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First of all, always use the verb ser. No, not estar, but ser. If you don’t know
what Spanish verbs are all about, you might want to check this little guide for
beginners. To put it simply, time is a permanent entity that requires the use of the
verb ser.
Secondly, remember that only when talking about one o’clock, you’ll need to use
the third person singular form of ser. For all the other eleven hours, you can safely
go with the plural form. Here’s how to tell the time in Spanish if the time is on the
hour:
As you can see, the feminine article (la/las) is used before the number. Why is that?
Well, because it refers to la hora. But again, remember that the singular form la will
only be used in the case of “one o’clock” because we’re talking about a single hour.
Nota bene: If you prefer to use the 24-hour clock, you should say son las
dieciséis (“it’s 16:00”) instead of son las cuatro (“it’s 4 o’clock p.m.”). But that will
require a little more studying on your part. Don’t worry though. Spanish numbers are
just as easy as learning how to tell the time. You can master them with Mondly faster
than you can say Jack Robinson. You can get started here.
Now, the time is not always on the hour. So how do you say “half past”, “quarter
past” and “quarter to” in Spanish? There are only two new words you need to
remember: media and cuarto.
Wanna be a little more specific? Here’s how Spanish time works when you need to
indicate the exact number of minutes that have past from the hour.
Thus, the same as in English, there will be two ways in which you can indicate some
hours in Spanish. If it’s 8:15, you can say:
Son las ocho y cuarto. (“it’s a quarter past eight”)
Son las ocho y quince. (“it’s eight and fifteen minutes”)
There are three formulas of telling time in Spanish. Here are different ways of telling
it’s 3:10:
Which one do you prefer? Additionally, if we also count it cuarto and media, there are
no less than four different ways to tell the time in Spanish. And you’ve just mastered
them all!
mediodía – midday
mañana – in the morning
noche – at night
madrugada – the middle of the night
medianoche – midnight
amanecer – dawn
tarde – in the afternoon
To indicate that an event occurs at a specific time, use the formula a + la(s) +
time: La clase de español empieza a las nueve – “The Spanish class begins at 9”.
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