I noticed that I and Alexa say “six ‘oh’ five a m”, but is that the correct way of saying the time? Specifically the “oh” part?
Kind of like when speaking out a phone number, how we might say “my number is one two three, six ‘oh’ six…” but really, that’s not an “oh” like the letter O even though it looks like an O, but everyone knows the person is saying “six zero six”, which is the proper way of saying that.
Edit: thanks for all the answers everyone! This was just pure curiosity for me but I really enjoyed reading everyone’s responses and learning some new things!
I’ll give you a short answer as you’ve got a lot of detailed ones already: to a native British English speaker “six oh five a m” sounds completely normal. There are other ways to say it that sound equally normal.
The proper way is the way the person you are talking to will understand.
Five minutes past 6 in the morning. (what I would say)
Six oh five AM.
etc.
It’s too early for all that 5 past 6 shit. I just woke up and you want me to do math?
I’d typically say something like: “One billion, seven hundred and one million, sixty five thousand, one hundred seconds since the epoch.”
Damnit chat-gpt. Who gave you a threadiverse account?
I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t answer that.
I suppose the “proper” way of saying this is “Five past six,” but I don’t see any real problem with “six o-five”
five (minutes) past six
The correct spoken way is to say 5 past 6.
I don’t really see a reason for including the zero unless it also says all the digits at other times. Like 6:45 would be six-four-five, which makes very little sense when spoken. If it’s capable of saying six-fourtyfive, it should also just say six-five for 6:05. But again, in the case of 6:45 the proper spoken way would be “(a) quarter to seven”
It seems like a lazy solution just to say the digits.
It doesn’t have to be difficult to do right. The code should just include a small table with the correct words.
