Rejsi:

In my opinion, if you say antaŭtagmeze, you pinpoint the time closer to noon. Matene is a general expression of time at the beginning of a day.

I disagree completely. To me, antaŭtagmeze can encompass a greater period of time than matene. If it was 3:00am, it would be "la 3a (horo) antaŭtagmeze," but it would not be matene (the sun has not risen yet unless you live near the poles of the earth).

"antaŭtagmeze" with hour is a special case (from old Latin ante meridiem which is used also in English). Normally this expression means: "before noon" (maybe one hour or so before noon) and certainly not from midnight till noon! Take a look at this sentence from Zamenhof:

"en tiu antaŭtagmezo devis okazi la enterigo"

Was the funeral before noon or after midnight?

I will not argue, because with my English I loose. I know I am right.

sudanglo:

It doesn't seem to work like that, Sudanglo.

Excuse me! What time do you think 12.31 atm is then?

How do you think Esperanto distinguishes between 1.00 am and 1.00 pm?

Try using Kukolo to search the web for atm/ptm.

Sorry, my first sentence was too vague, it should have been: It doesn't usually work like that, especially with antaŭtagmeze. Please control it in the Tekstaro, the texts there are of a higher quality than what a Google/kukolo search would result.

The difference seems to be bigger with atm than with ptm.
For 1.00 am I would always say "je la 1-a nokte", perhaps from 3 o'clock on "matene" would be an option, too. 1.00 pm is "la unua posttagmeze" or simply "la 13-a".

Thanks, everyone, for your replies.

Get used using the site www.tekstaro.net to know who and under what cases one can use the two words.
Belmiro

Thanks for the link, although the correct address turned out to be tekstaro.com, not .net

Horned_owl:Thanks, everyone, for your replies.

Get used using the site www.tekstaro.net to know who and under what cases one can use the two words.
Belmiro

Thanks for the link, although the correct address turned out to be tekstaro.com, not .net

Sorry for my mistake!!!
Belmiro

How can I search just the abbreviation "atm" in the Tekstaro instead of the entire word? If I type in "atm," it searches for every word with this combination of letters. I can do a search for "ptm," but I am more interested in this strange distinction many people are making between the morning hours.

And I don't understand this argument anyway. If you just look at the basic definitions of the words antaŭtagmezo and posttagmezo, they just mean before noon and after noon. There is no distinction between what specific hour of the day is considered before and after. Putting arbitrary numbers on this is just silly. There are 24 hours in the day. Half of them are before noon and the other half are after noon.

And another thing...these results in the Tekstaro don't seem contrary to what sudanglo and I are saying. It all depends on context. Saying "mi iris al la butiko antaŭtagmeze" has a bit of a different feeling than "mi vekiĝis je la 3a antaŭtagmeze."

Rejsi:... I am more interested in this strange distinction many people are making between the morning hours.

And I don't understand this argument anyway...

This strange distinction you refer of, is easier to explain in Spanish:

00:00 = la medianoche
00:01 to until just before dawn = la madrugada
after dawn to 11:59 = la mañana
12:00 = el mediodía
12:01 to until just before dusk = la tarde
after dusk to 23:59 = la noche

Now into Esperanto:

medianoche = noktmezo
madrugada = frua mateno
mañana = mateno
mediodía = tagmezo
tarde = posttagmezo
noche = nokto

Dawn an dusk are not always at the same time of the day, depending on the season of the year, and the longitude an latitude of the country. But dawn are dusk are the points in time (regardless of when they fall on any particular day) which separate the periods of the day that I think are confusing you.

If you are only using the AM and PM time convention (where AM starts at midnight, and PM starts at noon), then the equivalents would be:

AM = atm = noktmezo, frua mateno and mateno
PM = ptm = tagmezo, posttagmezo, nokto

Hope this helps to clarify the "distinction", at least from a Spanish point of view.

BoriQa:...

Thanks for all that, but I was referring to when people were saying that atm could not be used for 1am and ptm could not be used for 11pm.

If you are only using the AM and PM time convention (where AM starts at midnight, and PM starts at noon), then the equivalents would be:

AM = atm = noktmezo, frua mateno and mateno
PM = ptm = tagmezo, posttagmezo, nokto

Hope this helps to clarify the "distinction", at least from a Spanish point of view.

Right. I agree. But it seems many people in this thread are arguing against this usage.

@Rejsi

In the Tekstaro, just add spaces around atm in order not to find atmosfero etc.

I'm not sure whether atm/ptm are really impossible in the sence of AM/PM, but one can state that they are unusual (maybe not between natives of English), as the corpus shows (the definitions in PIV don't really reflect the actual usage, which conforms to the one of continental European languages). I would always stumble when reading/hearing je la dua antaŭtagmeze.

Kirilo, there are a number of areas of language usage where the Tekstaro is not going to be a good guide. This corpus is primarily a collection of literary texts and would not include railway timetables, or flight schedules, or congress programmes.

Thus for the usage of atm and ptm, you really do need to use a search engine like Kukolo. Try using this for 'ptm' and see if the hits are all from English speaker sources.

The customary scope of antaŭtagmeze/posttagmeze or antaŭtagmezo/posttagmezo (ie the full forms) may indeed be different to the usage of atm and ptm (preceded by times).

To see if Esperanto speakers read out aloud '1.00 atm' as 'je la unua matene', or '8.00 ptm' as je la oka vespere, you need to do the experiment.

sudanglo:Thus for the usage of atm and ptm, you really do need to use a search engine like Kukolo. Try using this for 'ptm' and see if the hits are all from English speaker sources.

The customary scope of antaŭtagmeze/posttagmeze or antaŭtagmezo/posttagmezo (ie the full forms) may indeed be different to the usage of atm and ptm (preceded by times).

To see if Esperanto speakers read out aloud '1.00 atm' as 'je la unua matene', or '8.00 ptm' as je la oka vespere, you need to do the experiment.

This is really an intriguing question (and a nice idea to solve the contradiction). I'll note it and perhaps (I'm applying for a position where I could actually do qualitative research with Esperanto speakers) I'll actually be able to query congress participants about it.