[wakahiu]

This is common across East Africa, including Kenya where I’m from. The night ends at 6:00AM, with 7:00AM being saa moja (first hour) of the day. Similarly, the day ends at 6:00PM (thenashara). Intuitively, this clock makes much more sense than the English clock. There’s rarely confusion between times because it’s embedded in the language.

[spuz]

What time is displayed on your phone when you are in Kenya? Is there a setting to make it display the commonly used time rather than the official time? I'm going to Kenya next year and I'm excited to see how my phone behaves.

[TremendousJudge]

Since it's pretty much on the Equator it makes a lot of sense to keep time like that -- days and nights have the same duration all year long. Such a system doesn't make sense for places that have wide variations between seasons, unless you also alter the length of the hours to match (which I think was done at some point somewhere in Europe, but I can't find any references)

[xvedejas]

Even on the equator, sunrise and sunset times will vary by +/-15 minutes, because solar days are not of equal length. But yeah, close enough for imprecise use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equation_of_time

[nine_k]

This is indeed a more logical clock, as it follows the natural cycle of activity. Equally, calendars that put the end of the year at the time after harvest ("autumn"), or at the start of agricultural work ("spring") are also more logical.

Positioning the beginning of a new day at noon, and a new year t a solstice, is just a technical convenience, because these are easy to detect with very simple astronomy tools.

[Y_Y]

Only if everyone is a peasant farmer with the same crops in the same place. My activities are barely related to the height of the sun in the sky, and like the other residents of my city I don't take a ton of notice of harvest time. Bus timetables and cultural festivals are a much bigger deal (of which one in particular is indeed historically related to a harvest).

[jvanderbot]

This "Day is 12 hours long" thing just doesn't work anywhere else.

I live far from the equator - "Dawn" is sometimes after breakfast, and "Dusk" can happen before I get off work.

[napoleongl]

My first thought as well as a swede. And coincidentally one of the things my old Kenyan classmate found the most strange about Sweden was the fact that the length of day was not even close to constant. That and when I explained to him that the sun being up doesn’t necessarily mean warmer weather, in the winter it’s practically takes the temperature further from zero as sun means no warming clouds…

[jachee]

As former Alaska resident, can confirm. December sunrises are often after 10am, and sunsets before 4pm. Vice versa in summer.

Then you get above the Arctic Circle, and there are days with neither. :D

[nerdponx]

What makes it more logical? The wheel turns all the same no matter where you mark the beginning. In the Northern hemisphere, there's actually something nice about starting the year in the dead of winter: it feels like the year is born in the spring and then dies away the following winter, not unlike a lifetime.

[nine_k]

The whole lives of the societies which have actually invented these calendars were built around the vegetation cycle, which ruled pastures, fields, and orchards. So the yearly cycles of food availability, work, seasonal migrations, and the correlated weather pattern changes were all reasonably aligned with the start / end of the year.

Peoples as diverse as Celts, Romans, Slavs, Babylonians, Hindus, and various peoples in China all used a variety of a calendar where the yearly changes were aligned around modern October-November and modern March-April.

A calendar with the year starting in January and with astronomically (more) precise years was promulgated by Julius Caesar in -46. (I suspect the introduction of the concepts of Babylonian astrology to Rome a century before may have played a role in the desire to align the calendar to stars and not to earthly affairs.)

[xeromal]

March should be the 1st month then I'd think. I'm pretty sure that's how the roman calendar worked. War started in spring.

[athom]

If you DO start in March, your days/month fall into a neat little pattern:

Mar 31 - Aug 31 - Jan 31

Apr 30 - Sep 30 - Feb 28/29

May 31 - Oct 31

Jun 30 - Nov 30

Jul 31 - Dec 31

That highlights a few interesting cycles you can use to calculate dates from a simple count of days from the start of the year:

153 days every 5 months

61 days every 2

31 days per month

An "early reset" occurs every second month, jumping to the next 2-month cycle after the second day 30. Another occurs after every fifth month, jumping into a new 2-month cycle halfway through the last one of the 5-month. And of course, end of the year breaks the third "5-month" cycle WAY early, just before even its first 2-month is finished.

I won't try to detail the process of generating dates from this here, but I'm sure most of us here can work it out with just a little effort. Instead, here's a couple more fun facts to consider:

If you DO start the calendar from March, counting it as month 1, September (7) through December (10) map rather nicely to their own numeric positions. That seems a pretty strong hint, to me.

And I REALLY love this one:

The Gregorian cycle consists of four centuries. The first three are 36,524 days each: 100 years x 365 days + 24 days for the leap years. The hundredth year (ending in 00) is NOT considered a leap year, EXCEPT for every FOURTH hundredth. So that's 4 centuries * 36,524 days = 146,096, plus 1 more for the leap century, for 146,097.

That number is EXACTLY divisible by 7, which means the week cycle repeats WITH the Gregorian one. Good thing! Otherwise, we'd have to wait 2800 years!

[madcaptenor]

Zeller's congruence for the day of the week (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeller's_congruence) exploits this:

- months are counted as 3, 4, 5, ..., 14, with 13 and 14 being January and February of the following year

- the contribution of the month to the day of the week is floor(2.6 * (m+1)) - the 2.6 comes from the 13 "extra" days (over the approximation 1 month = 4 weeks) in every 5 months.

[dublin]

March was the beginning of the year not all that long ago.

That's why there frequent confusion about George Washington's birthday, along with other historical dates of that era: The New Year started in March when he was born, but changed to January during his lifetime (The British Empire switched in 1752). So being born in February, there's an ambiguity about the year, unless you specify which calendar you mean:

"George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, according to the Gregorian calendar. However, when he was born, the Julian calendar was in use, which would have placed his birth on February 11, 1731."

