerals are relatively late. In early Middle English there were words for one, two, three (etc) but there was no word for “zero”, as the symbol hadn’t yet arrived in England (from India, via Arabia and Italy), and even when the symbols did arrive, they were, at first, a rather specialist tool for calculation that neither the illiterate peasants, nor the literate clergy, would have had much use for. They were a device that allowed financiers to make calculations without the use of an abacus.
As literacy and numeracy became more widespread in the Early modern period there is an issue: What do we call “0”? There’s no problem with “1” because we can just name the numeral after the number “one”. But there is no number for “0”!
Some people use the technical term “zero” from Italian, ultimately from Sanskrit. But this is a foreign and strange word. Some people use the English word “naught”, meaning “nothing”. But there is another option. The symbol looks exactly like the letter O. So not having a better name, many people just used the name of the symbol that it looks like. This use is attested from 1600, but probably goes back long before that.”
I have not checked the veracity of either source or answer, but it’s definitely true that English speakers have been saying O for 0 for a very long time, in any context that isn’t too confusing.
Then you have people who use aught for naught, as in 30 aught 6 for the 30-06 Springfield round.
Thank you for the detailed history!
five (minutes) past six
Yes, glad you made the minutes optional because I think most people colloquially skip minutes.
Five past six
Five past six is what they taught me in English lessons back in the day :) that is the “proper” Way to say it in British English.
01-29 minutes are past the hour, 30 is half past the hour, 31-59 are to the hour (ex. 20 minutes to 7).
You could also be a smart ass and say it in US military style - oh six hundred and five.
I believe you only say the hundred if the time ends in 00
And with numbers in general, I think you only say the “and” if it’s “and one”. 605 would be “six hundred five”, I think.
Not that you asked, but the thing that I have most issues with is the AM in that time. I think you should drop that and just count to 23 instead of to 12. It always confuses me if 12am is noon or midnight. And it’s superfluous anyways. We have enough numbers, no need to be stingy.
12:01AM is definitely 00:01, so 12AM is midnight.
Agree though, 24hr clock is just better.
Yeah, thanks. I don’t know how to get this into my brain. For me it’d just make as much sense that 12:01PM was 00:01. I always drift into looking at it like numbers in a succession… 10am, 11am, 12am, 1pm, … but that’s wrong. And the latin origin doesn’t help me either. Noon is neiter ‘before midday’ neither “post meridiem”. But it makes sense that the day starts at 00:00 with something AM and it keeps being AM for the fist half.
That’s there because of analog clocks, which somebody in history decided would look too cluttered if they counted all 24 hrs, and at any rate we’re asleep for roughly a third of them anyway, so it’s superfluous. The 12-hr clock is an elegant design solution.
I’m not so sure. I get why it is the way it is. I think these numbers are called Highly composite numbers. That’s why we got 12 and 60.
But it comes with issues. As I said you start with the 12 and then the one. That’s probably because the number zero has a complicated past. And now you have the clock going around twice a day and you need to prefix everything with am/pm. Or it’s clear from the context.
I think the number Pi is the same complicated concept. Why half around the circle and you need to memorize all the '2’s in the formulas? Why not make it once around the circle and use tau = 6.28… ?
So I think I can understand why we got there. But we have the number 0 nowadays. And electric light so we can stay up till 1am. So it seems an outdated concept to me to keep the 12 around. And if it were elegant, you wouldn’t need to specify which turn of the clock you’re talking about.
IMO it’s confusing because it makes no sense, since I would think the 12 should always be the same AM / PM as the last 11 numbers. But it’s not. E.g. 1 hour after 11 PM is 12 AM.
If AM (ante meridiem) means “before midday” and PM (post meridiem) means “after midday”, then I think it makes sense. That doesn’t mean it isn’t confusing, but it makes sense.
I’ll give you a short answer as you’ve got a lot of detailed ones already: to a native British English speaker “six oh five a m” sounds completely normal. There are other ways to say it that sound equally normal.
I would say that it might sound a bit “technical”. Five past six is definitely the more common way of saying it
i would say “Sechs uhr fünf” which translates to “six o’clock five”. but if i was to speak english i would definetely say “six o’ five” the “o’” might even stand for “o’clock”
That “oh” does not stand for “o’clock”, it stands for zero. If you said “six-o-fifteen” (or any time without the leading zero for minutes) you’d be saying it wrong.
In English we can often say “oh” for zero, when it is part of a string of numbers. So when giving telephone numbers or addresses, for example, in addition to the time.
We also don’t say the “oh” for zero the same way as the “o” in “o’clock” (the former rhymes with “owe” and the latter is a schwa).
Um I certainly as fuck do, as does everyone else in my country. What the fuck other way are you going to pronounce 'O'?
In some situations, we use "o" for the number 0. Been hunting around for a reason but I think it's just an abbreviation of zero.
Which is turn stands for “of the clock”
German class taught me fünf nach sechs.
Or if you want a real nighrmare
6:35
fünf nach halb vor 7
5 past half an hour to 7... It's in my textbook people look at me funny if I use it.
