Severn Spanish

Time I

 

Introduction

Telling time requires a knowledge of the conjugations of ser in the present tense, as well as the numbers 1-30.

 

Telling time

In Spanish, la hora, "the hour," is feminine. This means that all of the hours (i.e. the times of day) are considered feminine, as well. Therefore, when talking about time, you use the feminine articles la and las.

All of the hours are considered plural except la una, which is one o'clock. The rest are expressed as las dos, las tres, las cuatro, etc.

To express, "It is ___ o'clock," you can say either, Es la una, ("It is one o'clock") or, Son las ____, (insert another hour there).

Examples:

Son las cuatro. (It is four o'clock.)

Son las doce. (It is twelve o'clock.)

Es la una. (It is one o'clock).

 

Time on the half or quarter hour gets a little more complicated. Add y media to the hour to say literally "and a half." The same is true for y cuarto and "and a quarter."

Examples:

Son las tres y media. (It is three thirty.)

Son las cinco y cuarto. (It is five fifteen.)

Es la una y media. (It is one thirty.)

Son las doce y cuarto. (It is twelve fifteen.)

 

For a specific time, such as "It is eleven-oh-five," or "It is seven thirteen," you do the same thing, but substitute cuarto or media for the number you wish to indicate.

Examples:

Son las once y cinco. (It is eleven-oh-five.)

Son las siete y trece. (It is seven thirteen.)

Son las ocho y veintitres. (It is eight twenty-three.)

 

Spanish is a bit different from English when it comes to telling time past the half hour. For any time beyond __:30, Spanish works backwards. You start with the coming hour and then subtract minutes to indicate the current time, using menos instead of y. Let's work through an example.

Say it is 9:42.

1. Start with the coming hour (10). Son las diez...

2. Add menos and the number of minutes until that hour (in other words, subtract the current minute number from 60. 60-42= 18). Son las diez menos dieciocho. (Literally, this translates to "It is ten minus eighteen." A better translation would be "It is eighteen minutes until ten," which still sounds awkward to an English speaker, but that is the way it is done in Spanish speaking countries.)

 

Indicating time of day

As in English, sometimes in Spanish it is necessary to clarify whether you mean 10 in the morning or 10 at night. In English, we would say AM, PM, or some variation of "in the morning/night." In Spanish, we use de la mañana/tarde/noche to mean "in the morning/afternoon/night." Typically, any time before noon is de la mañana. After that, until about 7:00, you should use de la tarde. From 7:00 on, de la noche.

Examples:

Son las ocho de la mañana. (It is eight in the morning.)

Son las tres de la tarde. (It is three in the afternoon.)

Son las once de la noche. (It is eleven at night.)

 

Other useful time expressions

Sometimes, you just want a specialized word to express a common phrase like "noon" or "midnight."

mediodía: noon (literally, "half day" or "middle day")

medianoche: midnight

madrugada: dawn (can be used to say Son las tres de la madrugada, meaning "It is three in morning.")

 

Practice