I hear phrases like "half-past", "quarter til", and "quarter after" way less often since digital clocks have became more commonplace.

I use these all the time, my kids say "just tell me what time it is."

Seriously, though. It takes less brain processing power and just about the same speech-time to just say the dang time.
- If your brain works in digital time, this is true.
  
  Us olds have to translate the other direction.
  
  It’s like hearing someone say “why doesn’t everyone just speak English? Why go through the extra effort of speaking Spanish?” because you assume everyone’s internal monologue is in English.
- I think there's bigger problems if you have to process the time. If you've never heard it in your life, maybe you'd stop and think, but it's honestly just something you learn and know, no thinking required.
  
  It's like when people don't know 24 hour time, when it's something you've just grown up with, there's no thinking and then you are confused when you hear people have to think about it or "calculate".
I did the same thing with my parents, mostly because they'd just say "quarter after" but would never say any number. If you made a word cloud of everything I've ever said in my life, "after what" would be gigantic in the center with every other word tiny around the edges.
- This just triggered a deep memory from within me. My brother used to say "half past" when I asked him the time, and when I would say "half past what?" the response was always "Half past the monkeys ass, a quarter to his balls"
  
  I still don't know what it means or where it came from, but when I was 8 years old, it was hilarious.
- Even worse than that imo is 'quarter of'. I swear to god it's been used to mean both before or after whatever hour they're talking about
- EVERY TIME
"It's a third past the hour, ya dang kids!"
You're failing at your most important job.

Old man yelling at clouds checking in. I understand the prevalence of digital, but still can't wrap my head around younger people not understanding how to read an analog clock.

Of course the kids don't know how to read them. Kids rarely encounter analog clocks and when they do, they have several digital clocks within arms length. Most people wouldn't reach for a slide rule when they have a calculator.

And to be fair, analog clocks are objectively worse than digital clocks in every way aside from aesthetics.
- I grew up around both, for simply telling time, digital is far better. Analog though to me gives a better sense of the passage of time I guess you could call it? Like, you can see the hour hand has moved a distance after a little while; or if I want to do something for half an hour, I just have to watch for when the minute hand is pointing 180 degrees away from where it was when I started, things like that.
- My kid has analog clocks on her school tests and homework as questions. They are teaching them to read them, most just don't care for the reasons you stated.
- When I was in elementary school, my teacher asked us which kind of clock is easier to read. I said "digital, because it shows the numbers". She told me "no, analog is easier to read, because you just look at it and know the time without reading the numbers".
  
  I thought that was stupid back then, and it's still stupid now, because I have to calculate the time whenever I need to read an analog clock. Still can't read them quickly.
- as someone with adhd I much prefer analogue clocks, they allow me to see time through physical distance of the clock hands which helps with perceiving it, numbers don't do that for me
Younger people dont know how to read analog clocks?

Im young and neither i nor anyone i know doesnt know how to read an analog clock
- They stopped teaching it in schools around TX a long time ago. High Schoolers nowadays were shocked when I said that reading clocks was a 1st grade skill because they weren't taught to tell time.
I tried to raise my kids with analog clocks, specifically because they’d see digital everywhere else. It didn’t work. They know how to use an analog clock but find it more natural to pull out their phone

Actually, the barbarians won. I’ve mostly given up on analog because they’re wrong too often. My digital clocks rely on power and are synched, so they’re either correct or off. My analog clocks are battery and don’t synch with anything so it might be wrong and it might not be obvious. (While I’ve looked into analog clocks that synch with something, they generally fail the “looks nice” part)

Come to Germany. We still argue about how to properly say that. In some regions "quarter nine" means 8:15.

Could be worse. Could be Dutch.

What time is it?

Ten over half eight.

........

7:40
- I see no problem with this? Makes sense.
- ...what
In Spanish its pretty common to express time past 30 as next hour minus time left. So 8:45 can be expressed as 9 minus 15
- I feel this is the way that best reflects how you look at an analog clock. First hours then minutes. It'd be interesting to know if the amount of people saying time the analog way depends on the system used.
- Same in English, except that we say "half past" for xx:30. 08:35 is "twenty-five to nine".
This is why I don't talk to members of the British Isles, they do this.

KDE for years had a clock option called "fuzzy clock" where you could set the granularity of time, either in 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, or 60 minute resolution. So it would just say "five to six" or whatever in words. It was designed to keep you from clock watching while working. Not sure if it exists anymore :)

It does! I recently switched to Linux, and when messing with some of the options, I found that. It's pretty neat tbh
I like how it sometimes if you set the fuzziness to max it says just "lunch" or I think "second breakfast"
Limmy used to have a talking clock on his website that'd say stuff like "just gone half two" if it was 14:32 or "coming up on three" at 14:58 or whatever. Surprisingly good idea.

I went to public school in the 80s and every classroom had a very large analog clock on the wall. Even back then, it mildly annoyed me when teachers and other adults would say "half past" and so on. It always sounded archaic to my ears, even 40+ years ago.

