Telling the time Lesson 12 of the french course of Mova's primary school: 14 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: the lesson at school .
0 To ask the time in French you say Quelle heure est-il ?, and the answer is Il est trois heures, word for word "it is three hours", which simply means three o'clock. 1 Heure is a feminine word, so one o'clock is une heure, and from two o'clock on it takes an s: deux heures. 3 Picture a Paris station: the board says 14h30, because French timetables use the 24-hour clock; take 12 away and you know it is half past two in the afternoon. 4 Noon and midnight have their own words, midi and minuit, and the day is split into le matin, l'après-midi and le soir. 6 heure is feminine: Il est une heure (one o'clock) has no s; Il est deux heures (two o'clock) has an s. 7 French timetables, cinemas and shops use the 24-hour clock written with h: 14h30 is quatorze heures trente, half past two in the afternoon. 9 moins means minus: cinq heures moins le quart is quarter to five, cinq heures moins dix is ten to five. 10 midi means noon and minuit means midnight; le Midi is also a name for the south of France. 11 à + a time means "at": Le cours commence à neuf heures (the lesson starts at nine); neuf heures sounds like "nuh-VUR". 12 le matin is the morning, l'après-midi (after-midday) is the afternoon and le soir is the evening, from about 6 pm. 13 Debout ! ("duh-BOO") means "Get up!"; word for word it means standing. 14 À quelle heure ? means "At what time?"; in France dinner is often late, around 19h30 or 20h. 15 With a clock face people often say trois heures moins vingt (twenty to three); with a digital clock deux heures quarante (2:40) is fine too. 16 Slang here: "like" at the end (Yorkshire) adds a shrug; "wee" (Northern Ireland) means small; "sure" (Ireland) starts a sentence; "y'all" (Texas) means you all; "ah'm no" (Scotland) means I'm not; "arvo" (Australia) means afternoon; "my lover" (Bath) means dear. ← previous Dates and birthdaysnext → Weather and seasons↑ back to French This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/french/12-telling-the-time/