to think that 35 past 2 is not the new modern way of teaching the time?

[notnaice]

I have heard this twice now. The first time I just put it down to bad teaching/understanding at school. The second, from a supposedly educated 20 year old, made me wonder if I'm the one out of touch with modern teacing of telling the time.

You can't say 35 past 2 instead of 25 to 3, can you?

My late nan also said five and twenty to. I still catch myself saying it occasionally.

i do tell the kids "its 35 minutes past 2"

but to DH i would say 'its 25 to 3"

i think while they're young, its fine, but i will switch when they get older and better at understanding time/reading a clock.

I am scottish - I would use "back of" to mean nothing more than ten minutes past. So if I say I'll be with you "back of 2" I would hope to be there by about ten past

57 to 12 right now. Just saying.

someone somewhere is getting paid to think up all this stupid crap and that's worrying. let's keep it real !

zipzap - "a quarter of" is definitely "a quarter to". Maybe we should all stick to numerical time to avoid confusion!

StaircaseattheUniversity Arabic at least uses a quarter to/past and half past. They also use thirds, so twenty to twelve would be a third to twelve.

French also uses quarters, though you can also say the number of minutes.

Interesting point on the EAL children struggling with the time in English. I think a lot of languages do say these things all in different ways. In my native language (Dutch), 2.35 would be 'vijf over half drie', five past half three' - to add to the confusion, we use 'half + number' to signify the hour that is coming up, not the one that has passed like English does.

Ah, that's a good point Naoko. Arabic does half past twelve plus five too.

It might not even be the native language that is the issue. I know I find numbers the hardest thing in any new language I learn. I still get mixed up writing down long numbers in arabic because twenty six for example is six and twenty so it is easy to get them in the wrong order.

My head hurts. No wonder the poor children are confused!

On my language, Finnish, we say half 3 when the time is 2.30. So when I came here I was quite confused. We can also use the "5 past/to half whatever" thing.

Duh, thanks, Kindle! "IN my language"...

German uses quarters the same as us but their 'half' is half to rather than half past. And where I lived in Austria dreiviertel acht (3/4 8) meant quarter to 8, which I found very odd and confusing. Apparently in Vienna, they say viertel acht (1/4 8) to mean quarter past 7.

English is my first language, but I was brought up to say "half past" the hour. When my UK relatives said "half ten" to me, I had to ask if they meant, 9.30 or 10.30, as omission of "past" made it sound like more like other languages, where "half ten" would mean 9.30.

Sorry, forgot to check back. Posters above are correct, sennight is a shortened way of saying seven nights, or a week as we now more commonly say.

I like it and use it in my head a lot, but try not to use it out loud because I inevitably get called a twat.

Tinuviel - I use dreiviertel acht and I am not Austrian :)

Did you know that in Germany if someone is late you wait for 15 mins and then leave. Its qualled the 'academic quarter', implying that academics are a bit scatty brained and therefore often late....so 15 mins waiting would be acceptable but not a minute longer.

Bloody hell - all the foreign language stuff is confusing. I bet '35 past 2' doesn't sound so odd now OP