Native German speaker here: it's completely normal. In normal, everyday, colloquial talk, I think most people use the 12 hour system as well because most of the time, the context makes it clear that you do not have an appointment at 1 a.m. but p.m. Sometimes, my brain does the same thing as yours, assumimg e.g. that 17 is 7 p.m. So, nothing to worry about. And since you live in Munich, the singular form is always "Brezn" and the plural form is the same. In Bavaria, it's never ever "Bretzel" unless you are referring to the tiny, crunchy "Bretzln" you eat as a snack. 😁
@@bibida4499 Man muss Gott für alles danken... ;-) Ich hab nen Kumpel in Würzburg, ich frag ihn mal ob er auch "Brezel" benutzt. Ich komm' aus der Oberpfalz, wohn zur Zeit aber in Mittelfranken (Gunzenhausen), da wäre mir in der Bäckerei noch nie "Brezel" aufgefallen, aber vielleicht ist das tatsächlich so eine spezielle, unterfränkische Unsitte. :D Ich korrigiere mich aber auch gern von "Bayern" zu "Altbayern".
@@FriedeSeiMitDir Mit Sicherheit, ich bin in Würzburg aufgewachsen und habe dort nie jemanden Brezn sagen hören 😂 Da steht sogar in den Bäckereien Brezel aufm Schild :D
I get that occasionally too. I'm from Germany as well. But I think it only happens when I am trying to calculate the difference between two times that I mess it up. When I'm just thinking of one point in time, I don't think I get that confusion ever.
You're probably confused about Pretzels because you live in Munich and they do it differently there. Standard German: Brezel (SIngular), Brezeln (Plural). Bavarian: Brezn (Singular), Brezn (Plural)
The Duden says: die Brezel Plural: die Brezeln österreichisch auch: das Brezel Plural: die Brezel oder die Bretzel oder die Bretzeln www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Brezel
I wouldn't worry about it too much. As a (German) child I was confused about the clock numbers too! We (especially in Bavarian) normally say the numbers like in English: "I'll meet you at 4.", when meaning 16 o' clock, cause it's clear that it's not 4 in the morning. So since we basically use both systems, I also thought things like "18 is 8 o' clock". I also struggle with the American time, cause I always have to think of what am and pm means. xD The thing you described with the video time could also happen to me, I guess, since I'm very bad at numbers. But as long as you (generally) know that 14 doesn't come after 11, I don't think it's a problem.
AM/PM is easy 22 out of 24 times. What I struggled longest with was Mittag and Mitternacht: which one is 12AM and which one 12PM? Edit: also I concur, context is important. When talking, I and everybody I know would use 12h format and it would be clear, but in writing (mail, text, letter) always 24h. I'd really only say the time in 24h format if I needed to be 100% clear.
Here in the Netherlands we use 24-hour clock for things like train schedules, TV schedules, and for things where you would want to make sure the message is clear, but in daily speak e.g. when you ask someone "what is the time", you would normally get an answer in 12-hour clock system, but without the AM/PM. So that already indicates the usage: when you ask me "what is the time" and I reply "it is 15 past 2", it should be clear from context that this is during the day, not the night. People will usually not say "it is 14 15" even when their phones tell them that. This is of course the result of the long time usage (and still present) of analog clocks that only tell the 1-12 hours time and not if it is day or night. Even when you ask your friend to meet somewhere and it would be e.g. at 5 o'clock, this will usually be referred to as "5" and not "17". Still everyone will put it in their agenda as "17". I think part of your confusion arises from "14 is 2, 17 is 5" etc. 14 is not 2. 14 minus 12 is 2. When you need to convert the number, subtract 12. That is what is happening, and it is less confusing. When you keep in mind that you are subtracting 12 because the AM part of the clock is 12 hours long (inaccurate due to the silly AM starting at 01 thing but let's disregard that) it is not so strange that 14 hours is 2 PM.
Dana 2020: I am confusion Dana 2024: would happily accept the Nobel price in Stockholm for discovering alternative time physics if she hadn’t missed the plane by mixing up the departure time, again...😂😂😂😂😂
What gets me the most confused ist am and pm around noon and midnight. it is 11:59 am but suddenly its 12:00 pm. so pm starts before you start the circle again from 1. so I struggled the most with that because in my mind the circle would go: ..., 8am, 9am, 10am, 11am, 12am, 1pm, etc.
I still don't understand that logic. Why would you start a new day with the number 12? 00:00 is much more logical. 0 hours have passed this new day and then you add the minutes that have passed.
@@Leenapanther Look up 12-hour clock on Wikipedia. It's basically like an analogue clock works. But I get your point. I work in IT and it's easier to handle timestamps with the 24 hour clock
@@jessicaely2521 It is because when counting in the 24h system, we Germans do not call 12am as twelve but zero. So for us, the calendar day starts with 0 o'clock and not with 12 am.
Okay especially concerning the time - normally, or at least everyone I know, is totally fine with saying "Es ist ein Uhr" even if it is "13:00 Uhr". So this might be a little help! But actually because we often do use one and two and three, I really do make those mistakes in thinking 14 is 4 as well sometimes even though I am a native German speaker. Like all of the things you are talking about the numbers happened to me too. I really get that it is really weird for you, but like don't worry too much about it, because it happens to me too! I find it kinda funny though, haha!
Same, I'm also a native speaker and I do sometimes think for a second that 15:00 is 5pm. Also I rarely use the 24h system, I have in on my phone and see it a lot but when speaking I usually just say “Es ist zwei Uhr“, never “14 Uhr“. Okay sometimes I do, when I'm looking at my phone to check the time and just say what I see instead of “translating“ it first.
I moved to the UK from the US and I do the same thing with the time! Also, the amount of times I've thought I was running late or very early because I thought 17:00 meant 7pm is ridiculous. I would still have timers set for 5, and it never nded up being too bad, but it was an anxious moment I didn't need.
As a german, I have the same problem. The written language is often in the 24h system, but the spoken language is often in the 12h system. So the confusion about interchanging 17:00 and 7pm is relatable, even for germans.
Wow, lol So in the US we call this “Military Time” and it’s a required time keeping method in specific industries, like medical. I am a phlebotomist, so it’s usually required when we draw a specimen to label the time we drew it in military time so it’s not confused in the lab, or we don’t use a specimen after a certain point. This being said, transitioning between straight time and military time can throw me off, usually because in situations my brain has unilaterally decided the most appropriate timekeeping methods for which situation and will apply military time to something and no one knows what I’m talking about. However, if I’m looking at military time and I’m confused about what the numbers mean, my rule is always subtract two and erase the one. My brain will see 1700 hours as 7pm but I subtracted two so it 5 pm. Also, it really helps to include “hours” in my thoughts on military time because it tells my brain what to do with the information it’s seeing. “Our blood drive starts at 1400 hours.” means something different than “Let’s meet at 17.” 17 what? That confuses me, lol Also, my brain immediately sees a clock face we used to have that had in slightly smaller font the corresponding military time underneath all the numbers. So, visually I see 2pm in my head when I hear 1400 or 1425, etc. Perhaps investing in a nice watch that includes military time on the face could be helpful to you. Personally, I try to avoid digital representations of time as a standard, because I can’t connect them to where they belong on a clock face. The hands on the clock are in a specific place when the sun sits just like that when I drink my coffee. Or the hands of the clock look like this when I have to walk to my car at night. Or the green-orange of the trees and the grass outside has a particular hue that happens when the hands on on the clock in this way. Those experiences match times on the clock for me that I can connect with military time and remember it easier if I can see it on a clock face. Anyway, that’s some of what I do. Hope it’s any bit helpful 😊
Thank you for mentioning this. If Dana had ever watched an US movie with any military action she would have recognised this. And to be honest: I always have to think about whether lunch is 12 am or 12 pm :-(
Oh oh... I AM a native german AND i sometimes do have the same problem :D especially when i am not totally focussed, i sometimes think that 14h is 4pm. This happens most with 14h and 16h, less with 15 and 17. Strange :D
There's a simple trick regarding the 24hour time :o) Always subtract 12 and you got the time in pm. For example,... 17 o'clock - 12 = 5 pm .... and so on. Gern geschehen :D
Hi Dana. Interesting video. So, I'm an American who lives in Boston, and have absolutely no need necessarily to know how to read time in the 24 Hour System, but for some reason, maybe about 2-ish years ago, I had the interest in learning how to tell time this way. I too have set my phone to it, and by now am pretty adept at translating back and forth. I wanted to share how my brain learned how, I think it's pretty simple this way: Take the number in the Ones place (3 for 13, 4 for 14. 5 for 15, etc...) subtract 2 from it, and that's what time it is in p.m. 3 minus 2 = 1, so 13 is 1 O'clock, 4-2 = 2, so 14 is 2 O'clock, 5-2 = 3, so 15 is 3 O'clock, etc. So then you get to 19: 9 minus 2 = 7, so 19 is 7 pm. From there, switch to single increased increments from 10 minus 2. (Basically just switching in your head the 2 in the Tens place in the number 20 to a 1) 20:00= 8pm (10-2 =8), 21:00 = 9pm (11-2= 9), 22:00= 10pm (12-2=10), 23:00 =11 (13-2=11), and of course, finally, 00:00 we start over with midnight and back over to 1 am, 2am, 3am, etc until we hit 13 again. :-) I will be the very first to admit that I am HORRIBLE at math, always have been, but this system seemed an effective way to remember it, all ya gotta do is subtract 2 from everything. :-) I hope this maybe helps. :-)
Even as an american, I grew up prefering the 24 hour clock. The military uses it, because there is no confusion about day/night, and makes times that span days easier to calculate. But as a kid, once I found it on my digital watch, I was amazed we didn't all do it that way. I think your confusion now is because you no longer calculate, you just habituate, when it comes to numbers. Your brain no longer has the speedy plastic learning skills of a child. If you calculated often during every day, you would not have the problem translating between the two reference frames.
Here in the US the 24 hour clock was part of my upbringing with Dad in the Navy and Mom in the medical field and with my interest in railroads and shipping. My favorite time to say in 24 hour time is 13:30.
