This week I thought we'd do a few time related things. This episode is really a review of what you learned in school and covers different kinds of time and telling American and British time. 

As I mentioned in the podcast, I hope all of this is just a review for you and you can mostly remember what you learned at school.

1. Digital time

In this case we just read the numbers:

2. British time

We cut the face clock into quarters and for the first half we use 'past' (quarter past, half past) and for the second half we use 'to' (quarter to).

Ten to three

3. American Time

Americans use 'after' until 29 minutes past (a quarter after five).

For 10:30 they will usually just say 'ten thirty', however I double checked with my Canadian friend and she agrees that many North Americans will also use 'half past' for this time.

For both British and American time, other than the fractions of 1/4 and 1/2 and 3/4 we will mostly use the minute numbers.

one half OR 1/2

12:15

UK: Twelve fifteen OR (a) quarter past twelve

USA: Twelve fifteen OR a quarter after twelve

11: 20

UK: Eleven twenty OR twenty past eleven

USA: Eleven twenty or twenty after eleven

6:45
UK: Six forty-five OR (a) quarter to seven

USA: Six forty-five OR (a) quarter to seven

10:00
UK and USA: Ten AM OR ten o'clock

4. The 24 hour clock OR Military Time

In the UK many people use this and will use the digital rules to describe the time:

14:45

UK: Fourteen forty-five OR two forty-five OR (a) quarter to three

Americans rarely use the 24 hour clock so I would only expect to hear it used by military personnel or near military bases.

14:00

USA: Two pm OR Fourteen hundred (military time)

5. AM and PM

Midnight (the middle of the night) is 12am

Midday (or noon/lunchtime) is 12pm

Additional Vocabulary

'easy peasy' - idiom (British) used to express when we think something is very easy

Fractions - Maths! - used to describe breaking numbers into smaller parts: 1/4