Telling Time in Italian
3 Video Views·Oct 12, 2024
When visiting Italy, you'll probably want to keep a tight schedule, as there's so much to see and eat! You may have to ask someone what time it is or ask what time something is going to happen, and of course you'll have to understand their response, so let's learn how to tell time in Italian, both generally by time of day, and also the exact time. Script by Patrizia Farina, Professor of Italian at Western Connecticut State University and Purchase College.
It's Professor Dave, let's learn how Italians tell time.
We just learned how to divide the year into months and the week into days,
but for any individual day, it is common to need to know what time it is.
This can be described generally like morning, afternoon and night,
or, more specifically, with the official system of time that the world uses.
Either way, let's go over some of the words and phrases you will need to know in order to tell time.
As we know, each day can be broken into different sections.
First, there's alba.
And then, mattina lasts until noon.
Noon itself is mezzogiorno, which literally means middle of the day.
After that, there is pomeriggio.
And then sera, which is used until bedtime.
Once in bed, it's called notte.
And midnight is mezzanotte.
These words have plenty of applications,
but certainly we will sometimes need to tell the exact time.
This is pretty intuitive, but one thing Americans will have to get used to is the 24-hour clock,
as this is used at the airport, train station, on TV, and other official reports of time.
After 12 noon, instead of going to 1 pm, the numbers keep going up to 13, 14, and so forth.
So to get the pm time, just subtract 12.
That means 17 o'clock is 5 pm.
However, the system Americans are familiar with is also common in casual interactions.
The word ore means hours, so to ask what time it is, we can say,
or
Someone could respond to this question with a word, like mezzogiorno or mezzanotte.
They could also respond with a number, like è l'una.
Notice that this is singular.
Other numbers require a plural article.
This can be taken to be a rough estimation.
If intended to mean precisely on the hour, we can say something like
or
If there are some minutes to speak of, we just state the corresponding number.
In English, we sometimes say things like a quarter to two.
Italians do this as well.
A quarter of an hour is un quarto, so we could say sono le dieci e un quarto, to mean 10.15.
When it's 10.45, we could say sono le dieci e tre quarti,
or alternately we could say undici meno un quarto,
depending on whether we prefer to add three quarters or subtract one quarter.
If it's the half hour, we could say sono le dieci e mezzo, which means 10.5, or 10.30.
We can also do this with increments of time that are not quarter hours,
like saying sono le dieci e dieci, or sono dieci alle undici.
Let's go through a typical daily itinerary for our friend Franco, from his perspective.
Faccio la doccia.
Alle sette faccio colazione.
Alle otto esco di casa.
Alle nove ho lezione di matematica.
A mezzogiorno faccio il pranzo.
Alle due di pomeriggio prendo un altro caffè.
Alle cinque di sera incontro gli amici.
Alle nove e mezzo faccio cena.
Finalmente alle undici vado a letto.
Now let's see if you can do it.
Check out this clock.
Che ore sono?
Perfetto! Sono le tre e venti.
Bravo!
Let's check comprehension.
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