Bin ich der Einzige, der am Ende des Videos unwillkürlich das Titellied von Pippi Langstrumpf im Ohr hatte? Zwei mal drei macht vier, widdewiddewitt, und drei macht neune... 😁
I've had it happen to me in a few ways. I'm dyslexic, so it has been a problem for a long time. It has been known to happen when people are stressed, or have lack there sleep as well. It's crazy times, don't be so hard on yourself. Thank you for your videos! Lots of love from CT, USA
Zeitangaben sind auf Deutsch mitunter sogar für Muttersprachler verwirrend . Möchte sich jemand zu 10:15 Uhr verabreden, sagt derjenige "Wir sehen uns Viertel Elf " aber der andere versteht in seinem Gehirn "Wir sehen uns Viertel nach Elf" . Das passiert wenn man aus verschiedenen Regionen stammt mit dem Resultat : einer von beiden verspätet sich um eine Stunde.
In Poland we also use this 24h like in Germany. But also we use 4 pm (but without "pm" you know this from context) and I also must think for sometime but when somebody says Let's meet at 4. Ok, 4 so 14 NO 4 is 16!
I live in Austria, and we use the 24 hour clock, but use kinda the AM / PM system when talking about it. For example: When texting I write: Let's meet at 16:15, but when I talk to somebody, I say 4:15 (Viertel-Fünf, so kinda like one quarter of the way to five). It really makes no sense. 😂
When talking about numbers, we usually say both 15 and 3 for example, when you talk about meeting people, it's perfectly fine to say "du kannst um 4 vorbeikommen" (you can come over at 4 pm) instead of saying 16 because it rarely occurs that you meet friends at 4 am
@@WantedAdventure yes, it happens to me a lot, even though I'm a native speaker. It happens to a lot of people I know too, a friend once showed up 2 hours early!
Sometimes, I mix up times in the afternoon as well. I don't skip from 11 to 14, because midday is a different category in my mind, but 14/4, 15/5, 16/6 are mistakes I definitely have made before. It gets extra tricky when you become aware of the mistake and your mind starts actually cascading through time: "WAIT, 4 pm, 16:00, that cannot be right. Maybe they said 6 pm...? Or was it 14:00?" 🤔
24 hour clock always throws me off but my husband finds it easier than am/pm especially in winter. So all his items are in that clock type. My brain got so confused when i tried to learn it that i stopped and i just have him tell me the time if its a 24 hour clock 😂
I lived in Switzerland for almost two years back in 1980. I that's 40 years ago. I still transpose my numbers! I see 46 and think four and sixty. It has caused issues with money, time, and scheduling. I'll measure a board and cut it at 46 inches when I needed 64. I'm a music teacher and in rehearsals I'll tell students to start at measure 73 when I meant measures 37. Just now when I reread that last sentence, I saw 73, but in my brain I said, "Thirty-seven." Learning German numbers has caused a weird number dyslexia that I must deal with every single day. It's frustrating, but it's worth it. I love the German language and being able to speak it is a great blessing.
There's quite an easy explanation why so many of us (me included) wrongly "translate" 14:00 to 4pm, 18:00 to 8pm and so on, especially when not actively thinking about it. Our brains are heavily trained to use the decimal system. Adding or subtracting 10 is something we don't have to actually count or calculate, it just comes naturally. So there's already a very strong "link" established between e.g. 8 and 18. And while we do know that the hours of the day are a duodecimal (12-based) system, we still represent them as decimal numbers, which makes it even easier for our brains to slip up, to forget about the 12-based-ness and go for the "default" decimal way.
Even though I live in the US, I keep my phone on 24 hour time for no other reason then I just prefer it that way. Most Americans associate the use of 24 hour time with the military, and when they see my phone set to 24 hour time they incorrectly assume that I must have been in the military at one point.
I’ve only been here a year, but really relate on this so much!!! Just yesterday I was terrified that I might have gotten confused and been late to teach a workshop at 18:30 (6:30), thinking could it have been at 16:30 (4:30). I was correct, but the anxiety is real. I can’t latch on to time zone differentials either...
Donna, I can assure you that I have the same issue sometimes and I'm a native German speaker. I might be thinking "Um fünf Uhr hab ich Feierabend" and then when I want to tell someone and I want to be extra precise and use the 24-hour-format I say "Um 15 Uhr habe ich Feierabend" instead of "17 Uhr", instead of adding/substracting 12, I add/sub 10! In German you can use the 12-hour-format and many people do it in colloquial speech. Like "Vier Uhr nachmittags". So native speakers basically have the same issue but they are much more used to it. And I think some struggle with it and get it wrong, while others don't. It ususally happens to me when I want to "translate" from the colloquial 12-hour-format kind of thinking to the more disambiguous 24-hour-format on the fly.
That makes complete sense. It sounds like your mind just transposed the numbering system. Kind of like a cross wiring. I’ve done similar things when I was tired. Specifically when I had had a lot of mental/cognitive input that day. The scary thing is that at that exact moment, I had no idea my thinking was so off. I usually would not notice it until I either took a break, or got some rest. It happened a lot when I was in college. Especially when I was taking quite a few math classes. There’s something about numbers... It’s a bit different because I’ve been acutely aware that I was doing it, but I’ve had similar problems with languages lately. My native tongue is English, but I also speak Spanish. Last night, in German class, I was trying to ask if our three assignments were due on Thursday. I said three in German, but then I wasn’t sure if I was saying it in German or Spanish, and it all started blurring together. I just kind of froze, and all of my classmates were looking at me. I’m definitely losing my Spanish, and I question my English at times. Haha By the way, I just bought your book. I’m really excited! I’m only at A2, but I’m sure I’ll be able to read it before long. :-D
Hello! I have the SAME problem with this 24 hour clock whenever I am in Europe!! I have learned to just subtract 12 from whatever number it is and I get our regular American 'PM' time...like 14:00 - 12 = 2PM, 17:00 - 12 = 5pm, etc... works for me! lol
In the USA, I've been using 24-hour time for half a century ever since high school and years before enlisting. I keep my phone, watch, and computer on 24-hour time; my cable box can only do 12-hour time. Just about the only time I get confused is when I have to convert the time for a half-timer (12-hour type). In my experience, as long as you just work within a system, there shouldn't be a problem. A college friend from Yugoslavia told us that regardless of what language she'd be speaking, she still did all her arithmetic calculations in her native language. Fact check me here, but I'm pretty sure that we use different parts of our brains for math than we use for language -- I mean literally different regions of the brain. That might have some bearing on your confusion. We normally think about numbers somewhat separately from language, so by imposing language thinking on number thinking or vice versa, that might either confuse number thinking, or else confuse the brain itself of which region of the brain to use when dealing with numbers. Just a thought. 24-hour time makes so much more sense. In a number of countries, even when 12-hour time is used colloquially, schedules are posted in 24-hour time -- eg, I've seen 24-hour schedules in Mexico City. When our company in the USA employed a few German engineers, one day one of them brought his plane tickets to me. His flight departed at 12:35 PM, so he had to ask what time that meant. I had to think hard on that one, since I had always been weak on the AM/PM-ness of 12 -- we finally figured out the flight was at 1235 hours. At another company, a subcontractor would build our customers' PCs and we would then load it with our software. I could tell that they completed the computers in the afternoon, because the system time was invariably 12 hours off -- instead of setting the system time at 1500, they'd set it to be 3:00.
I noticed that people who only were used to the 12 hour system struggle with the 24 hour system. You have to keep in mind that Germans generally use both systems. In colloquial speech mostly you would use the 12 hour system. So even if your digital watch says 14:00, most people would read it as “zwei Uhr (nachmittags)”. I think it’s most easy not to remember fixed numbers such as 14 equals 2 but rather always think “can I subtract 12 and what’s the result”. That way you keep your math on and don’t rely on a mental table that makes fixes connections.
My wife is from Singapore, my boss lives in San Diego. Local Singapore time is European time plus 6 and Local San Diego time is European time minus 9. I always take a look on my analog clock and this works fine. Did you ever consider asking a shrink?
You are not alone in this Dana. When someone asks lets meet at "halb zwei" (13:30), I could get it confused with 14.30 because I have four languages in my head (Swiss German, German, English and Greek). So I always ask back so: we meet at "Dreizehn Uhr Dreissig", just to be sure. In Greek they say 13:30 as "Thirteen and a half" (which is the opposite in English). In Switzerland we have the 24h clock but we often use both when we talk. We could say let's meet at " dreizehn dreissig" or "halb zwei". But we don't use the 13 when we talk about the full hour (very confusing). So when someone tells me let's meet at 13 Uhr I could have 3pm in my head...
I never had that problem. My brain makes a strict difference between time and number. And time information will be immediately auto-translated by my brain into the image of minute and hour watch hand of an analogue clock. And translating time from German into English or vice versa use the clock image as well. 12 and 24h time scale normally isn't a problem because 99% can be detected from context. Both scales are transformed into the virtual clock image so it is absolutely no problem to switch between them. I'm doing this since I was a small child and learned the concept of time and clock. Therefore it's hard for me to imagine how this can be a problem for other people.
This could help you: paint a clock face on a paper and use "PM german" numbers, i.e. 12-23. Then watch at it regularly and try to connect the numbers with their positions. Doing so, you will not need compute, say "18" to American system. You will just have a picture in mind of that clock face and you will "see" 18 down there and youll get it immediately.
That is even to me as a native German speaker a bit weird sometimes because you can also use 4:00 (vier Uhr) for 16:00 (sechzehn Uhr) and sometimes people swich mid-sentence.
Even as a German native speaker I sometimes run into that problem. Especially with the 9-19-7-17 mess. It doesn't help that in everyday speech you usually just say "um 7", "um 9", whereas the clock on your mobile/computer uses the other format. Using a wristwatch would make things simpler.
I am American, and I use my fingers when using military time (24 hour clock). Thumb is 13, etc. I'm a high school teacher and I teach telling time using 24 hour clock and I still have to concentrate when converting 12 hour times to 24 hour times.
