![]() Here’s useful vocabulary related to key times during the day: Chinese in Chinese we say “in the morning,” “in the afternoon” or “in the evening.” 一点半 (yī diǎn bàn) - half past one (1:30) How to Say A.M. Let’s put it all together and go through some examples of telling time. We’re now familiar with the number system and how to tell hours and minutes. Just to note, in Chinese, there’s no “ten to” or “ten past.” Similarly, in Chinese, there’s also no “quarter to.” There’s only “quarter after.” Interesting, I know-that’s just the way it is! How to Tell Any Time in Chinese To indicate quarters, we say 一刻 (yī kè) - quarter hour. To say “half past,” we use 半 (bàn) - half. So, it’s correct to say, “八点十分” (bā diǎn shí fēn), literally “eight o’clock ten minutes.” Half and Quarter Hours in Chinese Note that, whereas in English it’s fine to omit the word “minutes” (for 8:10, we say “eight ten”), in Chinese it sounds more natural to always include 分 and say “minutes.” The twenties, thirties, forties and fifties follow a pattern like the teens.īased on what we’ve learned above, here are some examples of how to tell minutes: Teen digits in Chinese are “10+x,” with x being the number added to 10. To ensure that you’ll always know how to talk about minutes, let’s review the digits up to 60. To tell minutes in Chinese, use the formula: Now, we can easily tell hours in Chinese. * 两 (liǎng) can also be used in place of 二. To review, here are the digits 1 through 12 in Chinese: Chinese ![]() Here we’ll revisit them as a review, especially since there’s a special “two” we use in telling time, which is different from the “two” we use in counting. ![]() If you already know your Chinese numbers, that’s great. To tell the hour, simply say:īut first, to do that, we need to remember the numbers in Chinese. We’ll begin by learning how to tell hours in Chinese. This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that youĬlick here to get a copy. In this post, you’ll learn how to tell time in Chinese, ask for the time, count minutes and hours and more. With the essential skill of time-telling, you’ll be better able to manage your schedule and coordinate with others. Knowing how to tell and ask for the time helps you arrange all social occasions from romantic dates to business meetings. So the next time you look at your watch, think about how to say what the time is in English and if you get stuck, use these tips to help you.( shí jiān - time) is a basic conversation skill for Chinese learners. There is one exception to this rule in that we can also say “at night”. So, we would say “in the morning”, “in the afternoon”, “in the evening”, or “in the night”. However, if we are talking about a period of the day, we use ‘in’. ‘Midday’, ‘midnight’, ‘dawn’ and ‘dusk’ all need ‘at’ before them. For example “I’ll meet you at six pm.” Special specific times of the day and night have their own names in English, we use ‘at’ with these, to. We use ‘at’ to talk about any specific time. Use ‘at’ for specific times and ‘in’ for periods of time As with ‘half past’ we can only use these with the 12-hour clock. Using these expressions sounds much more natural to a native speaker than ‘fifteen minutes past’ or ‘fifteen minutes to’. Get started for free Use ‘quarter’ for 15 minutes before or after the hourĪt X:15 and X:45, we can use the expressions ‘quarter past’ and ‘quarter to’.
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