Loading...

Do you recall how to talk about time in Spanish?

Vocab Icon

Did you know?

How do you ask at what time something occurs? And how do you tell others at what time an event occurs?

For example:

At what time is Spanish class? Spanish class is at 8:15.

You use the small but powerful word a, which in Spanish means "at." So to ask at what time an event occurs, you would ask, "¿A qué hora?" ("At what time?") To express the time at which an event occurs, you would say, "Es a la/las..." followed by a time.

For example:

¿A qué hora es la clase de historia? = At what time is history class?

Es a las once y media. = It is at 11:30.

Vocab Icon

Let's Watch

Watch the video below to review how to tell time in Spanish.

PDF DownloadWe’ve touched on how to tell time in Spanish by the minute and hour, but we haven’t investigated ways to tell at what time an event will be or the differences between AM and PM. There are some pretty big differences in how we talk about time during the day or night, so let’s get down to it.

We know how to ask the time, "¿Qué hora es?," but how do we ask at what time something is? Well, it may not look all that different than our first question, but our second question asks something entirely different. "¿A qué hora es....?" translates to “at what time is...,” which would be followed by the event in question. In order to answer this question, we have two responses: "A la..." and "A las...." If we were asked what time the party is, we would respond, “A la una” if the party was at 1:00, or we would respond, “A las seis” if the party was at 6:00. We only use a la if our time is in the one o’clock range, and use a las for any other time.

In English, when we ask the time, often times people respond, “quarter ‘till” or “half past.” We have phrases like this in Spanish as well. The fifteen minute mark is called “cuarto” in Spanish. So if we said, “Son las siete y cuarto,” we’d be saying “6:00 and 15 minutes.” The half hour mark is called “media” in Spanish. So to say it’s 7:30 in Spanish, we would say “Son las siete y media.”

What about AM vs. PM? During AM hours, we have one way of indicating the morning. We would say, “de la mañana,” which means “of the morning.” There are two different ways to talk about the evening: “De la tarde” describes the afternoon and is valid up until 5 o’clock, after which we say “de la noche.” In English, we have words to describe the midpoints of each day: midday and midnight. We also have this distinction in Spanish. To say "midnight" in Spanish, we say “la medianoche.” To say "noon" in Spanish, we would say “el mediodía.”

For ejercicios, you’re going to practice writing the time in Spanish. Pause the video and record your answers before moving on to check them.

  1. 12:32: Our answer here would be “Es la una menos veintiocho,” which means “1:00 minus 28 minutes.” Notice that we use “es la” because 12:32 is in our 1 o’clock range.

 

  1. 8:10: Our answer here would be “Son las ocho y diez,” which means “8:00 plus 10 minutes.” If your answers match the ones on the screen, you are correct. Good work!
Transcript

Question

What are the two phrases for telling PM in Spanish?

"De la tarde" (used from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM)
or "de la noche" (used for 5:01PM to 11:59 PM)

Question

How is telling at what time an event happens different than telling the actual time?

Replace the verb es or son with the preposition a.

Before you begin asking and answering questions about time, practice changing time phrases from the actual time to phrases telling at what time.

Actual Time Phrase Telling at What Time
Son las cinco y dos de la noche.
Es la una de la mañana.
Son las nueve y media.
Son las once menos cuarto.
Son las doce de la tarde.
Es la una y media.
Son las tres y diez.
Son las cuatro de la tarde.