I think the reason why its so complicated to use the 24h system is because or 'usual' counting system is something called 'Dezimalsystem'. which ultimately means that we count from one to ten and then start adding those single figures (1-0) onto the tenner (e.g.: 11,12,13,...). this already is something all children have to learn and acquire, its not an innate ability. the 12h system however counts to 12 before repeating the single digits, which does not come naturally for children. they have to learn this different system as well. and the 24h system then, instead of repeating and adding the single digits after 12, just continues 'regularly' (like we would count if we're not talking about time) and uses the following 13 as =1. so in total, there are three different 'counting systems' that everyone has to learn and its not surprising at all and completely normal to get these mixed up or be unsure about it. I'm not sure if this makes any sense, we talked about the Dezimalsystem and various other counting systems (Binärsystem/Dualsystem and Hexadezimalsystem) in my first year of uni so its been a while and I wasn't quite sure how to explain it in english :D hope it made at least some sense tho 😅
The mental gymnastics described here are also how I taught myself the twenty-four hour clock when I was younger, not for learning German (which I didn’t really get into until now as an adult) but because it was cool to be different for some reason. And yes I run into moments where numbers in the teens stop making sense and 2PM/1400 comes “after” 11. You are not alone.
In the USA in hospitals, we use military or the 24 hour clock When it taught, we either add 12 if going from English to military time and subtract 12 when going from military to English, ie 2pm 12 = 1400. 1600-12= 4pm. What confuses me is that in the USA, we say meet me at 245. pm or quarter to 3. In other countries, they do some completely different that I can't even it explain it.
Yes this happens to me also, I’ve been in Germany five years. I always see the time at work 15:00 and I think „yay just 30 more minute to go“ then I realize it’s only 3:30pm. Going between a 24 hour system and the American AM/PM system constantly causes me confusion/mini problems
Yeah, this is definitely a problem for me too, even though I grew up with the 24-hour clock. My brain thinks, even if it is for a fleeting second, that 15:00 is 5 and 17:00 is 7 and so on. What doesn't help is that we as native speakers aren't really consistent in how we tell time. I, too, always switch between, for example, 5 and 17 when speaking. Nothing to worry about here. ;)
I had the same problem, too. And i am only moved from Rheinland-Pfalz to Franken.. here they have a funny way to tell me witch time it is. And after a few years i am STILL confused!
It is funny because I am German and it happens way too often that I want to meet a friend at '19:00 Uhr' (7 pm) but instead I am thinking of '9 Uhr' (am Abend, 9 pm), which means '21:00 Uhr' instead of '7 Uhr am Abend'. And I do know that we are not the only ones! :-D
Basically every country that uses the 24-h system also still uses analog clocks and watches. Thus to some degree the 12-h and 24-h labels coexist even for natives and requires constant translation. Almost all of the confusion is centred around the pairings where one side is in the single digits and the 24-h version has not yet ticked over to have a zero as the last digit. Meaning from 14/2 through to 19/7 (13 is close enough to noon that there is less confusion). It’s a bit like dealing with different time zones regularly, at some point you are going to mess up.
Dutch native speaker here with German relatives (my grandma was German and I have a lot of family living in the Ruhrgebied and München ),I also have been living both in the UK and France.......I always switch between 4 languages in my head. To some people it may sound mad, but to me it is a great way way to combine languages together. But the number system is just way difficult in French...They add up like the Romans did. 90 in Dutch : Negentig......90 in German: Neunzig, 90 in English: Ninety, 90 in French: quatre-vingt-dix. That messes me up always! Thank you for this very entertaining video!!!
Dear Dana, I can totally understand what you mean, even being born in Germany. When I lived in Mexico for a year and wanted to call my family and friends in Germany, I obviously agreed on times and dates with them to make sure we both have time. There is a time difference of 7 hours between Germany and Mexico, so I was thinking, I get off work at 12. 12+7=19. So 7 o clock in Germany. Actually not that difficult. But what I often ended up texting my family was that I would be free at 17 o clock making my family wait 2 hours for my call! I still up to this point do not get how this could have happened to me literally almost every time I was converting Mexican time into German time.
When it come to clocks and times I don't think there are strict rules about using 24h or 12h in Germany. Yes, we do use the 24h clock but we also sometimes use the 12h clock in verbal language. If it's obvious which time is meant, for example "a meeting at 3" there is no need to use the 24h times.
You are NOT alone in having trouble with the 24 hour clock. The key to me learning the 24 hours clock (from living in Germany and being in the Military) was to key in on the number 12. 12 = Noon. 12 + 1 = 1 oclock (13 hour) 12 + 2 = 2 oclock (14 Hour) 12 + 3 = 3 oclcok (15 hour), etc, etc So, instead of equating the two different times, as you are, I focused on the 12 and it worked. I can still do it rather quickly to this day (and I've been doing it since the early 90s.)
I use the 24h-system only in writing. So I write „17:00 Uhr“ and say „5 Uhr“. I think that’s mainly cause my dialect (Swiss German) doesn’t use the 24h-system. My biggest problem with time is, that I sometimes switch to a decimal system when calculating how many hours are between to times. So I think 3pm is three hours past 10am or 5am is five hours past 10pm.... Don’t know why I do this all the time...
The AM/PM problem is that you start counting at 12, then go 1, 2, ... until 11 AM after which there's of course 12 PM, because counting like Microsoft Windows versions is fun!
I use 12 plus or minus and have done all 77 years of my life and have not had a problem. In fact after all this time it is automatic. My mind now thinks 14:00 hr is 2 PM or 2 in the afternoon.
I can relate to the time confusion, because I had the same problem when I was a child, learing to tell time. We mostly used analog clocks back then and so I learned the 12hour-system frist. When I learned the 24hour-system with digital clocks, like you, I associated 14 with 4pm, 17 with 7pm and so on. Nowadays I much prefer the 24hour-system and digital clocks. It just seems more logical to me now, even if you still say: let's meet at 3 o'clock instead at 15.00, while speaking. On the other hand, when I see time displayed in the 12hour-system, I always get confused for a second. Last week for example, I got a Zoom invitation for an Apéro with my friends for 8pm. In the frist second my bain only registered the 8 and I thought: wow, my friend wants us to start drinking at 8 in the morning! And I agree, the most important German phrase is: Wo sind die Brezeln? 😆
Funny how the brain works 😅 Sorry. As a German I don’t have that problem. I think my brain separates the number 16 from the time 16. Maybe interesting to know: whenever I hear or say a time like 15 , I see a round clock in my head with that time on it.
Yes, same for me. Since I was a kid, I have been conditioned to mentally segregate „counting numbers“ from „time codes“. As Sphhyn I am also the „Visual Type“ seeing the clock in front of my mind‘s eye, where it clearly say 3:00 (15:00). And theoretically the Plural of „das Bretzel“ ist „die Bretzel“ (so no „n“ needed). However, in some regions it’s „die Bretzel“ (Singular), which is why the Plural doesn‘t work without an amendment („die Bretze(l)n“). So it‘s really a dialect thing.
As a kid I also often mixed the 12 and 25 hour system. Because in spoken language the 12 hour system is still often used, whereas the 24h system is more for calendars and business appointments or the be especially precise. Between friends and family we use more the 12 hour system. Back to when I was a kid. I also struggled with converting 24 hours into 12 hour system and often took 19 for 9 pm or 17 for 7 pm. So perhaps there are some other Germans outside there who also struggled with those 2 different time systems when they were young. But the more you use both, the more easy the conversion becomes. At least if you have 13 to 15 years of training. 😊
I honestly haven’t had the problem with the problem where I mix up thinking that 14 comes after 11 or any other number sequence like that, but as an American who lived in Leipzig over the past year, I have and still have trouble with doing the transferring time. As you were speaking about it though, I was thinking a way to avoid it might be to think that the German 14:00 is 14th hour of the day, and the American version is the 2p hour of the day. Thereby getting rid of the complete number equivalent that we see as shorthand for time in the different usages and countries.
And I am not lying to you, I just got done with my time in Leipzig and just recently found out that the Captain America: Civil War battle scene was at Leipzig/Halle airport where I got stuck overnight. XD it was my own fault. Also Wave Gotik Treffen was interesting, I live in Omaha, Nebraska at the moment.
I’m lucky. Straight out of high school I joined the military, which runs on 24 hour time. Now I’m in aviation ... and a lot of my timekeeping is now in UTC! But I certainly don’t confuse 14.00 as a number versus 14.00 as a time!
In the beginning I stayed with the 24 hour system and told people: The meeting starts at 17 o’clock and people like: Häh??? But then I started to use the “not formal” time. In friend groups we said: Wir seh’n uns und um 3. Sometimes we added the phrase am Nachmittag / am Morgen which is technically the same as AM / PM. I had more problems with the numbers that switch places after 12. Like 89 = neun und achtzig and not eighty nine. I still don’t know why we use the tens after the single numbers. And it is even more weird with numbers bigger than 112. Though I never recognized that before I learned English.
I'm from Baden-Württemberg. And not only do we use both time systems (12 / 24), but we also tell (in dialect) times like "dreiviertel vier" (03:45 resp. 15:45) or "viertel zehn" (09:15 resp. 21:15). Even germans from many other regions don't understand that. Well, we don't have problems with that, because we grew up with this system. But sadly we don't have much room left in our brains for other things. So we can tell time. That's it. =;-)
American here... my dad explained that military time/24hr time is just am/pm together, "You know 12+12=24.". I was maybe 7 and answered his, "1400 is what time?" "2pm!" I've never had a real issue with the notations since.
I know this is not directly connected, but I had the experience, too, that sometimes it takes way longer than expected to adjust to certain things. In 2002, when we converted to euros, I thought, "Ok, this will take about half a year and then I will only use the new prices." And with some items, it indeed did not take me too long, but I kept converting lots of products to the old currency for years, especially products I do not buy very often.
As a native German-speaker, I sometimes have similar problems with the two systems (and I'm pretty sure I've always had them and they're not a result of me speaking as much English as German these days). So, for example, 7pm is 19:00 and 9pm is 21:00 but sometimes my brain just kinda mixes up the 9 and the 19 and I'll think 21:00 is 7pm. Only happens to me with some of the numbers, though, weirdly enough, not with all of them. Like, I think with 21:00 it may just be because 21 is 3*7 so somewhere in my brain, those numbers are already linked up :p.
I totally get your problem with the 24-hour system. I have no problem converting 12 hours into 24 hours. But my brain still makes a detour when it has to do that: I always imagine where the hand of the clock would be for this hour of the day, and then I know for example that the numbers 5 and 17 are in this position and they belong together. It only takes a split-second to do that, but I can still recognize that I'm doing this. This is probably due to the fact that I used to have an analogue watch as a child that was supposed to help children learn to tell the time. It had both the 12-hour and the 24-hour numbers on the clock face. (Plus, it also had the minute numbers on it, like 5, 10, 15, etc.) So yes, even as an adult the two systems of telling the time still apparently confuse me enough to have my brain go back to a childhood watch. I do a similar thing for left and right. I can never instantly tell where left and right is. I always have to go via the detour of "Oh, I would write with this hand, so this has to be right."
