Date
In the
Netherlands
, Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
, dates are written using the
little-endian
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In computing, endianness is the order in which bytes within a word (data type), word of d ...
pattern "day–month–year" as is usual elsewhere in Europe and many other countries. Either dashes or slashes are used as separators. Times are written using
24-hour notation
The modern 24-hour clock is the convention of timekeeping in which the day runs from midnight to midnight and is divided into 24 hours. This is indicated by the hours (and minutes) passed since midnight, from to , with as an option to indicate ...
.
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The names and abbreviations of months and days are as follows:
Names of months and days are not capitalised in Dutch.
Time
In
written language
A written language is the representation of a language by means of writing. This involves the use of visual symbols, known as graphemes, to represent linguistic units such as phonemes, syllables, morphemes, or words. However, written language is ...
, time is expressed in the
24-hour notation
The modern 24-hour clock is the convention of timekeeping in which the day runs from midnight to midnight and is divided into 24 hours. This is indicated by the hours (and minutes) passed since midnight, from to , with as an option to indicate ...
, with or without
leading zero
A leading zero is any 0 digit that comes before the first nonzero digit in a number string in positional notation.. For example, James Bond's famous identifier, 007, has two leading zeros. Any zeros appearing to the left of the first non-zero dig ...
, using a
full stop
The full stop ( Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point is a punctuation mark used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation).
A ...
or
colon as a separator, sometimes followed by the word ' (hour) or its
abbreviation
An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening (linguistics), shortening, contraction (grammar), contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened for ...
' – for example, ', ', or '. In technical and scientific texts the use of the abbreviations ''h'', ''min'' and ''s'' is common – for example, ''17 h 03 min 16 s''.
The use of the 12-hour clock in
numeric writing
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...
is not standard practice, not even in
informal writing
In literature, writing style is the manner of expressing thought in language characteristic of an individual, period, school, or nation. Thus, style is a term that may refer, at one and the same time, to singular aspects of an individual's writing ...
, and writing e.g., "" for 13:30 would be regarded as odd. The actual Dutch terms for a.m. and p.m. are respectively v.m. and n.m. ( and ), but these are very old-fashioned and even more rare than the use of a.m. and p.m. in written language.
In
spoken language
A spoken language is a form of communication produced through articulate sounds or, in some cases, through manual gestures, as opposed to written language. Oral or vocal languages are those produced using the vocal tract, whereas sign languages ar ...
, most often time is expressed in the
12-hour clock
The 12-hour clock is a time convention in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods: a.m. (from Latin , translating to "before midday") and p.m. (from Latin , translating to "after midday"). Each period consists of 12&nb ...
. However, "a.m." and "p.m." are never used. Instead, an
apposition
Apposition is a grammatical construction in which two elements, normally noun phrases, are placed side by side so one element identifies the other in a different way. The two elements are said to be ''in apposition'', and the element identifyi ...
is added, for instance 21:00 is said as "" (9 o'clock in the evening). Half hours are relative to the next hour – for example, 5:30 is said as "". Quarter hours are expressed relative to the nearest whole hour – for example, 6:15, "" (quarter past six) and 6:45, "" (quarter to seven). Minutes are usually rounded off to the nearest five minutes and are expressed relative to the closest half-hour. For instance 05:35 is "" (literally "5 past half to 6") and 05:20 is "" (literally "10 to half to 6").
When the 24-hour clock is used in spoken language, which is not quite common, usually the written form is pronounced with the hours as a number, the word "" (hour) and the minutes as a number. For example, 17:21 might be pronounced as "" (seventeen hours twenty-one). Hours over 12 are not usually combined with phrasings using "half", "quarter", "to", or "past".
See also
*
Date format by country
The legal and cultural expectations for date and time representation vary between countries, and it is important to be aware of the forms of all-numeric calendar dates used in a particular country to know what date is intended.
Writers have ...
References
{{Europe topic, Date and time notation in
Time in the Netherlands
Netherlands
, Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...