The joy of growing up with two languages: halb neun/half-past eight

[pne]

Now, 8:30 is “halb neun” in German (literally, “half nine”—presumably because the clock is half of the way between eight and nine, i.e. it’s half-way to nine), but “half-past eight” in (my variety of) English.

Amy seems to have trouble with this distinction, perhaps because they sound so different (with “eight” vs “nine” being the prominent number)—if Stella has promised her that she may stay up until “halb neun” and I tell her that it’s now “half-past eight” and she has to go to bed, she says, no, she’s allowed to stay up until half-past nine.

Makes me glad that my native variety of English doesn’t use the shorter “half eight”, as some people (only in the UK?) do; that’d be even more confusing for her, I’m sure.

Comments

[ewx]

Any idea why English and German ended up with this difference? Are there any parts of Germany where they do it the other way round? (How about the Dutch, Frisians, Swiss Germans, etc?)

[pne]

No idea, no.

Norwegians apparently do it like the Germans, judging from a comment on my LiveJournal.

Also, as far as I know, Germans are uniform in their half-hour terminology -- but there are differences in the quarter-hours.

In the north, where I live, we say "quarter after eight" and "quarter before nine" for 8:15 and 8:45; on the south and east, they say "quarter nine" and "three-quarter nine", respectively.

Which matches "half nine" for 8:30, which everyone says, but "quarter nine" and "three-quarter nine" sound odd to me, since it's not what I'm used to.

A quick google for "halb sibeni" and "halb achti" implies that Swiss Germans use "half nine" for 8:30 as well (though their prepositions differ - I would say "um halb acht" with um = around, approximately [but here meaning simply "at" half-past seven], but in the Google results I see "uff die halb Achti" and "am halb achti" which mean, literally, "on(to?) the half eight" and "at the half eight", respectively).

And googling for "half negen" implies that the Dutch also do this (I've also seen "halfnegen" for "8:30", in one word). And http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Dutch/What_time_is_it%3F implies that Dutch is similar to German in using "ten before half nine" and "ten over half nine" for 8:20 and 8:40 (German would use "ten before half nine" and "ten *after* half nine", nearly the same).

I'm not sure what I could use to check Frisian.