Subject: Re: [lojban] Centripetal-centrifugal, little-endian--big-endian, subsets-contents, etc.

From: Elrond <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 02:36:10 +0200 (CEST)

> (Alright, many like to stick an "am" or "pm" at the end, but that is
> kind of silly since most ought to be able to count from 0 to 23 in a
> modern society. I'd like to know how common it is to use a 24-hr
> format in other parts of the world; I can say that in Sweden it is
> quite common, although less common in informal speech. It seems to
> be quite common in Poland too, so at least we're not alone... Does
> anyone have any comments on this?)
Same applies for French, although we do not have short words for "am" and
"pm". Nowadays nearly all written times are in 24h format; and one has to
find out from context in informal conversations to what part of the day
the speaker of a 12h time is referring to. In case of "ki'a" we
specify "in the morning" or "in the afternoon", but simply rephrasing the
date in 24h format is becoming more and more common.

The main problem with 24h times in French is that the numbers get longer
to say starting from 14:00. This is why we still commonly use the 12h
format for times after 13:00 (yes, true, it is very popular to say 13:00
and then switch to 2:00 "pm"). However, as Lojban has a rather
(duh!) short way of saying numbers, it should not be an issue to say the
times in 24h format all the time. Moreover, it would remove the possible
confusion when the part-of-day hint is not included. 

That was my piece of salt.
raph