I did the same thing with my parents, mostly because they’d just say “quarter after” but would never say any number. If you made a word cloud of everything I’ve ever said in my life, “after what” would be gigantic in the center with every other word tiny around the edges.
superfes@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I use these all the time, my kids say “just tell me what time it is.”
pimento64@sopuli.xyz 3 months ago
MIDItheKID@lemmy.world 3 months ago
This just triggered a deep memory from within me. My brother used to say “half past” when I asked him the time, and when I would say “half past what?” the response was always “Half past the monkeys ass, a quarter to his balls”
I still don’t know what it means or where it came from, but when I was 8 years old, it was hilarious.
PoopingCough@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Even worse than that imo is ‘quarter of’. I swear to god it’s been used to mean both before or after whatever hour they’re talking about
Willy@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
mfrs think I know what hours its close to when I probably don’t know the day and am lucky to know what month it is.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Anyone using “quarter of” to mean X:15 is just incorrect. That’s “quarter after”.
John_McMurray@lemmy.world 3 months ago
When you say quarter of, you are supposed to say the next hour. Quarter after 4 is a quarter of 5.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 3 months ago
EVERY TIME
John_McMurray@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You’re failing at your most important job.
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
“It’s a third past the hour, ya dang kids!”
wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 3 months ago
Seriously, though. It takes less brainpower and just about the same speech-time to just say the dang time.
humorlessrepost@lemmy.world 3 months ago
If your brain works in digital time, this is true.
Us olds have to translate the other direction.
irish_link@lemmy.world 3 months ago
What do you mean if your brain works in digital time. This doesn’t translate for me and I grew up with regular clocks and wrist watches. All time is the same. A clock with both hands facing 12 is and always has been twelve o’clock. Clock face or digital clock. They give the same time. Comparing two devices that give the same information in different ways to language is absurd.
Your comparison could work if the subject being discussed was 12 vs 24 hour time keeping. Then there is a translation between the two.
Revan343@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
Analog clocks lend themselves better to thinking in fractions of an hour or day, like this post is talking about, as an hour and a half day are both represented as a circle
Digital clocks lend themselves better to thinking in terms of number of minutes and hours directly. When working numerically, fractions of 60 are generally less intuitive, and fractions of 12 often so as well. Most people who don’t work with angles often think of fractions in terms of percent, or powers of two.
“Quarter past” kind of tweaks the brain wrong when a quarter is intuitively 25.
intensely_human@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Actually a digital clock with both hands pointing at twelve is not a digital clock.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
oh i think this may be a cultural thing, here in europe when we say “digital time” we specifically mean 24-hour time because “AM/PM” isn’t used here.
It’s the difference between saying “dinner’s at seven” and “lunch ends at 13:30”
wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 3 months ago
It’s inefficient is what I’m suggesting.
NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip 3 months ago
It is a one syllable difference, at most. Fif-teen versus Quar-ter-Past. Or Thir-ty versus Half-past. And for-ty-five versus quar-ter-till.
But it is also about precision. If I say “Let’s meet up at 4:45” that implies a lot more specificity than “let’s meet at quarter to five”. The firmer is an exact time people should meet at and the latter is “around that time”.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeopkvAP-ag goes into the difference between analog and digital time and what that means with thought processes. But a lot of it boils down to thinking in terms of “parts of a whole” versus “specific times”.
rockerface@lemm.ee 3 months ago
The most inefficient part of human brain is having to consciously process things. So going with whatever patterns you’re used to is always going to be faster
intensely_human@lemm.ee 3 months ago
When people report the time they aren’t reporting their internal dialogue they’re reading what it says on the display. What it says on the display is “four twenty three” not “halfway between quarter and half past four”.
humorlessrepost@lemmy.world 3 months ago
OP didn’t say anything about reading time off a digital clock.
What about the opposite scenario of reporting the time you read off an analog clock? Would you translate to digital first?
In your specific scenario, sure, it would require extra work to convert it, so I’d just read it as is.
But when making plans, and especially spans between two different times, my brain thinks of time as portions of a pie chart, and I’d have to translate 3/4 to 45 minutes.
warm@kbin.earth 3 months ago
I think there's bigger problems if you have to process the time. If you've never heard it in your life, maybe you'd stop and think, but it's honestly just something you learn and know, no thinking required.
It's like when people don't know 24 hour time, when it's something you've just grown up with, there's no thinking and then you are confused when you hear people have to think about it or "calculate".
wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 3 months ago
24 hr time should be the global standard too, IMO. Reduce all possibilities of confusion, I say.
warm@kbin.earth 3 months ago
To be honest, it's mainly just USA that just use 12-hour (and call 24-hour "military time"?), the large majority of the world use both interchangeably.
betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Also adopt UTC as global time while we’re improving things. No more messing around with all those different time zones, one is enough.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 3 months ago
If we’re doing this I’m referring to the hour past midnight as 0:XX and not 24:XX and you can’t stop me
joel_feila@lemmy.world 3 months ago
so would just saying am pm all the time.
rockerface@lemm.ee 3 months ago
I have a friend that had issues telling time with analogue clocks when we studied together in a university. It really is just the matter of what you grew up with.
superfes@lemmy.world 3 months ago
My kids also hate that all my devices use 24 hour time >_>
AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 3 months ago
I’ve been using 24 hour time for the past few years and I still have trouble with it from time to time and have to calculate it in my head.
Also, a different example of something similar is how old I am. Despite knowing my birth year, I still struggle recalling how old I am I still have to take a moment to calculate it.