In the US, the 12-hour clock format is in widespread use, except in the military. That is why it's called like that.
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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.
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.
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.
It's not even imperial measurements - the US has its own customary units.
US and international date standards all suck : ISO8601 on the other hand is beautiful
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.
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.
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.
And this isn't because we're uncultured swine, it's because we're separated by two oceans from most countries.
not mutually exclusive
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.
Related question. Do 24 hour clock folks say fourteen o'clock if they're talking about 2pm?
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".
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).
They say fourteen hundred or 2 o'clock. I've never really heard anyone say 14 o'clock.
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.
You mean freedom minutes, right??
Sorry, you're right. And stars and stripes minutes
The freedom clock, where hours are called "freedoms", minutes are called "stars" and seconds are called "stripes".
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.
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.
I keep telling people metric time is where it's at but they just look at me like I'm crazy
obviously we should all just switch to metric time lmao
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”
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lunch. It's 7 people.
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.
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.
Local or Zulu?
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.
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
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.
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.
Note Zulu Time (mission time) is equal to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) everywhere in the world.
GMT observes daylight savings as it is in Greenwich England, this is not consistent between countries. UTC does not observe daylight savings.