Time in Spanish: How to Tell and Ask the Time

How to ask the time in Spanish

The single most useful phrase for time in Spanish is the question that starts every conversation about it: ¿Qué hora es? That means "What time is it?" even though, word for word, it says "What hour is it?" The word hora means "hour," and Spanish uses the singular here to ask about the time in general. Say it out loud a few times, because you will use it constantly, and it is the natural way to ask a stranger, a friend, or a shopkeeper what time it is.

You will also hear a plural version, ¿Qué horas son?, which is common in many parts of Latin America. Both are correct and both are understood everywhere, so you can pick whichever feels natural and not worry about the region. If you want a single phrase that works from Madrid to Mexico City to Buenos Aires, ¿Qué hora es? is the safe choice, and native speakers will never blink at it.

There is a second, closely related question you need almost as often, and beginners frequently confuse it with the first. To ask "At what time?" something happens, you say ¿A qué hora? The little word a at the front changes the meaning from "what time is it right now" to "at what time does this event occur." So ¿A qué hora empieza la película? is "At what time does the movie start?" and ¿A qué hora abre la tienda? is "At what time does the shop open?" Keep these two straight from the beginning: ¿Qué hora es? asks the current time, and ¿A qué hora...? asks when something is scheduled.

A few polite softeners are worth knowing too, because you often ask a stranger. Perdón, ¿qué hora es? means "Excuse me, what time is it?" and ¿Me puede decir la hora, por favor? is a more formal "Can you tell me the time, please?" These are the phrases that make you sound like a considerate traveler rather than someone barking a demand, and they cost you nothing but a few extra syllables.

Es la una vs son las: the core rule

Here is the rule that confuses more beginners than any other part of telling time in Spanish, and once it clicks the whole system gets easy. To say what time it is, you use the verb ser ("to be"), and Spanish makes the verb agree with the number of the hour. One is singular, so it takes the singular verb. Every other hour is plural, so it takes the plural verb. That is the entire rule, and it splits into just two patterns.

For one o'clock, you say es la una. The es is the singular "it is," and la una is "the one" (with una feminine because hora, the hidden noun, is feminine). So es la una literally reads "it is the one," meaning "it is one o'clock." This is the only hour that uses es, so treat it as the special case you memorize on its own.

For every other hour, from two through twelve, you say son las. The son is the plural "they are," and las is the plural "the." So son las dos is "it is two o'clock," son las siete is "it is seven o'clock," and son las doce is "it is twelve o'clock." In English we say "it is" for every hour, but Spanish switches to a plural "they are" because it is really saying something closer to "they are the two hours," with the hours counted as a plural quantity.

Notice that the words la and las are feminine because the noun hiding behind the number is hora or horas, which is a feminine word. You never actually say hora in these sentences, but its gender still controls the article, which is why it is always la una and never el uno. This is a small detail, but getting it right is a big part of sounding natural.

Because this rule matters so much, here is the split laid out plainly. It carries through everything else in this guide, so it is worth a moment to lock in.

The same singular versus plural split follows you into every sentence with minutes attached. When you say "a quarter past one" you keep the singular, es la una y cuarto, but "a quarter past three" is plural, son las tres y cuarto. The rule never bends: one o'clock is always singular, and every other hour is always plural, no matter what minutes you tack onto the end.

The hours you need to know

Telling time is impossible without the numbers one through twelve, so before we add minutes, make sure the hours themselves are solid. These are the same cardinal numbers you already use for counting, and if you want a deeper walk through the whole number system, our guide to Spanish numbers covers them from one into the thousands. For telling time, though, you only need one through twelve, plus a couple of special words for noon and midnight that we get to later.

Here are the twelve hours with the full o'clock phrase, so you see them the way you will actually say them. Read each one aloud, because saying the time is a physical skill and not just a fact to recognize on a page.

A quick note on the number one when it is used for the hour: it appears as una, not uno. The masculine counting form is uno, but because the hidden noun hora is feminine, the number shifts to its feminine form una. This is the same reason you say una casa ("one house") rather than uno casa. So it is always la una, never la uno, and getting this small point right is one of the quiet markers of someone who has learned their basics well.

For the minutes you are about to attach, you will need the numbers past twelve as well, up to fifty nine, since a full time like "two twenty five" uses veinticinco. Those higher numbers follow the ordinary counting pattern, so if your numbers one through sixty are solid you already have everything the minutes require. If they are shaky, spend a session on the numbers first, because every single time expression leans on them.

Minutes past the hour with y

Once you can say the bare hour, adding minutes past the hour is easy: you say the hour, then the word y ("and"), then the minutes. So the structure is simply "hour + y + minutes," which reads almost exactly like the English "two and ten" for ten past two. The word y is pronounced like the "ee" in "see," a single clean vowel, and it is doing the job of the English "past" even though it literally means "and."

