Talk:Date and time notation by country

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[edit] Sweden

It should be mentioned that in some common speech in sweden, the hour is left out. 15:30 could be said as "halv" ("Half"). It's not very specific due to the short length of an hour, but it's commonly used in speech. Ran4 20:27, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Military

If military time is spoken with the words hours, than shouldn't be the 1440-hour clock? Zginder 21:25, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Working for the US Navy, we speak that time as "fourteen forty hours". The top of the hour is spoken as "hundred hours", such as "thirteen hundred hours" for 1300. Groink 07:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] British dates

How do you say a date like 31 December, 1999. I am from the USA so I am wondering because in the US it is writin the way we say it. December 31, 1999, is said, "December 31st. 1999." while to say to the other way would be longer, "The 31st. of December, 1999." Zginder 12:17, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

"It is written the way it is said" is usually an illusion and not very helpful if you want to document usage exactly, as your change from an cardinal number in the written form to an ordinal number in the spoken form illustrates.
Not being a native English speaker (only have lived here for a decade), I would say: the English written date "31 December 1999" (no comma!) would most commonly be pronounced as either "thirty-first december nineteen ninety-nine" or "thirty-one december nineteen ninety-nine". I have also heard "the thirty-first of december nineteen ninety-nine", but I do not believe this version with determiner and predicate is very common today and it has a slightly old-fashioned ring to me. You might say or even write that if you deliberately tried to sound old-fashioned (e.g., on a stylish wedding invitation). Markus Kuhn 12:56, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

How did in the U.S. historically the day end up between the month and the year? It is a most unusual order.

Because it is said that way. Zginder 22:37, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Same question again: how did saying it that way arise? It is (was?) not said that way in British English. −Woodstone

I live in the United States. And I've never once spoken the day of the month using ordinal suffixes, such as "December thirty-first". I've always spoken it as "December thirty-one". I live in Hawaii. Groink 07:41, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I live in the north-east USA and we say it using ordinals when we say the name of the month, but with cardnals with number months. Zginder 20:22, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, time for an entry from a British English speaker as to common usage for spoken dates. The ordinal is used for day and month if reading the numbers, so "31/12/2006" is read as "the thirty first of the twelfth", followed by either "two thousand and six" or "twenty oh six" for the year, depending on preference. If the name of the month is used, then it's "thirty-first of December"; but this may be reversed, with the word "the" inserted: "December the thirty-first" followed, once again, by the year as per preference. [JerryT 16:24, 13 October 2006 (UTC)]

Why do they say twenty to three when they mean 14.45??

Is it true that "in private life Sunday is often preferred" as the first day of the week? As a Brit, this seems to me to be quite an old-fashioned view. In my experience, people tend to think of Monday as the first day of the week, as it is the usual day for going back to work or school, followed by the remaining four weekdays and finally two days off at the end of the week. --Listsdraft 16:18, 26 October 2007 (UTC)


Towards the end of the date section, it says:

"In business, the beginning of the week is usually considered to be Monday; but in private life Sunday is often preferred."

Since when has this been the case? I've never heard anyone refer to the beginning of the week as Sunday, it's always Monday in both business and private life. Almost all calenders sold here also have the week beginning on a monday. Sneyton (talk) 22:19, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Japan

It would seem that this acticle should reference the Japan articles - Japanese era name Japanese calendar and the use of times beyond 24:00 (e.g. 27:00 for 03:00 when referring to an event starting the previous day) which is alluded to in 24-hour clock.

[[User:Boltonm|Bolton] 18:45, 15 November 2006 (UTC+9)]

[edit] Canada

When Canada uses numbers to write their dates, is it in the dd-mm-yyyy or mm-dd-yyyy format? --124.106.134.220 08:29, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

In informal usage, I've seen it both ways in equal measure. And on passport forms, it's requested in "yyyy-mm-dd" format. I'm not sure there'd be any government policy on it, would there? --Lonelywurm 07:47, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Canada uses the ISO8601 format ("yyyy-mm-dd") officially. That's why it appears thus on government documents. Bushcutter (talk) 22:11, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] United States

The article says that, for instace, 1:55 is pronounce "five 'til two" (which is common), as well as "five until two" which is vitually unheard of. Without any citation of this form, I think I will delete it. If anyone can produce a reference for this obscure form, I will let it stand. I cannot find it in actual use anywhere.

