Ich denke, Mittag (midday/noon) ist 12 am - es zählt noch zum Vormittag. 11:00 Uhr vormittags ist ja im Englischen 11 am, dann müßte doch 12:00 Uhr (Mittag) 12 am sein - und dann geht's weiter mit 1 pm, 2 pm und so weiter bis 12 pm (=Mitternacht/midnight).

noon is noon and midnight is midnight.

am and pm stand for "ante meridiem" (before noon) and "post meridiem" (after noon). So it would be hard for noon to be before or after noon...

As for midnight: the span between midnight and noon is equal either way, so it's neither before nor after noon - just midnight.

Windows clock proofs you right, Dave:
11:59:59 AM
12:00:00 PM (= noon)
MfG

Thanks for the replies.. A quick search on "12pm" seems to agree what i thought..

http://bigbrother.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/whatson/today/g...

.. but i didn't really want to use the 'big brother' site as a reliable source of good english! :-)

Thanks again for the replies!

Ich gebe mich geschlagen ;) Und dabei hätte ich schwören können, daß wir es im Englischunterricht mit 12 am als Mittag gelernt haben...
Ich finde es allerdings immer noch unlogisch, daß nach 11:59 am 12:00 pm kommt - wenn schon sollte es doch dann 0:00 pm sein.
Aber Sprache ist nun mal nicht immer logisch..

Lo: besonders die englisch/amerikanische, siehe meine kgf Anfrage...

es ist nicht wirklich unlogisch, dass 12pm noon ist.
Wenn die uhr 12 schlägt ist es genau in dem Moment eigentlich schon wieder nach noon- also nach der Mitte. also daher 12pm.
Mitternacht kenne ich als 0 am aber das schreibt man eher so. Es ist klarer.
Habe noch nie 12:30am gesehen, glaube ich.
Sagen tut man eher die Variante '12:15 at night' oder wie auch immer.. bzw. midnight.
Zumindest war das in meiner Umgebung immer so..
nicht?

00:15 = "twelve fifteen in the morning"

hört sich für mich (Can) komisch so an..
12:15 in the morning.
Wahrscheinlich ein Unterschied zwischen AE/BE?
Es ist für mich nachts..

@K., mit deiner logischen Erläuterung ("Wenn die Uhr Zwölf schlägt...") kann man sich das wirklich gut merken.

Ich stimme bw zu.

Because of the general confusion about am/pm, mirrored in the comments in this thread, people generally avoid it. This is why car rental companies and so on for which time is important never say your car is due at 12:00, only at 11:59 so they can add a.m. or p.m. and not have to argue with customers.

But to the point itself: I always thought that at exactly noon it is '12 m.' (meridiem)--everything before it is 'a.m.' and everything after 'p.m.'. The fact that modern appliance manufacturers force two characters in there and make you decide 'a' or 'p' doesn't alter the original derivation, and we are the poorer for being strait-jacketed into this nonsensical discussion.

And calling on the fact that Windows does it one way or the other as support for taking a position is so laughable as to be scarcely worth a response. God help you if Bill Gates is the arbiter of your world--he's certainly not of mine, even if he tries to insinuate himself into every corner of it.

@K. + Ghol: The Fedwire Funds Service will open three and one-half hours earlier (9:00 p.m. Eastern Time the prior calendar day) than the current opening time of 12:30 a.m. ET.

We are talking of 00:30 Uhr.

Convinced?

12.00pm is high noon - well, actually the moment "noon" lasts only for an unmeasurable amount of time. 12.00 and a blink of an eye - that's after noon already.

Better you use fool-proof 24hour scheme (Europe) or American military style... hehe ;-)

11:59 a.m. [last minute before noon]
12:00 p.m. [noon] / you'll also find "12:00 noon"
12:01 p.m. [first minute after noon]
...
11:59 p.m. [last minute before midnight]
12:00 a.m. [midnight] / you'll also find "12:00 midnight"
12:01 a.m. [first minute after midnight]

Look at this:
http://wisconsincoach.com/mil-gur.htm

The reason why you see 00:01 instead of 12:01 a.m. is that some organizations in the USA use the 24-hour clock, i.e. the military. Dabei wird die Stunde oft, wie beim Lesen einer vierstelligen Zahl, mit "hundred" gelesen. Wehmütig erinnern wir uns der AFN-Sendung: "The world at eighteen hundred."

