Now that we have already seen sharp times in another post, let’s add minutes after the hour. Remember:
¿QUÉ HORA ES?
WHAT TIME IS (IT)?
1:00 → ES LA UNA
(IT) IS THE ONE
→ (IT’S ONE)
2:00 → SON LAS DOS
ARE THE DOS
→ (IT’S TWO)
Let’s add minutes in the time:
2:05 → SON LAS DOS Y CINCO
ARE THE TWO AND FIVE
→ (IT’S TWO, FIVE MINUTES)
◊ Just adding Y (and) after the hour, and the minutes that we are going to tell. Easy right?
5:09 → SON LAS CINCO Y NUEVE
ARE THE FIVE AND NINE
→ (IT’S FIVE, NINE MINUTES)
If we keep giving more minutes to the clock and we reach to :15, as in English, we do have a name to express that. In English you name it –QUARTER-, and, in Spanish it is named –CUARTO-, which actually, it is completely the same concept, but, we just build it in the sentence in a different order. 1/4 is a -QUARTER- of the total:
2:15 → SON LAS DOS Y CUARTO
ARE THE TWO AND QUARTER
→ (IT’S QUARTER, PAST TWO)
Let’s keep adding minutes to the clock:
1:25 → ES LA UNA Y VEINTICINCO
(IT) IS THE ONE AND TWENTY-FIVE
→ (IT’S ONE, TWENTY-FIVE)
And adding a bit more minutes to the clock, we have reached :30; as in English, we do have a name to express that. In English you name it –HALF-, and, in Spanish is named –MEDIO– which actually, it is completely the same concept, but we just build it in the sentence in a different order. 1/2 is -HALF- of the total:
6:30 → SON LAS SEIS Y MEDIA
ARE THE SIX AND HALF
→ (IT’S HALF, PAST SIX)
◊ Note:
MEDIA is grammatically an adjective that gives information about the noun feminine/singular HORA; MEDIA HORA → HALF HOUR. We do not tell the noun HORA because it is already clearly known that it refers to it, so, we just keep the adjective MEDIA (feminine/singular) that it is needed to specify the time.
In the following post, we are going to keep adding minutes to the clock; from 30 minutes onwards. We will see a very Spanish counting time style, again! 😉
