This is the second in what I’m sure will be a long series of threads asking non-US native English speakers what they do in their countries so I don’t pass misinformation on to my students.
I’m teaching my kids to tell time in English. In Bulgaria, military time is really common…it wouldn’t be unusual to hear someone say “the bus leaves at 16 o’clock,” for example, which you would never hear in the US. I wanted to explain about am and pm, but before I do, is am/pm standard throughout the English speaking world?
You asked about English speaking countries, but nonetheless I’ll give you the common usage in Germany. Both ways are used, but in everyday conversation, the 12 hour count is slightly more common - you’re more likely to hear “The bus leaves at four o’clock.” We generally don’t use the a.m./p.m. designators and only add “vormittags” (in the morning) or “nachmittags” (in the afternoon) if it’s not clear from the context if a.m. or p.m. is what the speaker means.
In print, the 24 hour count is preferred - schedules and such almost exclusively use it.
What Schnitte said - only, I have never heard 24-hour time referred to as ‘military time’ in Germany. Isn’t ‘military time’ specifically 24-hour time expressed as a 4-digit number (e.g. 1730 for 5:30 p.m.)? We don’t use that style at all.
Yeah, it’s not ‘military time’: in Britain, it’s the ‘24 hour clock’. Used, for example, on railways, where a standard announcement is something like “The next train to depart from platform 2 is the fourteen-oh-seven service for London Liverpool Street…”. And in these contexts, people will sometimes use such terms of speech themselves, and on other occassions translate to ‘normal’ speech. Such translation between 24-hours and am/pm can be habitual, in both directions - for example, when I’m verbally given a time e.g. of an appointment at quarter-to-five, I’ll automatically write down 1645.
I’ll second GorillaMan’s post and say that we (UK) tend to float in a haphazard fashion betwen the two, as with most things - Imperial and Metric measures being a prime example.
My experience in Sweden was that 24-hour time was the norm.
Irrelevant anecdote: in a butchers, I asked for a kilo of mince, and a customer beside me made some sarcastic comment about me ‘being a bit too modern’. Quick as a flash, the butcher asked ‘is 908 grammes OK?’ The old fool beside me had no idea why I laughed
I will third GorillaMan post and second Myglaren’s for the UK.
With the corollary that when talking to another native English speaker in the UK, I would use am/ pm if it wasn’t clear from the context.
Additionally, I haven’t lived in the UK for a while, so other people’s MMV.
In Russia, mostly the 24 hour clock is used, i.e. ‘I’ll meet you at 1900’. A lot of Russians carry this over into English which to me, as a native speaker of British English, sounds strange.
When I was teaching EFL, I always taught my students to use am and pm. Maybe not successfully, but it was taught.
I seem to be in agreement with the other U.K. people here. I use happily use either, depending on context. Example, I might agree to meet someone at 8 o’clock, but if I were telling someone about arrival or departure of a train or bus I would be much more likely to give in in the “24-hour clock”*(and I would then shift it into the other version if I was talking to a stranger who seemed confused by the 24 hour clock).
And I’m pretty sure I always write down the time in 24 hour format - e.g. "meet parents Sat, 18.00) which is daft as I’m not likely to forget.
The 24-hour clock is the official way to tell time in Quebec. It’s the only way you’ll see time written on signs or official websites, for example. However, while it’s standard for French-speakers to say *“seize heures” *, you’ll never hear a (civilian) English-speaker say “sixteen hundred hours”. Odd, n’est ce pas?
All clocks in our house are set to the 24-hour clock. My watch, my alarm clock, the DVD recorder, our phones, computers, etc. etc. When we book flights and train tickets we refer to the 24 hour clock to avoid confusion, even when talking to each other.
However, when we talk to each other casually, even though the clock says “21.20” we’ll say “It’s nine-twenty.”
Rather than ‘haphazard’, I’d call it ‘bilingual’.
(Another vote for ‘military time’ to be a peculiar term.)
Perfect example of Brits liking to sit on fences. As I said, we’ve got no problem understanding a train timetable. But it’s the norm for a bus lane to be signed “7am-10am, 4pm-7pm”. I find that really hard to parse, at least within the time it takes to change lanes (or not!)
I teach at a public school in South Korea. The schedules for the school day and all school events is published with 24-hour clock time. Also, the public transportation schedules use 24-hour clock time.
Depending on the subject of the conversation, people have no problem discussing things with 12-hour or 24-hour clock time.
I got in the habit of using “military time” years ago because I had to keep a log of radio transmitter readings and the Federal Communications Commission mandated a 24-hour clock.
I still use it when signing out medical reports and such.
