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I think almost everybody in European countries knows about AM/PM, but I certainly get confused by 11:59 AM vs 12:00 AM
by Recursing 6y ago
I think almost everybody in European countries knows about AM/PM, but I certainly get confused by 11:59 AM vs 12:00 AM
- Kye 6y agoOn the topic: Siri will ask you to clarify if you set a reminder too close to midnight. "Did you mean 11am tomorrow?" It also works on the other side: set a reminder for "2" at 1am and it'll ask you to specify.
- criddell 6y agoI've never been able to keep 12 AM vs 12 PM straight in my head. If I have to put something on my calendar or set an alarm for that time, I always use 11:59 AM or PM. Is there a mnemonic or trick for remembering?
- mc32 6y agoYes, you can’t have 12:01AM being in the afternoon, so 12:00AM must be one minute before 12:01AM, so it is also dark.
- lebuffon 6y agoIt might go back to Anglo-Norman (Frenchish) language: Apres midi Post midi
- gmac 6y agoIt's usually held to be Latin: ante and post meridiem[1]. But surely the whole point is that midday itself is neither before nor after midday, while midnight is precisely equally both before and after? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock
- lozf 6y agoBut "apres" also means after.
- gmac 6y ago12 AM and 12 PM are only meaningful by some arbitrary convention, and I'm not sure if that's even very consistent. I try always to use 12 noon and 12 midnight instead.
- hanche 6y agoThat’s why insurance policies in the US usually comes into effect at 12:01 AM.
- gmac 6y agoSame in the UK, and similarly they often cease at 11:59PM, which has always struck me as pretty unsatisfactory. What if a plane crashes on my house, between policies, during those two uninsured minutes? Sure, it's unlikely, but so are all the other things that might cause me to claim on my buildings insurance policy.
- hanche 6y agoSo make insurance policies overlap by 23 hours and 58 minutes? And leave it to the insurance companies to figure out which one gets to pay out if bad things happen during the overlap.
- gambiting 6y agoMost policies I've seen have a clause that says that if you are double insured for the same event then they won't pay out - which in effect could leave you with neither company paying anything. I have no idea how a court would look at such a clause, but it definitely exists.
- gmtx725 6y agoeven 12 midnight is ambiguous- for example is 12 midnight on January 1st the start of the new year? Or is it at the end of new year's day?
- tgb 6y agoYeah, I always think of 12 as really just 0. So 12:00AM = 0:00AM is midnight (precedes 1:00AM by an hour) and 12:00PM is 0:00PM (which precedes 1:00PM).
- Asooka 6y agoSort of. Instead of mnemonics, I find it easier to remember when I know how a concept is derived from basic principles. So, first we observe that 1am and 1:00 in 24h format are the same time. Then, we consider the hour before that. That hour is 0 in 24h format. It also belongs to the same day. Since the day is split in two equal halves by AM/PM, then hour 0 in 24h format is hour X am, where X is the hour before 1 am. That is hour 12. Therefore, 12am is 0 o'clock. The other fact that helps me remember is that 12 hour clocks were invented before the number 0, and afterwards 24h clocks are 0-based, so 12 on an old clock is the start of the am or pm cycle respectively because there is no 0. Really 12 should be 0 and then it all makes sense.
- 1_player 6y agoMy mnemonic is literally "it's the wrong one". 12PM is morning, 12AM is afternoon.
- hanche 6y agoI learned it by traveling the US on a one month Greyhound bus pass. I had to deal with the time tables, after all. It’s a rather inefficient way to learn it, but it was interesting in other ways.
- martopix 6y agoThink of 12.30. 12.30 PM is after-noon.
- pxx 6y agoYou can use first principles. "12:00pm" likely refers to the minute that contains the seconds "12:00:00pm, 12:00:01pm, 12:00:02pm... 12:00:59pm". Each of the seconds that follows the first one is non-ambiguous (they're in the afternoon). It would make little sense to have the first time be 12 hours apart from the other ones. Thus the boundary point 12:00pm refers to noon and the boundary point 12:00am refers to midnight.
- gambiting 6y ago>>I think almost everybody in European countries knows about AM/PM Again, as a Polish person I don't think that's true at all, certainly in Poland it isn't.
- ajuc 6y agoI am from Poland, and while we understand 12-hour clock and use it interchangeably with 24-hour one (well, mostly old people, young people just use 24-hour clock) - nobody uses AM/PM. In Polish it's 8 rano (in the morning) vs 8 wieczorem (in the evening). I can't remember which is which in AM/PM, and have to check each time :) And the issues with midnight/noon are frustrating and 12-hour-clock should just die.
- hunter2_ 6y agoI am from the USA and whenever I travel to Europe (Poland, Germany, England, Scotland, etc.) I never quite grasp whether 24h is used for all purposes, or just "official" purposes (like train schedules) while casual conversation remains 12h. I wonder if the young/old divide you described is prevalent in most places. I assume some people (perhaps older people) wear analog 12h wrist watches, and wouldn't translate to 24h after looking at it to answer a random question "what time is it?"
- ajuc 6y agoWhen I was young (in 90s) everybody used 18 and 6 wieczorem (in the evening) interchangeably, like 50% - 50% split. Now I almost never hear "6 wieczorem" it's always 18. I think I haven't heard it used this year in Polish. Lots of people use analog clocks but they just say 18 when looking at 6.
- hunter2_ 6y agoInteresting! It sounds like maybe there are more people doing +12 mental math (reading analog clocks in 24h places) than people doing -12 mental math (Americans trying to read 24h times) even though the USA is always the "weird" one.
- AnssiH 6y agoThat probably indeed varies a lot by location and demographic. In my experience in Finland, casual spoken discussion is usually 12h but written is 24h. The xx:xx format always means 24h, whether written or spoken. When referring to a precise minute 24h is common even when spoken - "train leaves at sixteen thirty-four" - the 12h alternative is "train leaves at four past half five" or "twenty-six to five". Notably, one would never say "four thirty-four" as that refers to 04:34 (24h). Also, 12h is used when casually written with letters - e.g. it would be "meet you at three" / "nähdään kolmelta", not "meet you at fifteen" / "nähdään viideltätoista".
- eitland 6y agoNever think of AM/PM except when dealing with badly designed software.
- hackissimo123 6y agoWhere are you from?
- eitland 6y agoNorway.