HOW TO TELL THE TIME IN ITALIAN

In this free lesson we teach you how to ask and tell the time in Italian.

The first thing to keep in mind is that the word for “hour” in Italian is feminine.

With that in mind, let’s start!

HOURS IN ITALIAN

Telling the time in Italian is pretty simple if you already know Italian numbers between 1 and 24.

Below you can find all the names of the hours using both a 12h clock (which is more common in informal settings) and a 24h clock (mostly used in official contexts).

As already mentioned, keep in mind that when you’re talking about hours, you should add a feminine definite article before the number (except for “mezzogiorno” and “mezzanotte”, which do not want an article).

Also, notice that the number one “uno” becomes feminine (“l’una”).

As you can see, if you’re using the 12h clock system, sometimes it’s necessary to be as clear as possible, so you might want to add “del mattino/del pomeriggio/di sera/di notte” (in the morning/in the afternoon/in the evening/in the night) to avoid confusion.

You can say “del mattino” or “di mattina“: the meaning doesn’t change.

Midnight and Midday are almost never called “le dodici”:
in Italian, we say “mezzanotte” and “mezzogiorno”.

MINUTES AND SECONDS

To say minutes, simply add the word “minuti” after the numbers 2-59. To say “1 minute”, which is singular, you simply say “un minuto”.

The same happens with seconds (secondo/secondi).

SPECIFIC WORDS & PHRASES

There are also some special expressions referring to specific hours. You can find them in the table below, along with an example for each of them.

ASKING & TELLING THE TIME

Now, let’s move to something more practical: how to ask and tell the time in Italian.

These are the most common ways to ask for the time:

To tell the time, you simply say:

You can choose to omit the verb “to be”.

But, if you put it, remember that “una”, “mezzogiorno” and “mezzanotte” are singular (so you should say è), while all the other hours are plural (so you should say sono).

As in English, you usually omit the word “minuti”.

AT WHAT TIME SOMETHING HAPPENS

Now that you know how to tell the time, if you want to tell what time something happened, happens, or will happen, or to fix an appointment, you just need to remember to put the preposition “a” before the time.

Since hours are always preceded by a definite article, the preposition a and the article will fuse together and form a “preposizione articolata” (articulated preposition), like in the examples below.

Now let’s see how to put them in a sentence:

If you need to ask the time of an event, you should say: “a che ora…?”
For example: “A che ora inizia la partita?” (At what time does the match start?)

DURATION

We saw how to give the time and how to set a time for an appointment, but what happens when you need to talk about a duration of time?

In that case, you will need to use the word ora / ore, and some other words:

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