How to Tell Time in Spanish: A Comprehensive Guide

¿Que hora es? Knowing how to tell the time in Spanish is an important, real-world thing to learn early on as a beginner student.

In this guide, we’ll show you the most common ways to tell the time in Spanish, as well as a few alternative ways you’ll sometimes hear.

Telling Time In Spanish: The Main Structure

We use the verb SER (“to be”) to tell time in Spanish.

We say:

Es la una… (one is singular)
Son las dos/tres/cuatro… (Two / Three etc. they are plural)

How do you answer what time is it in Spanish?

So for instance, if someone asks you ¿que hora es?, and it’s 2:00pm, you would say “son las dos”.

There’s a bunch of different ways to go about telling the time. Let’s start with the most popular.

Number + Number

This is the easiest and most popular way to express the time.

For 1-30 minutes we use Y (“and”) before the minutes.

Hora + y + minutos

For instance:

• 1:10 – Es la una  y  diez
• 8:05 – Son las ocho  y  cinco

You can usually drop the “son las” and just say “ocho y cinco”. The “son las” is basically the “it’s” in “it’s 8 o’clock”.

Number + Para + Number

For 31-59 minutes there are two ways that can be used:

Minutos + PARA (la/las) + Hora

For instance:

• 2:35 – Son veinticinco para las tres
• 11:45 – Son cuarto para las doce (see next section for explanation of cuarto)

This is the equivalent of saying “until” or “to” (e.g. it’s 10 to five) in English.

15 / 30 minutes

When we talk about 15 minutes before or after the time, we usually use cuarto.

• 7:15 – Son las siete y cuarto.
• 9:45 – Un cuarto para las diez.

When we talk about 30 minutes after the hour, we usually use y media.

• 8:30 – Son las ocho y media.

O’clock

Sometimes we use en punto when it’s on the hour.

• 10:00 – son las diez en punto
• 5:00 – son las cinco en punto

How to ask for the time in Spanish?

One of the most common questions to ask the time is: ¿Qué hora es?

• A: ¿Qué hora es?
• B: Son las dos y media.

The nice thing is all of these different ways of expressing the time make sense, so you don’t have to use a particular one.

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Times in Spanish: Quiz

Let’s practice. What time is it? Some clocks have multiple ways to say it, do both.

1. Son las __ __ __ __ __ y __ __ __ __ __ __        2. Son las __ __ __ __ __ y__ __ __ __ __ __

3. Son las __ __ __ __ y __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

4. Son las __ __ __ __ y __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

5. Son las __ __ __ __ para las __ __ __ __ __

6. Son las __ __ __ __ __ y __ __ __ __ __ __

7. Son las __ __ __ __ y __ __ __ __ __ __

8. Son las __ __ __ __ y __ __ __ __ __ __ __ 9. Son las __ __ __ __ y __ __ __ __ __

10. Son las __ __ __ __ 11. Son las __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __

12. Son las __ __ __ __ y __ __ __ __ __

Key:

1. Son las nueve y quince
2. Son las nueve y cuarto
3. Son las ocho y veinticinco
4. Son las seis y cincuenta
5. Son las diez para las siete
6. Son las cinco y veinte
7. Son las once y veinte
8. Son las doce y treinta
9. Son las doce y media
10. Son las tres
11. Son las tres en punto
12.  Son las once y cinco

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