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Yesterday I said: "I can't read analog clocks", but my interlocutor corrected me saying that what I was pointing at was a watch and not a clock.
Now, I am aware of the difference between the two, but how can I say I can read neither analog clocks nor analog watches? Is there a hypernym for both of them?
The word is timepiece:
Any device that measures or registers time; a clock or watch, especially one lacking a chime or other striking mechanism.
But it's not really used much, and as the usage notes on that page explain, your interlocutor can just as easily object that clocks are not strictly timepieces. So you can keep on looking to say something like "I can't read analog timekeeping devices" or what have you, or you might as well save yourself the trouble and simply say, "I can't read analog".
I can't read (the hands on) clocks.
It stands to reason that the speaker is referring to any time mechanism which uses the traditional 12-hour dial.
During the 15th and 16th centuries, the 12-hour analog dial and time system gradually became established as standard throughout Northern Europe for general public use. The 24-hour analog dial was reserved for more specialized applications, such as astronomical clocks and chronometers, and timetables, especially for railway and airline travel.
Wikipedia suggests that the term clock face is used for both clocks and watches
A clock face or dial is the part of an analog clock (or watch) that displays the time through the use of a fixed-numbered dial or dials and moving hands. In its most basic form, recognized throughout the world, the periphery of the dial is numbered 1 through 12 indicating the hours in a 12-hour cycle, and a short hour hand makes two revolutions in a day. A longer minute hand makes one revolution every hour.
I suppose you could say: "I can't read twelve-hour dials" and be understood, but it's not very idiomatic.
EDIT
The expression read a clock is understood to mean watches and all mechanical clocks.
On a British reality show called "I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!" one contestant confesed to not being able to tell the time.
... he earned himself some airtime by admitting that he didn’t know how to read a clock-face. That didn’t matter, he insisted, because his watch — reportedly worth £70,000 — was strictly for show, and anyway it didn’t have any numbers on its dial. ‘It’s fashion,’ he says, adding that it’s ‘much easier to look at your phone’.
Source Daily Mail
Ok, earlier today I was at a restaurant and some kids (maybe highschool) asked what time it was so I pointed to a clock on the wall and they stood there sort of silent. Then I heard one say to their friends, "I'm really bad at telling time can you guys read it?"
Long story short none of them could read it but after a few minutes they figured it out. Also now that I think about it, I have overheard some teenagers talking about how they can't read a clock.
Source: www.neowin.net
Reading a Clock
Reading a clock takes practice, but after you learn how, it’s very easy to do! First, you’re going to locate the hour hand. The hour hand is the shorter of the two clock hands.
Source: wikiHow to Read a Clock
The idiomatic way to say this (albeit not a hypernym) is
I cannot tell the time
"To tell the time" is the idiomatic (phrasal?) verb used for the activity of determining the time from an analog dial; it would not imply a digital display, nor does it suggest a watch face or a clock face. "Learning to tell the time" is a common phrase among parents of pre-school children.
Incidentally, the use of 'analog' here is unnecessary; the context of 'clock' in the phrase 'reading the time from a clock' implies that the clock is analog, and the word is unusual in non-technical contexts. It is also incongruous; generally those who cannot tell the time do not know the word 'analog'.
It appears the American English version of "to tell the time" is "to tell time".
Less casual than "timepiece" is chronometer.
"Timepiece" is the correct hypernym, but in this context you could also say
I can't read analog clock faces.
The clock face is the part of the device that you read, and it's called a "clock face" even if it's part of a watch rather than a clock. (It's also called a "dial", but saying you can't read analog dials would imply that you can't read analog voltmeters, barometers etc. either, so "clock face" is better in this context.)
I know this is very old and this will be buried at the bottom but the ticked and much-upvoted response of timepiece matches the dictionary definitions—although Wiktionary's can be at least be quickly corrected—but is completely incorrect. Not only would native speakers never say 'I cannot read a timepiece' (OP's original question) but in practice
timepiece is not the hypernym of clocks and watches.
Informal use would restrict timepiece to only smaller chronometers, and preeningly formal use would restrict it to only nonsounding chronometers or to the time display on larger clocks. There is no actual sense of timepiece in modern English where it would ever be applied to an entire grandfather clock.
Yesterday I said: "I can't read analog clocks", but my interlocutor corrected me saying that what I was pointing at was a watch and not a clock.
Your interlocutor either has poor English or was being pedantic. All watches are clocks in actual English. Clock is the hypernym of large clocks ("clocks") and small clocks ("watches"). It sometimes only means mechanical timepieces but there are readily understandable senses in which it means any timekeeping device, including sundials and waterclocks (clepsydras). There are some other actual hypernyms (chronometer, horologium, &c.) but they're all pretty uncommon and unhelpful in general use.
"I can't read analog clocks" is exactly what you should've said and you were misled that it was wrong or that timepiece would've been better, in that context or in most others.
