I don’t know where the usage “a quarter of…” came from originally. But as I’ve said before, I hate it, hate it, hate it!
Quarter 'til…? That makes sense. “Quarter [un]til” makes it obvious that you mean 15 minutes before the hour.
Quarter after… (or quarter past…)? Again, it makes sense. “Quarter after” makes it obvious that you mean 15 minutes after the hour.
Quarter of…? Madness. “Of” tells you nothing about the relative position of the quarter in relation to the hour. Is it fifteen minutes before the hour? Fifteen minutes after the hour? There’s no logical way to reason it out. It’s a recipe for disaster, I tell you. You’re gonna be a half hour early (or worse, a half hour late) for every appointment if you use some weird terminology like “quarter of.” Mark my words.
I think I’ve heard ‘quarter of’ before once or twice, here in England, but never in a context where it was going to make me early or late.
Here, the typical convention is:
Everything up to and including 30 minutes is ‘~past’ with respect to the previous hour - so: five past six, ten past, quarter past, twenty past, half past (never ‘thirty past’ or ‘fifteen past’ though)
The ‘past’ is sometimes dropped for the half hour, so: ‘half six’ is half past six - 6:30 - and this has caused misunderstanding in the past when speaking to German or Polish people, where I believe ‘half six’ really means 'half an hour to six (so actually 5:30)
Everything from 31 to 59 minutes inclusive is ‘to’ with respect to the next hour (I don’t think I’ve heard ‘til’, but I would comprehend it if I did), so: twenty-five to seven, quarter to, ten to, five to, one minute to
I recall that from when I was learning German in high school, that “halb sechs” means what we would call 5:30 in English.
I’ve heard things like “half six” on British TV shows, but we don’t really use it in the US (at least not that I’ve ever run across). “Half past six,” sure, but not “half six.”
I’ve always been fascinated by the little differences between British and American phrases, idioms, etc.
Indeed, and it gets crazier. In most German dialects, you can say things like “dreiviertel sechs” (“three-quarters six” = 5:45) or “viertel sechs” (“quarter six” = 5:15). The fraction indicates how much of that last hour has elapsed.
I come from a region (Westphalia) where this isn’t used, and it always throws me off. Every time someone from Southern Germany tells me the time that way, I have to ask what time they really mean.
When we moved from New York to Canada (Ontario) in 1969, we were surprised to hear “quarter to ten” instead of “quarter of ten”; similarly, Canadians didn’t seem to understand “quarter OF”. Without debating whether it makes sense or not, it’s clearly a regionalism.
Die_Capacitrix mused about “next Friday”. I’ve been fascinated by this for literally decades. I’m convinced that it’s a sliding scale: if today is Thursday, “next Friday” is definitely eight days away. If today is Saturday, “next Friday” is six days away. The tricky part is where that switches, and that seems to be individual. It also may even depend on what the day you’re referring to is: I think “next Friday” is only five days away on Sunday, but probably eleven days away on Monday. But “next Sunday” might still be less than a week on, say, Wednesday. And your usage may well vary. Of course the best best is to be explicit, but we aren’t always, are we?
There’s at least a Canada Council grant in this, possibly even one from NSF, to the right researcher!
For me, I think it’s only next Friday if it is currently Friday, then there is a stress on ‘next’
If it’s Saturday and we’re talking about the coming Friday, it’s Friday, or sometimes ‘Friday coming’. Once we get past Sunday into the working week, then the coming Friday may also be referred to as ‘this Friday’
In the US, if someone asks the time, one might sometimes respond simply “Half past”, without specifying the hour, if it’s understood that the other person knows what hour it is.
In the UK, would one ever answer the question with just “Half”?
We have that here too - unfortunately the habit that this tends to foster (of only paying very close attention to the minute hand) has made me occasionally turn up an hour early to appointments.
I don’t think that ever happens, except maybe in the middle of a conversation that is already about times, where someone has asked “You mentioned ‘after 6’, but how long after 6?” or something. I think it’s slightly more likely that a number (like twenty or twenty-five) would be unqualified in that way, than a fraction like half or quarter.
If someone told me to show up at “half six”, i would ask for clarification. Because that’s not used in my idiom. (I would guess 5:30, fwiw. But I’d know i was just guessing.)
As for “next Friday”, i try not to use that unless we’ve just ruled out this (future) Friday. Etymologically, “next” used to mean “nearest”, so if today is Thursday, “next Friday” ought to mean tomorrow. But it probably is intended to mean 8 days from now. Anyway, I’ve just decided it’s confusing, and I’ll look at my calendar and say, “how about Friday, dec 27”, instead.
However, the whole verbiage of “half past”, “quarter to”, etc is slowly dying. The older the person is, the more likely they are to use it. It is not something a 20 year old would say.
Probably because digital clocks are more and more common. I found out the other day that a work colleague of mine, who is about 20, doesn’t know how to tell the time on a traditional analogue clockface. Seriously.
