r/GlobalTalk • u/about831 • 21d ago
[Question] In some parts of the world 12pm is referred to a noon. What terms does your culture have for different times of the day? Question
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u/Kronos_001 Change the text to your country 21d ago
We have
सुबह(subah) for morning,
दोपहर(dopahar) for afternoon, and
शाम/संध्या(shaam/sandhya) for evening, and
रात्रि(ratree) for night.
As far as noon is concerned, we just say दोपहर के बारह बजे or 12 of the noon (sic)
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u/agni39 India 21d ago
Piggybacking off of the Hindi, Bengalis have almost similar terms
সকাল for morning
দুপুর for afternoon
সন্ধ্যা for evening
রাত for the night.
We have one extra though,
বিকেল which technically means afternoon but is used more in a pre-evening context, basically the last hour of sunset.
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u/TrainingNail Brazil 21d ago
12pm in Brazil is meio-dia, or mid-day, just like 00 is midnight. 12:30 would be “mid-day and a half”. We use the 24h clock here (never am/pm) but always speak in 12h, so 16h here would be said like “four hours of the afternoon” (not “four in the afternoon” if I’m translating directly”).
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u/casdwyfil Uruguay 🇺🇾 21d ago
Mañana*1 - 00:00 to 12:00
Mediodía - 12:00
Tarde*2 - depends on the person really. Usually between 13:00 to 19:00. In summer it may extend a bit (until 20:00) due to the sun setting later.
Noche - 19-20:00 till 00:00
Medianoche - 00:00
*1. You can hear “Mañana” when talking about a specific time (1 de la mañana, 8 de la mañana — 1 in the morning, 8 in the morning) or “Madrugada” when talking about the timeframe between 1:00 to 5-6:00 AM (Terminó de madrugada, Es/era de madrugada —It ended early in the morning, It is/was early in the morning)
*2. When talking about greetings, you would hace different ways of using timeframes. Before evening you say “Buenos días”, during evening you say “Buenas tardes”. Now, some people will say “Buenos días” before they’ve eaten lunch, and “Buenas tardes” after. So you can hear someone say “Buenas tardes” at 13:00 while someone else is saying “Buenos días”. Of course if it’s 15:00 and you have not eaten lunch yet, you’d most likely say Tardes still.
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u/spiky_odradek Mexico- Sweden 21d ago
In Mexico mediodía Is used for the time frame between 12-3pm ish, otherwise same
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u/MacAdler 21d ago
¿Por qué no se pues decir buenos días en la tarde, si sigue siendo de día?!!
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u/casdwyfil Uruguay 🇺🇾 20d ago
Podés decir “Buen día”, por ejemplo “Que tenga un bien día”, creo… nunca me enseñaron más allá de lo que uno aprende por costumbre
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u/CriticDanger 21d ago
Every country south of the US uses these terms differently for some reason. It often makes no sense.
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u/recidivx 21d ago
"Noon" comes from latin "nona" which means the ninth hour after sunrise, i.e. somewhere around 3pm depending on the time of year.
It's also part of a system of liturgical hours which contains (from morning to night): mattins, lauds (at dawn), prime, terce, sext (sixth hour, i.e. somewhere around 12pm), none, vespers, compline.
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u/manyfingers 21d ago
My girlfriend considers anything after 1000 or 10AM to be afternoon. Sometimes I think she was raised by wolves in the woods.
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u/SharkAttackOmNom 21d ago
Ah a time rounder. Does she get anxious about being on time to casual gatherings? I only ask because my wife does, and will heavily round up the time on any occasion m. As far as saying “it’s almost 3o clock” when it’s actually 2:20.
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u/manyfingers 21d ago
My gf isn't rounding, its just the way she rolls. It's not closer to noon, after 10am IS afternoon.
My father is a rounder. It may have been anxiety but I think he was mostly curmudgeonly. Any impending deadline would be more beneficial if it was sooner than later.
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u/fruskydekke 21d ago
In Norwegian, "middag" (mid-day) is technically noon. But few people use it like that anymore. "Ettermiddag" (literally after-mid-day, same meaning as afternoon) is technically any time after 12, but most people would argue that the "ettermiddag" begins somewhere around 2-3 pm, and lasts until 5-6 pm.
To make things extra confusing, "middag" is mostly used these days to mean the meal that is known in English as "dinner" - i.e. the main meal of the day, usually eaten late afternoon or early evening. It just used to be the case that the main meal of the day was eaten at noon....
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u/the-other-otter Norway 21d ago
Adding to this, we have a word for one day and one night (24 hours) :et døgn.
And it was super confusing when I lived in England and people said "half five", and they meant "half past five" and didn't mean "half past four" which is the only normal way to say things.
Thus "ten to half five" is ten minutes before half an hour before five = four twenty. Obviously.
I have been thinking that we have a word for "day and night" as one unit, because sunrise and sunset vary so much over the year, but then someone told me they also have that kind of unit in Tamil? Which is loser to Equator and would have fairly similar day length all year.
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u/alcard987 Poland 21d ago
Noon is "południe", the same word is used for south. Respectively, midnight is "północ", the word for north.
I don't know which came first, tho.
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u/dyna67 21d ago
Something really confusing with Dutch is that if you say, for instance, half seven “half zeven” it means half past 6. Which is very confusing to English speakers as in English “half seven” would be understood as 7:30 not 6:30
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u/Cheeseblock27494356 21d ago
Is there an implied "until"? As in, "half until seven"? Or is it otherwise implied through the mechanics of the language?
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u/dyna67 21d ago
In some instances it follows English rules in that if you want to say 2:45, you would say “kwart voor drie” (literally quarter to three) or 4:10 would be “tien over vier” (10 past four).
