I plan to make a tool that will show how to tell the time in many different languages. It will function something like the one here, and will probably use Flash.
I’ve started gathering translations, as you can see in this spreadsheet. Can you help by adding other languages, and by making recordings?
The recordings don’t need to be of every phrase in the spreadsheet, but of enough parts of phrases so that I’ll be able to splice them together. If you can help, please send your contributions to feedback[at]omniglot[dot]com.
Just a note: You have the midday and midnight entries reversed for Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
And in German, ‘ten’ is ‘zehn’ (so C38-41 need correcting)
Nice idea,
What format do you want the audio in?
So do you want each sentence to be recorded in its own audio file or all sentences in one long file?
I’ll ask my girlfriend to do Catalan for you.
Jim
Jim – I prefer mp3 format for audio, but other formats are ok. The phrases can be recorded in a single file or seperately – whichever is easier.
In Portuguese, all the times whose hour count is higher than one need to be horas, not hora.
Also: meia-noite; da tarde.
I’d gladly contribute Modern Hebrew.
Hi Simon,
I’d be glad to contribute with Bulgarian, but I see it is not required at the moment.
Cheers,
Mariana Yaneva
I can contribute in Tagalog … but we normally tell time using Spanish expressions … using native Tagalog expressions would sound awkward and unnatural in normal conversations. But I’ll contribute them anyway.
Hi Mariana, it would be great to have Bulgarian translations as well.
Hi Simon, I would like to add a Polish version but I don’t where I am supposed to send it. Could you help me…unless you have already got one
thank you very much
Hi Ewelina, could you send the Polish version to me at feedback[at]omniglot[dot]com – (replace the [at] with @ and the [dot] with .). Thanks.
I know You have given the address:) but every time I try to send it I receive the return email saying that my email has been undelivered. I don’t want to make troubles so maybe do not worry about that…
Simon. I never heard anybody say “il est douze heures” in French, not in the last sixty years. Maybe automatic reading clocks do that, but in normal conversation it would mark you as a foreigner. Of course twelve is douze, but people would keep to noon (midi moins le quart, midi, midi et demi) or midnight (minuit).
Because French people like precision so much, they would always say “une heure du matin” for the start of the day etc. I guess for the same reason many French people tend to use 24 hours like the American army. Though it is common to say “une heure de l’apres-midi” or “huit heures du soir”, more often we would catch the news “a vingt heures” or come out of a meeting “vers quize heures” (around 3 p.m.)
I love the project.
This is a fun idea, as usual, good luck with it all
In Spanish, the correct question is “¿qué hora es?” (not horas). Mediodía is correct, but most people nowadays would say “son las doce”. Also, you should correct the last row, it should be “de la noche” and not “de la tarde”. But then, there is always an argument about when does “tarde” and “noche” start 🙂 20:00 would be “ocho de la tarde” for some, but 21:00 is definitvely “nueve de la noche” for all speakers.