I’ve noticed that I don’t really get what’s meant by “night” when watching American movies or even social experiments on youtube. Like before coming on here I’ve watched a prank vid where person 1 was like “are u free tonight?” and person 2 said “yeah” only for person 1 to go “ok then let’s do something in an hour” when it’s clearly still noon in the video.
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I feel like I’m missing something here as people from my country don’t communicate about time that way. Like are Americans just that flexible about time or what’s “tonight” supposed to mean?!
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The time is flexible, should be at least after 7pm, but they have to accelerate time frames in movies and TV shows.
It usually means in the evening once most people’s work responsibilities are complete. “Do you want to hang out tonight?” usually means like going to dinner, drinks, a movie, etc. Some sort of social activity.
I don’t think I have seen, nor can I think of, an example around noon as you describe. Perhaps you could give such an example? I assume its just a movie thing you’re overanalyzing a bit.
>Like before coming on here I’ve watched a prank vid where person 1 was like “are u free tonight?” and person 2 said “yeah” only for person 1 to go “ok then let’s do something in an hour” when it’s clearly still noon in the video.
It can be really bright out in parts of this country at certain times of the year even at 5pm. If that’s the case, I can see how that can be called tonight because in an hour, that’s getting into the evening
No one thinks 12 noon is the evening.
“person 1 was like “are u free tonight?” and person 2 said “yeah” only for person 1 to go “ok then let’s do something in an hour” when it’s clearly still noon in the video.”
I would interpret this as them doing something that would run from early afternoon, say, 1 or 2, into the night as well, and just said “night” assuming that if the person was free that night but not that afternoon they would have said “yea, but got a bit going on this afternoon.”