this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
17 points (90.5% liked)
Shitty Ask Lemmy
1091 readers
1 users here now
its like r/shittyaskreddit except its lemmy
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If you really want to have fun with spoken German time formats, you have to get into the quarters though.
For example:
8:15 / 20:15 can be said as Viertel nach Acht (quarter past eight) or Viertel Neun (quarter nine)
8:45 / 20:45 can be said as Viertel vor Neun (quarter before nine) or Dreiviertel Neun (three quarters nine)
And I think the difference in those is regional, so those are actually more "controversial" then using 12 or 24h formats.
As a native English speaker that used to be able to speak decent German, the one that really screwed with me was 30 minutes past/to the hour. In British English (apparently, an American girlfriend found this confusing when I said it), you can just say "half eight" and everyone knows you mean half past eight. In German, "halb acht" would be 7:30, because it's assumed to be half to instead of past. Neither is more reasonable than the other, but it definitely took me a while to get over the instinctual understanding of it. I was very late to at least one lunch
As an American, the first time I heard this usage by a British person, I assumed it meant half an hour before the hour (7:30, in your example).