“Que horas são?” What time is it?

Today we are talking about how to tell the time in Portuguese. So let’s start with on the hour examples.

Here we have,

“É uma hora.” I’m answering this question, “Que horas são?” What time is it? And notice that in the question we have “horas”, hours.

Hora, it’s a feminine word. A hora. Horas, plural. As horas. And this is to be, verb ser, plural. Plural because we are using the plural noun horas. So it’s matching. “Que horas são?” What time is it? So the answer,

this is a little bit of an exception. One, because it’s singular, and therefore, the verb in the singular form, “É uma hora.” Now, hora, so you see I’m also using hora in the answer. It’s within parentheses because we just leave it out. Normally, we just say, “É uma.”

So this is, “São três.” So you see now it’s plural, três horas, and therefore the verb são. Okay? So it’s three, “São três.” Again, we don’t need to say horas. São três horas. São três.

“São nove.” Again, plural, são, são. This is one. “É uma.” Notice that I’m using uma because uma hora. Again, hora is a feminine noun, and therefore, uma.

“São onze.” So you see

the logic here. “São doze” now we have noon, meio-dia. Again, now we have, it’s a singular noun, meio-dia. It’s masculine, o meio-dia. É meio-dia. “Que horas são?” É meio-dia. São doze horas. São doze.

The same way, meia-noite, midnight. “Que horas são?” É meia-noite. Now, let’s add the minutes.

So 1:15, “Que horas são?” É uma e quinze. Now we have this and. So we say e. Uma, hour, and then minutes, e in between. Uma e quinze. Notice that I’m now putting the verb within parentheses because we also leave it out oftentimes. So we just need to say the figures, uma e quinze. “Que horas são?”

Três e trinta. São três e trinta. “Que horas são?”

Nove e quarenta e cinco. “Que horas são?” Onze e vinte.

Now, the quarter and half, we have in Portuguese, um quarto. Half, meia. “Que horas são?” Uma e um quarto. So in English we say, quarter past

1. In Portuguese, we start with the hour, and then we add the minutes. Uma e um quarto.

“Que horas são?” Três e meia. Again, in English, half past 3. In Portuguese, the hour comes first. Três e meia.

Now, a quarter to,

we have two options. This last one resembles more the English. Um quarto para as 10. This is literally a quarter to 10.

This is the other version. Dez menos um quarto. We start with the hour, 10, and then minus one quarter. You see the logic? Ten minus one quarter. Dez menos um quarto. They are both common, so pick the one you feel more comfortable with.

Either dez menos um quarto or um quarto para as 10. Now with AM/PM,

we have, so AM in the morning, that’s da manhã. So here we have

nove e vinte da manhã. Okay? “Que horas são?” São três e cinquenta e cinco da tarde. So in the afternoon, da tarde. “Que horas são?” São sete e cinquenta da tarde

/ noite. So I’m

using tarde for / noite because we don’t really have a word for evening. We use either tarde, noite, depending on the context. So, say that it’s summer and at this time it’s still day. Maybe we say, sete e cinquenta da tarde. In the winter, it’s already dark. Maybe we say, sete e cinquenta da noite, in the evening. “Que horas são?” Dez e quarenta da noite. So again, we have to contextualize when we tell the time, AM/PM. We have da manhã, in the morning, da tarde, in the afternoon. In the evening, either da tarde or da noite. At night, da noite. And again, when we have this

time almost turning to the next hour, so here it’s five to 4, we have the option to say five

to 4. Cinco para as quatro da tarde. Okay? The same here, 10 to 8, dez para as oito. Dez para.

20 to 11. Vinte para as onze.

Yeah?

And you remember that we have the other version that we say the next hour minus. So here it would be quatro menos cinco da tarde, oito menos dez da tarde, onze menos vinte da noite. So don’t get confused. There are all these alternatives.

I’m linking an article below, so you can go there and take your time just to go through all these variations. All right? Now,

in more formal contexts, it’s quite usual in Portugal to use the 24-hour clock. Okay? And when we use the 24-hour clock, normally we want to use these

a quarter past, half past. We just say all the figures, the numbers. So nove e quarenta e cinco. So this is 1:00 PM, right? Treze e dezoito, dezessete e trinta, vinte e cinquenta e cinco. These are the essentials on how to say the time in Portuguese. I will see you in the next lesson. Até breve.