[tz] tm_isdst: to be or not to be? [WAS: Did Greenland abolish daylight saving from 2024 on?]

Guy Harris gharris at sonic.net
Fri Nov 17 21:35:49 UTC 2023


On Nov 17, 2023, at 1:18 PM, Doug Ewell <doug at ewellic.org> wrote:

> Guy Harris wrote:
> 
>> Are there any people in Ireland who believe that "Daylight Saving
>> Time" is observed during the winter?
> 
> I’ve always been led to believe that “Daylight Saving Time” (with or without the odious extra ‘s’) is North American and Australian terminology, and that Europeans instead use the term “summer time” to refer to an alternative time standard observed during some period that includes the summer.

That's the impression I have as well.

And I think "summer time" is a better term, as 1) it doesn't make a bogus claim of "saving" anything and 2) it clearly indicates when it is in effect.

> Given that, it may not be surprising if Irish writers equate the foreign term “Daylight Saving Time” with whatever time they observe in the summer, regardless of whether that time is “standard.”

The surprise, for me, is that they use the term "Daylight Saving Time" at all.  Perhaps, in the Irish case. where "standard time" is observed in the summer and "winter time" is observed in the winter, they adopt the North American/Australian term because "summer time", for them, unlike for the rest of Europe, *is* "standard time", so they can't speak of "standard time" vs. "summer time".


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