"Nous ne dînons jamais avant vingt heures."
Translation:We never have dinner before eight o'clock.
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I don't understand the fetish with "o'clock"... In more recent exercises they made it required. "We never have dinner at eight" is not only ok, but more usual. In fact, I don't remember the last time I heard "o'clock" being added.
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Michal, your main mistake is that you said "at eight" instead of the correct "before eight".
My guess is that "O'clock" is retained so there is a matching word for reverse translation (heures). But like I said, it's a guess. As has already been pointed out, we don't use o'clock anymore and haven't for some time. As for Duo going back and forth between the 24 hour clock, (our military time keeping system), and the 12 hour (a.m. p.m. clock), I get that the inconsistency is annoying, but it's probably done for the purpose of teaching the 24 clock to those who don't know it. Most Americans who haven't served in the military are not versed in the 24 hour clock. How can they be expected to accurately translate something they don't know? By teaching them. That's why I believe Duolingo is using both.
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Once again mixing 12 hour clock with 24 hour clock. As a stand-alone sentence, this one is fine, but the set started out using a 24 hour clock.
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Well, the French use the 24 hour system and Anglos use the 12 hour. If we want to be linguistically and culturally fluent, we have to use both. I'm glad Duo gives us a crack at it!
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Not true. Everyone I know is equally comfortable with a 24 hour system and a 12 hour system. My point is that it is not a good idea to mix the two within the same sentence or set of sentences.
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In my country, it is not unusual. Maybe 30 years ago the use of a 24 hour clock might have been less common. But every computer, for example, when being set up, asks if you want a 24 hour clock or a 12 hour clock. But my point was, as I have already mentioned, I do find it unusual that Duo mixes 24 hour clock and 12 hour clock in the same set of questions, causing problematic translations.
Same comment as twice before: On the answer tiles, to be correct in English, you need to add the apostrophe after the o on that tile. You need to take it off the clock tile.
Like so: o' on the first answer tile clock on the second answer tile
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Hi Anig, We say 8pm or 8 o'clock, but not both in the same sentence. If talking about dinner, pm is assumed. If unclear, such as 'I'll pick you up at 5, then we say 'Ill pick you up at 5pm'.
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PM is more likely to appear in written form, when you do not know how much of the current context the reader will be aware of.
In spoken form it would normally be assumed, unless there was potential for confusion.