On 2020-08-28, at 19:25:37, Philip Paeps wrote:
... This system is still widely in use in Ethiopia (and reportedly in other parts of east Africa though I have no direct experience). If you have a meeting at "three o'clock" you should turn up at 10:00. The meeting will probably start at 10:30 ... possibly because you have to call at least one other person who thought the meeting was at 15:00. ;-)
I don't know the idiom, but I might expect the "first hour" to be tropical sunrise, 06:00, thus the "third hour" 08:00 (or 08:30). A half century ago I learned a similar Russian idiom; times from 08:01 to 08:59 were "one minute of the ninth hour" and "without one minute of the ninth hour".
I believe there's a link to an article about this phenomenon in tz-links.html.
Does it have a zoneinfo entry? -- gil