this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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I asked someone to stop saying “half 5” as a time since it was ambiguous & confusing, especially given that we weren’t in an English-speaking country & folks come from all over (many culture this means one thing or the other, while many—including where I grew up—don’t even use it as an expression). I asked a few times, then another time we were gonna meet up, I asked him “half five ha” “so what time do you really mean?” “half 5” …so I just didn’t show up, wasn’t in the mood. We haven’t really talked since.
You didn't like the way your friend... told time? And that was enough to end the friendship?
And I thought I was neurotic. How do you even have friends? I'm not even attacking you, I'm looking for advice here.
There is no reason to be unclear with folks with some weird dialectal thing that is inconsistent across cultures when you aren’t in that culture… or to keep doing something on purpose when asked to stop for a couple of months. I thought it would be a one-time thing since I wasn’t feeling it that night, but everything ended up fizzling out after I guess my no show. We would chat if we ran into each other but neither of us planned anything together after.
I was being charitable. It's now becoming obvious you're just a finnicky person with bad social skills.
I mean seriously, if I had a friend who got so uppity about some silly way I told time (that was common where I came from), I would have to seriously wonder what was wrong with them.
I had to look that up and I've always lived in an English speaking country. Such a weird way to say 5:30.
4:30 in the Netherlands & German IIRC
It's before the time?
When you do not include a preposition like til or past or before or after there is no way to underestand relative to which side of the hour. This is why it is interpreted differently in some cultures. This is also why no one I grew up with ever said anything other than 5:30, 6:30 PM, or 17:3:0 since—aside from the 12-hour Anglophone clock thing—you can remove both ambiguity & doing mental math (also typing less characters).
Funny when I first read about it: https://en.m.wikivoyage.org/wiki/English_language_varieties#Date_and_time
Which had explicit instructions