I also get annoyed when people say "two thousand and twenty-four" for the year. Just say "twenty twenty-four". We didn't say "one thousand nine-hundred and eighty-four" back in the day, we said "nineteen eighty-four".

There was a solid decade where the pattern broke, and so e people didn't get back into it.

Two thousand, two thousand one etc don't really work as "twenty oh-one", etc.
I was taught in the '80s that you shouldn't use 'and' in a number that isn't followed by a decimal portion (e.g. 23 and 4 hundredths). I've seen various back-and-forth on that topic over the years.
- That sounds familiar. Applies to check writing, for those who still do that.
It goes

nineteen ninety-eight

nineteen ninety-nine

two thousand

two thousand one

two thousand two

...

two thousand nine

twenty ten

twenty eleven

etc
This is literally the first time I’ve ever heard the term “analog clock”.

Also, the title of the book (and film) is not 1984. It’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

But I’m not a boomer, I’m genx, so whatever. I’m outta heeeere… 😎
- one thousand nine hundred and eighty-four
- What else would you call an analog clock?
And stay offa mah lawn!
Can you really say "1984" with confidence either way given Big Brother?

Nowadays is easier just to say the precise time down to the minute.

I still round, I'll call 3:11 3:10 when the precision doesn't matter.
In a way it is a bit sad though. It gives a more rigid feeling to things. "about quarter past" would usually be something between :10 and :20. There is room for interpretation and time feels more available with less demanded precision.
- On the other hand, quarter inch and half mile and such are meant to be precise?

Why would the use of analog or digital clocks affect that? Quarter is 1/4th of an hour = 15 minutes. I don't see the correlation and I can't confirm it from personal experience either.

The way information is presented impacts how it is stored. If you look at a clock face and want to know what time it is it's very easy to visualize the passage of time as fractional because the time is presented to you without numbers being the primary focus and instead divisions. Mentally it is easier for you then to grapple with time as a fractional division. However, if instead of presenting the day as being divides into 2 portions of 12 hours, themselves divided into 12 subdivisions, those then further divided into 12 subdivisions of the 5tha of those divisions, you presented it as a simple read out the passage of time feels more like a linear stream mostly indistinguishable.

How we present time changes how we think about time, which then changes how we describe time.

Man language is cool...
- what do you know about Marshall McLuhan? I'm hoping it's not very much, because you seem to be in a really good place to receive what he has to teach right now. Google the phrase "the medium is the message" if you'd like to know more.
I think it's because, visually, 3:15 puts the minute hand a quarter of the way around the clock face. Digital clocks don't have a corresponding visual.
I think it's a rounding thing. Looking at an analog clock, you'll see at a glance that the hand is about halfway around the circle but it takes an additional processing step to determine whether it's 6:31 or 6:29. Looking at a digital clock, you'll see that it's 6:29 first and then it takes another step of processing to determine that 29 minutes is roughly halfway through the hour.

I was thinking the other day that I never hear the phrase "bottom of the hour" (meaning __:30) anymore.

Shit, I'm 27 and never heard that in my life
- Top of the hour to you, sir/ma'am

Strange, nothing has changed in my experience. It's a general way to tell the time, not exclusive to analog clocks.

A quarter to 1400 does sound a bit odd.

24h time makes way more sense, especially when working with servers late at night. Hate 12 hour time's annoying AM/PM issues, particularly when typing the time into server refreshes or dealing with 11pm - 12pm (am) slip ups.
- I don't think I've ever seen a server in a corporate environment running on anything other than 24-hour UTC time. That sounds like a nightmare.
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That doesn't make sense to me. It would be a quarter to 14 if you wanted to say 14 instead of 2.
- I wrote that it sounds odd, which it does. I used to work a job that used military time. Almost everyone wore a digital watch but many of the offices had analog clocks. If I was looking at an analog clock I'd say 'quarter to 2" but if I looked at my watch or the screen I'd probably say 1345.

Laughs in Austrian.

The convention for (15-minute) fractional hours is to name the fraction of the time from the previous hour to the next one.

eg:
3:15 -> "viertel vier" = "quarter four"
3:30 -> "halb vier" ("hoiba viere" in dialekt) = "half four"
3:45 -> "dreiviertel vier" = "three quarters four"

In Finland we use:

3:15 viisitoista yli kolme = fifteen over three.
3:30 puoli neljä = half four.
3:45 viisitoista vaille neljä = fifteen short of four.

We also use 24 hour clocks but if the dinner is at 17:30, it will just be said to be at half six and you figure am/pm out of context - if it's ambiguous, we say "six in the morning / six in the evening".
- In English, when they ask the time, we reply: Puolivälissä ohitti apinan perse. Because in English Puolivälissä rhymes with perse.

Not in Norway lol. If you want to meet up at 11:20 you say "ti på halv tolv" meaning "ten minutes before half hour before twelve.
Yeah, it took me a while to wrap my head around it too.

I generally avoided use of the quarter/half shorthand because people often say it with no context.

“What time is it?”

“Half past.”

