Am transcript. Time designations PM and AM in English

Everything was mixed up in the Danish kingdom. The prince stared at the Apple Watch display: 17:30 a.m. - what could this mean? Is it morning or evening?

When should you go on a date with Ophelia, so as not to stand around for half a day, getting wet through and through in the London fog and rain?

For our people, this can only happen with a deep hangover, but for civilized Europeans, such uncertainty arises over time for reasons of “objective control” - because in some states a 24-hour day system is adopted, and in other countries - a twelve-hour system.

Why are there 12 and 24 hour time formats?

Unfortunately, historical science is not distinguished by rigor; on the contrary, authors often allow free interpretations of artifacts.

As a precaution, the 12-hour time format could be due to the fact that it is difficult to fit more than twelve digits on the small dial of a pocket or mechanical wristwatch and it would be inconvenient to view the too small 24th numbers.

And since in the Middle Ages glasses were an expensive pleasure and available only to very rich people, watchmakers made a smart marketing decision to limit themselves to only 12 hours on the dial.

The reasons are purely mercantile - few people wanted to buy a watch with an illegible 24-hour dial.

The 24-hour time format as a phenomenon arose simultaneously with the introduction of the metric system of measures. Presumably, to spite the arrogant Anglo-Saxons, along with pounds and yards, it was decided to replace the 12-hour time scheme.

By the way, it turned out to be much more convenient in all respects. In particular, in military culture, a 24-hour system has been adopted in all countries. The reason for this was the unpleasant incident at Waterloo, when the French came to use a metric 24-hour dial, and the British, committed to strict traditions, used a 12-hour dial.

As a result, the French, who did not get enough sleep after yesterday, lost miserably with a clean score and the great Napoleon realized that he was not so great after all.

Transcript A.M. and P.M.

As you may have guessed, the 12-hour clock is common in the countries of the British Commonwealth and Japan, the USA and the Philippines (as in the former American colony), and the 24-hour clock in the rest of the civilized world.

However, the English-language interpretation of letter designations will be a deep misconception.

• a.m. – at morning
• p.m. – past morning

In fact, these letters are written in Latin and mean something completely different.

• ante meridiem - before noon
• post meridiem - after noon

As a result, everything turned out to be very simple.

• a.m. – denotes the time period from midnight to noon.
• p.m. – time from noon to midnight.

For example, 10:00 p.m. – it’s 10 o’clock in the evening for us. 10:00 a.m. - It's ten o'clock in the morning.

Time conversion table

For readers with a pedantic mindset that does not allow the slightest inaccuracy, for all those who are afraid of being late for work by at least 30 seconds, we present an accurate summary table for converting time from a twelve-hour format to a twenty-four-hour format, and at the same time to an everyday, everyday format.

Freelancers who don’t watch the clock don’t need to read any further - go earn your money on the Internet.

You noticed? Above is only the daytime part of the table - because respectable people work during the day, therefore, there is no need to overload the gray matter with unnecessary knowledge about the darkness of the night, intended for robbers (according to the film “Aladdin”).

Although, of course, in some cases the table will be useful for freelancers.

For example, when an advanced digital worker finds a customer in an English-speaking country and intends to earn money in dollars.

Here, time accuracy is extremely important - when you are paid $100 per hour, it is extremely undesirable to be late with the delivery of finished projects. You won't be spoiled with American clients. Anything - they immediately punish you with fines, hit you with dollars, damned capitalists.))

Therefore, especially for freelancers, who, as you know, sleep during the day and prefer to work on projects in the silence of the night (because the Internet is unlimited), the second half of the time conversion table is presented below.

Translation in the sense of conversion, not waste.

As you can see, ambiguities arise already at the level of verbal interpretation of tenses)).

Problematic issues of the 12-hour time grid

As mentioned above, the 12 hour time standard creates some linguistic misunderstandings and discrepancies.

12 a.m. and 12 p.m. – is this the same time or not?

From the point of view of the Latin translation, there is no certainty in this matter.

