Lesson Transcript

Hello everyone!
Welcome back to ItalianPod101.com.
My name is Desy.
Mi chiamo Desy.
And in this video, we're going to talk about time.
Che ore sono?
It's a question.
What time is it?
First of all, let's clarify that even though the word tempo does mean time, we also use
that for weather like che tempo fa, how's the weather like?
So we don't say che tempo è for time but we use the word ore which is hours.
The good news is that you don't have to worry about singular or plural because you can either
say che ora è, so singular, un'ora, an hour, che ora è, or che ore sono, plural, hours,
che ore sono.
Even though for the question you don't have to think about singular or plural, you just
have to combine it, right?
So if you use ora, then you use the singular form of the verb to be, ora è, che ora è,
while if you use the plural ore, then you use the plural form of the verb to be, che
ore sono.
That's the only thing that you have to think for the answer as well.
And what I mean is that when you say one, so it's one, I am or PM, we're going to see
how to say that later, you just have to say è l'una, because it's singular, right?
Just one, one hour, so è l'una.
And that's the only case when you use è.
For the rest, you just use sono, plural, because it's always more than one if it's not l'una,
right?
Follow me.
For example, sono le due, sono le due, it means it's two o'clock, che ore sono, sono
le dieci, what time is it?
It's ten, sono le dieci.
If you want to add sono le dieci in punto, it means it's ten o'clock, in punto, punto,
punto literally means dot, so it's just ten, le dieci in punto.
While in English you say, for example, it's five past four, five past four, so five minutes
past four o'clock, we just add and, and to the hours to say the minutes as well, so we
say sono le quattro, it's four, è cinque, sono le quattro, è cinque, and that implies
five minutes, sono le quattro, è cinque minuti, it's four and five minutes, five past four,
sono le quattro, è dieci minuti, ten past four, sono le quattro, è quindici minuti,
it's fifteen past four.
Of course, when you want to say the time, you have to know numbers as well, but there
are some expressions that don't involve numbers, not at all, but that can help sometimes.
For example, if you don't want to say and fifteen, so quindici minuti, quindici minuti,
you can say un quarto, un quarto, a quarter, dodici, twelve, è un quarto, sono le dodici,
è un quarto, it's twelve and fifteen.
Be careful though, because when it's half, we don't say two quarters past twelve, but
we use the word mezza, which literally means half, and we use that with the female exception
because ora is feminine, ora, so sono le dodici e mezza, sono le nove e mezza, it's
half past nine, or it's half past twelve, dodici e mezza, nove e mezza, or of course,
you can say dodici e trenta, or nove e trenta, nine and thirty, twelve thirty, nove e trenta,
while if it's twelve forty five, so you can either say dodici e quaranta cinque, quaranta
cinque, forty five, or you can say a quarter to one, è l'una meno un quarto, meno literally
means less, minus, so it's one, minus a quarter, minus a quarter, è l'una meno un quarto, l'una
meno un quarto, quindici minuti all'una, fifteen minutes to one, and this meno word, which
as I said means minus, can be used with other numbers as well, for example,
of course, when you're asking what time it is, it's kind of obvious, like if it's day
or night, right, but if you want to specify, you can say è l'una del mattino, it's one
a.m., mattino is morning, del mattino, so of the morning, l'una del mattino, or l'una
del pomeriggio, afternoon, del pomeriggio, pomeriggio, and talking about parts of the
we have mattino, as we just said, it's morning, let's say odio svegliarmi presto al mattino,
I hate waking up early in the morning, odio, I know it's a strong word, but it's true,
odio, I hate, svegliarmi, waking up, svegliarmi, presto, early, presto, al mattino, in the
mornings, odio svegliarmi presto al mattino, let me sleep, in the middle of the day, we
have midday, mezzo giorno, as I said before, mezza means half, but also in the middle,
so mezzo giorno, the half of the day, in the middle of the day, mezzo giorno, then we
have pomeriggio, pomeriggio, afternoon, afternoon, pomeriggio, sera, evening, sera, and then
notte, when it's night, right, notte, and same as midday, we have midnight, so if midday
was mezzo giorno, midnight will be mezzanotte, mezza, just because notte is feminine, mezzanotte
while mezzogiorno, dormo, I sleep, sempre, always, before, prima di mezzanotte, mezzanotte,
I always sleep before midnight, dormo sempre prima di mezzanotte, that's a good habit
but it's a lie for me, that's why I hate waking up early in the morning, so if you
don't want to ask what time it is, but at what time something happens or happened, then
you use the expression a che ora, literally at what time, a che ora, what time does the
movie start, a che ora inizia il film, a che ora, what time inizia il film, does the
movie start, so I have a question for you, a che ora sei nato, what time were you born,
a che ora sei nato? Io sono nata, I was born alle otto di sera, I was born at 8 o'clock
in the evening, Io sono nata alle otto di sera, I was born at 8 o'clock in the evening.
Thank you for watching, I hope this video was useful, my advice is to go and revise
numbers as well, because that's something that you need to tell the time and if you
want to be able to have real Italian conversations with native speakers, just click the link
in the description and download our PDF lessons to learn Italian in the fastest, easiest and
most fun way possible. I'll see you soon, thank you for watching, bye bye, ciao ciao!

Comments

Hide