Tuši

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Monday, October 18, 2010

11470

Timezones
I was calling to New Zealand today so I checked Timezones before. There was a nice map in Wikipedia. Then I remembered, that somewhere in the world people start to count hours when sun goes up. I searched and I find, that this are Swahili people.

Copy/paste from this page.

Time
It is interesting to note that in the Swahili culture the day starts at sunrise (unlike in the Arab world where the day starts at sunset, and in the Western world where the day starts at midnight). Sunrise in East Africa, being exactly at the Equator, happens every day at approximately 6:00 a.m. And for that reason, 6:00 a.m. is "0:00 morning" Swahili time. By "Swahili time" I mean the time as spoken in Swahili.

So the hands of a watch or clock meant to read Swahili time would always point to a number opposite to the number for the actual time as spoken in English. That is, the Swahili time anywhere in the world (not just East Africa) is delayed by 6 hours.

Therefore 7:00 a.m. is "1:00 morning"  (saa moja asubuhi) Swahili time; midnight is "6:00 night"  (saa sita usiku) Swahili time. 5:00 a.m. is "11:00 early morning" (saa kumi na moja alfajiri) Swahili time.

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