We use the 24hr system in Hungary as well but even as a native Hungarian I often make the mistake of thinking that 18:00 is 8pm. 😅 That's why every time I write a note for myself, I use the 12hr system instead. I don't want to be accidentaly 2 hours late... 😅😅😅
I constantly translate times in my head :-D But the other way around. I moved from Germany to Canada about three years ago but I still have a lot of online meetings with Europeans. Those meetings are usually announced in Central European (Summer) Time, so the announced time is 6 hours ahead of my time. For the life of me I can't calculate 4pm minus 6 hours, my brain always goes to "4pm, so that's 16:00, 16-6 = ah ok it's at 10 o'clock". I have zero problems knowing without translating it in my head that 4pm is 16:00 but when I have to subtract a number that leads to the time going from am to pm or the other way around then I'm lost and have to translate to the 24 hour clock ^^
Okay I don't have that exact issue with the numbers you have. :D But I will tell you even as a native german speaker,I sometimes confuse people scheduling something at 18:00 with them scheduling at 8. Same with the other numbers between 14 and 19. The worse thing is that I seem to completely lost the ability to say german numbers. I consume a lot of english media, I often google things in english and I post on social media in english. And the number system in english makes a lot more sense. So a lot of times I will say the german number but try to insert the english numbering logic. So instead of saying "48" as "achtundvierzig", I will say "vierundachtzig". I've always had issues with that, even when I didn't know any/much english, but being bilingual definitely made it harder. And now I'm at the point where I just say the individual numbers if I can. Especially in phone numbers.
I'm bilingual and that does sometimes happen, because one language is faster and sometimes forms a connection to the corresponding number in the other language which can make such a brain fart happen without you noticing right away. The brain tries to be quick and want's to do less thinking by forming short-cuts. Most of them are pretty neat, but sometimes brain farts occur. Something along those lines without time: my phone number ends on the same digits as my door number, and therefore if i have to say my phone number i sometimes give out my adress number instead of my phone number before my brain catches up and is like FULL STOP NOPE THATS WRONG
@Daniel Sado Thank you!!! This is really helpful to hear. I'm relieved to hear that other people are experiencing this kind of thing too!! :) :) :) Really interesting to hear about your phone number and address thing! How you explained it makes total sense!!!
Honestly, I don't hear people here in Germany SAY times like 14:00 or 16:00 Uhr. We use that in WRITING a lot (because it's just practical, and you know, were sooooo efficient...). And of course on computers, because it makes sorting timestamps easier. But I don't remember ever making an appointment verbally for fourteen fourtyfive (that would obviously be dreiviertel vier)!
You can use ein/zwei/drei Uhr instead of 13/14/15 Uhr :), practically no one will assume you that you want to meet in the middle of the night. And you kind of turn our 24- hour - system into a somewhat 12-ish-hour -system by adding determinants like mittags/nachmittags/abends :3
I am sooooo with you! My whole family is bilingual! Mum Scottish and father German... so I've ALWAYS spoken both languages! And often somebody says "okay we'll meet at 5 o'clock"... and the other answers "great see you at 15uhr"... ;) Totally normal... happens all the time! Same with 7 and 17 or 9 and 19... we always have that problem :D always makes us laugh :D And yes your 14 is 12 issue comes up sometimes too :D Congratulations - you are now a true bilingual ;)
Ah, now I've watched this vid, I understand what the situation is for her. Having spent many years in the US military, the 24-hour clock is not an issue for me; if somebody tells me something will occur at 1715, I automatically know that means 5:15 pm. One way I learned to avoid confusion is that noon is always 1200, and just add 1 to every hour afterwards, so 1pm becomes 1300, 2pm = 1400, etc....
What you described with 14 = 2 = 12 is a very good example for the kind of brain fart that I also sometimes have. Unfortunately, I can't really remember a specific example for this right now, but I promise you you are not alone with this. I've often had it while having a conversation, and when I realized my error and tried to explain it, I sometimes just gave up because I needed to elaborate too much. It's frustrating because you know better, and yet you have just given the impression that you do not.
Sometimes I think "It's 5 pm", then I would say "It's 7", just because it is 17:00, so what I say doesn't match with what I think! and I'm from Italy, so I use the 24h format in devices and in very formal situations the 12h format when speaking
I don’t think it’s just a bilingual thing. At jobs here in the US that use the 24 hour clock instead of the 12 hour clock, for awhile I’d goof up and still do. I know 18:00 is 6:00pm. That’s stuck in my brain along with 15:00 is 3:00pm. I mostly remember that because that’s when most meetings, trainings, etc were scheduled. So for me, when I see 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 I have to start from the nearest one I know. So for 13 I go oh one more than 12 so 1pm. 14 I have to think oh one less than 15 so 2pm. 17, that’s one less than 18 so 5pm. 20 is two more than 18 so 6, 7, 8 (will even have to employ fingers to count sometimes). Then I have to translate into whatever language I’m speaking to the person in (French or Spanish) and hope I don’t mix that up ... even worse if I was thinking about a Hindu concept and my brain also thinks about Sanskrit numbers because then I’ll really confuse the person. Nothing like telling someone dasa-seis (Dasa being Sanskrit for ten, seis being Spanish for six) and you’re trying to say 16 in French (seize). And the mixing up numbers and thinking they’re something different...yup, definitely happens to me...especially the upper teens as Spanish and French say 10+# as those numbers and so I’ve thought 20 was less than 17 because it’s just 2 and 0 while 17 is said 10+7 and that’s 1 and 0 and 7. If that makes sense. It has to my brain until I realized that wasn’t correct when I said it in English. So yeah, you’re definitely not alone in either of the examples. I think the 24 hour clock is just difficult for Americans because we’ve been conditioned to think of time as being in two segments...if that makes any sense. It’s like my brain thinks “13:00? No, it’s afternoon and it’s the first hour after noon, noon and midnight are the guide posts of time not just midnight alone!” And oh goodness do I get confused when someone says something like “It’s a quarter before 17.” My brain is just like “What?! Why are you doing this to me!?” And yes, I’ve had my brain think “17-25= -8.......wait, what? There’s no such thing as -8 hour! What are you doing? No, it’s 17:45. Get it together, dude, you learned how to tell time in pre-school!” LOL
I'm often caught in endless calculations where my brain translates e.g. 15:00 to 5pm which is 17:00 and then I think the appointment is at 7pm which is 19:00... so it's at 9pm?! (And I'm German... a very confused one, though)
Likely most people will know this trick but a huge trick I use to remember what the 24h times are, you just minus 12 (or 2 and take away the first number). For example 14 (- 12) = 2. Perhaps since I’ve kept this way of learning the 24h clock, I never needed to remember what exactly each hour (14) equals to which pm number (2pm)
I've never done this 14-11 thing, but I can understand what kind of steps your brain took to get there. What I've experienced was this 17 vs. 7pm thing. Sometimes I have to think about "Did he say 17 oder 7?" and I am german 😄
wenn ich solche verabredung am telefon mache, habe ich mir angewöhnt, um missverständnisse zu vermeiden, dann mit der frage/feststellung abzuschließen: "also tschüß bis um 5" da durch hintergrundgeräusche ecta. das "siebzehn" manchmal wie "sieben" klingt.
When I was a child learning my times table, I had a little bit of difficulty with mixing-up 6 X 9 and 7 X 8. 6 X 9 = 54, and 7 X 8 = 56. However, because 54 is six away from 60 and 56 is four away from 60, my brain wanted to connect 54 (being six away) as *56* whereas it wanted to connect 56 (being four away) as *54*. Aside from this quirky wiring, I was a math whiz kid. If this sounds similar to what you're describing, hopefully you can feel better about that amazing place that is your brain. :-)
Native German speaker here: it's completely normal. In normal, everyday, colloquial talk, I think most people use the 12 hour system as well because most of the time, the context makes it clear that you do not have an appointment at 1 a.m. but p.m. Sometimes, my brain does the same thing as yours, assumimg e.g. that 17 is 7 p.m. So, nothing to worry about.
And since you live in Munich, the singular form is always "Brezn" and the plural form is the same. In Bavaria, it's never ever "Bretzel" unless you are referring to the tiny, crunchy "Bretzln" you eat as a snack. 😁
I have a watch that tells both 12 and 24-hour time (used 24-hour time in the Army). Push the button and do not think. It should straighten right out.
There are even watches with double notation.
Fun fact: Unterfranken gehört auch zu Bayern und dort sagt man Brezel (sg) und Brezeln (pl) 😂
@@bibida4499 Man muss Gott für alles danken... ;-) Ich hab nen Kumpel in Würzburg, ich frag ihn mal ob er auch "Brezel" benutzt. Ich komm' aus der Oberpfalz, wohn zur Zeit aber in Mittelfranken (Gunzenhausen), da wäre mir in der Bäckerei noch nie "Brezel" aufgefallen, aber vielleicht ist das tatsächlich so eine spezielle, unterfränkische Unsitte. :D Ich korrigiere mich aber auch gern von "Bayern" zu "Altbayern".
@@FriedeSeiMitDir Mit Sicherheit, ich bin in Würzburg aufgewachsen und habe dort nie jemanden Brezn sagen hören 😂 Da steht sogar in den Bäckereien Brezel aufm Schild :D
OK; I agree, 14:00 comes right after 11:00 because that's the time I take my nap ...
I can relate to this, i always think that 14:00 is 4:00 (=16:00)
*And i'm from Germany* 😂
I get that occasionally too. I'm from Germany as well.
But I think it only happens when I am trying to calculate the difference between two times that I mess it up. When I'm just thinking of one point in time, I don't think I get that confusion ever.
Happens to me as well as we are using both notations. Especially when being exhausted, tired or just sloppy. #nativeGerman
Just subtract 12 from the 24-hour system that's how I avoid getting confused. It's a simple trick
You're probably confused about Pretzels because you live in Munich and they do it differently there. Standard German: Brezel (SIngular), Brezeln (Plural). Bavarian: Brezn (Singular), Brezn (Plural)
I'm from northern Germany and would say Brezel (s.) and Brezel (pl.)
