{"id":7050,"date":"2025-08-06T16:21:38","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T16:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jolliffe.de\/?p=7050"},"modified":"2025-08-06T16:21:42","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T16:21:42","slug":"troublesome-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jolliffe.de\/en\/uncategorized\/troublesome-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Troublesome Times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Today, I\u2019d like to talk about the confusing world of days, dates, and times in English<\/strong> and the mishaps they can cause \u2026

One Tuesday morning, I confidently arrived at my student\u2019s door at 11:00, ready for our English lesson.
He looked at me, puzzled.
\u201cWhy are you here? The lesson\u2019s on Tuesday.\u201d
He\u2019d of course confused Thursday with Tuesday – they do sound a bit similar \u2639.
Tip: Think of Tuesday like two\u2019s-day \u2013 the second day of the week.
<\/strong>
And then there\u2019s the classic half two mix-up.
In German, halb zwei means 1:30 \u2013 half before two.
But in English, half two means 2:30 \u2013 half past two!
Tip: To avoid confusion, say two fifteen, two thirty, two forty-five, etc<\/strong>.

Then we have the confusion with the famous \u201cnext Tuesday\u201d problem.
In German, n\u00e4chsten Dienstag usually means the upcoming Tuesday.
But in English, next Tuesday often means the one after the upcoming Tuesday.
Tip: Always write the exact date, e.g. Tuesday, 6 March.<\/strong>

But be careful how<\/strong> you write dates:
– In the UK, we write day\/month\/year \u2013 so 6\/3\/2025 means 6 March.
– In the US, they write month\/day\/year \u2013 so 6\/3\/2025 means June 3.
Tip: Always write it in full, particularly in emails and just right the number on its own \u2013 it\u2019s quite happy as 6 instead of 6th!<\/strong>

And one more cultural twist:
If an English person says they went to a great party last night, it probably just means yesterday evening \u2013 not an all-night affair! Now you can imagine how that misunderstanding might cause problems\u2026
And finally: when we use time as an adjective<\/strong>, we drop the \u201cs\u201d and add a hyphen. So we say:
1. a two-hour journey (not two-hours)
2. a 30-minute meeting (not 30-minutes)

Little things, big difference. Especially when you\u2019re trying to be in the right place at the right time!<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, I\u2019d like to talk about the confusing world of days, dates, and times in English and the mishaps they can cause \u2026 One Tuesday morning, I confidently arrived at my student\u2019s door at...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["de","en"],"languages":{"de":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jolliffe.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jolliffe.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jolliffe.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jolliffe.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jolliffe.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7050"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.jolliffe.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7071,"href":"https:\/\/www.jolliffe.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7050\/revisions\/7071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jolliffe.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jolliffe.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jolliffe.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jolliffe.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}