this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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Why is it that Americans refer to 24 hour time as military time? I understand that the military uses the 24hr format but I don’t understand why the general public would refer to it like that?

It makes it seem like it’s a foreign concept where as in a lot of countries it’s the norm.

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[–] NemoWuMing@lemmy.world 104 points 2 years ago (1 children)

In the US, the 12-hour clock format is in widespread use, except in the military. That is why it's called like that.

[–] governorkeagan@lemdro.id 24 points 2 years ago (14 children)

It’s interesting that it’s not as widespread amongst the public.As far as I know, the rest of the world either uses it or is able to understand it whereas I’ve had the opposite with Americans. I’m a very limited sample size though.

[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 49 points 2 years ago

Americans understand it just fine.

Just like I understand what a meter is, but in real life, I would NEVER use the meter as a unit of measurement.

Yeah, I know metric is the better system, I agree. This isn't about that. It's about saying something and not making the listener take a moment to convert it into how they relate to the world.

[–] QubaXR@lemmy.world 27 points 2 years ago (13 children)

Look up the "theory of American exceptionalism". In short there is a very strong belief here that America is one of a kind and things that may work for others simply don't apply here.

Explains why the US stocks a 12hr clock, messed up month/day/year mission, imperial measurement and a ton of other things that any foreigner will find anywhere from quirky to infuriating.

IMHO the exceptionalism theory is a b.s. lazy way of keeping things conservative and unchanged and shutting down any discussion of uncomfortable progress.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 16 points 2 years ago

It's not even imperial measurements - the US has its own customary units.

[–] lps2@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 years ago

US and international date standards all suck : ISO8601 on the other hand is beautiful

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[–] ShadowCatEXE@lemmy.world 14 points 2 years ago (8 children)

It's standard in Canada as well. I prefer 24hr personally. There were a couple times where I've napped in the evening, and woke up thinking I was late for work in the morning. Not fun. 24hr clock solves that. Plus it just makes more sense to me than 12hr clocks.

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[–] raptir@lemdro.id 10 points 2 years ago

I live in the US and I've never met someone who isn't able to understand it. They might need to convert it in their heads to compare it with other times.

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[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 89 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Because the average American is much more likely to bump into American military personnel than people from countries that use 24 hour time. It's really as simple as that.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 25 points 2 years ago (8 children)

And this isn't because we're uncultured swine, it's because we're separated by two oceans from most countries.

[–] Lemmyvisitor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 years ago

not mutually exclusive

[–] kadu@lemmy.world 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The entirety of South America uses 24hr time.

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[–] dandroid@dandroid.app 80 points 2 years ago (18 children)

Lots of good answers here, but I don't see anyone mentioning the minor differences between military time and 24 hour. With military time, they don't use a colon when writing it, and they always verbally say the leading zero. So a time using a 24 hour clock is written 06:00 or 6:00 and said verbally as "six o'clock", but with military time, it is written as 0600 and said verbally as "Oh six hundred hours".

That's it. That's the only difference. Though many Americans do indeed incorrectly call any 24 hour clock "military time". I myself used to say it incorrectly when I was a kid because my parents said it incorrectly.

[–] Terevos@lemm.ee 8 points 2 years ago (10 children)

Related question. Do 24 hour clock folks say fourteen o'clock if they're talking about 2pm?

[–] aeno@feddit.de 14 points 2 years ago

I'm german. if it's completely unambiguous, we simply say "dinner is at 6" or "my shift ends at 4". but when you want to make sure that there's no room for confusion we say "let's meet at 21 o'clock".

[–] gerryflap@feddit.nl 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm Dutch. Usually we just say something like "2 in the afternoon" instead of 14:00 or 2 PM. But digital clocks and writing etc will use 24 hours. Every now and then people will use it though, saying 14:30 as "fourteen hours thirty", but that's quite rare and sounds a bit formal (or goofy).

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[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

In French, it's pretty common to say 14 o'clock.

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[–] Alimentar@lemm.ee 8 points 2 years ago (3 children)

They say fourteen hundred or 2 o'clock. I've never really heard anyone say 14 o'clock.

[–] Player2@sopuli.xyz 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

We definitely just called it 14 where I grew up

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[–] vodkasolution@feddit.it 66 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Given how they use different systems to measure almost everything than the rest of the world, I'd say I'm OK with them not using the 24h format, I'd expect them to use something like the 27 American hours, divided in 109 minutes of 31 seconds each.

[–] governorkeagan@lemdro.id 24 points 2 years ago (1 children)

You mean freedom minutes, right??

[–] vodkasolution@feddit.it 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Sorry, you're right. And stars and stripes minutes

[–] Cringe2793@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago (4 children)

The freedom clock, where hours are called "freedoms", minutes are called "stars" and seconds are called "stripes".