The Duden says:
die Brezel
Plural: die Brezeln
österreichisch auch: das Brezel
Plural: die Brezel oder die Bretzel oder die Bretzeln
www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Brezel
MrDiarukia wir auch aus NRW. Aber ich glaube man kann da beides sagen🤷♀️
Yeah, there are really a lot of regional variations. In Oberschwaben we would say (but normally not write): Oi Brätzl (s.), zwoi Brätzla (pl.)
In Ostalb Schwäbisch it's Bretzg and Bretzga, and I think they're quite fun to say.
But basically what Üllüp said.
I wouldn't worry about it too much. As a (German) child I was confused about the clock numbers too! We (especially in Bavarian) normally say the numbers like in English: "I'll meet you at 4.", when meaning 16 o' clock, cause it's clear that it's not 4 in the morning. So since we basically use both systems, I also thought things like "18 is 8 o' clock". I also struggle with the American time, cause I always have to think of what am and pm means. xD The thing you described with the video time could also happen to me, I guess, since I'm very bad at numbers. But as long as you (generally) know that 14 doesn't come after 11, I don't think it's a problem.
Same. I remember the am pm thing with "a comes before p in the alphabet to naturally am is earlier than pm"
AM/PM is easy 22 out of 24 times. What I struggled longest with was Mittag and Mitternacht: which one is 12AM and which one 12PM?
Edit: also I concur, context is important. When talking, I and everybody I know would use 12h format and it would be clear, but in writing (mail, text, letter) always 24h. I'd really only say the time in 24h format if I needed to be 100% clear.
Here in the Netherlands we use 24-hour clock for things like train schedules, TV schedules, and for things where you would want to make sure the message is clear, but in daily speak e.g. when you ask someone "what is the time", you would normally get an answer in 12-hour clock system, but without the AM/PM.
So that already indicates the usage: when you ask me "what is the time" and I reply "it is 15 past 2", it should be clear from context that this is during the day, not the night. People will usually not say "it is 14 15" even when their phones tell them that.
This is of course the result of the long time usage (and still present) of analog clocks that only tell the 1-12 hours time and not if it is day or night.
Even when you ask your friend to meet somewhere and it would be e.g. at 5 o'clock, this will usually be referred to as "5" and not "17". Still everyone will put it in their agenda as "17".
I think part of your confusion arises from "14 is 2, 17 is 5" etc. 14 is not 2. 14 minus 12 is 2. When you need to convert the number, subtract 12. That is what is happening, and it is less confusing. When you keep in mind that you are subtracting 12 because the AM part of the clock is 12 hours long (inaccurate due to the silly AM starting at 01 thing but let's disregard that) it is not so strange that 14 hours is 2 PM.
Dana 2020: I am confusion
Dana 2024: would happily accept the Nobel price in Stockholm for discovering alternative time physics if she hadn’t missed the plane by mixing up the departure time, again...😂😂😂😂😂
What gets me the most confused ist am and pm around noon and midnight. it is 11:59 am but suddenly its 12:00 pm. so pm starts before you start the circle again from 1.
so I struggled the most with that because in my mind the circle would go:
..., 8am, 9am, 10am, 11am, 12am, 1pm, etc.
Wow you just confused me totally. It's at 12 because it's at the top of the clock. Since it's at the top it changes to am or pm.
I still don't understand that logic. Why would you start a new day with the number 12? 00:00 is much more logical. 0 hours have passed this new day and then you add the minutes that have passed.
@@Leenapanther Look up 12-hour clock on Wikipedia. It's basically like an analogue clock works. But I get your point. I work in IT and it's easier to handle timestamps with the 24 hour clock
@@jessicaely2521 It is because when counting in the 24h system, we Germans do not call 12am as twelve but zero. So for us, the calendar day starts with 0 o'clock and not with 12 am.
Well, an unsoluble problem!
Okay especially concerning the time - normally, or at least everyone I know, is totally fine with saying "Es ist ein Uhr" even if it is "13:00 Uhr". So this might be a little help! But actually because we often do use one and two and three, I really do make those mistakes in thinking 14 is 4 as well sometimes even though I am a native German speaker. Like all of the things you are talking about the numbers happened to me too. I really get that it is really weird for you, but like don't worry too much about it, because it happens to me too! I find it kinda funny though, haha!
12 is sunny outside and you have only count from there on, take your fingers to count rater then your brain lol
Same, I'm also a native speaker and I do sometimes think for a second that 15:00 is 5pm. Also I rarely use the 24h system, I have in on my phone and see it a lot but when speaking I usually just say “Es ist zwei Uhr“, never “14 Uhr“. Okay sometimes I do, when I'm looking at my phone to check the time and just say what I see instead of “translating“ it first.
Sometimes when I'm tired, it might happen to me as well.
it goes totally out of control if the difference between Winter and Summer time adds up.
I moved to the UK from the US and I do the same thing with the time! Also, the amount of times I've thought I was running late or very early because I thought 17:00 meant 7pm is ridiculous. I would still have timers set for 5, and it never nded up being too bad, but it was an anxious moment I didn't need.
As a german, I have the same problem. The written language is often in the 24h system, but the spoken language is often in the 12h system. So the confusion about interchanging 17:00 and 7pm is relatable, even for germans.
Dear Dana,
Don't stress about this too much.. I am confused about this stuff myself and I am german.
Wow, lol
So in the US we call this “Military Time” and it’s a required time keeping method in specific industries, like medical.
I am a phlebotomist, so it’s usually required when we draw a specimen to label the time we drew it in military time so it’s not confused in the lab, or we don’t use a specimen after a certain point.
This being said, transitioning between straight time and military time can throw me off, usually because in situations my brain has unilaterally decided the most appropriate timekeeping methods for which situation and will apply military time to something and no one knows what I’m talking about.
However, if I’m looking at military time and I’m confused about what the numbers mean, my rule is always subtract two and erase the one. My brain will see 1700 hours as 7pm but I subtracted two so it 5 pm.
Also, it really helps to include “hours” in my thoughts on military time because it tells my brain what to do with the information it’s seeing. “Our blood drive starts at 1400 hours.” means something different than “Let’s meet at 17.” 17 what? That confuses me, lol
Also, my brain immediately sees a clock face we used to have that had in slightly smaller font the corresponding military time underneath all the numbers. So, visually I see 2pm in my head when I hear 1400 or 1425, etc. Perhaps investing in a nice watch that includes military time on the face could be helpful to you.
Personally, I try to avoid digital representations of time as a standard, because I can’t connect them to where they belong on a clock face. The hands on the clock are in a specific place when the sun sits just like that when I drink my coffee. Or the hands of the clock look like this when I have to walk to my car at night. Or the green-orange of the trees and the grass outside has a particular hue that happens when the hands on on the clock in this way. Those experiences match times on the clock for me that I can connect with military time and remember it easier if I can see it on a clock face.
Anyway, that’s some of what I do. Hope it’s any bit helpful 😊
Thank you for mentioning this. If Dana had ever watched an US movie with any military action she would have recognised this. And to be honest: I always have to think about whether lunch is 12 am or 12 pm :-(
I'm bowing down to your honesty at the struggles we have with German numbers/times. *hug*
Oh oh... I AM a native german AND i sometimes do have the same problem :D especially when i am not totally focussed, i sometimes think that 14h is 4pm. This happens most with 14h and 16h, less with 15 and 17. Strange :D
@Ninns_cat I am relieved to hear other people are experiencing this too!! Thank you :) :) :)
@@WantedAdventure and this although i grew up with the 24h system :D i think that is exciting.
There's a simple trick regarding the 24hour time :o)
Always subtract 12 and you got the time in pm.
For example,... 17 o'clock - 12 = 5 pm .... and so on.
Gern geschehen :D
This is one benefit I derived from my brief misadventure in the Navy. The Navy _also_ operates on a 24-hour cycle, so I became accustomed to it.
just subtract 2 to the last digit: 14:00 I do: 4 -2 = 2 so 2:00pm, 19:00 -> 9-2 = 7 so 7:00pm , 20:00 (0 like 10-2)=8 and so on...
Hi Dana. Interesting video. So, I'm an American who lives in Boston, and have absolutely no need necessarily to know how to read time in the 24 Hour System, but for some reason, maybe about 2-ish years ago, I had the interest in learning how to tell time this way. I too have set my phone to it, and by now am pretty adept at translating back and forth. I wanted to share how my brain learned how, I think it's pretty simple this way: Take the number in the Ones place (3 for 13, 4 for 14. 5 for 15, etc...) subtract 2 from it, and that's what time it is in p.m. 3 minus 2 = 1, so 13 is 1 O'clock, 4-2 = 2, so 14 is 2 O'clock, 5-2 = 3, so 15 is 3 O'clock, etc. So then you get to 19: 9 minus 2 = 7, so 19 is 7 pm. From there, switch to single increased increments from 10 minus 2. (Basically just switching in your head the 2 in the Tens place in the number 20 to a 1) 20:00= 8pm (10-2 =8), 21:00 = 9pm (11-2= 9), 22:00= 10pm (12-2=10), 23:00 =11 (13-2=11), and of course, finally, 00:00 we start over with midnight and back over to 1 am, 2am, 3am, etc until we hit 13 again. :-) I will be the very first to admit that I am HORRIBLE at math, always have been, but this system seemed an effective way to remember it, all ya gotta do is subtract 2 from everything. :-) I hope this maybe helps. :-)
Even as an american, I grew up prefering the 24 hour clock. The military uses it, because there is no confusion about day/night, and makes times that span days easier to calculate. But as a kid, once I found it on my digital watch, I was amazed we didn't all do it that way.
I think your confusion now is because you no longer calculate, you just habituate, when it comes to numbers. Your brain no longer has the speedy plastic learning skills of a child. If you calculated often during every day, you would not have the problem translating between the two reference frames.
German here. When i learned the 24 system in 2 grade i struggled too.😂
I'm German and I do this 17:00 equals 7pm sometimes too 😂
Just like 8.50 plus 2.50 are 10.00 in total when you calculate how much your purchases cost in total.
Danke für das Video Dana. Es war informativ und unterhaltsam.
Here in the US the 24 hour clock was part of my upbringing with Dad in the Navy and Mom in the medical field and with my interest in railroads and shipping. My favorite time to say in 24 hour time is 13:30.
