this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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Since using AM and PM are essentially analogue standards, will people eventually stop saying "it's two o'clock" when they mean "the time is fourteen hundred"?
Talking about hundreds is American military slang/jargon isn't it? I've never heard it elsewhere and it doesn't even make sense. It's fourteen hours, not hundreds. If we're going that way, I think it'll be "twenty past fourteen" and such.
Well, you could say "fourteen twenty" too.
But if "fourteen twenty" was a year we would think its "1420".
Likewise, 1400 is "fourteen hundred" and not "14:00"
Some military standards make a lot of sense, there's no problem adopting it if it's clear.
But 14:00 is what the time is and what the clock shows, not 1400. So I would say 14 o'clock if not 2 o'clock. Would you say "it's nine hundred in the morning" too? Again, it's hours not hundreds. I'm sorry but I don't understand why you're talking about years.
For context my country uses 24h time and I grew up with it.
It is objectively wrong to say 14 o'clock, because "o'clock" refers to the orientation of an analogue clock.
Saying "it's nine in the morning" is redundant in a 24 hour system, because nine would never be anything other than that.
To say 'it's nine hundred" reduces the ambiguity slightly (because you can't really say o'clock).
If you simply say "it's nine" then other people might ask "what's nine?"
Is it "nine past nine"? Or are you telling me "no" in German?
Nine hundred is pretty clear, but not to our primitive ears