Until what midnight exactly? After what afternoon? Today's or tomorrow's?

Such discrepancies can play a cruel joke in serious matters, for example, when dividing an inheritance or calculating salaries.

Therefore, in countries with a twelve-hour standard, in particular in the United States, midnight as the end of the day in legal documents and commercial contracts is usually designated as 11:59 p.m., and midnight as the beginning of the next day - 12:01 a.m.

This is such a strange casuistry.

Time: 24 hour and 12 hour. If everything is clear with the distribution of digital indicators in the first case, then the second is a more complex topic for us. As you know, AM-PM time is a code adopted primarily in America. But few people know that a similar system for calculating hours is also used in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the Philippines. Therefore, let’s consider what it is so that there is no confusion in the future.

Difficulties of simple school topics

Surely all children who study English at school are faced with these codes - AM-PM. Time in this case is calculated in numbers from 0 to 12, no more. That is, the first stage takes place before noon, and the second begins after 12 noon, when the next hour is again called the number 1. In order to avoid confusion, the terms AM-PM were introduced. The time in the first half of the day is designated by the first of them, which in Latin means “before noon,” and the hours that come after are designated by the second code.

Fun facts and coincidences

Many children, when studying this topic at school, begin to get confused about these terms. In order for the child to better understand this information, you need to provide him with a simpler analogue of the interpretation of the 12-hour time calculation. Think carefully, because in our country this system also works at 50%. More often, when making an appointment in the afternoon, we say “at 9 pm,” although according to the 24-hour system this would be 21 hours.

Teach children in simple terms

Also, the child will better navigate the American time system using standard wall clocks. They do not contain numbers with an equivalent of more than 12. Therefore, AM-PM time is a system that is much more acceptable for everyday everyday communication. However, it can create a little confusion when it comes to doing business and setting up business meetings.

Research excerpts

If we explore the origin of these terms further, the word merediem is translated from Latin as middle. That is, it turns out that it can mean both the midday boundary and the midnight one. Because of this, experts in the field concluded that the AM-PM time designation could be reversed, creating even more confusion. As a result, the United States has adopted strict rules that define midnight as 11:59 PM when referring to the end of the day. And in order to indicate the beginning of a new day, they most often say 12.01 AM. This practice occurs in jurisdictions and in everyday life.

A short afterword

It is very important that even during school years the child understands this simple topic in English. This will make it easier for him to navigate space, and in the future there will be no difficulties in work and other areas of life.

You can also explain AM-PM by making two watches with your own hands. There will be nothing special about them except that the letters AM will be located in the center on some, and PM on others. In the first half of the day, place the first clock on the baby’s table so that the brain records the “morning-light-AM” pattern. And in the afternoon, focus on the time shown by the clock with the letters PM.

Not a single day goes by without us looking at the clock, telling or asking the time. From this article you will learn how to say time in English, how AM and PM stand for it, and what “military time” is.

Basic English words on the topic “Time”

What are AM and PM?

In English, the day is clearly divided into two periods: AM and PM.

• AM – 00:00 - 12:00 or from midnight (midnight) to noon (midday);
• PM – 12:00 - 00:00 or from noon to midnight.

These abbreviations are not English, but Latin, they stand for ante meridiem(before noon) and post meridiem(afternoon). When naming time, these two abbreviations are often added to make it clear what time of day we are talking about.

A simple way to tell time in English

In Russian, we can call time simply by two numbers without any “twenty to twenty”, “half”, “quarter to” and so on. The same method exists in English.

• 03:15 – Three fifteen (three fifteen).
• 04:35 – Four thirty-five (four thirty-five).

If the exact hour without minutes is specified, then this hour is called + “o’clock”.

• 11:00 – Eleven o’clock (eleven o’clock).
• 10:00 – Ten o’clock (ten o’clock).

In speech, tense sentences are constructed with the formal subject it. According to the rules of grammar, a sentence must have a subject - it formally fulfills this role.

