Why is it that Americans refer to 24 hour time as military time? I understand that the military uses the 24hr format but I don’t understand why the general public would refer to it like that?

It makes it seem like it’s a foreign concept where as in a lot of countries it’s the norm.

  • Epicurus0319@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Our country is so big and heavily populated (and most of our many, many populated areas are overshadowed by a few really touristy places like New York, the Disney parks and Yellowstone National Park and Hawaii which isn’t even that American) and that you’ll rarely encounter someone from a country that uses the 24 hour system. Canada uses the 12-hour clock if I remember correctly from when I last went there, and I think Mexico does since we usually learn their dialect of Spanish in school (but I’m not sure, in all my spanish classes they taught us to say “son las ocho y media en la noche” for 8:30 PM, instead of “veinte y media horas” as I was taught when I studied in Spain for a semester)

    • matter@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Most countries that use 24h time (Western Europe, ime) use both interchangeably - saying “at 18” or “at six in the evening” are both totally normal.

    • jungle@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Nobody says “veinte y media”. It’s “veinte treinta”, and everyone understands that and it’s shorter than “ocho y media de la noche”, which everyone understands as well. They’re completely interchangeable and nobody would find either strange or unusual.

    • BlackVenom@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It may be rare to find someone who uses it in regular conversation, but medical, logistics, IT, and military commonly used it… Everyone likely knows a few people that use it.