My 3-year-old son is showing an interest in time and asks to see my watch frequently. I keep my watch in 24-hour time despite 12-hour time being the default in my country. When it’s 14:30, do y’all say “fourteen thirty” or do you say “two thirty” to your young kids? He’s only doing number recognition now in preschool, and I’m mildly worried that I’ll confuse him. Thanks!
Edit to add:
My toddler asks, “what time is it?” every few minutes, and then asks, “can I see?” He hears me say “two thirty” and then reads the watch out loud “one, four, three, zero.” I am not actively trying to teach him the time; he is just obsessed with timers and numbers right now.
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I learned, and when I worked as a substitute teacher we taught the children, 12 hour time. The clocks on classroom walls, on the school’s outer wall, on stations, in most public buildings and so on, will be analogue, so it makes the most sense to teach 12 hour time to children. This was from around age 6.
We would say “_halv tre_” for the time you’re using in your example. It literally translates to “half three,” and is a common error many adult Danes also make when speaking English.
I rarely ever say ‘two thirty’ anyway, I almost always say ‘fourteen thirty’ so there is really no confusion in that matter.
I don’t really teach my four year old to read the clock yet though, he doesnt even have a feeling what an hour really is. Right now we are working on what a minute, three minutes or maybe 20 minutes is (the time it takes to count till 60, a song, the length of a cartoon). But when i tell him that I pick him up at 14 o’clock he is still confused about it, even though we are doing that since years.
When I don’t want to stand up and send him to read the kitchen clock he just tells me the numbers, so he tells me it is one eight three nine and he gets a thumbs up.
People tend to just read “14” as 2 when they say it out loud anyway in my experience, regardless of whether they’re speaking to a child or an adult. People use the 24 hour clock in writing and the 12 hour clock in speech, adding the time of day (morning, evening, etc.) if it’s confusing, since a.m. and p.m. aren’t used either. This is true for both countries on my flair, as far as I know.
*>do y’all say “fourteen thirty”*
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Offtopic (sory) but that’s (literally translation) what you would say in Polish, but hour (14) would be in feminine form.
While speaking in English, if you want to use 24-hour clock is both super long and (for me) sounds super stupid “fourteen hundred hours xd”
If it is 14:30 I will say fourteen-thirty regardless of the age of the person I am talking to.
Digital clocks were not really super common up until I was like 8-10 years old, so my parents just taught me the analogue 12-hour clock and I picked up the 24-h digital clock later without any special teaching.
Personally, I think I’d do it the same way: use only 12-hour clock when they are younger and add the 24-h clock later. Two at the same time might be more confusing than it’s worth and learning them the other way around is harder (big numbers). But if you want to use the 24-h clock with them, I would still say “fourteen-thirty” and not translate it to the 12-h clock logic, kinda like talking to the kid two different languages.
It varies, sometime I say ”half two” and sometimes I say ”fourteen thirty”. It seems confusing when I describe it here but it never was a problem for the kids. They learnt that it can be said both ways and just accepted that.
I usually say ”half two” when someone asks me for the time as we all realize it is in the afternoon anyway but if I want to specify a time another day I would use ”fourteen thirty”. That way every one knows it is in the afternoon (twentyone och nine is a better example as no one sets a meeting in the middle of the night, lol)