Learn how to use Italian to tell someone the time
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| Ciao a tutti! Sono Consuelo. Hi everybody! I’m Consuelo. |
| Welcome back to ItalianPod101.com’s Italiano in tre minuti, the fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Italian. |
| In the last lesson, we covered the directions in Italian. Today we are going to learn how to ask for the time and how to answer this question. |
| In Italian, "What time is it?" is che ore sono? The first word, che, means "what." This is followed by ore, which in English is "hours." Then you have sono, which literally means "are they." |
| (One more time slowly: che ore sono?) |
| However, there is also another expression with the same meaning, but in a different form, using the singular version: Che ora è? |
| (One more time slowly: che ora è?) |
| Let’s cover how to answer now! |
| When talking about hours o'clock, you just have to say the number and that’s it. |
| 1 o'clock una |
| 2 o'clock due |
| 3 o'clock tre |
| 4 o'clock quattro |
| 5 o'clock cinque |
| 6 o'clock sei |
| 7 o'clock sette |
| 8 o'clock otto |
| 9 o'clock nove |
| 10 o'clock dieci |
| 11 o'clock undici |
| 12 o'clock dodici |
| In Italian, the easy way is to say sono le, "it's," then the number for "hours" followed by the conjunction e and then the number for "minutes." For example: |
| Sono le cinque e venti. ("It's five twenty") |
| (One more time slowly: sono le cinque e venti) |
| Whenever you need to say "midday"/"noon" or "midnight," you might use mezzogiorno and mezzanotte. |
| E’ mezzogiorno (it’s noon). E’ mezzanotte (it’s midnight). |
| Finally, "quarter" in Italian is quarto, so "It’s 3:15" in Italian can also be sono le tre e un quarto. |
| (One more time slowly: sono le tre e un quarto) |
| "A quarter," un quarto, in Italian can also be used in different ways, as in sono un quarto alle nove. "It’s a quarter to nine." |
| (One more time slowly: sono un quarto alle nove.) |
| Or sono le nove meno un quarto. Literally, "it’s nine less a quarter." |
| (One more time slowly: sono le nove meno un quarto.) |
| Here background changes into an Italian street or square |
| Consuelo: Scusi, sa che ore sono? |
| Passer-by: Sono le sei e un quarto. |
| Consuelo: Grazie, molto gentile! |
| As you probably noticed in the previous scene, I added the verb sa, meaning "do you know," before che ore sono. That is the verb sapere, "to know," and sa stands for "do you know" when making questions referring to Lei. |
| Now it’s time for Consuelo’s tips: |
| When answering, please remember to say sono le, followed by the hours. Only in the case of mezzogiorno, mezzanotte, and l’una, meaning "one," is the right verb to use è: è mezzogiorno, è mezzanotte, è l’una. |
| This does it for today! In today’s class, we learned how to ask for the time and what to answer. |
| We’ll be waiting for you in our next Italiano in tre minuti lesson! |
| Ciao alla prossima lezione!! |
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