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November 28

Clock questions

Does 12-hour clock have a written numeric form in any of continental European countries? Does it have a written numeric form in Finnish, Polish, Italian and Swedish, for example?
How do English speakers say leading zero of times such as 01:15?
Why does English not use word "clock" in expressions of time? Why is it not "Clock is five" but "It is five"?
Does English ever use expressions such as "It is 16", "I go to sleep at 22", "The shop opens at 7"? And are terms like "15 sunset" (meaning a sunset between 15:00 and 16:00) and "19 news" (meaning a news broadcast starting around 19:00) understood in the same way as "3 PM sunset" and "7 PM news"? --40bus (talk) 06:21, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
4. Yes to "the shop opens (or closes) at seven"; no to the others. —Tamfang (talk) 20:58, 30 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You have also asked questions 1 - 3 on the Miscellaneous desk, where I have already answered two of them. I suggest you transfer 4 there and strike out this query or the responses might become confused. If you do so I will also address 4 there. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.1.211.243 (talk) 07:20, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is the place to ask these questions, not the Miscellaneous desk. These are related to language. I posted these on wrong desk because I replied to the ethnicity question there, and forgot to go to another desk. I think that this discussion should be continued there. --40bus (talk) 07:52, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

40bus -- As I'm sure you've been told before, in the United States, military people sometimes say things such as "Men, we hit the beaches at oh-two-hundred hours" (i.e. 02:00) or "We have an inspection at twenty-two hundred hours" (22:00), but 12-hour AM and PM usage without leading zeroes predominates almost exclusively in non-military and non-narrowly-technical contexts... AnonMoos (talk) 13:05, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can only speak from a British point of view, so don't know how things are said in other English speaking countries, but

2) I would say "Oh one fifteen". This would imply 01:15 in the morning as opposed to 13:15. "One fifteen" could be either morning or afternoon, depending on context.

3) "Clock is five" isn't an English expression, however "five o'clock" is. I believe this is short for the formal "five of the clock", but that would never be used in full. "Five o'clock" could be 05:00 or 17:00, again depending on context. "Seventeen o'clock" wouldn't be used.

4) The 24 hour clock is used to avoid ambiguity, for example in railway timetables, and understood by most people, but would only be used for a precise time, for example "The train leaves at twenty-two fifteen", not "the train leaves at quarter past twenty-two".

Generally the British use the 12 hour clock, and where necessary add "a.m." or "p.m." I don't know about other countries so can't answer #1. -- Voice of Clam (talk) 13:53, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. George Orwell's "1984" starts with the sentence "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen", but I hope you don't want to live in that world... AnonMoos (talk) 14:42, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Besides "occasion" and "equation," what other word pairs sound somewhat similar enough that foreigners may intend to pronounce one word but pronounce a whole 'nother word by mispronouncing what they had intended?

I can also think of "pretend" and "portend."

What are words you can think of that sound like entirely different but similar words in any foreign accent? --2600:8803:1D13:7100:9FF:58EA:8413:22F3 (talk) 18:25, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Foreign accents vary widely, so the question is quite vaguely phrased. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:54, 28 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you don't have to cite similarities of word pairs for every accent; you can just share the ones for the accents you know. I'm hoping for a variety of answers from a variety of users. --2600:100A:B051:403F:5829:6046:7D7:35FD (talk) 03:11, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Both your examples have very different vowels (o versus e) in writing and to most people those sound very different too. Foreigners would tend to pronounce them differently. Very few languages don't distinguish front vowels from back vowels. English of course features very strong vowel reduction, so all unstressed vowels sound more or less the same. Foreigners are more likely to mishear occasion/equation than to mispronounce them.

Consider pairs differing in voicedness of a plosive. For example time/dime. In English, the t is aspirated, the d is voiceless or slightly voiced. If the foreigners native language has fully voiced d and unaspirated t (for example, French or Dutch), the foreigner's time may sound like dime to a native speaker. There's also bag/back. I think that phonetically the difference is mostly in the length of the vowel (but I'm no native English speaker and to me they sound pretty much the same), so this may be hard for speakers of languages with no phonemic vowel length.

Also consider pairs with similar vowels, like bit/beet. No problem for people who have those vowels in their native language, but if your native language only has 5 or 6 vowels (like Spanish or Italian), those are confusing. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:35, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are several languages that reguarly unvoice consonant sounds in final positions, such as all Continental West Germanic and all (?) Slavic languages (I think). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 13:00, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, AFAIK they unvoice their voiced obstruents in final position. That is, to the extend that they have voiced obstruents, which may be less than you might think on first sight. PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:05, 1 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It might not even need to be foreigners. I once met a British girl named Ella who spoke some British accent where it seemed like the vowel sounds of bAt and bEt had merged, so I thought at first she was named Alla. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:58, 29 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]