Dialogue Telling the time

Chapter 7
7 ¿QUÉ
HORA ES?
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Dialogue
Vocabulary
Luego
Then
Salgo
I leave
Raúl: ¡Hola Sofía! ¿Qué hora es?
Sofía: Son las ocho y cuarto.
Raúl: Gracias. ¿Qué haces normalmente por la mañana?
Sofía: Me levanto a las siete. Luego, me ducho y tomo mi desayuno.
Usualmente, salgo a las ocho.
Raúl: Ah, vale. Así, ¿cuándo almuerzas?
Sofía: Suelo almorzar a la una.
Raúl: Claro. ¡Adiós!
Sofía: ¡Hasta luego!
Telling the time
Telling the time is easy in Spanish, and very similar to English. You use this
construction:
Son las [hours] y [minutes]
So, Son las tres y veinte would mean "It's twenty past three". To ask the time, you
just use the question ¿Qué hora es? (literally: "What hour is it?"). However, this
only works for times up to half-past the hour. How do you say "It's twenty to three",
I hear you cry? For this, you have to use menos (meaning "less") instead of y (Son
las cuatro menos diez means "It's ten to four".
Other typical time-telling phrases are depicted in the table below.
Spanish Vocabulary • ¿Qué hora es?
El tiempo • The time
Inglés
Español
a.m.
de la mañana
p.m.
de la tarde
It's half-past [hour]
Son las [hour] y media
It's quarter-past [hour] Son las [hour] y cuarto
It's quarter-to [hour] Son las [hour] menos cuarto
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¿Qué hora es?
Notes
• If there aren't any minutes, just say son las cinco ("It's 5 o'clock") or son
las once ("It's 11 o'clock").
• Remember: son means "they are", so son las... only works for numbers
greater than one. To say "it's one o'clock", you have to say Es la una.
Examples
•
•
•
•
Son las ocho
It's 8 o'clock
Son las nueve y media
It's half-past nine
Son las seis menos cuarto
It's quarter-to six
Son las dos y veinte de la mañana
It's 2:20 a.m.
When?
So, you now know how to tell the time in Spanish. Now let's use it to describe
when something happens. To do this, you use a las followed by the time as
described above (a las tres means "at 3 o'clock"). But what if you don't know a
specific time? What about just "In the evening"? Just use por la, followed by one of
the entries in the table (por la noche means "at night"):
Spanish Vocabulary • ¿Qué hora es?
Los tiempos del día • The times of the day
Inglés
Morning
Afternoon
Night
Español
Mañana
Tarde
Evening
Noche
Notes
• Since it's always "por la", this means that these times-of-day are all
feminine.
Examples
•
•
A las ocho de la mañana, tomo mi desayuno.
At 8:00am, I eat breakfast.
Por la tarde, le gusta ver la tele.
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Chapter 7
•
In the evening, He likes watching TV.
Por la noche, les gusta mucho beber leche.
At night,they love drinking milk.
Time-related Adverbs
It's all very well knowing how to say that you do things at a particular time, but
what about more habitual actions? What do you do usually? Normally?
Sometimes?
Spanish Vocabulary • ¿Qué hora es?
El tiempo • The time
Inglés
Usually
Normally
Often
Sometimes
Occasionally
Rarely
Soler
Español
Usualmente
Normalmente
A menudo
A veces
De vez en cuando
Ocasionalmente
Raramente
To be in the habit of
Notes
• You should notice that all the words ending in "ly" in English end in
mente in Spanish. To turn an adjective into an adverb: take the feminine
form of the adjective, then add mente.
• Thus, normal, raro, ocasional and usual are all adjectives.
• Also, ruidosamente, tranquilamente, etc, are adverbs (you met
tranquilo and ruidoso in lesson 4...)
• Soler is a UE stem-changing verb (suelo, sueles, suele, solemos, soléis,
suelen), and it is followed by the infinitive (Suelo comer queso con pan,
meaning "I usually eat cheese with bread").
Examples
•
•
•
•
A veces, bebemos vino tinto, pero nunca vino blanco.
Sometimes, we drink red wine, but never white wine.
Suelo vivir en pisos; vivir en una casa es muy difícil.
I usually live in flats; living in a house is really difficult.
De vez en cuando, juego al ajedrez, pero usualmente, practico judo.
Sometimes, I play chess, but usually I do judo.
Normalmente a las cinco de la tarde, juego al futból.
Normally at 5pm, I play football.
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