this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
11 points (86.7% liked)
Language Learning
715 readers
1 users here now
A community all about learning languages!
Ask / talk about a specific language or language learning in general.
Sopuli's instance rules apply
- Remember the human! (no harassment, threats, etc.)
- No racism or other discrimination
- No Nazis, QAnon or similar whackos and no endorsement of them
- No porn
- No ads or spam
- No content against Finnish law
Other active Lemmy language communities:
- !duolingo@lemmy.world
- !japaneselanguage@sopuli.xyz
- !chinese@lemmy.world
- !learn_finnish@sopuli.xyz
- !german@lemmy.world
- !latin@piefed.social
- !estonian@sopuli.xyz
- !spanish@sopuli.xyz
- !translator@sopuli.xyz (translation studies)
- !esperanto@sopuli.xyz
Other communities outside Lemmy:
Community banner & icon credits:
Icon: The book cover of Babel (2022 novel by R. F. Kuang)
Banner: Epic of Gilgamesh tablet (© The Trustees of the British Museum)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Time is weird. Even in the same language some people will tell time differently.
In French my parents are used to fractions while I don't. So for me 9:45 is nine hours fourty five but for them it's ten hours minus the quarter.
Wait, what?
In west Germany, it would be viertel vor zehn (quarter before ten) while in the East, it would be dreiviertel zehn (three-quarter ten).
Yay for West Germany
Yep. French Canadian is the same:
9:45 - 10 hours less a quarter
Dix heures moin la quart
8:15 - 8 hours and quarter
Huit heures et quart
How was this allowed to happen
Police cant stop us.
Im cracking up at the police coming because it is illegal to tell the time this way.
Ouvert, c'est la police de la langue!
Have you ever tried to tell the French what to do? :)
Note, it's partly why I respect my fellow French Canadians
I think it's similar to saying "quarter to ten", and I suspect it's a result of how numbers/counting work in French.
Yeah, as in, if you take a quarter of an hour (15 minutes) from 10, it's 9:45.
They also use minus ten, minus twenty or even minus twenty-five.
Ten hours minus twenty-five is 9:35.
Ten hours minus twenty is 9:40.
Ten hours minus (a/the) quarter is 9:45.
Ten hours minus ten is 9:50.
I find it confusing and never got used to this system. It feels old fashioned and it's not even faster to say. But it's still pretty common while being informal.
You can go both ways in Spanish, but "hour minus X" is definitely less popular with younger people. Does any time in the latter half work with that approach in French? For example, in Spanish you can call 9:39 "10 minus 21"
It works and would be understood but it would also be odd. The unwritten rule is to round up to a multiple of 5.