Warum folgen nicht alle Amerikaner dem europäischen Beispiel und verwenden die 24-Stunden-Uhr? (seufz). Das würde ihnen und uns allen hier das Leben erleichtern.

...for the simple reason that almost all clocks (with a dial face) show only 12 hours.

Die 24-Uhr wurde in Europa schon verwendet (z.B. in Fahrplänen) als es noch keine Digitaluhren gab, sondern nur solche mit Zifferblättern, und zwar deshalb, weil sie einfacher zu handhaben und obendrein eindeutig ist.

@Simon. I agree.
WIth my 8-year old stepdaughter, we talked through the logic of the 24-hour clock (12 + 3 = 15) many times until she was willing to accept it.

Ja, aber als ich in den USA war hatte ich dort einen digital Wecker.
Das hatte leider einmal das Resultat, dass ich ihn auf 6pm anstatt 6 am gestellt habe. Zum Glück bin ich kurz vor 7 Uhr morgens aufgewacht und doch noch pünktlich gewesen.
Ich hatte dummerweise den Punkt, der pm anzeigt übersehen.

[das hier kommt direkt von der greenwhichmeantime.com]

What is Noon and Midnight?
AM and PM start immediately after Midnight and Noon (Midday) respectively.
This means that 00:00 AM or 00:00 PM (or 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM) have no meaning.
Every day starts precisely at midnight and AM starts immediately after that point in time e.g. 00:00:01 AM (see also leap seconds)
To avoid confusion timetables, when scheduling around midnight, prefer to use either 23:59 or 00:01 to avoid confusion as to which day is being referred to.
It is after Noon that PM starts e.g. 00:00:01 PM (12:00:01)

@ Lo (5. Verfasser): Du hast auch Recht. Im Teacher's Manual des Lehrwerks Portobello Road aus dem Diesterweg Verlag ist noon mit 12am vorgegeben.

Gruß, wondaronda

readers will understand, from this discussion, why announcements in the New York press about

Service disruptions on transport
starting of job actions/strikes
events for which time is critical

always read "12:01am"

There are four time designations: midnight, AM, noon, and PM:

12:00 midnight
12:01 AM and so on up until 11: 59 AM
12:00 noon
12:01 PM and so on up until 11:59 PM.

12:00 AM and 12:00 PM are simply incorrect usages, since 12:00 is the meridian. Consequently, 12:00 can be neither ante or post meridian.

The confusion experienced by the original poster highlights the fundamental ambiguity (and incorrectness) of the expression 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM.

*lol*

Man dachte schon, nur die Maßeinheiten im angloamerikanischen Sprachraum seien bescheuert, aber die Zeitrechnung scheint dem ja in nichts nachzustehen.

I don't really see what the fuss is all about, using am and pm is really not that difficult.

The 24hr system can be as confusing when you're not used to it.

It seems misleading to suggest that 12 am and 12 pm are somehow wrong. Since with ordinary clocks we can't measure the absolute tenth or hundredth of a second of the moment it strikes noon or midnight, there's no point in trying to define that point as a time outside of time. What learners of English need to know is simply that those two points mark the change from one half of the twelve-hour clock to the other, so as soon as you hit the point, you change to the designation that will apply for the rest of that period.

For all practical purposes,

12 am = midnight
12 pm = noon

That may leave something to be desired in elegance, but it's a lot better than getting the two backwards, which would really be wrong.

I agree with hm. Analysis is great, and fun, but sometimes the nod must be given to convention, and you just move on. I imagine a very small proportion of native speakers would not accept that 12pm is noon and 12am is midnight.

Or would somebody care to explain to me why in some parts of Germany, "viertel elf" is 10:15 and in others it is 10:45???

@Todd: We had that discussion recently,
related discussion: Nervige Schreibweisen, Teil II
related discussion: eh
and finally all Germans agreed that nowhere in Germany "viertel elf" means something else than 10:15.