Bin ich der Einzige, der am Ende des Videos unwillkürlich das Titellied von Pippi Langstrumpf im Ohr hatte? Zwei mal drei macht vier, widdewiddewitt, und drei macht neune... 😁
Energetic presentation
Awesome
Never a boring moment with wanted adventure
I've had it happen to me in a few ways. I'm dyslexic, so it has been a problem for a long time. It has been known to happen when people are stressed, or have lack there sleep as well. It's crazy times, don't be so hard on yourself. Thank you for your videos! Lots of love from CT, USA
Zeitangaben sind auf Deutsch mitunter sogar für Muttersprachler verwirrend .
Möchte sich jemand zu 10:15 Uhr verabreden, sagt derjenige "Wir sehen uns Viertel Elf " aber der andere versteht in seinem Gehirn "Wir sehen uns Viertel nach Elf" .
Das passiert wenn man aus verschiedenen Regionen stammt mit dem Resultat : einer von beiden verspätet sich um eine Stunde.
In Poland we also use this 24h like in Germany. But also we use 4 pm (but without "pm" you know this from context) and I also must think for sometime but when somebody says Let's meet at 4. Ok, 4 so 14 NO 4 is 16!
I live in Austria, and we use the 24 hour clock, but use kinda the AM / PM system when talking about it.
For example: When texting I write: Let's meet at 16:15, but when I talk to somebody, I say 4:15 (Viertel-Fünf, so kinda like one quarter of the way to five). It really makes no sense. 😂
When talking about numbers, we usually say both 15 and 3 for example, when you talk about meeting people, it's perfectly fine to say "du kannst um 4 vorbeikommen" (you can come over at 4 pm) instead of saying 16 because it rarely occurs that you meet friends at 4 am
@Janwip Using both of those numbers interchangeably, have you gotten 16 and 4 confused with each other? Like my brain apparently has with 14 and 2?😁
@@WantedAdventure yes, it happens to me a lot, even though I'm a native speaker. It happens to a lot of people I know too, a friend once showed up 2 hours early!
Sometimes, I mix up times in the afternoon as well. I don't skip from 11 to 14, because midday is a different category in my mind, but 14/4, 15/5, 16/6 are mistakes I definitely have made before. It gets extra tricky when you become aware of the mistake and your mind starts actually cascading through time: "WAIT, 4 pm, 16:00, that cannot be right. Maybe they said 6 pm...? Or was it 14:00?" 🤔
24 hour clock always throws me off but my husband finds it easier than am/pm especially in winter. So all his items are in that clock type. My brain got so confused when i tried to learn it that i stopped and i just have him tell me the time if its a 24 hour clock 😂
I lived in Switzerland for almost two years back in 1980. I that's 40 years ago. I still transpose my numbers! I see 46 and think four and sixty. It has caused issues with money, time, and scheduling. I'll measure a board and cut it at 46 inches when I needed 64. I'm a music teacher and in rehearsals I'll tell students to start at measure 73 when I meant measures 37. Just now when I reread that last sentence, I saw 73, but in my brain I said, "Thirty-seven." Learning German numbers has caused a weird number dyslexia that I must deal with every single day. It's frustrating, but it's worth it. I love the German language and being able to speak it is a great blessing.
There's quite an easy explanation why so many of us (me included) wrongly "translate" 14:00 to 4pm, 18:00 to 8pm and so on, especially when not actively thinking about it.
Our brains are heavily trained to use the decimal system. Adding or subtracting 10 is something we don't have to actually count or calculate, it just comes naturally. So there's already a very strong "link" established between e.g. 8 and 18. And while we do know that the hours of the day are a duodecimal (12-based) system, we still represent them as decimal numbers, which makes it even easier for our brains to slip up, to forget about the 12-based-ness and go for the "default" decimal way.
Even though I live in the US, I keep my phone on 24 hour time for no other reason then I just prefer it that way. Most Americans associate the use of 24 hour time with the military, and when they see my phone set to 24 hour time they incorrectly assume that I must have been in the military at one point.
You should do rants more often. I love your expression on this.
I’ve only been here a year, but really relate on this so much!!! Just yesterday I was terrified that I might have gotten confused and been late to teach a workshop at 18:30 (6:30), thinking could it have been at 16:30 (4:30). I was correct, but the anxiety is real. I can’t latch on to time zone differentials either...
Donna, I can assure you that I have the same issue sometimes and I'm a native German speaker. I might be thinking "Um fünf Uhr hab ich Feierabend" and then when I want to tell someone and I want to be extra precise and use the 24-hour-format I say "Um 15 Uhr habe ich Feierabend" instead of "17 Uhr", instead of adding/substracting 12, I add/sub 10!
In German you can use the 12-hour-format and many people do it in colloquial speech. Like "Vier Uhr nachmittags". So native speakers basically have the same issue but they are much more used to it. And I think some struggle with it and get it wrong, while others don't. It ususally happens to me when I want to "translate" from the colloquial 12-hour-format kind of thinking to the more disambiguous 24-hour-format on the fly.
Weird numbers?
english: eighty-three (80+3)
german: dreiundachtzig (3+80)
french: quatre vingt trois (4x20+3)
Swiss french (not Geneva) 83= huitante trois
Zürichgerman 83= drüänachtzg or drüänachtzig
Baslergerman 83 = dreeiäanchtzig
That makes complete sense. It sounds like your mind just transposed the numbering system. Kind of like a cross wiring. I’ve done similar things when I was tired. Specifically when I had had a lot of mental/cognitive input that day. The scary thing is that at that exact moment, I had no idea my thinking was so off. I usually would not notice it until I either took a break, or got some rest. It happened a lot when I was in college. Especially when I was taking quite a few math classes. There’s something about numbers...
It’s a bit different because I’ve been acutely aware that I was doing it, but I’ve had similar problems with languages lately. My native tongue is English, but I also speak Spanish. Last night, in German class, I was trying to ask if our three assignments were due on Thursday. I said three in German, but then I wasn’t sure if I was saying it in German or Spanish, and it all started blurring together. I just kind of froze, and all of my classmates were looking at me. I’m definitely losing my Spanish, and I question my English at times. Haha
By the way, I just bought your book. I’m really excited! I’m only at A2, but I’m sure I’ll be able to read it before long. :-D
My American friends know this 24h concept but called it „Military Time“ in the US 😉
Hello! I have the SAME problem with this 24 hour clock whenever I am in Europe!! I have learned to just subtract 12 from whatever number it is and I get our regular American 'PM' time...like 14:00 - 12 = 2PM, 17:00 - 12 = 5pm, etc... works for me! lol
In the USA, I've been using 24-hour time for half a century ever since high school and years before enlisting. I keep my phone, watch, and computer on 24-hour time; my cable box can only do 12-hour time. Just about the only time I get confused is when I have to convert the time for a half-timer (12-hour type). In my experience, as long as you just work within a system, there shouldn't be a problem.
A college friend from Yugoslavia told us that regardless of what language she'd be speaking, she still did all her arithmetic calculations in her native language. Fact check me here, but I'm pretty sure that we use different parts of our brains for math than we use for language -- I mean literally different regions of the brain. That might have some bearing on your confusion. We normally think about numbers somewhat separately from language, so by imposing language thinking on number thinking or vice versa, that might either confuse number thinking, or else confuse the brain itself of which region of the brain to use when dealing with numbers. Just a thought.
24-hour time makes so much more sense. In a number of countries, even when 12-hour time is used colloquially, schedules are posted in 24-hour time -- eg, I've seen 24-hour schedules in Mexico City. When our company in the USA employed a few German engineers, one day one of them brought his plane tickets to me. His flight departed at 12:35 PM, so he had to ask what time that meant. I had to think hard on that one, since I had always been weak on the AM/PM-ness of 12 -- we finally figured out the flight was at 1235 hours. At another company, a subcontractor would build our customers' PCs and we would then load it with our software. I could tell that they completed the computers in the afternoon, because the system time was invariably 12 hours off -- instead of setting the system time at 1500, they'd set it to be 3:00.
I noticed that people who only were used to the 12 hour system struggle with the 24 hour system. You have to keep in mind that Germans generally use both systems. In colloquial speech mostly you would use the 12 hour system. So even if your digital watch says 14:00, most people would read it as “zwei Uhr (nachmittags)”. I think it’s most easy not to remember fixed numbers such as 14 equals 2 but rather always think “can I subtract 12 and what’s the result”. That way you keep your math on and don’t rely on a mental table that makes fixes connections.
An easy way is I avoid confusion is just "subtract 12" from the time they say. If they say 14 subtract 12 you get 2 so they're saying 2pm.
Even for me as a german sometimes it's confusing because in Germany we also use for example 3 o'clock instead of 15 o'clock😂
My wife is from Singapore, my boss lives in San Diego. Local Singapore time is European time plus 6 and Local San Diego time is European time minus 9. I always take a look on my analog clock and this works fine. Did you ever consider asking a shrink?
You are not alone in this Dana. When someone asks lets meet at "halb zwei" (13:30), I could get it confused with 14.30 because I have four languages in my head (Swiss German, German, English and Greek). So I always ask back so: we meet at "Dreizehn Uhr Dreissig", just to be sure. In Greek they say 13:30 as "Thirteen and a half" (which is the opposite in English). In Switzerland we have the 24h clock but we often use both when we talk. We could say let's meet at " dreizehn dreissig" or "halb zwei". But we don't use the 13 when we talk about the full hour (very confusing). So when someone tells me let's meet at 13 Uhr I could have 3pm in my head...
I never had that problem. My brain makes a strict difference between time and number. And time information will be immediately auto-translated by my brain into the image of minute and hour watch hand of an analogue clock. And translating time from German into English or vice versa use the clock image as well. 12 and 24h time scale normally isn't a problem because 99% can be detected from context. Both scales are transformed into the virtual clock image so it is absolutely no problem to switch between them.
I'm doing this since I was a small child and learned the concept of time and clock. Therefore it's hard for me to imagine how this can be a problem for other people.
This could help you: paint a clock face on a paper and use "PM german" numbers, i.e. 12-23. Then watch at it regularly and try to connect the numbers with their positions.
Doing so, you will not need compute, say "18" to American system. You will just have a picture in mind of that clock face and you will "see" 18 down there and youll get it immediately.
