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Re: Clockwise without clocks

From:J. 'Mach' Wust <j_mach_wust@...>
Date:Saturday, April 2, 2005, 11:13
On Sat, 2 Apr 2005 11:36:17 +0100, Joe <joe@...> wrote:

>Carsten Becker wrote: > >>On Sat, 2 Apr 2005 12:13:26 +0200, Carsten Becker >><naranoieati@...> wrote: >> >> >> >>>I'd answer e.g. "Just half >>>past ten ago" and would hear from another corner of the >>>classroom "No, he's wrong, it's nine-thirty-two". >>> >>> >> >>Of course I'd be wrong! That should have been "half past nine"! German is so >>stupid by parsing "half ten" as "half past nine", or rather "half *to* ten". >> >> > >Well, I'd rather say English is stupid for doing it the other way round, >since every other Germanic language has 'half ten' meaning 'half past >nine'. > >Also, Estonian (my current obsession) has an even more interesting >system. In Estonian, 'quarter past nine' by 'veerand kümme' - literally >'a quarter of ten'. Similarly, 'pool kümme'(half of ten) and >'kolmveerand kümme' (three quarters of ten) are 'half past nine' and >'quarter to ten', respectively.
So it is in German: _Viertel Zehn_ 'a quarter past nine' (literally: quarter ten), _halb Zehn_, _dreiviertel Zehn_ 'a quarter to ten' (literally: three-quarters ten_. It makes sense when you keep in mind how the chime (is this the word) of the bells: At a quarter past nine, it's one time, at half past nine, it's two times, at a quarter to ten, three times, at ten o'clock, four times: a quarter, a half, three quarters, and the entire hour. Only _halb Zehn_ is used in the whole German-speaking area, and _Viertel Zehn_ is least used. In Switzerland, most won't understand either _Viertel Zehn_ or _Dreiviertel Zehn_ at all. kry@s: j. 'mach' wust

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Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>