Telling the time

In one line

Il est + number + heure(s) — and for halves and quarters French has two completely separate systems: one everyday, one official.

The table

The subtraction half will feel familiar: English does it too. "A quarter to four", "ten to four" — English also looks forward to the next hour and takes away. French says moins, "minus", and otherwise behaves identically.

What is genuinely new is how routine the 24-hour clock is. In English it belongs to the military and the railways. In France it is on every ticket, every shop door, every appointment: Le magasin ferme à 19h. You will read it far more often than you will hear it — in speech people still say sept heures du soir.

After the half hour, French looks at the next hour and subtracts.

Asking

à for when something happens

That à is obligatory, because trois heures on its own is only a number. Adverbs that already mean "at that time" take nothing:

Je pars à huit heures et je reviens demain. — one takes à, the other does not.

The full rule is in prepositions-temps.

The details exams test

When demi takes an e

quart with and without le

There is no logic to the asymmetry; it is simply so.

heure is always written

English can drop the noun — "it's three", "I'll come at half four". French cannot:

❌ Il est trois. ✅ Il est trois heures.

And it takes an s from two upwards: une heure but deux heures.

Parts of the day

In the everyday system they are added to remove ambiguity:

trois heures du matin — three in the morning trois heures de l'après-midi — three in the afternoon huit heures du soir — eight in the evening

French has no a.m. and no p.m. Those abbreviations are not used at all. Either give the 24-hour form (quinze heures) or add du matin / de l'après-midi / du soir.

Writing the time

The h takes the place of the colon and is always lowercase.

Examples

Common mistakes

Why heure is feminine but midi is masculine