At 15:30 today I said to a friend asking the time it was 3:30pm. The friend said its actually 4:30pm or half four. I'm confused.

haha Emese does this.

Are you in the UK and your (Hungarian) friend still has his watch set to Central European Time, or have you not yet grasped the central European way of telling the time ("half four" = half past three)?

When people ask me what Hungarian is like, I say: See Ya! is hello, Heylo! is goodbye, and after that it just gets worse.

It's quite simple really - but confusing. Hungarian time counts forward whereas UK time counts backwards, that is UK time references the hour just gone and the Hungarian time references the hour to come.
15:15 UK = quarter past 3, Hungarian = three quarters to 4
15:30 UK = half (past) 3 Hungarian = half to 4
The 24 hour clock counts hours and mins in both languages e.g. 15:45 is the same in both languages

Same in German "Halb Vier" is not half PAST four, but half to four !". German has had a huge impact on the Hungarian language. Within Austro-Hungary, German was the dominant language.

For SZIA (aka see ya) we have the yanks to thank for that. seeya was picked up after the 2nd world war from the American soldiers and films and imported into the Hungarian language and yes they use szia for both hello and goodby.

On the other hand (I'm told) that hello came from Alex Bell the telephone inventor who had a Hungarian assistant who was short on English and when experimenting and the assistant speaking to Bell said HALLOD (Hungarian for can you hear me) Due to poor reception it came though to all as HELLO and the term stuck and got imported in to English.

Hungarian (as with any living language) has gained several imported words since I have been here and I hear English (some times Hunglish) words used in normal conversation

Snap! I think the thinking behind it is 3:30pm is to Hungarians 30 minutes to 4pm so it's 4:30 to them. In addition they do the date format in reverse order to UK format so to them it makes sense but to Brits no sense at all.

When we first started dating, I was an hour late...apparently. haha

Watch post - I'm in Hungary!

Interesting responses.

I caught my wife out on this time format. She told me our friends will come at 1:30pm not two thirty!

I've just remembered it's going to be fun when we have UK visitors and I tell them to be ready at nine thirty and I turn up at 8:30. No doubt they will argue I told them nine thirty but I'll remind them they are in Hungary and it's the other way round!

PS - it will probably be atleast three years before we have visitors from UK. We need find a house, settle down and for myself integrate into Hungarian society, etc. Quite few friends really keen to visit but if we allow them to come too soon it will delay my integration into Hungary.

Interesting about Alexander Graham Bell and his Hungarian assistant. AGB was actually trying to invent a hearing aid for his deaf wife but stumbled into inventing the telephone!

"Halb drei" in German is mainly used in the South - the logic is very simple:
Half of the third hour has passed ...
If you look at "Halb eins" or "fél egy" it should be even more obvious - half of the first hour has passed.
I read somewhere that the Slavs have similar expressions ...
A bit OT:
What took me more time to adapt to was the Hungarian custom of telling weights (or rather mass ...):
Tiz deka is short for tiz dekagram i e 100 gram.
But now I'm used to asking for "Húsz deka sajt kerek" in the Spar eg ...

This is still not correct. Hungarian doesn't reference the hour to come, it references the hour that is being passed. "Háromnegyed négy" is not "three quarters to four" (3:15), it's three quarters of the fourth (3:45). Wolfi has it right.

Oops - yes you are right , I got my proverbials in a twist. My brain must have been in neutral due to the heat.

Our local friends tested me quite a few times yesterday on Hungarian time. I didn't get everything right but atleast I'm slowly learning but need to practice alot.