[delecti]

> it feels like the year is born in the spring

Then shouldn't the start of the year be when the year is "born"? Or alternatively, the end of the year when the year "dies"? January 1 is neither.

[jvanderbot]

The year "dies" on the longest, darkest nights. (Dec 21, technically). We mourn its passing and celebrate it's life with drinks. I'm guessing there was in antiquity, a whole bunch of dreadful and exciting parties in the last 10 days around the longest nights.

It slowly grows after that and blooms later.

[maratc]

January 1 is so close to December 25 (when Jesus is believed to have been born) so if we wanted to count years since that -- and call it AD for "Anno Domini" (the Year of Our Lord) -- we could declare the year to begin on January 1st.

Which is exactly what we did.

[nine_k]

January 1st became the start of the year about half a century before Jesus was born.

25 of December is close to the winter solstice (around 22nd), and I suspect it was ascribed to that day for astrological reasons; there are a few other astrological clues around that episode, most prominently, the Bethlehem Star.

[quesera]

> December 25 (when Jesus is believed to have been born)

I don't think anyone actually believes Jesus was born on Dec 25.

[tharkun__]

A lot of people believe a lot of things. I wonder why you don't believe that people believe this.

Now whether you yourself believe he was born then, another time or ever existed at all etc is another story.

I believe for example that everyone can believe whatever they want about those things as long as:

    They leave me alone when I tell them I don't believe that and I don't want to be convinced

    They don't try to kill me, enslave me, etc for being an infidel (yes that includes the Christian holy wars sort of thing but also current events)

[ComputerGuru]

If the year is “born in the spring” then surely you would want the year to start in the spring (if not the spring equinox, then March) and not winter?

[maratc]

Of course, and -- if you were Roman, for instance -- you could, for example, call the 8th month a name with "octo" (Latin for "eight") in it, or the 10th month something with "decem" (Latin for "ten").

[QuercusMax]

Positioning of the new year at the Equinox shouldn't be any harder than doing it at the solstice (since equinoxes are halfway between the solstices), and it makes much more sense IMO. First half of the year: more day than night. Second half of the year: more night than day.

[quickthrowman]

You forgot to precede your entire post with ‘Provided you live on the equator,’ which Kenya is.

If you live on the 45th parallel like I do, it isn’t logical at all since the length of a day is constantly shifting.

[tharkun__]

The problem with "more logical" here is that it's completely subjective.

The beauty of the "English clock", which isn't English at all, is that it simply defines a way to refer to the same point in time with a number (never mind that Daylight savings" nonsense) and you can refer to it whether you are a farmer, a software developer, a waiter, you live Africa or the arctic circle all the same.

[alserio]

didn't the julian/gregorian calendar started that way and drifted?

[krick]

Of course not. Gregorian Calendar didn't drift, it just fixed drift in Julian calendar, which was like a couple of weeks by 1582. And "new year" in Julian calendar was 1st of January, same as now. It was inherited from previous Roman tradition, because Romans already had the custom to mark 1st of January as a new year, because since 153 BCE it was the date when consuls were inaugurated. So it's an entirely political thing and makes no real sense whatsoever. We are celebrating the day of Roman consulate inauguration for more than 2000 years now.

And before that they they started years from 1st of March, which is much closer to one of the Equinoxes, which is what all sane people (including french revolutionaries) consider to be the proper start of a year.

[alserio]

very informative, thank you

[technothrasher]

Traditional Japanese timekeeping kind of did both. The "am" and "pm" time periods started at midnight and noon, but the clocks themselves started at dawn. The hours counted down from hour 9 to hour 4 (they did not use 3-1). Each of the hours was approximately two modern hours, but their individual lengths changed every two weeks to keep the periods aligned with the sun. The twelve hours on the linear clock dials ran: 6,5,4,9,8,7,6,5,4,9,8,7 (and then a final 6 to match the first six, since it was a linear instead of circular dial).

[Maxamillion96]

Same with Somali. The first hour of daylight is hal saac (Hour 1)

7 AM is 1 Saac ( Hour 1)

6 PM is 12 Saac ( Hour 12)

7 PM is 1 Saac

6 AM is 12 Saac

[krick]

> 7 AM is 1 Saac

> 7 PM is 1 Saac

How do you distinguish AM/PM? How does one say that something will happen 19:00 specifically, and not 07:00?

[Maxamillion96]

Morning and Afternoon are used for AM and PM, or if you want to be really specific you can use the name of the hour, for example 10 am is called barqo, and 18 hours is called himhimmow

https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...

[chgs]

Everyone I work with in Kenya uses standard dates and times. It’s a requirement when you work internationally.

[SZJX]

Of course. That doesn't mean they are not familiar with the local traditional system though. They just can use both, as in many other countries such as Japan and China and in the Middle East for example.

[tobyjsullivan]

Do they exclusively speak English as well?

[borski]

Many do, yes. And I’d suspect that’s true for those the parent commenter works with in particular.

[samatman]

Intuitive is a synonym for "what one is used to", so I believe you when you say that according to your intuition, what you're accustomed to makes the most sense.

In a place with considerable skew in daylight hours between the summer and the winter, this would be quite unintuitive, because daylight hours would become longer (and night hours shorter) during winter and spring, and the opposite for summer and autumn.

Either that, or a fixed conventional notion of "dawn" which only corresponds to the sun rising around the Equinoxes. Either way would be unintuitive.

[ar_lan]

It's also incredibly condescending, at least the way they wrote it.

[bloppe]

I would probably be a bit confused by the fact that 6pm is 13 hours after 5pm, but I'm assuming Swahili has better ways of communicating time

[mbrubeck]

You already have to deal with the fact that 12pm is 13 hours after 11pm.