[edit] Austria, Germany, Switzerland

The sample: For example, "dreiviertel drei" (three-quarter three, see table below) stands for "three quarters of the third hour have passed". is incorrect. Correct is the later reference in the table of "dreiviertel drei" being 14:45. So the sample should state something like "three quaters of the second hour have passed". While that would be technically correct it is confusing and doesn't help much as an example. Therefore I have not changed the entry. Hovewer, this needs to be addressed and corrected.

To me the description looks consistent. The first hour is the one starting at 00:00 (or in the afternoon 12:00). So the third hour is the one between 02:00 and 03:00, making said time 02:45 (or if you like 14:45). −Woodstone 15:54, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

consistent? yes it is. confusing? Yes! 80% of German speakers will have no idea what time you mean when you say "dreiviertel drei". therefore it would never be used in any written german so one should always use the relative version. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.196.203.94 (talk) 20:23, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] O' Clock

An anon edit on 2 March 2006 changed all occurances of "o'clock" to "O'Clock". This looks very unusual to me and clearly requires a reference. Markus Kuhn 00:29, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] date and time articles

Tobias Conradi (Talk) 20:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

How about putting the content to the Time in Xy articles which are often very short anyway. standardised sections could be created.

Tobias Conradi (Talk) 20:45, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion it makes more sense to merge all the "time in xx" articles into this one. Since the information for each country is short, it does not make sense to brake it into minute subsections. −Woodstone 21:13, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
If you really must split up the article into per-country articles, then they should be bound together by a common navigation template. Markus Kuhn 09:46, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
The "Time in X" articles are currently about time zones, not date and time notations. Markus Kuhn 09:48, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Australia

In the Australia time section, it says that a period is the preferred time separator, but that the colon is also common. I disagree with this. I think the colon is far more common than the period. I'm going to put citation needed. Dgen 06:00, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't know about other countries, but one thing that really annoys me about time references in Australia is the growing practice of writing "12 pm" for noon and "12 am" for midnight. Apart from anything else, it's etymologically wrong, since "pm" means "post meridien", i.e. "after noon" in Latin, so "12 pm" means "12 after noon" (is that midnight?!!) I believe we should change to using the 24-hour clock for all civil purposes, which would remove this anomaly and be much less ambiguous generally. As that isn't going to happen anytime soon, I do hope this practice is stamped out.Shrdlu junction 04:58, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I just changed the colon/period thing around. The colon is a million times more common.203.13.90.2 (talk) 01:49, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] General week

In the UK at least, and it seems very probably elsewhere, there are three distinct contexts for the Week :

  • Business - Mon-Sun very common, I believe
  • Ordinary - Sun-Sat traditional, Mon-Sun increasingly common
  • Church - Genesis notwithstanding, the Prayer Book presumes Sun-Sat. Church diaries?

Perhaps each of the three should be included in each "national" section; certainly it should not be assumed that there is always a uniform preference.

82.163.24.100 16:05, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Sun-Sat is broadly consistent with Genesis. --Rumping 12:21, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Consistent with the Jewish tradition of resting on the Sabbath = Saturday, but not consistent with the Constantine I-decreed Christian tradition of resting on the Sabbath = Sunday. Check Sunday#Sunday_and_the_Sabbath for a detailed discussion regarding the Christian confusion on this issue. Markus Kuhn 14:58, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Just scroll up to Sunday#Position during the week and it shows that having Sunday (the Lord's Day) as a day of rest need not alter the first day of the week for Christians. The New Testament is clear that Easter and the empty tomb was the first day of the week (Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:9, Luke 24:1, John 20:1). Moving the first day to Monday is a secular tradition to ensure that a weekend is contained within a single week.--Rumping 02:20, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Globalization

In many wikipedia articles, both the British and American versions of the date appear. Since our world is becoming more dependent upon cultural lines, it may become necessary for the entire world to have one date format. I wonder which format in wikipedia is proper for a multicultural reference. Will 9/11 be known as 11/9 in the future in America? For now, I suggest all US articles should have the proper format, but this issue will become more important. If September 11 becomes 11 September in this country (US), it would probably be a pretty big deal since it is quite a famous date. Times are a changin' and international influence, especially in the academic field is censoring away another one of America's identities- as evident on the Declaration of Independence and Statue of Liberty.

Check out ISO 8601 for the most sensible global long-term solution. Markus Kuhn 00:53, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
Also note that ISO 8601 does not chance, only changes 9/11 to 09-11 not 11/9, and 9/11/2001 to 2001-09-11. Zginder (talk) (Contrib) 14:30, 15 December 2007 (UTC)