How? I thought the "o'" meant of. Thirteen of the 24-hour clock.
Thirteen of 5 minutes is backwards.
Space Wizard
On the topic of naming numbers: Decimals between 21 and 99 always irked me in German.
While you say e.g. "two hundred forty-seven" for 247, you'd say "two hundred seven-and-forty" in German.
edited 22nd Sep '12 8:51:45 AM by Lock
Programming and surgery have a lot of things in common: Don't start removing colons until you know what you're doing.
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Well, we already say "eleven o' three".
Calling it "thirteen five" is fine too, though.
edited 22nd Sep '12 9:04:05 AM by Balmung
The only reason time in 24 hour time is so awkward is because of how many people use 12 hour time. We're all taught that after 12:59 is 1 o'clock (I actually remember my Kindergarten teacher saying there's no such thing as 13 'o clock [lying bitch]). So when you encounter someone who actually says 13 o'clock your natural inclination is to think the person's an idiot.
There's no real reason why 15:48 shouldn't be said the same way as 3:48.
edited 22nd Sep '12 1:49:18 PM by Malph
Sneering Imperialist
BBC article
on Britishisms in American English.
Ok, so like I said, I don't mind as much "I could care less".
But what is up with "X was all but Y". Why does that translate to X is Y?
Catalytic
Trivialis: "Five o'clock" actually comes more from "oh" as in how people substitute "zero" with "oh" when speaking. Like when someone says their phone number is "780-blahblah" they usually say "seven-eight-oh," not "seven-eight-zero."
At least that's how I've always taken the phrase, as that's how people in British Columbia speak.
That's also why I've always figured people don't say "five o'ten," but rather "five-ten." The zero is gone, so the "o'" is misleading.
"Lock up your girlfriends, lock up your wives, Grim's on the loose so run for your lives." - Pyrite
@Lock: That's very interesting. We mix the two methods in Norwegian, but "two-fourty-seven" became the official norm when the telephone became a thing. When the operators were to relay callers to the right numbers, it went much faster if people said the numbers in order, as it were.
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Just fine, thank you very much. It mostly sounds douchey to me to say "thirteen o'clock". "Thirteen o'five" sounds fine to me.
edited 22nd Sep '12 8:45:16 AM by Balmung