![]() ![]() If you're speaking to an American, use these forms. With that fairly simple set of rules, here's how we'd read those times: Minute 0 is not pronounced, but in that case, we say " o'clock". So, for minutes 10-59, the number is spoken normally ("ten", "fifty-nine", etc.) but for minutes 1-9, the number is spoken as "oh-one", "oh-nine", etc. Here's the perspective of a native West Coast American speaker - which I believe is, in this case, the same as the General American perspective.Īll times, regardless of where you're reading them, are spoken as " ", where is always spoken as a two-digit number. Someone reading a digital clock will likely tell you the reading, but with analogue clocks, conversationally, you are likely to get these more vague, conversational answers. ![]() "Quarter to" and "quarter past" feel like their own times. We drop the "a" from "It's a quarter to ten." "It's twenty-six to ten." would be very rare to hear, much more likely to be exact for that and say "It's nine thirty-four." 1328-1329: "nearly half past"ġ330: "It's half past one on the dot." "It's half one exactly."Ġ934: "It's nearly twenty five to (ten)."Īnything other than the 5 minute increments of 25,20,15,10,5 feel strange to say. Unless it's a circumstance where the listener needs the exact time, we're likely to approximate to the nearest 5 minutes.ġ326, 1327: "about twenty five past". If people are asking because they need to catch a train at a particular time, or waiting for a meeting to start, the assumption is they're asking about the minutes, rather than the hour.ġ326: "It's just gone twenty-five past (one)." If the hour can be inferred, it's often dropped. As a native Londoner, here is what I am most likely to say (and hear) at those times (given below in 24 hour format):ġ302: "Two minutes past one." "It's just gone one."
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