The problem is that in the north-western half of Germany (and Switzerland) people simply don't understand that and erroneously beleive it would mean 10:45 or even 11:15.

OK, In dem Fall, muß man mir dann den Unterschied zwischen einem regional-bedingten Sprachgebrauch und einer Gruppe , die sich alle in einem Geographischen gebiet befinden, und aus Versehen allen den gleichen felhlerhaften Gebrauch unterstützen.

For that is six of one, half-dozen of the other.

Wickey Wouse (14) hit the nail on the head, but one can put this in more precise terms. One nanosecond after noon, the time is 12:00:00.000000001pm. To a very reasonble approximation, this is 12:00:00pm, or, to the nearest minute 12:00pm.

Logical enough?

I seems to me that anyone who claims that an event can be correctly described as happening at precisely 12:00noon does not understand that there are physical limitations on how precisely time can actually be measured, let alone the problems of the relativity of simultaneity. Use 12:00pm, and accept that it is an approximation of arbitrary precision!

@Todd: "Viertel elf" ist für rund die Hälfte der Deutsch Sprechenden einfach unverständlich, und wenn sie das hören, mögen manche denken, es sei 10:45 gemeint.
Das heißt aber nicht, dass diese alle "denselben fehlerhaften Sprachgebrauch unterstützen", denn sie würden das selbst niemals sagen.

Überall, wo "viertel elf" als Zeitangabe verwendet wird (Bayern, Österreich, Ostdeutschland), bedeutet das 10:15.

Hier in der Pfalz, bedeutet "viertel elf" "viertel vor elf" mit weggelassenem "vor", habe ich mir erklären lassen.

there is no 12AM/PM even though it used sometimes
instead us NOON/MIDNIGHT

@Todd: Sorry, I doubt that, though I'm not from the Pfalz.

Ich habe noch nie jemanden getroffen - in der realen oder der virtuellen Welt - der gesagt hätte: "Viertel elf bedeutet in meinem sprachlichen Umfeld eindeutig 10:45, ich selbst sage das und jeder hier versteht das auch so!"

Es wird nur immer wieder behauptet, "man habe das so gehört", oder "man kenne Leute, die das so verwenden". Auch in den Fäden, die ich in #30 verlinkt habe, ist niemand aufgetaucht, der die Sprechweise "viertel elf = 10:45" selbst verwendet. Und solange das niemand tut, bleibe ich bei meiner Ansicht, dass es sich einfach um ein Missverständnis handelt.

det wär dreiviertel ölwe, wa?

Hello

I don't understand the discussion with a nano second after 12 o'clock or something like that. In my point of view it's plain and simple: When a new person is born, in this moment starts the 1st year of it's life. One year later at his "1st birthday" he starts the 2nd year of it's life. The same behavior you have with the time of a day. 12 o'clock the 12th hour is completed and exact in this moment the 13th hour starts.

It might sounds strange for germans (and I'm german too): 12:59 pm + 1 minute is 01:00 pm. But I'm pretty shure that such different usings you will find in all languages. For example the number 573 will spoken in english and german:

five hundred - seventy - three
fünf hundert - drei-und-siebzig

In german the fewest important digit of a number will be spoken prior the second fewest important one. But more important digits are spoken in the regular sequence "most-important-digit-first". For non-germans this is strange - I guess.

But also in english you can find exceptions of this rule:
17 => "seven-teen" and not - like the rule says: tenty - seven (or something like that)

and because a dozen - I guess - 11 and 12 are complete breaking all ranks ;-)

I don't understand why this ever became a topic of discussion. I think that most people would agree that "a new day" usually begins at midnight: 00:00 i.e. 12:00am.

Logic would imply that every new day must start with morning coming before evening. Therefore 12:00 which starts a new calendar day cannot be anything other than am.

Said a different way, the last second of any given day is usually 11:59:59 pm which cannot logically be followed by anything other than beginning of the following day which cannot be anything other than am.

Similar logic should follow for 12:00 pm which is one second after 11:59:59 am.


Why are people so confused by this?

Ich werde es mir jetzt hinter die Ohren schreiben!