Look at how the pattern fills in across a range of times. Each one keeps the singular or plural verb from the hour, then adds the minutes with y.

You use y for minutes running from just after the hour up to the half hour, which in practice means from one minute past to thirty minutes past. So son las cuatro y cinco is "five past four," son las cuatro y veinte is "twenty past four," and son las cuatro y media is "half past four." Everything in that first half of the hour attaches to the hour you just passed, with y gluing the minutes on.

You can absolutely say the minutes as plain numbers, and many speakers do, especially in Latin America and in any digital or casual context. Son las siete y cuarenta ("seven forty") is perfectly normal and completely clear. The y plus menos system in the next section is more traditional and very common in Spain, but you will never be misunderstood if you just read the numbers off the clock, the way a digital display shows them. Both are correct, and it is worth being comfortable hearing and saying either one.

Minutes to the hour with menos

Once the clock passes the half hour, the traditional way to tell time switches gears. Instead of counting up from the hour you just left, you count down toward the hour that is coming, using the word menos ("minus" or "less"). The structure becomes "the coming hour + menos + the minutes remaining." So for a time like 4:50, you look ahead to five o'clock and say how many minutes are missing: son las cinco menos diez, literally "five minus ten," meaning "ten to five."

This is exactly how English works when we say "ten to five" or "quarter to six," we just use "to" where Spanish uses menos. The mental move is the same: past the half hour, stop counting up and start counting down to the next hour. Here is the pattern across several times, so you can see the countdown in action.

Pay close attention to the fourth row, because it hides the singular rule again. The time 12:55 is five minutes before one o'clock, and since the hour you are counting down to is one, the verb goes singular: es la una menos cinco. The hour you name is the one that is coming, so when that coming hour is one o'clock, you switch back to es la una even though it is nearly one in the afternoon or the morning. This catches people out constantly, so slow down whenever the next hour is one.

A handy rule of thumb keeps you on the right side of the switch. Use y from the o'clock up to and including the half hour, then use menos from just after the half hour until the next o'clock. In other words, the first thirty one minutes belong to the hour behind you, joined with y, and the last twenty nine belong to the hour ahead of you, joined with menos. Once that switch becomes automatic, you can tell any time on the clock without hesitating.

As with minutes past, you are free to skip the countdown entirely and just say the digital reading. Son las cuatro y cincuenta ("four fifty") means the same thing as son las cinco menos diez, and both are understood everywhere. The menos style sounds more traditional and is the default in Spain and in careful speech, but no one will be confused if you read the number straight. Learn to understand menos so you can follow native speakers, and use whichever style you find easier to produce yourself.

Cuarto, media, and en punto

Three special words make telling time sound natural, and they map neatly onto the English "quarter," "half," and "on the dot." Learn these three and you cover the times people mention most, since half past and quarter past come up far more often than, say, seventeen minutes past.

Cuarto, the quarter

Cuarto means "quarter" and stands in for fifteen minutes. You attach it exactly like a number, so a quarter past uses y cuarto and a quarter to uses menos cuarto. Thus son las cinco y cuarto is "a quarter past five," and son las seis menos cuarto is "a quarter to six." You can always say y quince instead of y cuarto if you prefer the plain number, and both are correct, but cuarto is the everyday choice most speakers reach for.

Media, the half

Media means "half" and stands in for thirty minutes. It only ever appears with y, since half past sits at the top of the "counting up" range, so you say y media and never menos media. So son las ocho y media is "half past eight," and es la una y media is "half past one." Notice the word is media with an a at the end, agreeing with the feminine hora, not medio. This feminine ending trips people up, so fix it in your memory now: it is always y media.

En punto, on the dot

En punto means "exactly" or "on the dot," and you add it after a whole hour to stress that there are no stray minutes. So son las nueve en punto is "it is nine o'clock exactly," and es la una en punto is "it is one o'clock sharp." It is optional and used only for emphasis, the way we might say "nine o'clock sharp" in English when we want to underline punctuality. You will hear it a lot around appointments, schedules, and anything where being on time matters.

De la mañana, tarde, and noche

Spanish does not use "am" and "pm" in everyday speech. Instead, when you need to make clear which part of the day you mean, you add a phrase that names the time of day: de la mañana for the morning, de la tarde for the afternoon and early evening, and de la noche for the night. These phrases work like the English "in the morning," "in the afternoon," and "at night," and you tack them onto the end of the time.

So son las ocho de la mañana is "eight in the morning," son las cuatro de la tarde is "four in the afternoon," and son las diez de la noche is "ten at night." The word de here means "of" or "in the," and the phrase pins down whether you are talking about the morning eight or the evening eight, since Spanish speakers overwhelmingly think in a twelve hour clock for everyday conversation.

