Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
My name is Dr. C and on today's episode, I want to discuss dates and time.
If you are learning American English, if you are using the English that we use here in the United States, you might have seen that the way that we write dates and the way that we talk about time is different here than it is in other countries.
Even other English speaking countries such as Great Britain.
On today's episode, I want to go over how we write dates, how we talk about dates here in the US, and also how we talk about time.
How do you say what time it is?
How do you say how much more time you have left until something happens?
I want to go over all of these things so that way it can help you when you are trying to talk to a Native American English speaker, when you are trying to communicate and understand what they are telling you.
If you are learning American English or if you are just interested in learning the differences on how we do dates and times here in the United States compared to other places, follow along so you can learn a little bit about it.
With that, let's begin.
Before we start, I just want to remind you that in the episode podcast description, you will find a list of vocabulary words and phrases that I use in this episode so you can incorporate them into your vocabulary learning system and start using them in conversation yourself.
You can find these vocabulary lists in this episode and in previous episodes so you can help expand your knowledge of English.
Now, let's talk about dates.
When we're talking about dates in the United States specifically, we have a very different format than I know a lot of the world does not use.
When you are writing the date in the United States, the format that we use is the month, the day, and then the year.
I know this is different than in a lot of other places because a lot of other places will write the day first, but that is not very common in the U .S.
What happens if you are writing the date and you are writing it in number form?
You're going to write the month and then a slash, the day and a slash, and then the year.
The year you might put all four, you might put just two of the numbers.
It depends. A lot of the times, we will just use two numbers for the year.
But some forms will make you use all four numbers when you're trying to say the year.
When you're reading this then, if you see 12 -1 -2024 or 12 -1 -24, what this means is that it is December 1, 2024.
Do not read that as January 12.
That is very different.
If it was January 12, we would write 1 -12 -24.
Again, I know this can be a little bit confusing, but that is the format that we use.
If we are writing dates out, usually we will write the month in word form, but we will write still the day and the year in number form.
For example, going back to what I just said, if we were writing December 12, 2024, you will see December written in words, then the 12 and the 2024 in number form.
This format is usually on letters.
Let's say if we write a letter of recommendation for someone, or if you write a cover letter for a job application, this is the format you're going to use.
You're going to write the month in word form and then the day followed by a comma, and then the year in number form.
You usually don't see this format many other places, maybe on a calendar, something along those lines.
But if you're just writing the date on a check or on a contract or on some paperwork, you're usually just going to use the number forms with slashes in between them.
If you write the day first and then the month, that is a very formal way to write the date, at least here in the United States.
So if you write the 5th of May, 2024, that is a very, very formal way to write the date.
You usually only use this format when you are writing a wedding invitation, for example, or a graduation invitation, or maybe some fancy government document or legal document.
Again, extremely formal way of doing it.
You don't normally do this in normal daily life.
I think the only time I have ever written a date this way is when I was sending out invitations to my graduation.
But otherwise, I would never write the date this way.
Now, that is when you are writing the date.
If you're saying the date out loud, if you're speaking to someone and you're saying the date, what you're going to say is you're going to say the month and the day.
And again, the day is going to be an ordinal form.
So May 1st, May 2nd, May 3rd, May 4th, May 5th, etc.
You're always going to say the month first and then the day.
Again, if you said the 1st of May or the 5th of May, that's a lot more formal.
You're not usually going to hear that in everyday conversation.
You're much more likely to hear May 1st, May 2nd, May 3rd.
If you're trying to explain the specific day of the week that that is relating to, when we are writing the days of the week in English, the day of the week is always capitalized.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on, all of those are always capitalized.
So make sure to capitalize the day of the week when you are writing it.
When you're saying it, you would put the day of the week first.
So you would say Wednesday, May 5th, or Wednesday, May 6th, instead of saying the date and then the day of the week after.
So it's always the day of the week first, then the month, then the actual date in ordinal form.
Wednesday, May 5th, Wednesday, May 6th, and Wednesday, May 7th, for example.
When we are talking about time, especially here in the United States, we use an AM and a PM clock.
This means that we do not use a 24 -hour clock when we are telling time.
Instead, we're going to use AM and PM.
So 8 AM, 8 PM. You would use that structure when you are trying to tell time.
Besides AM and PM, you might also hear O clock.
So 8 O clock, 3 O clock, 4 O clock.
The O clock is when you are saying exactly on the hour.
If it is exactly 3 O clock, if it is exactly 5 O clock, that's when you put the O clock at the end of whatever hour it is.
If it is not exactly on the hour, you are not going to say the O clock.
So you would not say 520 O clock.
That is extremely odd.
No one would ever say that.
They would say 520.
Or if they really need to specify if it's daytime or nighttime, they might say 520 PM or 520 AM.
A lot of times when you are dealing with things during the day when it's very obvious what time of day is going to happen, people don't say the AM or PM part.
So let's say that you are working in an office and someone asks you, what time is the meeting?
If the meeting is at 230 PM, a lot of times people will just say 230.
Because it's understood that you are not meeting people at 230 in the morning.
