Five and Twenty To..

[top4718]

Did anybody elses parents have this bizarre way of saying the time ie: for 5.35 they would say its "five and twenty to six".

 

Strange.

[bubble_she]

I would probably stare at someone for a while if they had said that to me, before trying to work it out and probably getting it wrong lol

[soft ayperth]

Used to say it myself all the time. When I moved to Canada in '69 I continued to say it at first much to the consternation and amusement of others around me. In addition to the five and twenty to, of course, there's also the five and twenty past.

[CorkerSWFC]

My nanan used to say 5 and 20 to when she was talking about buses for some mad reason lol.

[hillsbro]

My grandma always said "five and twenty" when telling the time. She never used this way of saying numbers in any other context, and apart from the nursery rhyme "Sing a song of sixpence..." that includes the line "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie" I had never heard numbers spoken this way until I learned German. The Germans and Dutch still count this way (the German fϋnfundzwanzig = five and twenty), as people evidently did in Olde England - see here for example.

[OwlsChick]

Did anybody elses parents have this bizarre way of saying the time ie: for 5.35 they would say its "five and twenty to six".

 

Strange.

 

Yes mine did.But dident you find that they never said,for example,5.55, they wouldent say "fifty five to six"...It only seemed to work when it was twenty and five and reverse?

[SheShe]

We still do I'm afraid. It's not 5.40 for example it's twenty to six:hihi:

[echo beach]

Did anybody elses parents have this bizarre way of saying the time ie: for 5.35 they would say its "five and twenty to six".

 

Strange.

 

My grandma also used that terminology for the time and I always attributed it to the way reading the time was taught to pupils in Victorian schools. She was born in 1890.

Incidentally, ask the teenagers of today to turn something clockwise or anticlockwise and a significant number will encounter initial difficulty. They are so used to viewing digital time displays and are unfamiliar with analogue clock faces!

Another oddity is when some people say "Thankyou, no" instead of "No thankyou." I haven't heard it recently but I used to work with a chap in the 1960's who used it all the time. I think it originates from a colonial / military background because he spent many years pre-war in the Far East.

Strange language English!

[donnygirl]

Did anybody elses parents have this bizarre way of saying the time ie: for 5.35 they would say its "five and twenty to six".

 

Strange.

 

I think the change has got something to do with the digital age when you say what you see on the digital time keeper. On a digital watch you will only see one set of figures such as 5.35 so you say what you see. On a proper watch with a dial you could say the time in several different ways depending on how you read the numbers - twenty five to six, five and twenty to six (which I agree with the earlier post about olde English). Don't forget that on dials the number read as "five and twenty to" or "twenty five to" is shown as the number 7 or on the 24 hour clock it's 19.

[soft ayperth]

Yes mine did.But dident you find that they never said,for example,5.55, they wouldent say "fifty five to six"...It only seemed to work when it was twenty and five and reverse?

 

Owlschick, nobody would have said fifty five to six because that would have been incorrect.. They would have said 5 to 6, which is what I still say. Five and twenty (never twenty and five) was the only one I can recall where you had to do addition to figure out the time. Back when digital clocks and decimalized time didn't exist for ordinary folk. The armed forces would have said 5: 55 or 17: 55 depending on whether it was a.m. or p.m.