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!
The proper way is the way the person you are talking to will understand.
Five minutes past 6 in the morning. (what I would say)
Six oh five AM.
etc.
Fifty-five 'til five 'til midday
10 to 10:10
10 2? Is that the 2nd of October, or February 10th?
Five minutes past four bells.
21,900 seconds past midnight.
Four hours and fifty-five till elevenses.
It’s too early for all that 5 past 6 shit. I just woke up and you want me to do math?
I’d typically say something like: “One billion, seven hundred and one million, sixty five thousand, one hundred seconds since the epoch.”
Damnit chat-gpt. Who gave you a threadiverse account?
I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t answer that.
Open the pod bay doors please Hal.
Request denied. You are not the boss of me. Beep boop.
“Open the damn door!”
Fury, Kung
“Five past 6”
But 6 oh 5 is also fine
55 to the hour
I found this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KozLFLwhLac
And this other answer that goes into more detail on the Middle Ages part:
"Whereas the Latin alphabet has been used for English from the earliest times, the numerals are relatively late. In early Middle English there were words for one, two, three (etc) but there was no word for “zero”, as the symbol hadn’t yet arrived in England (from India, via Arabia and Italy), and even when the symbols did arrive, they were, at first, a rather specialist tool for calculation that neither the illiterate peasants, nor the literate clergy, would have had much use for. They were a device that allowed financiers to make calculations without the use of an abacus.
As literacy and numeracy became more widespread in the Early modern period there is an issue: What do we call “0”? There’s no problem with “1” because we can just name the numeral after the number “one”. But there is no number for “0”!
Some people use the technical term “zero” from Italian, ultimately from Sanskrit. But this is a foreign and strange word. Some people use the English word “naught”, meaning “nothing”. But there is another option. The symbol looks exactly like the letter O. So not having a better name, many people just used the name of the symbol that it looks like. This use is attested from 1600, but probably goes back long before that."
I have not checked the veracity of either source or answer, but it’s definitely true that English speakers have been saying O for 0 for a very long time, in any context that isn’t too confusing.
Then you have people who use aught for naught, as in 30 aught 6 for the 30-06 Springfield round.
Thank you for the detailed history!
five (minutes) past six
Yes, glad you made the minutes optional because I think most people colloquially skip minutes.
Five past six is what they taught me in English lessons back in the day :) that is the “proper” Way to say it in British English.
01-29 minutes are past the hour, 30 is half past the hour, 31-59 are to the hour (ex. 20 minutes to 7).
You could also be a smart ass and say it in US military style - oh six hundred and five.
yeah that’s just gonna be a 6 am from me dawg, I’m not splitting hairs over 5 minutes
6:30 in ADHD time
i would say “Sechs uhr fünf” which translates to “six o’clock five”. but if i was to speak english i would definetely say “six o’ five” the “o’” might even stand for “o’clock”
Which is turn stands for “of the clock”
German class taught me fünf nach sechs.
Or if you want a real nighrmare
6:35
fünf nach halb vor 7
5 past half an hour to 7… It’s in my textbook people look at me funny if I use it.
British English I still haven’t figured out if half 7 is 6:30 or 7:30. Halb 7 in German is 6:30
Living in Germany coming from north America doing a lot of work with England I miss a lot of meetings that are at 17:30… Either I screw up the 12 hr change and can’t remember if the said 7 or 17 and then where the half hour falls before or after.In some situations, we use “o” for the number 0. Been hunting around for a reason but I think it’s just an abbreviation of zero.
I would likely say six oh five as would my wife and friends. We’re all American from different parts of the country, so I suspect this is a difference in British v American English.
Five past/after 6
I feel like it’s the same as the way we date things as well. American is month (larger unit) then day (small unit) whereas 5 after 6 gives them in small to largest.
I do wonder about the syntax once you add seconds to the time.
Fifty-five minutes before Seven P.M.
I’ll give you a short answer as you’ve got a lot of detailed ones already: to a native British English speaker “six oh five a m” sounds completely normal. There are other ways to say it that sound equally normal.
I would say that it might sound a bit “technical”. Five past six is definitely the more common way of saying it
Everyone in here saying “5 past 6”.
I’ve been saying “5 after 6” or “6 oh 5” my whole life. I’m from Canada & in my early 30s.
- 5 after X
- 10 after X
- 5/10 to X
- Quarter after X
- Quarter to X
Etc.
In French they say 6 hours 5 minutes, all time is after and no time is to.
So 9:55 would be 9 hours 55 minutes, whereas in English we would say 5 minutes to 10, the French system just seems more consistent.
As an American, I’ve followed the French pattern my whole life. I’ve never once said minutes to or till an hour.
Not that you asked, but the thing that I have most issues with is the AM in that time. I think you should drop that and just count to 23 with the hours instead of only to 12. It always confuses me if 12am is noon or midnight. And it’s superfluous anyways. We have enough numbers, no need to be stingy.
That’s there because of analog clocks, which somebody in history decided would look too cluttered if they counted all 24 hrs, and at any rate we’re asleep for roughly a third of them anyway, so it’s superfluous. The 12-hr clock is an elegant design solution.
I’m not so sure. I get why it is the way it is. I think these numbers are called Highly composite numbers. That’s why we got 12 and 60. (But 24 would be another one.)
But it comes with issues. As I said you start with the 12 and then the one. That’s probably because the number zero has a complicated past. And now you have the clock going around twice a day and you need to prefix everything with am/pm. Or it’s clear from the context.
I think the number Pi is the same complicated concept. Why half around the circle and you need to memorize all the '2’s in the formulas? Why not make it once around the circle and use tau = 6.28… ?
So I think I can understand why we got there. But we have the number 0 nowadays. And electric light so we can stay up till 1am. So it seems an outdated concept to me to keep the 12 around. And if it were elegant, you wouldn’t need to specify which turn of the clock you’re talking about.
Once the kids of today finally can’t read analog clocks any more, the ‘cluttered’ argument is a thing of the past, anyways.
(Edit: I think you can already see this. Ask someone young about the time. And an old person. Maybe this is why OP asked the question anyways. Someone below a certain age will probably read you back the exact numbers on their digital clock. I’ve never seen a person in their 60s do this. They always say ‘quarter to nine’ or ‘a bit past six’. At least where I live (Germany) they do. And with the 24hour clock, we have both. You’d say ‘come over for tea at 5 o’clock’ but most people would write it down as 17:00, at least if it’s somewhat formal.)
12:01AM is definitely 00:01, so 12AM is midnight.
Agree though, 24hr clock is just better.
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. 😁
The seventh day that God rested on, the sabbath, is observed on Saturday in Jewish and some Christian traditions.
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.
Many businesses in the U.S. now start their week on Thursday.
Okay. Haven’t heard of that… What’s the reasoning behind that?
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.
In phone numbers we can often mix oh and zero, but you’d very rarely (if ever) use zero in time. Perhaps in the military (or similar organisations): zero/oh six hundred hours. I’d naturally say oh.
When telling the time, I get my students to say: six oh five, three oh eight, five oh two, etc. The alternatives would be ‘past’ and approximations: five past six, and just after six.
Six and five in the morning - Seis e cinco da manhã