The rough boundaries between these parts of the day are worth knowing, though they are cultural rather than strict. La mañana runs from dawn until around noon. La tarde stretches from roughly midday or the early afternoon until nightfall, which in much of the Spanish speaking world can be as late as eight in the evening, later than an English speaker might expect. La noche covers the dark hours from nightfall onward. Because a Spanish afternoon reaches so far into the evening, "seven pm" is normally las siete de la tarde, not de la noche.

There is also a fourth phrase for the small hours: de la madrugada, meaning the dead of night and the hours just before dawn, roughly from one or two in the morning until first light. So son las tres de la madrugada is "three in the morning" with the flavor of "three in the wee hours." This is a lovely, precise word with no tidy English equivalent, and using it well is a mark of comfort with the language. You would use de la madrugada for a red eye flight or a very late night out, where de la mañana would feel too much like a normal, sensible morning hour.

One subtle point: use de la when you attach the part of day to a specific time, but use por la when you speak about the period in general without a clock time. So a las ocho de la mañana is "at eight in the morning," a precise time, while por la mañana is just "in the morning," a general stretch. You would say estudio por la mañana for "I study in the morning" and me levanto a las siete de la mañana for "I get up at seven in the morning." Getting de la and por la right is a small polish that makes your time expressions sound native.

Noon, midnight, and the 24 hour clock

Two moments of the day get their own special words. Noon is mediodía, literally "midday," and midnight is medianoche, literally "midnight." So es mediodía means "it is noon" and es medianoche means "it is midnight." Notice these two take the singular es, since each names a single moment rather than a plural count of hours. You can also just say son las doce del mediodía ("twelve noon") or son las doce de la noche ("twelve at night") if you want to be fully explicit about which twelve you mean.

Alongside the everyday twelve hour clock, Spanish uses the twenty four hour clock heavily in formal and written contexts: transport timetables, television schedules, official appointments, invitations, and anything printed. On a train ticket or a cinema listing you will see times like 14:30, 20:00, or 22:15, and these are read as plain numbers. So 14:30 is las catorce treinta ("fourteen thirty"), 20:00 is las veinte horas ("twenty hundred," literally "the twenty hours"), and 22:15 is las veintidós quince ("twenty two fifteen").

The key thing to understand is that the twenty four hour clock and the twelve hour clock are used in different settings, not mixed. In casual speech, when a friend asks ¿Qué hora es?, you answer with the twelve hour system and a part of the day: son las ocho de la noche, not son las veinte. But when you read a schedule, book a flight, or note an official meeting, the twenty four hour numbers are the norm. Being able to switch between the two, understanding las veinte horas on a poster and saying las ocho de la tarde to a friend, is exactly the flexibility a real speaker needs.

Here is how the two systems line up for a handful of afternoon and evening times, so the mapping is concrete.

Saying when things happen with a qué hora

Telling the current time is only half the job. Just as often you need to say when something happens: when a class starts, when a shop opens, when you will meet a friend. For that you use the preposition a ("at") plus the hour, following the same singular and plural split. So a la una is "at one o'clock" (singular) and a las dos is "at two o'clock" (plural). The pattern mirrors es la una and son las dos, just with a in place of the verb.

To ask the question, you use ¿A qué hora? as we saw earlier, and the answer starts with a la or a las. Watch how a full exchange works:

• ¿A qué hora empieza la clase? means "At what time does the class start?" and the answer A las nueve de la mañana means "At nine in the morning."
• ¿A qué hora comemos? means "At what time do we eat?" and A las dos y media means "At half past two."
• ¿A qué hora abre el banco? means "At what time does the bank open?" and A las ocho en punto means "At eight o'clock sharp."
• Nos vemos a la una means "We'll see each other at one o'clock," using the singular a la una.

Everything you learned about minutes, y, menos, cuarto, media, and the parts of the day carries straight over. You simply lead with a la or a las instead of es la or son las. So "at a quarter past seven in the evening" is a las siete y cuarto de la tarde, and "at ten to nine at night" is a las nueve menos diez de la noche. If you can tell the time, you can already say when things happen, because the machinery underneath is identical.

This is where telling time meets real conversation, and it is a good moment to connect it to the wider grammar of asking questions. Words like qué, cuándo, and a qué hora are the backbone of everyday exchanges, and our guide to Spanish question words lays out the full set so you can move beyond time into asking about anything. Pairing question words with the verb forms you meet in our guide to Spanish verbs is what turns isolated phrases into flowing talk.

Worked examples and a reference table

Rules stick best when you see them applied, so here is a run of full times worked out one by one, mixing everything from the guide. Read each Spanish sentence aloud and check it against the English before moving on, because the goal is production, not just recognition.