British English I still haven't figured out if half 7 is 6:30 or 7:30. Halb 7 in German is 6:30
Living in Germany coming from north America doing a lot of work with England I miss a lot of meetings that are at 17:30... Either I screw up the 12 hr change and can't remember if the said 7 or 17 and then where the half hour falls before or after.
Six-oh-five is not wrong.
Unless you’re in basic. Then I’m pretty sure it was zero-six-hundred-oh-five. (Unless I’m wrong. If it’s any consolation…. They were always going to yell at you.)
yeah that’s just gonna be a 6 am from me dawg, I’m not splitting hairs over 5 minutes
It’s 6:30 in ADHD time
I would likely say six oh five as would my wife and friends. We’re all American from different parts of the country, so I suspect this is a difference in British v American English.
Five past/after 6
I feel like it’s the same as the way we date things as well. American is month (larger unit) then day (small unit) whereas 5 after 6 gives them in small to largest.
I do wonder about the syntax once you add seconds to the time.
Everyone in here saying “5 past 6”.
I’ve been saying “5 after 6” or “6 oh 5” my whole life. I’m from Canada & in my early 30s.
Etc.
In French they say 6 hours 5 minutes, all time is after a no time is to.
So 9:55 would be 9 hours 55 minutes, whereas in English we would say 5 minutes to 10, the French system just seems more consistent.
As an American, I’ve followed the French pattern my whole life. I’ve never once said minutes to or till an hour.
Same. And I’ve lived in several places across Canada and it seems to be pretty universal here.
Fifty-five minutes before Seven P.M.
Fem över sex.
Unfortunately. Alexa doesnt understand swedish…
Just after 6.
5 after 6.
Very similarly, I’d probably say ‘5 past 6’.
The hour of six, and five minutes past.
You woke up and choose violence? XD
I call it Whiskey time.
The correct spoken way is to say 5 past 6.
I don’t really see a reason for including the zero unless it also says all the digits at other times. Like 6:45 would be six-four-five, which makes very little sense when spoken. If it’s capable of saying six-fourtyfive, it should also just say six-five for 6:05. But again, in the case of 6:45 the proper spoken way would be “(a) quarter to seven”
It seems like a lazy solution just to say the digits.
It doesn’t have to be difficult to do right. The code should just include a small table with the correct words.
Probably should take into account people with processing disorders. six-oh-five is straight forward for anyone, five past six and five til six are commonly used but can trip up some people more than you’d expect.
Probably should take into account people with learning disabilities and processing disorders
As an option, definitely. As a default though I too would prefer the standard spoken form if the time is going to be spoken rather than displayed. It's a bit like how simplified wikipedia is a good idea but I prefer regular English to be the default version.
In phone numbers we can often mix oh and zero, but you’d very rarely (if ever) use zero in time. Perhaps in the military (or similar organisations): zero/oh six hundred hours. I’d naturally say oh.
When telling the time, I get my students to say: six oh five, three oh eight, five oh two, etc. The alternatives would be ‘past’ and approximations: five past six, and just after six.
I say “six oh five,” but with numbers, I say “zero” or “oh.”
No 12/24h, only unix timestamps.
On a serious note, anything that other people understand works. 6-oh-five isn’t a mistake but I generally hear “5 past 6” from most people.
Whatever Alexa says is probably meant to be localizable to other languages as well.
May I ask where you live? Everyone I (American) know always says six o five, six twenty two, six thirty, and quarter after/quarter to six (but only on the quarters). Something past the hour is understood, but not common. I feel like when I do hear it, it’s from someone with an accent.
I live in Georgia (the country) and I am speaking mostly of internet experience. Yeah it could include non-native speakers, that’s why I mentioned “most people I know”. I still prefer the way you mentioned as it’s much clearer anyway.
6 in the morning.
“six hours and five minutes”?
6 05
Or 5 past 6
I usually say either: zero six zero five, OR five past six
I agree with you and Alexa, but you can always say “five past six” to avoid the [zer]o if it’s bothering you.
I remember on a German exchange at school the German student could not handle “oh” sounds in phone numbers at all. So it might be tricky for non native speakers (though I think they made more of a fuss from anger at how stupid English is than out of genuine confusion…)
Oh no, it doesn’t bother me at all lol. This was just a curiosity of mine.
When I speak to automated phone systems, I try to say “zero” instead of saying “oh” when speaking a phone number just to avoid me having to repeat myself in case I meet a system that’s not trained on hearing “oh”, but it got me wondering if there was a “proper” way to say the “0” in the time.
Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 11 months ago
The proper way is the way the person you are talking to will understand.
Five minutes past 6 in the morning. (what I would say)
Six oh five AM.
etc.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Fifty-five 'til five 'til midday
ItsYaBoyN00dles@lemm.ee 11 months ago
10 to 10:10
Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 11 months ago
Five minutes past four bells.
21,900 seconds past midnight.
Four hours and fifty-five till elevenses.
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 11 months ago
It’s too early for all that 5 past 6 shit. I just woke up and you want me to do math?