Half past what? Sort of an assumption that the asker has a clue what hour it is, but if they knew, why would they ask the time?

I’m not sad to see the phrases go.

Never actually heard anyone exclude the hour, it's always "half past 3", "quarter to 8", "5 till 6", etc
That's why people usually say Half past 5, in my experience anyway.
My childhood was filled with people doing that. It drove me nuts.

It does not make sense to convert digits to figure of speech, just for the fuck of it.

The practice still has one very important application:

"What time is it?"

"Half past a monkey's ass, quarter to his balls"
- Our family's was "freckle past a hair and time to get a watch"
I feel this comment betrays a misunderstanding of what language even is. Saying it like "two forty-five" or whatever is a figure of speech as much as "quarter to three" is.
- You knew exactly what I meant, you're just being pedantic.

In Lesotho (and I assume other developing countries that teach the English standard) they use those phrases because the 24-hour day and 60-minute hours are a foreign concept to many kids and their families.

I hear these phrases(the romanian version) much more often than an exact time

This is also how i was taught time in english

I rarely even bother using 12 hour time any more.

Never saw the point. It doesn't save syllables, and people unaccustomed to it get confused

My internal clock runs on a circle... So if I am guessing or saying roughly the time I will use "quarter to", "ten past", etc. If it's an exact time I will say it to the minute, 6:43 etc.

I'm not sure. Anecdotal evidence, but when I was little, we learned how to read analog clocks, and all the "half past whatever" terminology. Actually, I think most of us in my class at that time primarily used analog clocks. Even then, we never used those sorts of phrases. We would just round to the nearest 5 minutes if anyone asked.

That's still what I do nowadays. Of course, there's phones and computers now that can tell you the time, but if I want a physical clock, I prefer to get an analog one. And I still just round to the nearest 5 minutes.

In my interpretation, those phrases fell out of favor a long time ago

I still hear people talk about the top and bottom of the hour all the time.

I've never heard those phrases in person, only when spoken on TV or radio. Whereabouts you from?
- My or is based out of Midwest US, but my we have people scattered across the US.
Do you prefer the top or the bottom?

I don't get why, it's not like they aren't learning fractions these days right?

Because it's easier to use 5:15 or 5:30 when you get a digital readout. No one's counting every individual tick on an analog clock, so fractions make more sense in that case.

I'm 46 and for as long as I can remember I've used "half past" and "quarter to" etc. Even during the years when I used a digital watch I transferred to do this now often than not. I'll use it with my Kuga as well and they understand and often do the same.

Since using AM and PM are essentially analogue standards, will people eventually stop saying "it's two o'clock" when they mean "the time is fourteen hundred"?

i dont know if you are joking or not, but i have all my clocks unironically on 24 hour time.
- So does a lot of the world.
- In real life though, when the clock reads 15:00, how do you vocally express that?
Talking about hundreds is American military slang/jargon isn't it? I've never heard it elsewhere and it doesn't even make sense. It's fourteen hours, not hundreds. If we're going that way, I think it'll be "twenty past fourteen" and such.
- Well, you could say "fourteen twenty" too.
  
  But if "fourteen twenty" was a year we would think its "1420".
  
  Likewise, 1400 is "fourteen hundred" and not "14:00"
  
  Some military standards make a lot of sense, there's no problem adopting it if it's clear.

I think everybody puts too much emphasis on it being a strict generational thing while imo it's mostly a force of habit.

I'm on my early 20s, and used to take around 10 seconds to read an analog clock. Fully digital mind. Bought an analog wrist watch this summer and merely 1-2 months into wearing it I started understanding it instantaneously and all of "half past" type phrases click immediately now.

I'm 38 and still take 10s to read an analog clock.

I do still say half past etc though. I don't really associate them with digital vs analog

Dave Allen on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QVPUIRGthI

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://www.piped.video/watch?v=0QVPUIRGthI

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
The second hand is the minute hand and the third one is the second hand!
That was exceptional. I hadn't heard of Dave Allen before but as a watch collector this bit really cracked me up1

It's becausee with digital clocks it's easier to just read the exact time which used to be less convenient. So. Reading digital clocks easy: Juat read what you see. Reading traditionap clocks easy: quarters and halves are a great way to simplify and fasten the time that it takes to tell what time it exactly is.

We have strayed so far from God

I have almost never heard people use quarter or half to tell time.

Last summer, I was in a water park, one of the few people still wearing a watch. A man asked me what time it was, and I replied "half past one and ten minutes". To me, this was completely natural, and I didn't even think about it. I'll never forget his confused look. You could almost see slight movements under his hair as the wheels in his brain worked overtime to translate it into digital time...

I have never heard anything like that. "twenty 'til two" is what jumps to my mind. I've never heard <some relative time> and x minutes
- That's how I was taught. Quarter past, half past, quarter to, and add to it the minutes. Then again, I was also taught to hide under my school desk in case of a nuclear attack. I think times may have changed slightly since then...
half past one and ten minutes can be reduced to half past eleven minutes, which is five and a half minutes

did I get that right?