How to tell the time in Spanish.

When a normal-speed reply blurs.

A café counter in Mexico City. Your order is ready in your head. The person behind the till says something quick and friendly and it arrives as one sound: sonlasdiezymedia. You catch diez, maybe, and nothing else. Two seconds later the moment has gone and you are nodding at something you did not understand.

That is not a memory problem. Speech does not arrive in tidy words: Son las diez y media runs together in a busy mouth, and the small words after the number are the first to disappear. You do not need the whole sentence back. You need two things: the number, and the tail that follows it - y media, menos cuarto, en punto.

This page gives you the question, the answer, and a short routine for practising a time at speaking speed. It is a set of lines you say aloud, then cover and recall, then use in an imagined scene. Times turn up everywhere in a move abroad - the technician, the café closing, a viewing, a delivery - so a small amount of practice goes a long way.

Ask with ¿Qué hora es?

Start with the question on its own. Say it aloud five times before you look at any answer. The opening mark ¿ shows where the question begins, and the accent on qué belongs there.

The polite form with tiene is the safe default with staff, a landlord or a stranger on the street. Switch to tienes only when the other person uses tú with you.

Answer with son las, and es la una.

The word hora is feminine, and Spanish treats the expression as plural for every hour except one. So one o'clock is singular, and the rest take las.

Minutes count forward with y up to the half hour. After that, many speakers count back from the next hour with menos. Both patterns are heard across the Spanish-speaking world, so learn to say one and to recognise the other.

Add de la mañana, de la tarde or de la noche when the hour alone would be ambiguous: son las diez de la mañana is clearly morning. Noon and midnight are short: Es mediodía and Es medianoche. Watch the small difference: por la mañana means in the morning in general, while de la mañana attaches to a clock time.

Catch the number at speed.

Reading a phrase and hearing it are different skills, so practise them separately. The routine below moves you from slow and clean to joined-up, which is closer to how a busy person actually speaks.

When you hear a time in real life, do not try to hold the whole sentence. Listen for three things.

Then buy yourself certainty with three words. Repeat the time back with a rising tone: ¿A las diez? This is a yes-or-no check, not a guess, and it gives the other person a chance to correct you kindly. If you still miss it, slow the exchange down: Más despacio, por favor or ¿Puede repetir, por favor?

There are more rescue lines in our guide to asking someone to repeat or slow down in Spanish.

Two scenes worth rehearsing.

The question ¿A qué hora...? asks when something happens. The answer uses a las for most hours and a la una for one o'clock. Read the learner's lines aloud first, then swap roles with the page.

Now a slower, more pressing situation: someone is coming to your flat and you need the time exactly. Notice how the learner misses it once, then asks again.

For the ordering half of that café scene, see order coffee in Spanish with a simple dialogue. For the moving side - landlord, address, delivery - our guide to Spanish for moving abroad covers the first everyday questions.

Read. Cover. Say. Check.

Read the English prompt, cover the right-hand column, say your answer aloud, then check.

• I can ask what time it is.
• I can answer with son las and with es la una.
• I can ask when something happens.
• I can repeat a time back to check it.

Use the answers whenever you need them. This is practice, not a proficiency test.

Three short sessions this week.

Short repeats beat one long evening. The IES What Works Clearinghouse practice guide on organising instruction and study recommends spacing learning over time and using quizzing to re-expose learners to key content. In plain terms: three five-minute sessions on three days, each ending with a covered recall, will serve you better than one heroic Sunday.

Day 5 of the free plan adds ¿Dónde está la estación?, which pairs naturally with asking a train or bus time. The 10 Minute Practice Planner has a weekly template for the routine, and our guide to a 10-minute Spanish practice routine explains how to keep a session that short.

Is this another app that leaves you silent?

Fair question, and worth answering plainly. There is no streak counter here, no points and no microphone. This page is text: phrases with their English, two short dialogues and a recall table. The work that turns them into speech is you saying them aloud, which is also the part an app cannot do for you.

Nothing on this page asks you to sign up first. The free 7 Day Spanish Starter Plan is five pages and you can read the whole plan on its web page. If you want the PDF and editable Word copy by email, you give a first name and an email address, and that starts four short follow-up emails on days 2, 4, 7 and 10; one of them mentions optional paid materials. You can ignore it, and every email has an unsubscribe link.

The paid options on this site are planned, not open: a starter toolkit, a four-week conversation course and a monthly practice membership. Dates and a coach have not been confirmed and booking is not open, so no checkout appears while you are reading. Our Editorial Policy explains how the Spanish is checked: by our editors, with no independent teacher review yet.

One honest limit. Nobody can promise that you will speak on your first day in Mexico City, and progress varies. What you can do today is rehearse a handful of lines until they come out without hunting for them.

Common questions.