From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Fri May 12 02:13:32 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 11158 invoked from network); 12 May 2000 09:13:32 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.26) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 12 May 2000 09:13:32 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO argo.bas.bg) (195.96.224.7) by mta1 with SMTP; 12 May 2000 09:13:24 -0000 Received: from banmatpc.math.bas.bg (root@banmatpc.math.bas.bg [195.96.243.2]) by argo.bas.bg (8.10.1/8.9.3/Debian 8.9.3-6) with ESMTP id e4C9DMn01753 for ; Fri, 12 May 2000 12:13:22 +0300 Received: from iad.math.bas.bg (iad.math.bas.bg [195.96.243.88]) by banmatpc.math.bas.bg (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id MAA02285 for ; Fri, 12 May 2000 12:13:21 +0300 Message-ID: <391BCB5B.7094@math.bas.bg> Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 12:14:03 +0300 Reply-To: iad@math.bas.bg Organization: Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I; 16bit) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: The Lojban List Subject: Re: [lojban] Centripetal-centrifugal, little-endian--big-endian, subsets-contents, etc. References: <4.2.2.20000511063957.00adeca0@127.0.0.1> <200005120014.CAA21294@Zeke.Update.UU.SE> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski Thorild Selen wrote: > [...] yyyy-mm-dd seems like the most logical to me -- it fits > so nicely into the pattern yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss, and I don't think > that anyone here would prefer ordering hours, minutes and seconds > in any other way when writing a time of the day. Not seconds before anything else, to be sure, but minutes do come before hours (with the possible omission of the latter if presumed known) in some natlang ways of telling time, including English (`_mm_ past/to [_hh_]'; note that this is exactly parallel to `the _dd_th [of _mm_ [_[yy]yy_]]'). Obviously all has to do with what one is most likely to want to communicate or to leave out. We discuss recent events more often than remote ones, so years are elided more often than days -- otoh, seconds are not very useful on their own. > (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. Most are, but (1) the large numerals tend to be longer and (2) the 24-hour format is only practical if you happen to be wearing a digital watch, and then only if it has a 24-hour display. > I'd like to know how common it is to use a 24-hr format > in other parts of the world [...]) In Bulgaria it is the only one that is used in formal speech, but colloquially it is only ever used to remove ambiguities (`At six o'clock ... no, not six in the morning, I mean eighteen.') There are no all-purpose counterparts to `am' and `pm', so the 24-hour format saves wondering whether it's better to say `6 in the afternoon' or `6 in the evening'. --Ivan