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[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 50 points 2 years ago (9 children)

Its because in America most people's only experience with it is when the movie says "meet here at 0700 hrs." Really isn't much deeper than that, we also call "ranger green" "ranger green" whether an army ranger is wearing it or not, despite it really being "just a shade of green." Sometimes things are just called things.

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[–] indigojasper@kbin.social 38 points 2 years ago (4 children)

as an american i must say i HATE this as well. people ask me why i use military time and i say it's because there are 24 hours in the day so it makes much more sense to me. and that in other parts of the world they call it international time with the military having nothing to do with it.

makes me wanna scream. thank you for letting me go off.

[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 19 points 2 years ago (10 children)

I keep telling people metric time is where it's at but they just look at me like I'm crazy

[–] indigojasper@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago

obviously we should all just switch to metric time lmao

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[–] governorkeagan@lemdro.id 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Not sure if you’ve had the same experience but I had an American colleague ask me what I meant when I didn’t give the time in the 12hr format. The message was something like, “I’ve booked the meeting for 14:00”

[–] Canadian_Cabinet@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 years ago

Similar things happen to me. All of my devices are in Spanish in addition to 24hr, so anything automated is sent in Spanish to my non speaking colleagues

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[–] LilB0kChoy@lemm.ee 29 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It’s called genericide. They encounter the 24 hour measure of time primarily through the US military and its service members so all 24 hour time generally gets called military time.

Similar to why facial tissue is often Kleenex or adhesive bandages are Band-aids in the US.

[–] FlordaMan@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago (1 children)
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[–] cobysev@lemmy.world 22 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I spent 20 years in the US military. I had to quickly learn "military time" in order to function, as we were taught 12-hr time growing up in school. I was surprised when I traveled the world and discovered that everyone else uses "military time" (read: international time) as well. I guess Americans just really wanna do their own thing.

I exclusively use military time nowadays. If someone doesn't understand the time I stated, I'll correct it to 12-hr time on the spot, as converting is super easy. Just count back 2 hours and drop the 10's digit by one; e.g. 1600 = 4 PM. 2200 = 10 PM. Etc.

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[–] jasondj@ttrpg.network 18 points 2 years ago (7 children)

Let’s go out to eat, I made reservations for 7.

Are we having breakfast or dinner?

Without context, tough to tell. That’s why 24hr is superior.

[–] Hexous@lemmy.world 32 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Dinner, because if it's earlier than 7 AM and you're inviting me to an impromptu breakfast, we're not friends anymore, and I'm going back to sleep.

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[–] brygphilomena@lemmy.world 30 points 2 years ago

Lunch. It's 7 people.

[–] YaBoyMax@programming.dev 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Except that's not actually an issue in practice. In a real-world conversation you would disambiguate with "Let's get breakfast" or "Let's get dinner" if you're not referring to the immediate future. I honestly can't think of a single time that I've been genuinely confused in this way.

Edit: Also, when would you ever make reservations for breakfast? Unless this is a joke that's gone over my head.

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[–] Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 15 points 2 years ago

Because that's exactly how we see it. It IS a completely foreign concept. The general public does not use 24hr at all. The only time we ever hear it, is when someone in the military says it.

[–] DirigibleProtein@aussie.zone 15 points 2 years ago

Local or Zulu?

[–] robocall@lemmy.world 14 points 2 years ago (5 children)

The average American is likely to have more interaction with American service men and women than Europeans. Most Latin immigrants I know use the 12 hour clock. While the 24 hour clock is preferred in many countries, they are not the countries that immigrate to the US in large enough numbers to influence us or expose us to the 24 hour clock like our own military does.

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[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 14 points 2 years ago (4 children)

For the people where 24h time is normal …. Is that a more recent development it’s the ubiquity of digital clocks, or would people have also used 24h time with analog clocks, despite them not having a way to display that?

—- looking around, realizing I still hav analog clocks all over because I wanted my kids to be familiar with them. That boat sailed

[–] theskyisfalling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 2 years ago (9 children)

I have owned multiple analog watches with a 24 hour face so it isn't like they don't exist they just are far from common place.

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[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oh wow. That explains a lot. I always thought that when Americans said “military time”, they meant Zulu time, that is 24h time UTC.

TIL it’s just sparkling 24h local time.

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[–] YoBuckStopsHere@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Note Zulu Time (mission time) is equal to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) everywhere in the world.

[–] Bahnd@lemmy.world 10 points 2 years ago (6 children)

GMT observes daylight savings as it is in Greenwich England, this is not consistent between countries. UTC does not observe daylight savings.

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