Talk:Date and time notation by country

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[edit] Military

If military time is spoken with the words hours, than shouldn't be the 1440-hour clock? Zginder 21:25, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Working for the US Navy, we speak that time as "fourteen forty hours". The top of the hour is spoken as "hundred hours", such as "thirteen hundred hours" for 1300. Groink 07:38, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] British dates

How do you say a date like 31 December, 1999. I am from the USA so I am wondering because in the US it is writin the way we say it. December 31, 1999, is said, "December 31st. 1999." while to say to the other way would be longer, "The 31st. of December, 1999." Zginder 12:17, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

"It is written the way it is said" is usually an illusion and not very helpful if you want to document usage exactly, as your change from an cardinal number in the written form to an ordinal number in the spoken form illustrates.

Not being a native English speaker (only have lived here for a decade), I would say: the English written date "31 December 1999" (no comma!) would most commonly be pronounced as either "thirty-first december nineteen ninety-nine" or "thirty-one december nineteen ninety-nine". I have also heard "the thirty-first of december nineteen ninety-nine", but I do not believe this version with determiner and predicate is very common today and it has a slightly old-fashioned ring to me. You might say or even write that if you deliberately tried to sound old-fashioned (e.g., on a stylish wedding invitation). Markus Kuhn 12:56, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

How did in the U.S. historically the day end up between the month and the year? It is a most unusual order.

Because it is said that way. Zginder 22:37, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Same question again: how did saying it that way arise? It is (was?) not said that way in British English. −Woodstone

I live in the United States. And I've never once spoken the day of the month using ordinal suffixes, such as "December thirty-first". I've always spoken it as "December thirty-one". I live in Hawaii. Groink 07:41, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I live in the north-east USA and we say it using ordinals when we say the name of the month, but with cardnals with number months. Zginder 20:22, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, time for an entry from a British English speaker as to common usage for spoken dates. The ordinal is used for day and month if reading the numbers, so "31/12/2006" is read as "the thirty first of the twelfth", followed by either "two thousand and six" or "twenty oh six" for the year, depending on preference. If the name of the month is used, then it's "thirty-first of December"; but this may be reversed, with the word "the" inserted: "December the thirty-first" followed, once again, by the year as per preference. [JerryT 16:24, 13 October 2006 (UTC)]

[edit] Japan

It would seem that this acticle should reference the Japan articles - Japanese era name Japanese calendar and the use of times beyond 24:00 (e.g. 27:00 for 03:00 when referring to an event starting the previous day) which is alluded to in 24-hour clock.

[[User:Boltonm|Bolton] 18:45, 15 November 2006 (UTC+9)]