That is even to me as a native German speaker a bit weird sometimes because you can also use 4:00 (vier Uhr) for 16:00 (sechzehn Uhr) and sometimes people swich mid-sentence.
Even as a German native speaker I sometimes run into that problem. Especially with the 9-19-7-17 mess. It doesn't help that in everyday speech you usually just say "um 7", "um 9", whereas the clock on your mobile/computer uses the other format. Using a wristwatch would make things simpler.
I am from Chile, native Spanish speaker, and my brain does this thing with numbers too.
I do usually confuse 16 with 6 PM and 18 with 8 PM and so on.
I am American, and I use my fingers when using military time (24 hour clock). Thumb is 13, etc. I'm a high school teacher and I teach telling time using 24 hour clock and I still have to concentrate when converting 12 hour times to 24 hour times.
I think the reason why its so complicated to use the 24h system is because or 'usual' counting system is something called 'Dezimalsystem'. which ultimately means that we count from one to ten and then start adding those single figures (1-0) onto the tenner (e.g.: 11,12,13,...). this already is something all children have to learn and acquire, its not an innate ability.
the 12h system however counts to 12 before repeating the single digits, which does not come naturally for children. they have to learn this different system as well.
and the 24h system then, instead of repeating and adding the single digits after 12, just continues 'regularly' (like we would count if we're not talking about time) and uses the following 13 as =1.
so in total, there are three different 'counting systems' that everyone has to learn and its not surprising at all and completely normal to get these mixed up or be unsure about it.
I'm not sure if this makes any sense, we talked about the Dezimalsystem and various other counting systems (Binärsystem/Dualsystem and Hexadezimalsystem) in my first year of uni so its been a while and I wasn't quite sure how to explain it in english :D hope it made at least some sense tho 😅
The mental gymnastics described here are also how I taught myself the twenty-four hour clock when I was younger, not for learning German (which I didn’t really get into until now as an adult) but because it was cool to be different for some reason. And yes I run into moments where numbers in the teens stop making sense and 2PM/1400 comes “after” 11. You are not alone.
Don't worry. I have the same problem as a native German! I always confuse 17 with 7pm and 16 with 6pm etc.
In the USA in hospitals, we use military or the 24 hour clock When it taught, we either add 12 if going from English to military time and subtract 12 when going from military to English, ie 2pm 12 = 1400. 1600-12= 4pm. What confuses me is that in the USA, we say meet me at 245. pm or quarter to 3. In other countries, they do some completely different that I can't even it explain it.
Yes this happens to me also, I’ve been in Germany five years. I always see the time at work 15:00 and I think „yay just 30 more minute to go“ then I realize it’s only 3:30pm. Going between a 24 hour system and the American AM/PM system constantly causes me confusion/mini problems
Yeah, this is definitely a problem for me too, even though I grew up with the 24-hour clock. My brain thinks, even if it is for a fleeting second, that 15:00 is 5 and 17:00 is 7 and so on. What doesn't help is that we as native speakers aren't really consistent in how we tell time. I, too, always switch between, for example, 5 and 17 when speaking. Nothing to worry about here. ;)
I had the same problem, too. And i am only moved from Rheinland-Pfalz to Franken.. here they have a funny way to tell me witch time it is. And after a few years i am STILL confused!
It is funny because I am German and it happens way too often that I want to meet a friend at '19:00 Uhr' (7 pm) but instead I am thinking of '9 Uhr' (am Abend, 9 pm), which means '21:00 Uhr' instead of '7 Uhr am Abend'. And I do know that we are not the only ones! :-D
Basically every country that uses the 24-h system also still uses analog clocks and watches. Thus to some degree the 12-h and 24-h labels coexist even for natives and requires constant translation. Almost all of the confusion is centred around the pairings where one side is in the single digits and the 24-h version has not yet ticked over to have a zero as the last digit. Meaning from 14/2 through to 19/7 (13 is close enough to noon that there is less confusion).
It’s a bit like dealing with different time zones regularly, at some point you are going to mess up.
Dutch native speaker here with German relatives (my grandma was German and I have a lot of family living in the Ruhrgebied and München ),I also have been living both in the UK and France.......I always switch between 4 languages in my head. To some people it may sound mad, but to me it is a great way way to combine languages together. But the number system is just way difficult in French...They add up like the Romans did.
90 in Dutch : Negentig......90 in German: Neunzig, 90 in English: Ninety, 90 in French: quatre-vingt-dix.
That messes me up always!
Thank you for this very entertaining video!!!
I am German and sometimes it happens that even I mix numbers up because you can also say „wir treffen uns um 7“ (19Uhr) in germany.
Dear Dana, I can totally understand what you mean, even being born in Germany. When I lived in Mexico for a year and wanted to call my family and friends in Germany, I obviously agreed on times and dates with them to make sure we both have time. There is a time difference of 7 hours between Germany and Mexico, so I was thinking, I get off work at 12. 12+7=19. So 7 o clock in Germany. Actually not that difficult. But what I often ended up texting my family was that I would be free at 17 o clock making my family wait 2 hours for my call! I still up to this point do not get how this could have happened to me literally almost every time I was converting Mexican time into German time.
When it come to clocks and times I don't think there are strict rules about using 24h or 12h in Germany. Yes, we do use the 24h clock but we also sometimes use the 12h clock in verbal language. If it's obvious which time is meant, for example "a meeting at 3" there is no need to use the 24h times.
You are NOT alone in having trouble with the 24 hour clock.
The key to me learning the 24 hours clock (from living in Germany and being in the Military) was to key in on the number 12.
12 = Noon.
12 + 1 = 1 oclock (13 hour)
12 + 2 = 2 oclock (14 Hour)
12 + 3 = 3 oclcok (15 hour), etc, etc
So, instead of equating the two different times, as you are, I focused on the 12 and it worked. I can still do it rather quickly to this day (and I've been doing it since the early 90s.)
I use the 24h-system only in writing. So I write „17:00 Uhr“ and say „5 Uhr“. I think that’s mainly cause my dialect (Swiss German) doesn’t use the 24h-system.
My biggest problem with time is, that I sometimes switch to a decimal system when calculating how many hours are between to times.
So I think 3pm is three hours past 10am or 5am is five hours past 10pm.... Don’t know why I do this all the time...
The AM/PM problem is that you start counting at 12, then go 1, 2, ... until 11 AM after which there's of course 12 PM, because counting like Microsoft Windows versions is fun!
if it's easier, maybe this can help: just add or subtract 12.
4pm + 12 = 16
19 - 12 = 7pm
If there is a problem, this doesn't help.
If this helps, there has never been a problem.
Same thought... Dana isn't much into maths, I guess 😂
I use 12 plus or minus and have done all 77 years of my life and have not had a problem. In fact after all this time it is automatic. My mind now thinks 14:00 hr is 2 PM or 2 in the afternoon.
I can relate to the time confusion, because I had the same problem when I was a child, learing to tell time. We mostly used analog clocks back then and so I learned the 12hour-system frist. When I learned the 24hour-system with digital clocks, like you, I associated 14 with 4pm, 17 with 7pm and so on. Nowadays I much prefer the 24hour-system and digital clocks. It just seems more logical to me now, even if you still say: let's meet at 3 o'clock instead at 15.00, while speaking.
On the other hand, when I see time displayed in the 12hour-system, I always get confused for a second. Last week for example, I got a Zoom invitation for an Apéro with my friends for 8pm. In the frist second my bain only registered the 8 and I thought: wow, my friend wants us to start drinking at 8 in the morning!
And I agree, the most important German phrase is: Wo sind die Brezeln? 😆
Funny how the brain works 😅 Sorry. As a German I don’t have that problem. I think my brain separates the number 16 from the time 16. Maybe interesting to know: whenever I hear or say a time like 15 , I see a round clock in my head with that time on it.
Yes, same for me. Since I was a kid, I have been conditioned to mentally segregate „counting numbers“ from „time codes“. As Sphhyn I am also the „Visual Type“ seeing the clock in front of my mind‘s eye, where it clearly say 3:00 (15:00). And theoretically the Plural of „das Bretzel“ ist „die Bretzel“ (so no „n“ needed). However, in some regions it’s „die Bretzel“ (Singular), which is why the Plural doesn‘t work without an amendment („die Bretze(l)n“). So it‘s really a dialect thing.
As a kid I also often mixed the 12 and 25 hour system. Because in spoken language the 12 hour system is still often used, whereas the 24h system is more for calendars and business appointments or the be especially precise. Between friends and family we use more the 12 hour system. Back to when I was a kid. I also struggled with converting 24 hours into 12 hour system and often took 19 for 9 pm or 17 for 7 pm. So perhaps there are some other Germans outside there who also struggled with those 2 different time systems when they were young. But the more you use both, the more easy the conversion becomes. At least if you have 13 to 15 years of training. 😊
I honestly haven’t had the problem with the problem where I mix up thinking that 14 comes after 11 or any other number sequence like that, but as an American who lived in Leipzig over the past year, I have and still have trouble with doing the transferring time. As you were speaking about it though, I was thinking a way to avoid it might be to think that the German 14:00 is 14th hour of the day, and the American version is the 2p hour of the day. Thereby getting rid of the complete number equivalent that we see as shorthand for time in the different usages and countries.
And I am not lying to you, I just got done with my time in Leipzig and just recently found out that the Captain America: Civil War battle scene was at Leipzig/Halle airport where I got stuck overnight. XD it was my own fault. Also Wave Gotik Treffen was interesting, I live in Omaha, Nebraska at the moment.
I’m lucky. Straight out of high school I joined the military, which runs on 24 hour time. Now I’m in aviation ... and a lot of my timekeeping is now in UTC! But I certainly don’t confuse 14.00 as a number versus 14.00 as a time!
you know, a lota people are confused with the 24h clock... even though they were brought up with it.
Who? For real, do you know more than one Person? I‘ve Never Met a single person in my life that got confused by the 24h System.
In the beginning I stayed with the 24 hour system and told people: The meeting starts at 17 o’clock and people like: Häh??? But then I started to use the “not formal” time. In friend groups we said: Wir seh’n uns und um 3. Sometimes we added the phrase am Nachmittag / am Morgen which is technically the same as AM / PM.
