Why is it that Americans refer to 24 hour time as military time? I understand that the military uses the 24hr format but I don’t understand why the general public would refer to it like that?
It makes it seem like it’s a foreign concept where as in a lot of countries it’s the norm.
Related question. Do 24 hour clock folks say fourteen o’clock if they’re talking about 2pm?
I’m german. if it’s completely unambiguous, we simply say “dinner is at 6” or “my shift ends at 4”. but when you want to make sure that there’s no room for confusion we say “let’s meet at 21 o’clock”.
In French, it’s pretty common to say 14 o’clock.
La fête est à quatorze heures.
Which is French for “I expect you’ll show up some time between 15:00 and 19:00.”
In my country younger individuals like me use the 24 hour system a lot verbally. Older generations from before smartphones (which always use 24 hour) uses the 12 hour system more.
But in general I would argue that people use the 24 hour system when talking about something which needs precision, like when the train arrives. And the 12 hour system when talking about something like when to meet a friend (it’s still very important to arrive on time though, regardless of how imprecise the time was, “about five” means five.)
They say fourteen hundred or 2 o’clock. I’ve never really heard anyone say 14 o’clock.
We definitely just called it 14 where I grew up
We called it 14 in Alabama. You’re talking about age of censent, right?
In both Polish and German people say fourteen o’clock.
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking
thirteenfourteen”In Denmark we say “2 o’clock” or just “14”, sometimes also “14 o’clock”. No one says fourteen hundred, except perhaps for a few military wannabes.
If it’s quarter past 2, we’d usually say “14-15”. Half past 2 would be “14-30”, you get the idea.
If we mean to say “from 2 o’clock to 3 o’clock”, we’ll say “14 to 15”, which I imagine can be confusing for the uninitiated, as the only difference from “quarter past 2” would be a “to”.
For those downvoting me, what do you say? I imagine it must be other Danes or neighboring countries, as one surely wouldn’t downvote a culturally dependant statement if not from said culture.
Same in Norway, unsurprisingly, but we do say 14 0 0 (fjorten null null) if making it clear that we mean 1400 exact. Otherwise like you said, klokken 14 or klokken 2.
1400 (fourteen hundred)