Categories: words, germany, translation, austria, switzerland
Date: 28 August 2007 20:56:19
The other day, I mentioned to the Lödgerin that an event was going to start at “half seven”. I saw her face cloud over for a second - and I knew immediately what she was thinking. Of course, I meant “half past seven”. If you say “halb sieben” in German you actually mean it is half past six. For both of us, after all our years of speaking each other's language, this is an area where we always have to think twice to be sure we get the right time.
The confusion does not end there. Oh no. Depending on where you live, there are different ways for telling the time. Broadly speaking, if you live in the north or middle of Germany, you will use a familiar form - i.e. 8:15 is "viertel nach acht" = a quarter past eight, and 8:45 is "viertel vor neun" = a quarter to nine. So far so good. But as you move further south in German-speaking areas, you will find that people start talking about 8:15 as being “viertel neun” and 8:45 as “dreiviertel neun”*. But it appears that it is not consistently used across the southern areas. When I lived in Austria, I had a flatmate from Salzburg who used the northern German system and one from Graz who used the southern German system. It didn't matter too much. One was a lark and the other an owl so they rarely saw each other anyway.
I think the logic works like this: (Actually, I should confess that nobody has actually ever explained this to me... it is all entirely my own work. I cannot take any responsibility for flaws in the argument - use at your own risk. But it seems to hold water.) The ninth hour is completed at the point that it becomes “o'clock”. If it is a quarter past eight it is a quarter of the way towards nine, then half way towards nine and then three-quarters of the way towards nine. Easy, nicht wahr?!
But don't get too complacent just yet. You probably know that the German system of counting is along the lines of “four and twenty blackbirds”. This is fine for after a while you get used to saying “ two and twenty past two”. But your brain can get scrambled when someone says that the time is “fünf vor halb neun (five minutes to half the way to nine - which, of course, if you've been paying attention is actually “five minutes before half past eight”). Or they say it is “fünf nach halb neun” (= five minutes past half the way to nine). By the time you've worked it out in real money, (8.25 and 8.35 respectively) it's about five minutes later anyway.
I'm planning a trip to Germany and Austria for the near future. All I can say is that I'm grateful that timetables use the 24-hour clock.
*Literally “quarter nine” and “three quarters nine”