Why is it that Americans refer to 24 hour time as military time? I understand that the military uses the 24hr format but I don’t understand why the general public would refer to it like that?
It makes it seem like it’s a foreign concept where as in a lot of countries it’s the norm.
In Brazil it has just always been this way. We have normal 12h clock faces and we are used to both 24h and 12h time. The curious thing is that we are used to read and write in 24h, but in speaking the vast majority uses 12h. Probably because it’s shorter to say “nove e meia” than “vinte e uma e trinta” for 09:30/21:30