It is not a meeting in the middle of the night.
Instead it is a meeting during work day hours.
You would just say it's at 230.
A lot of times this happens, especially with like work schedules, school schedules.
You could just say school starts at 8.
Instead of school starts at 8 AM.
Because again, it's implied that you know you are not going to school at nighttime.
So you would just say school starts at 8.
You could say O clock.
Again, the O clock is a little bit more formal, a little bit more strict on the time.
A lot of times when people are talking, they'll just say it's 8.
It starts at 8. We're going at 8.
Instead of saying we're going at 8 o 'clock or going at 8 AM, the AM or O clock part makes it a little bit more rigid, a little bit more formal.
And Americans are kind of known for their informality and for shortening things.
So they'll just say we're going at 8 or it starts at 8.
Most people are going to use the AM and PM schedule.
The only time where you really use a 24 hour clock is when you are dealing with the military.
The 24 hour clock is actually called military time here in the United States.
And that's because they're really the only people that use that clock.
Everyone else is going to say 8 AM, 8 PM or just 8.
Military is going to use that 24 hour clock.
So 5 AM becomes 500 or 0500 because there's no number in front of the 5.
They say 0 to mean 0.
0500, 100 is referring to the hour.
So 0500 means 5 o 'clock in the morning or 5 AM.
When they would talk about 5 PM, they would say 1700.
So the hour part, instead of saying 0 o 'clock or AM or PM, again becomes 100.
This is not very common.
I would say a lot of Americans don't even really know military time.
If I hear a time in military time, I kind of have to think for a second and figure out what time it is, because it's just not natural for me to use.
But obviously, people who are in the military use it.
There are people who do deal with that time clock of a 24 hour clock.
I would say a majority of Americans do not do that and it's not common to hear that in everyday language unless you're specifically in the military or watching some show or movie that's about the military.
You're not going to hear that or ever see that or interact with that version of telling time.
Also, when we talk about time, in the United States at least, I can say that most people are going to tell you the hour and the minute instead of giving you how many minutes after or however many minutes before.
Now, I know that sounds a little bit confusing, but let's say that it is 15 minutes past the hour.
It is 8 15. Sometimes people will say it's a quarter past 8 or it's 15 minutes past the hour, which means it's been 15 minutes since the hour changed.
That sounds very old fashioned and very formal.
Yes, you will hear it.
Sometimes you'll hear it on the radio.
I've heard radio DJs, people who are on the radio say that when they're giving updates about the time.
They'll say it's 15 minutes past the hour.
That's really the only time I've heard it.
A normal American in conversation is just going to say it's 8 15.
They're not going to say a quarter past 8.
That's very strange.
I will almost guarantee you, I have not heard that in years.
People saying it that way.
Instead, they might say 15 minutes past the hour.
Again, if you're listening to a news program, if you're listening to the radio, if you're watching CNN, they might say that.
But otherwise, you're just going to hear 8 15, 8 20, 8 10 to tell you the time.
Same thing with if it's the half hour, you're going to hear it's 8 30 instead of hearing it's half past 8.
Again, yes, people do say that like on news channels on radio, but normal everyday conversation, you really don't say is half past 8.
Same thing when it's going to be a new hour.
You might hear it's a quarter to 8, which means that it's really 7 45.
It's 15 minutes until it becomes 8 o 'clock.
You might hear that in like some old movie.
You might again hear on random occasions, but that's extremely odd.
Most everyday Americans are going to say it's 7 45.
The only time I would say you would say it's 15 minutes until 8 is if you were telling someone that you have something to do at 8 o 'clock.
Let's say you're with someone and you're supposed to be at an event at 8 p .m.
And they're still getting ready and you haven't left yet and you're starting to kind of be anxious and you're wanting to hurry them up.
You might say it's 15 minutes until 8, which means it's 15 minutes until we need to be somewhere.
That's the only time I would say like how many minutes until it becomes a certain time.
Just because I'm trying to signal to the person I'm with that we have this amount of time until we're supposed to do something or until we're supposed to be at a particular place.
If they just ask me what time it is, I would not say 15 minutes till 8.
Again, that's extremely odd.
I would just say it's 7 45.
This 15 minutes until I would only say if I'm really trying to tell them this is how much time we have or this is how much time you have until we need to go do something or be at a particular location.
I hope this episode helps you.
I hope you learned a little bit about how to write dates, how to talk about dates, how to tell time, and how to communicate these with a Native American English speaker.
There's a lot when it comes to learning English and there's some differences between the English that is spoken here in the United States and the English that is spoken in other countries such as Great Britain.
I hope that you learned some things that will help you on your journey to fluency and just know that the more you practice, the better you're going to get with all of these aspects of English.
We are going to do another episode about time, specifically how to communicate when an event occurred in time or will occur if it happened in the past or if it's happening in the future, how to communicate that with someone.
So be on the lookout for that episode because it will be coming out soon.
I want to remind you to check out the description of this podcast episode for the vocabulary list so you can learn the words and phrases that I used in this episode and so that you can begin to use them in conversation yourself.
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