However it becomes very messy when you want to say something like 5:25 which is “vijf voor half zes” (literally five to half six)
It is just one of the rules of the language, so it becomes confusing when comparing it to other languages but once you are used to it, like in any language it becomes normal. And yes I suppose “until” is implied but unlike all the other time phrases we don’t actually say it.
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u/Cheeseblock27494356 21d ago
The english have "tea time", which generally means anywhere from 3-6PM afternoon or early evening.
In the world of computing, many time tools understand the word "teatime" to be exactly 1600 localtime, otherwise known as 4PM.
While not common, I have run into this somewhat confusing statement in computer code and server scripts.
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u/LOOKATHUH 20d ago
My mum is from Yorkshire and refers to lunch as “dinner” and dinner as “tea” which has caused much confusion for the entirety of my life
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u/doodahdoo 21d ago
Follow-up question: countries that don't say 'noon', do you still call afternoon, well, after-noon? Or how does the equivalent interpretation work? (I.e. if you call 12pm midday, would you say 'after-midday' instead?)
From reading replies, it looks like Norwegian is the equivalent (i.e. after-whateveryoucallit), but Hindi is different.
(Genuine and likely ignorant question, I've never thought about this before.)
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u/Artess It's complicated 11d ago edited 11d ago
Russian speaker here. While we do have noon and midnight (literally half-day and half-night), we instead say, to translate literally, "10 hours of the morning", "three hours of the day", "eight hours of the evening", "one hour of the night". The borders between those four periods are not strictly defined and can slightly vary from person to person based on their schedule, but it eliminates the AM/PM ambiguity.
And of course there's always the 24-hour clock when you need to be 100% certain. It's used less often in conversation, but still normal for anyone. I know Americans call it "military time" and sometimes aren't unable to understand it, but in Russian it's pretty common and used frequently, especially in writing.
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u/DrJackl3 Frankfurt, Germany 21d ago
In Germany we use no super-duper special terms. Our noon is called "Mittag" which roughly translates to "middle of the day".
Morgen (morning), Nachmittag (afternoon), Abend (evening) and Nacht (night) are similar to English.
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u/KrishaCZ 20d ago
Czech has a fairly complex system of day times.
ráno (morning) is around 5-8
dopoledne (forenoon) is the part of the morning between 9-11 roughly
poledne (noon) is then midday, around 12
odpoledne (afternoon) is like english, around 13-16
podvečer (early evening, literally underevening) is 16-18 roughly
večer (evening) then around 19-23
and the rest is noc (night), but you can use večer for all the hours before midnight and ráno for the hours after midnight
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u/y6ird 21d ago edited 21d ago
Australia, New Zealand, the UK and I think pretty much every English-speaking country EXCEPT the USA: we say [minutes] TO the next hour instead of after the hour before, beyond the half way mark (and we use the fractions “quarter” and “half” (of an hour) instead of 15 and 30).
I was utterly stunned to learn that not only do Americans NOT do this, many don’t even understand it when it is said.
Examples:
| USA/digital time | normal time |
|---|---|
| 10:55 | five to 11 |
| 8:50 | ten to 9 |
| 11:45 | quarter to 12 |
| 5:30 | half past 5* |
- some places would even call 5:30 “half to 6”, but that is much rarer.
(Edit: table formatting)
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u/thebeef24 21d ago
This is definitely done in the US, although it's less common than saying "eleven forty-five" for instance. I have a vague impression that the "quarter til 12" style is more common with older people who grew up before digital time was prevalent, but I can't say for certain.
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u/MajesticAsFook Australia 21d ago
It's pretty similar here in Australia in that younger people tend not to use it as often. It seems like a remnant of the analog clock days where the small hand is closer to the next hour after half past, so its just easier to read it that way.
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u/Artess It's complicated 11d ago
In Russian, if we use this colloquial form we always speak of the next hour. 5:05 will be "five minutes of the sixth". For the second half of the hour we switch to the form where 5:50 is "without ten, six". Usually rounded to the nearest five minutes. For 15 and 45 minutes you can also say "quarter of the sixth" and "without a quarter, six", both variants are frequently used. 5:30 is "half of the sixth".
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u/y6ird 21d ago
Canadians: can someone please confirm if you guys do this? Does it depend how close you live to the US border, maybe? If you do, do far northern USians understand it?
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u/peet1188 21d ago
Canadian here, 45min from the US border: In your table, the first 3 sound super common to me. The last one sounds like something slightly older people might say, but not all that uncommon.
That said, I’m just over 40, and I use the “digital clock” versions of each since I’m so used to reading digital times from various glowing screens. :)
The weirdest one I ever heard was back in university. I was doing a project with a guy from Scotland who called 5:30pm (“half six”). Took me a few seconds to figure out what time he was talking about.
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u/squirrelcat88 19d ago
Agree. I’m older than you and I would probably say 5:30, but I think my mum ( born 1922 ) would have said half past five.
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u/floating-point- usa 21d ago edited 21d ago
The phrases in the 'normal time' column would also be considered normal/fine in the NY-area and up through the New England states (Northeastern US). Personally, I tend to say the exact time (ex. 'eight fifty') more when I'm at work or in a professional setting, and use the '10 til 9' phrasing at home or in casual settings.
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u/luka1194 21d ago
I'm not a native English speaker and allways thought noon actually means the time around 12. (In German we have "Mittags" = roughly "mid day" and I though that was the translation) Why else is it called afternoon? 😅
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u/DeeDee_GigaDooDoo 9d ago
In Australia the afternoon is often called "the arvo" which is just Australian slang for afternoon using a standard contraction. Nothing fancy but people in other places definitely don't call it that as far as I know.
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u/thesyntaxofthings 21d ago
In my local language 7 am is "one o'clock" because it's the first hour of the day. Noon is therefore 6.