I had more problems with the numbers that switch places after 12. Like 89 = neun und achtzig and not eighty nine. I still don’t know why we use the tens after the single numbers. And it is even more weird with numbers bigger than 112. Though I never recognized that before I learned English.
How I learned the 24 hour time. is subtract 2 from the second number. So 14:00 would be 4-2=2 17:00= 7-2= 5pm. I hope that makes sense or helps!
I'm from Baden-Württemberg. And not only do we use both time systems (12 / 24), but we also tell (in dialect) times like "dreiviertel vier" (03:45 resp. 15:45) or "viertel zehn" (09:15 resp. 21:15). Even germans from many other regions don't understand that. Well, we don't have problems with that, because we grew up with this system. But sadly we don't have much room left in our brains for other things. So we can tell time. That's it. =;-)
American here... my dad explained that military time/24hr time is just am/pm together, "You know 12+12=24.". I was maybe 7 and answered his, "1400 is what time?" "2pm!" I've never had a real issue with the notations since.
I know this is not directly connected, but I had the experience, too, that sometimes it takes way longer than expected to adjust to certain things. In 2002, when we converted to euros, I thought, "Ok, this will take about half a year and then I will only use the new prices." And with some items, it indeed did not take me too long, but I kept converting lots of products to the old currency for years, especially products I do not buy very often.
As a native German-speaker, I sometimes have similar problems with the two systems (and I'm pretty sure I've always had them and they're not a result of me speaking as much English as German these days). So, for example, 7pm is 19:00 and 9pm is 21:00 but sometimes my brain just kinda mixes up the 9 and the 19 and I'll think 21:00 is 7pm. Only happens to me with some of the numbers, though, weirdly enough, not with all of them. Like, I think with 21:00 it may just be because 21 is 3*7 so somewhere in my brain, those numbers are already linked up :p.
I totally get your problem with the 24-hour system. I have no problem converting 12 hours into 24 hours. But my brain still makes a detour when it has to do that: I always imagine where the hand of the clock would be for this hour of the day, and then I know for example that the numbers 5 and 17 are in this position and they belong together. It only takes a split-second to do that, but I can still recognize that I'm doing this. This is probably due to the fact that I used to have an analogue watch as a child that was supposed to help children learn to tell the time. It had both the 12-hour and the 24-hour numbers on the clock face. (Plus, it also had the minute numbers on it, like 5, 10, 15, etc.) So yes, even as an adult the two systems of telling the time still apparently confuse me enough to have my brain go back to a childhood watch.
I do a similar thing for left and right. I can never instantly tell where left and right is. I always have to go via the detour of "Oh, I would write with this hand, so this has to be right."
We use the 24hr system in Hungary as well but even as a native Hungarian I often make the mistake of thinking that 18:00 is 8pm. 😅 That's why every time I write a note for myself, I use the 12hr system instead. I don't want to be accidentaly 2 hours late... 😅😅😅
I constantly translate times in my head :-D But the other way around. I moved from Germany to Canada about three years ago but I still have a lot of online meetings with Europeans. Those meetings are usually announced in Central European (Summer) Time, so the announced time is 6 hours ahead of my time. For the life of me I can't calculate 4pm minus 6 hours, my brain always goes to "4pm, so that's 16:00, 16-6 = ah ok it's at 10 o'clock". I have zero problems knowing without translating it in my head that 4pm is 16:00 but when I have to subtract a number that leads to the time going from am to pm or the other way around then I'm lost and have to translate to the 24 hour clock ^^
Okay I don't have that exact issue with the numbers you have. :D
But I will tell you even as a native german speaker,I sometimes confuse people scheduling something at 18:00 with them scheduling at 8.
Same with the other numbers between 14 and 19.
The worse thing is that I seem to completely lost the ability to say german numbers.
I consume a lot of english media, I often google things in english and I post on social media in english.
And the number system in english makes a lot more sense.
So a lot of times I will say the german number but try to insert the english numbering logic.
So instead of saying "48" as "achtundvierzig", I will say "vierundachtzig".
I've always had issues with that, even when I didn't know any/much english, but being bilingual definitely made it harder.
And now I'm at the point where I just say the individual numbers if I can. Especially in phone numbers.
I'm bilingual and that does sometimes happen, because one language is faster and sometimes forms a connection to the corresponding number in the other language which can make such a brain fart happen without you noticing right away. The brain tries to be quick and want's to do less thinking by forming short-cuts. Most of them are pretty neat, but sometimes brain farts occur. Something along those lines without time: my phone number ends on the same digits as my door number, and therefore if i have to say my phone number i sometimes give out my adress number instead of my phone number before my brain catches up and is like FULL STOP NOPE THATS WRONG
@Daniel Sado Thank you!!! This is really helpful to hear. I'm relieved to hear that other people are experiencing this kind of thing too!! :) :) :) Really interesting to hear about your phone number and address thing! How you explained it makes total sense!!!
Honestly, I don't hear people here in Germany SAY times like 14:00 or 16:00 Uhr. We use that in WRITING a lot (because it's just practical, and you know, were sooooo efficient...). And of course on computers, because it makes sorting timestamps easier. But I don't remember ever making an appointment verbally for fourteen fourtyfive (that would obviously be dreiviertel vier)!
You can use ein/zwei/drei Uhr instead of 13/14/15 Uhr :), practically no one will assume you that you want to meet in the middle of the night. And you kind of turn our 24- hour - system into a somewhat 12-ish-hour -system by adding determinants like mittags/nachmittags/abends :3
I am sooooo with you! My whole family is bilingual! Mum Scottish and father German... so I've ALWAYS spoken both languages! And often somebody says "okay we'll meet at 5 o'clock"... and the other answers "great see you at 15uhr"... ;) Totally normal... happens all the time! Same with 7 and 17 or 9 and 19... we always have that problem :D always makes us laugh :D
And yes your 14 is 12 issue comes up sometimes too :D Congratulations - you are now a true bilingual ;)
In French, it can happen that you mix up 80 and 24, especially if you're used to speak German.
Ah, now I've watched this vid, I understand what the situation is for her. Having spent many years in the US military, the 24-hour clock is not an issue for me; if somebody tells me something will occur at 1715, I automatically know that means 5:15 pm. One way I learned to avoid confusion is that noon is always 1200, and just add 1 to every hour afterwards, so 1pm becomes 1300, 2pm = 1400, etc....
Add 1? or add 12.
What you described with 14 = 2 = 12 is a very good example for the kind of brain fart that I also sometimes have. Unfortunately, I can't really remember a specific example for this right now, but I promise you you are not alone with this. I've often had it while having a conversation, and when I realized my error and tried to explain it, I sometimes just gave up because I needed to elaborate too much. It's frustrating because you know better, and yet you have just given the impression that you do not.
Sometimes I think "It's 5 pm", then I would say "It's 7", just because it is 17:00, so what I say doesn't match with what I think! and I'm from Italy, so I use the 24h format in devices and in very formal situations the 12h format when speaking
I don’t think it’s just a bilingual thing. At jobs here in the US that use the 24 hour clock instead of the 12 hour clock, for awhile I’d goof up and still do. I know 18:00 is 6:00pm. That’s stuck in my brain along with 15:00 is 3:00pm. I mostly remember that because that’s when most meetings, trainings, etc were scheduled. So for me, when I see 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 I have to start from the nearest one I know. So for 13 I go oh one more than 12 so 1pm. 14 I have to think oh one less than 15 so 2pm. 17, that’s one less than 18 so 5pm. 20 is two more than 18 so 6, 7, 8 (will even have to employ fingers to count sometimes). Then I have to translate into whatever language I’m speaking to the person in (French or Spanish) and hope I don’t mix that up ... even worse if I was thinking about a Hindu concept and my brain also thinks about Sanskrit numbers because then I’ll really confuse the person. Nothing like telling someone dasa-seis (Dasa being Sanskrit for ten, seis being Spanish for six) and you’re trying to say 16 in French (seize). And the mixing up numbers and thinking they’re something different...yup, definitely happens to me...especially the upper teens as Spanish and French say 10+# as those numbers and so I’ve thought 20 was less than 17 because it’s just 2 and 0 while 17 is said 10+7 and that’s 1 and 0 and 7. If that makes sense. It has to my brain until I realized that wasn’t correct when I said it in English. So yeah, you’re definitely not alone in either of the examples. I think the 24 hour clock is just difficult for Americans because we’ve been conditioned to think of time as being in two segments...if that makes any sense. It’s like my brain thinks “13:00? No, it’s afternoon and it’s the first hour after noon, noon and midnight are the guide posts of time not just midnight alone!” And oh goodness do I get confused when someone says something like “It’s a quarter before 17.” My brain is just like “What?! Why are you doing this to me!?” And yes, I’ve had my brain think “17-25= -8.......wait, what? There’s no such thing as -8 hour! What are you doing? No, it’s 17:45. Get it together, dude, you learned how to tell time in pre-school!” LOL
I'm often caught in endless calculations where my brain translates e.g. 15:00 to 5pm which is 17:00 and then I think the appointment is at 7pm which is 19:00... so it's at 9pm?!
(And I'm German... a very confused one, though)
Likely most people will know this trick but a huge trick I use to remember what the 24h times are, you just minus 12 (or 2 and take away the first number). For example 14 (- 12) = 2.
Perhaps since I’ve kept this way of learning the 24h clock, I never needed to remember what exactly each hour (14) equals to which pm number (2pm)
I've never done this 14-11 thing, but I can understand what kind of steps your brain took to get there.
What I've experienced was this 17 vs. 7pm thing. Sometimes I have to think about "Did he say 17 oder 7?" and I am german 😄
wenn ich solche verabredung am telefon mache, habe ich mir angewöhnt, um missverständnisse zu vermeiden, dann mit der frage/feststellung abzuschließen: "also tschüß bis um 5" da durch hintergrundgeräusche ecta. das "siebzehn" manchmal wie "sieben" klingt.
When I was a child learning my times table, I had a little bit of difficulty with mixing-up 6 X 9 and 7 X 8. 6 X 9 = 54, and 7 X 8 = 56. However, because 54 is six away from 60 and 56 is four away from 60, my brain wanted to connect 54 (being six away) as *56* whereas it wanted to connect 56 (being four away) as *54*. Aside from this quirky wiring, I was a math whiz kid. If this sounds similar to what you're describing, hopefully you can feel better about that amazing place that is your brain. :-)