• It is five twenty-five AM. - It's five twenty-five in the morning.
• It's ten thirty PM. - It's ten thirty in the evening.

In our country you can often hear not “six in the evening”, but “eighteen hours”; in America, the 24-hour time format is practically not used in everyday life; it is used mainly by police officers, military personnel, technicians and people of other professions in which accuracy is important. This designation of time is called military time- "war time". By the way, how would you say 17:00 in English? Not seventeen o’clock or seventeen zero zero at all. It will be right seventeen hundred– literally, “seventeen hundred.”

Telling the time in English by the clock

Another, more common, way of saying time is by using expressions like “half past five” instead of “four thirty”, “quarter to two” instead of “one forty five”, etc.

How this is done is shown in detail in the picture:

We call the exact time without tricks: It's... o'clock:

• It's ten o'clock. - It's ten o'clock now.
• It's four o'clock. - It's four o'clock now.

We call time with 30 minutes using half past(lit.: half after):

• It's half past four. - It's half past four now.
• It's half past one. - It's half past two now.

We call time with 15 minutes using a quarter past(a quarter after) or “a quarter to” (without a quarter):

• It’s a quarter past seven. - It's quarter past seven.
• It's a quarter to nine. - It's a quarter to nine now.

All other time options are indicated using to(without) or past(after).

• It's five past seven. – It’s five minutes past seven (lit.: five after seven).
• It's twenty-five to eleven. – It’s now twenty-five minutes to eleven (lit.: twenty-five to eleven).

Other useful words and expressions on the topic "Time"

One of the difficulties associated with the topic of time in English is the correct use of prepositions in different expressions. Mentions of time in conversations are far from limited to phrases like “It’s half past five.” For beginners, confusion often arises in the expressions “in an hour”, “at nine o’clock”, etc.

You can familiarize yourself with prepositions of time in this collection; below I also provide some template expressions that may be useful to you.

When we talk about time in English, we use abbreviations such as AM and PM. What do they mean and what is the difference between them? In this article we will look at their use.

A.M.

Pronunciation and translation:

A.m.

/ [ee em] - before noon
Meaning of the word:

Time after midnight and before noon
Use: Reductiona.m. (from the Latin ante meridiem, "before noon") - this interval begins at 12 o'clock at night (midnight) and ends at 12 o'clock in the afternoon (noon). That is, it lasts With 00:00 to 12:00

. For example: I woke up at 8 am.

By the way, midnight is usually designated as 12 a.m. , this is like the beginning of a period of time a.m.

Example: It's two
a.m.

Two o'clock in the morning. (2:00) It's two
It's ten

Ten in the morning. (10:00)

P.M. Pronunciation

and translation:

/ [ee em] - before noon
P.m.

Time after midnight and before noon
Use: / [pi em] - afternoona Time from noon to midnight p(from the Latin post meridiem "after noon") - this interval begins at 12 noon (noon) and ends at 12 midnight (midnight). That is, it lasts

from 12:00 to 00:00

By the way, midnight is usually designated as 12 a.m. , this is like the beginning of a period of time a.m.

Two o'clock in the morning. (2:00) . For example: We finished at 10 pm.
By the way, noon is the beginning of the p.m. period. It is customary to denote 12 p.m.

p.m. . For example: We finished at 10 pm.
Ten pm. (22:00)

It's five

Five in the evening. (17:00) Reductiona, when we talk about the interval from 12 o'clock at night (midnight) to 12 o'clock in the afternoon (noon). That is With With. For example: He arrived at 6 am.

Five in the evening. (17:00) / [pi em] - afternoona, when we talk about the interval from 12 o'clock in the afternoon (noon) to 12 o'clock at night (midnight). That is p. For example: We met at 9 pm.

Consolidation exercise

Insert the correct abbreviation into the following sentences. Leave your answers in the comments below the article.

1. Meeting at 10 am.
2. She fell asleep at 12 am.
3. Lunch at 2 pm.
4. It's 7 am.
5. They will arrive at 3 days.
6. We fly out at 3 am.