• 1:00 is Es la una. The lone singular hour.
• 1:10 is Es la una y diez. Singular hour, minutes added with y.
• 2:15 is Son las dos y cuarto. Plural hour, quarter past.
• 3:30 is Son las tres y media. Half past, always y media.
• 4:45 is Son las cinco menos cuarto. Past the half, so count down to five.
• 6:50 is Son las siete menos diez. Ten minutes before seven.
• 7:00 am is Son las siete de la mañana. Morning made explicit.
• 12:00 noon is Es mediodía. Or son las doce del mediodía to be fully clear.
• 8:20 pm is Son las ocho y veinte de la noche. Evening, twenty past.
• 12:55 is Es la una menos cinco. The coming hour is one, so back to singular.
• 3:00 sharp is Son las tres en punto. On the dot.
• At 9:30 am is A las nueve y media de la mañana. Leading with a las.

Now a compact reference table you can keep coming back to. It gathers the common times across the whole clock so you can scan for the pattern you need, from the o'clock through the quarters, halves, and the switch from y to menos.

If you are building your first phrases and this feels like a lot at once, that is normal, and time expressions are exactly the kind of practical, high frequency material worth drilling early. Our Spanish for beginners guide slots telling time into a sensible order alongside greetings, numbers, and the present tense, so you learn it as part of a whole rather than a floating list of rules.

Common mistakes with time in Spanish

A handful of errors show up again and again with learners, and knowing them in advance saves you from cementing bad habits. Here are the ones worth guarding against, each with the fix.

1. Using son las for one o'clock. The most common slip by far. One o'clock is es la una, singular, never son las una. Remember that one is the single exception and every other hour is plural.
2. Saying y medio instead of y media. Half past is always media with a feminine a, agreeing with the hidden hora. Medio with an o is wrong here.
3. Forgetting the singular in menos countdowns to one. A time like 12:50 counts down to one o'clock, so it is es la una menos diez, singular, even though it is nearly one. The hour you name controls the verb.
4. Mixing up de la and por la. Use de la with a clock time (a las ocho de la mañana) and por la for a general period (por la mañana). They are not interchangeable.
5. Calling early evening de la noche. In Spanish the afternoon runs late, so six or seven in the evening is usually de la tarde, not de la noche. Night language starts after dark.
6. Saying el uno for the hour. The number one becomes feminine una before the hidden feminine hora, so it is la una, never el uno.
7. Confusing ¿Qué hora es? with ¿A qué hora? The first asks the current time, the second asks when an event happens. The little a changes everything, so keep them apart.

Notice that most of these come back to two things: the singular versus plural split around the hour, and the small agreement details like feminine una and media. Nail those and you eliminate the majority of time errors in one go. The rest is just practice at speed, which is where most of the real learning happens, out loud, in conversation, rather than on the page. If your broader plan needs shaping, our guide on how to learn Spanish puts vocabulary like this in its proper place alongside listening, speaking, and grammar.

How SPAIKING helps you say the time out loud

Everything in this guide is knowable in an afternoon. The hard part is not knowing the rules but producing them instantly when someone actually asks you ¿Qué hora es? and you have half a second to answer before the pause gets awkward. That gap between understanding the rule on a page and saying it smoothly in real time is exactly what SPAIKING is built to close.

Here is how it fits. After you read a guide like this one, you open SPAIKING and have a real spoken conversation with an AI partner, one that asks you the time, asks when you get up, asks what time your imaginary flight leaves, and makes you produce the answers out loud, on the spot. Because the AI actually responds, you get the two way pressure a worksheet can never give you: a follow up question you did not script, that you have to understand and answer in the moment. That pressure is precisely what drags son las tres menos cuarto from "I can work it out slowly" to "I can just say it."

The parts that make it work for something as practical as telling time:

• It corrects you in real time. When you slip and say son las una or y medio, SPAIKING catches it and shows you the fix in the moment, so the mistake never has a chance to harden into a habit.
• It is always available. No scheduling a tutor or a language partner. Finish this guide and practice telling time out loud seconds later, while it is fresh in your head.
• It is judgment free. You can fumble the same time ten times over and the AI just keeps the conversation going, which is what finally gets nervous beginners to speak instead of staying silent.
• It works the exact phrases you need. Ask it to quiz you on times, appointments, and schedules, and you drill the real sentences you will use when traveling, making plans, or catching a train.

Telling time is one of the first genuinely useful things you can do in a new language, the kind of small win that makes the whole effort feel real. Read the rules here, then go say them out loud until they come without thinking. You can start on the pricing page and turn these patterns into speech you can actually produce when a Spanish speaker turns to you and asks what time it is.