> As someone who grew up in a country where 24 hours are the norm for digital displays, I'm a bit miffed that the author seems to portray that as alien and weird.
As a german, i gotta agree. We have (translated) "four in the afternoon" or "16 'o clock". (4 Uhr Nachmittags, 16 Uhr.) We also never say the leading zero on hours, and depending on context it doesn't even need to be clarified that we're talking about "'o clock", these are perfectly fine exchanges: "When will you go to the beach?" "Three twenty." (Wann geht ihr zum Strand? - Drei zwanzig.) The context makes it abundantly clear which is meant.
There's also the fact that nobody uses the construct "xx hundred" for numbers above 9. The years before 2000 are still referred to like that, but outside of that people will consider you very strange if you try and buy "twelve hundred grams of minced meat". And for times it's especially not used.
The author's awkwardness with 24 hour times entirely on himself.
Edit: To make this post a little useful, this website is extremely useful for dealing with people in different timezones:
FWIW, in Swedish it's perfectly normal to say the leading zero on hours, to use the "xx hundred" construct when buying twelve hundred grams of minced meat, as well as to refer to years after 2000 as "twenty hundred and fifteen" (tjugohundrafemton). I think the reason the post uses the "twelve hundred hours" is because the American military does.
That said, I agree that there's nothing awkward about 24 hour times.
'There's also the fact that nobody uses the construct "xx hundred" for numbers above 9.'
Count me amongst those who do. By subjective reflection - and standing significant chance of being wrong - I would say most frequently when I've had to do a bit of arithmetic on values where rounding to hundreds is most reasonable.
This is cultural. In Polish there's separate word for n-hundred. 200 is dwieście, 300 is trzysta, etc. So nobody thinks about number of hundreds and tousands as connected thing, we just divide the number differently because of language.
Imagine someone told you "twelve tens" for 120 :)
Anyway, "tysiąc dwieście" for 1200 is easier than "twelve hundred" or "dwanaście setek".
As a German watching some English podcasts I am now used to it, but at first I pictured the trailing zeros in my head to understand it fast enough in spoken language.
I think it's an American English dialect thing. I'm from Ireland, a dialect close to British English, and always found it odd when they say it on US TV
Depends on the language. In some, "one thousand two hundred" is about as simple as "thousand and twondred", while "twelve hundred" is "twoovertenhundred" and quite a mouthful.
As an aside, in high school I had an English teacher with such clear and correct diction, that people said you could hear the apostrophe in "o'clock"...
As a german, i gotta agree. We have (translated) "four in the afternoon" or "16 'o clock". (4 Uhr Nachmittags, 16 Uhr.) We also never say the leading zero on hours, and depending on context it doesn't even need to be clarified that we're talking about "'o clock", these are perfectly fine exchanges: "When will you go to the beach?" "Three twenty." (Wann geht ihr zum Strand? - Drei zwanzig.) The context makes it abundantly clear which is meant.
There's also the fact that nobody uses the construct "xx hundred" for numbers above 9. The years before 2000 are still referred to like that, but outside of that people will consider you very strange if you try and buy "twelve hundred grams of minced meat". And for times it's especially not used.
The author's awkwardness with 24 hour times entirely on himself.
Edit: To make this post a little useful, this website is extremely useful for dealing with people in different timezones:
http://everytimezone.com/