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.

Edit: thanks for all the answers everyone! This was just pure curiosity for me but I really enjoyed reading everyone’s responses and learning some new things!

  • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
    0·
    1 year ago

    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 first half.

    It’s somehow the same weird thing with American people starting their week on Sunday (in the calendar). Despite the bible clearly telling us god took a day off on the seventh day. Though… I like taking taking a break and have a coffee before getting to work, so I don’t have an issue with that. 😁

    • VulKendov@reddthat.com
      3·
      1 year ago

      The seventh day that God rested on, the sabbath, is observed on Saturday in Jewish and some Christian traditions.

      • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
        1·
        1 year ago

        Ah, you’re right. The week starts on ‘Yom Rishon’ and ends on ‘Yom Shabbat’. So starting your week on Sunday is correct in the Hebrew calendar.

        • Oyster_Lust@lemmy.world
          1·
          1 year ago

          I don’t actually know the reasoning behind it. We have a rather small company and in 2003 we outsourced our accounting to a nationwide firm that does accounting for a lot of huge worldwide franchises. Our work weeks went from Monday to Sunday, but this accounting firm said that all their clients had Thursday to Wednesday weeks, so we had to change to that system. We’ve since taken our accounting system back inhouse, but we’ve kept the Thursday through Wednesday weeks.

          I had never heard of that weekly system before 2003, but now I’ve realized that it’s quite popular. I think it’s more of a system used in franchise type companies rather than manufacturing or other type businesses.