Oh that's crap. I speak English. You, clearly and by self-confession, do not. Any bastardisation of a perfectly good language to the point where you commit atrocities of the "quarter of eight" nature cannot possibly be regarded as "English".
That "quarter of eight" stuff you speak may well be a perfectly usable and practical means of communication if others around you say it too, but no-one could possibly pretend to call it "English". "English" has rules which determine what does and does not qualify as part of the language. "A quarter of eight" is clearly and unambiguously outside those rules.
Hey, there is nothing wrong with making up weird and peculiar bastardisations of an established (and in this case rather beautiful) language. Anyone can do it if he or she wants to, and no-one will stop them.
OK, I find it distasteful, and any impartial judge would find it illogical and directly counter to the normal goal of most languages, i.e., to communicate clearly, but that doesn't mean you have to pay any attention if you don't feel like it. However, claiming that that particular bit of illiterate regional gobledegook is English is unacceptable. Call it "American" if you wish (that seems a fair enough description of it to me), just don't pretend that it is English, 'cause it ain't.
Does this logic then require that the language I use be described as "Australian"? Not really. (Though I don't mind if you wish to term it this.) In the main, Australian English adheres quite closely to the mother tongue - much more closely than the American dialect does - and follows the major conventions. It merely adds a distinctive accent (usually in quite small doses, certainly so in city areas) and a handful of distinctive expressions, but none of them (so far as I am aware) do the sort of raw violence to the tongue that "a quarter of eight" does. Most of the more spectacular ones (such as Tea's examples above) are, in fact, rarely or never used in everyday life. You'll see them in movies from time to time, or hear them used for comic effect, but almost never in daily conversation.
Refreshingly, Australian English is happy to borrow ideas from other regional variants, in particular the New Zealand one and the American varieties. Australian dictionaries, for example, accept both "colour" and the more logical "color"; we say "truck", not "lorry", and so on. Thus far, at least, we do tend to reject the extreme and nonsensical imports though.
(Give it 5 more years and youngsters raised on too much American TV here will probably start saying "a quarter of eight". I'll probably have the time to write and tell you about it in detail, assuming, of course, that they let me have an internet connection in the cell where I'm serving my time for murder of the particular teenager who says it first.)
