¿Qué Hora Es? | Telling Time in Spanish for Beginners

¿Qué hora es? What time is it? In this lesson, we're going to be learning about how to talk about time. This is a very practical piece of learning Spanish because wherever you travel, you will most likely at some point need to ask someone for the time. This lesson will also give us practice with our palabras interrogativas and the verb ser. Before we dive too far into talking about time, we first need to learn how to say numbers in Spanish. Some people already know how to count, so if you don't need to learn numbers or don't need to review, feel free to skip this section of the lesson. First, let's go over how to say the numbers 1 through 19. This will help us to say greater numbers throughout the lesson. Repeat after me. Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez, ocho, nueve, diez, ocho, nueve, diez, once, doce, trece, catorce, quince, dieciséis, diecisiete, dieciocho, diecinueve. Now to say numbers higher than 19, we just need to know how to say every tenth number starting with 20. So for example, if I know how to say 30, I can say 32 by combining the words 30 and 2 together. So let's learn these new numbers. Repeat after me. Veinte, treinta, cuarenta, cincuenta, sesenta, setenta, ochenta, noventa, cien. The last number that we should look at is 1000 or mil. So now that we know how to say those numbers, let's look at combining these new words that we learned to form higher numbers. Like mentioned before, we can combine all of the numbers we learned to form other numbers. So for example, if I want to say the number 33, I can combine the words 30 and 3 together to say 33 or treinta y tres. Similarly, if I wanted to say 62, I could say sesenta y dos. Notice that I put the word y in between sesenta and dos. Y means and, so the direct translation is 60 and 2. This is how you combine numbers. We can also use our numbers to say numbers higher than 100. For example, if I wanted to say 200, I could say doscientos. Or if I wanted to say 253, I could say doscientos cincuenta y tres. Cientos is the plural version of cien. Lastly, let's look at what a thousand can mean. If I wanted to say two thousand, I could combine the word for two and thousand to say dos mil. If I wanted to say fourteen hundred, I could say mil cuatrocientos. Make sense? If this lesson feels a bit overwhelming, don't worry, we'll have more practice with other numbers later. For now, let's learn a bit of vocab around time. Repeat after me. Hour is hora. Minute is minuto. Second is segundo. And lastly, clock is relo. Okay, now that we have learned numbers and vocab around time, we need to know how to talk about time. How can we answer the question, ¿Qué hora es? Or, what time is it? To tell someone what time it is, we use the verb ser. To say almost any time on the clock, we will use the conjugation son because any number above one is plural. So for example, if we wanted to say it is two o'clock, we would say, son las dos. However, there is one exception to this rule. If we wanted to say it is one o'clock, we would say, es la una. This is because one is singular. So in other words, the two conjugations of ser that we will use to tell time is son and es. You probably also noticed that when I said son las dos or es la una, I used the articles la and las. Directly translated, we are saying it is the two or it is the one. I know this sounds a bit funny, but remember that Spanish grammar does not always exactly mirror that of English. So as you could probably guess, we use las for all numbers above one and la for one. So when telling time, we're going to use first the correct conjugation of ser, son or es, and then the article, la or las, and then the hour, which will be a number. So if I wanted to say it's 1215, we would say, son las doce y quince. In other words, we combine the hour with the minutes with y or and. Now if I wanted to say it's 1230, I could say, son las doce y treinta or son las doce y media. Media denotes the half an hour mark. Make sense so far? Let's get some practice and I'm sure things will start to click. In this activity, I will ask you, ¿Qué hora es? or what time is it? It will be your job to look at the clock and answer my question. Feel free to pause the video if you feel you need more time to think about an answer and generate a response. Otherwise, let's get started. ¿Qué hora es? If you said, son las ocho y quince, you are correct. ¿Qué hora es? If you said, son las doce y cuarenta y siete, you are correct. ¿Qué hora es? If you said, es la una, you are correct. ¿Qué hora es? If you said, son las doce y cinco, you are correct. ¿Qué hora es? If you said, son las dos y veinte y nueve, you are correct. ¿Qué hora es? If you said, son las tres y treinta, or son las tres y media, you are correct. ¿Qué hora es? If you said, son las once y treinta y seis, you are correct. ¿Qué hora es? If you said, son las tres y doce, you are correct. ¿Qué hora es? If you said, son las once y veinte y cinco, you are correct. Good job! You have now completed this activity.