Learning the time in French is crucial! Take the time to learn it as it will be extremely useful for you in various situations. There are several ways to say the time in French but I will explain the simplest way just for you! Before learning together about how to tell the time in French, you need to learn numbers. You can take a look at my article “How to count in French“.
Why is learning how to tell the time in French so important?
You definitely need to know how to say the time in your daily routine. If you need to make an appointment to the doctor, the time is crucial. If you misunderstand it, it is going to be a big issue, especially if it is for an interview as it will be seen as unprofessional.
Tell the time in French
In French, to ask “what time is it?” we will say “quelle heure est-il?”. When answering, to say “it is…” we will use “il est…”.
In French, we use the 24 hours to say the time so in the afternoon after midday, we will say:
Il est treize heures (1pm), il est quatorze heures (2pm), il est quinze heures (3pm)…
When saying the time in French, we will start by the hours and then the minutes, so it is similar to English. Please note that we do not use hundred if the time is round, we will just say the hour.
Quarter past, half past and quarter to in French
In French, to say:
– Quarter past, we will use “et quart”.
– Half past, we will use either “et demie” or “trente”.
– Quarter to, we will use either “moins le quart” or “quarante-cinq” and it is their that the difficulty comes.
To say “quarter to” there are two different ways as mentioned before that I am going to detail now:
– If you use “quarante-cinq” this is a bit like in English, for 1:45am you said “it is one and forty-five minutes” so we will use “il est une heure quarante-cinq”.
-If you use “moins le quart” you know that it is going to be 2 o’clock soon right? so you will say “it is 2 o’clock minus a quarter” which gives in French “il est deux heures moins le quart”.
Find below some examples to have a good summary of the different ways to say quarter past, half past and quarter to.
It is 3:00 am/pm: Il est trois heures (am) OR Il est quinze heures (pm).
It is 3:15 am/pm: Il est trois heures et quart (am) OR Il est quinze heures et quart (pm)
It is 3:30 am/pm: Il est trois heures et demie (am) OR Il est quinze heures trente (pm)
It is 2:45 am/pm: Il est trois heures moins le quart (am) OR Il est deux heures quarante-cinq (am) OR Il est quinze heures moins le quart (pm) OR Il est quatorze heures quarante-cinq (pm)
It is midday (12:00pm): midi
It is midnight (12:00am): minuit
Minutes past and to the hour
As mentioned earlier, we will say the hour first and then the minutes so it is pretty easy when the minutes are on the right side of the clock. When the minutes are on the left side of the clock it gets more complicated as we have seen for 1:45am.
When the minutes are on the left side of the clock, there are two ways to say the time:
– You can say like in English for 4:35am “il est quatre heures trente-cinq”.
– You know that it is going to be five o’clock soon so you will say “it is five minus 25 minutes” which will be in French “il est cinq heures moins vingt-cinq”.
It is 3:05 am/pm: Il est trois heures cinq (am) OR Il est quinze heures cinq (pm)
It is 2:40 am/pm: Il est trois heures moins vingt (am) OR Il est deux heures quarante (am) OR Il est quinze heures moins vingt (pm) OR Il est quatorze heures quarante (pm)
Practice time!
Questions
Let’s practice with few more examples, how would you say:
- 12:40pm?
- 2:10pm?
- 6:30am?
Responses
- 12:40: il est midi quarante OR il est une heure moins vingt
- 2:10pm: il est quatorze heure dix (do not forgot we use the 24 hours ;-))
- 6:30am: il est six heures trente OR il est six heures et demie
Keep practicing the time in French and if you want more information about how to say the time in French, I have found a very informative website that I recommend, click here to access it.
Tell me in the comments in French at what time do you get up in the morning? Feel free to share this article!
A bientôt!