Japanese Day 23 – Telling The Time

Today we are looking at how to tell the time in Japanese. This is all pretty straight forward, but very good information to know. As we have already covered how to count, you should find the extra little bit of information I give you here makes everything just fall into place, so lets get started.

時- “O’Clock”

The first thing we need to learn is時, which is pronouncedじ (ji) and is the word for “o’clock”.

So very simply 2時  or二時  (ni ji) – is 2 o’clock.

If you remember from the numbers, you can say some of them a few different ways, and this is one time when that matters, so I will quickly go through 1-12 so you know exactly what version of each number you should be using.

1 o’clock – 一時 (ichi ji)

2 o’clock – 二時 (ni ji)

3 o’clock – 三時 (san ji)

4 o’clock – 四時- (yo ni ) – This is always Yo when talking about time.

5 o’clock – 五時 (go ni)

6 o’clock – 六時 (roku ni)

7 o’clock – 七時 (shichi ni)  – This is always Shichi when talking about time.

8 o’clock – 八時 (hachi ni)

9 o’clock – 九時 (ku ni) – This is always Ku when talking about time.

10 o’clock – 十時 (juu ni)

11 o’clock – 十一時  (juu ichi ji)

12 o’clock – 十二時 (juu ni ji)

Am and Pm

Just like in English, you can say if the time you are talking about is in the Am or Pm.

You simply use the following:

午前 (ごぜん) (gozen) – A.M / Morning

午後 (ごご) (gogo) – P.M / Afternoon 

However, this actually goes at the start, rather than at the end like it does in English. So while things are a little backwards in Japanese, it should still make sense.  

So it would be 午前 六 時 – Am, 6 o’clock. …or 6am.

Saying The Minutes In Japanese

To say the exact time, we need to add the minutes, which works exactly like it does English. You say the hour, then the minutes.

The word for “Minutes” in Japanese is ふん (fun), but there is a little annoying thing we need to be aware of.

Sometimes when you combine the numbers with this word for “minutes” the first letter has to change. Remember when we were counting form 10-19 and some numbers did this, they had to be pronounced slightly differently …it’s the same here.

So let’s look at them below.

1 minute	いっぷん (ippun)
2 minutes	にふん (nifun)
3 minutes	さんぷん (sanpun)
4 minutes	よんぷん (yonpun)
5 minutes	ごふん (gofun)
6 minutes	ろっぷん (roppun)
7 minutes	ななふん (nanafun)
8 minutes	はっぷん (happun)
9 minutes	きゅうふん (kyuufun)
10 minutes	じゅっぷん (juppun)

Luckily, we only need to remember those sound changes for the numbers 1-10! Everything after this works as expected, you just say the number, followed by ふん (fun),

For example, 34 minutes is さんじゅうよんぷん (san juu yon pun) and 40 minutes is よんじゅっぷん (yon juu ppun).

Half Past

The Japanese also use “half past” when describing the time.

They do this by adding半  (はん)(san) –  after the time.

So it would look like this:  ごぜん  ろく  じ  はん (Of course you are more likely to see this all in kanji, but  I have it in hiragana here to help you read it) 午前 六 時 半

Which would be – am, 6 o’clock, half past … or as we would say, half past 6 in the morning. 

Asking For The Time In Japanese

A part of telling the time is being able to ask for it.

This is very straight forward and all you have to do is use the phrase –  いま なんじ ですか。(Ima nanji desu ka.) – which will look like – 今何時ですか。in kanji  and means:

What time is it now?   

If you look at how this question is formed its “Now, what, time, it is, ?”

The cool thing is that you can basically use the same question to reply, you can say  –

いま なんじ ですか (ima ni ji desu)  今何時です (basically the exactly same thing, just without  the question particle か) which means – “The time now is” …then you would say what it is. 

Making Everything Polite

Everything I have gone through here so far has just been pretty much the basics.

If you wanted to make anything more polite, which you would do when you are talking to a stranger …you just add です (desu) at the end.

三時です

午前 六 時半です

It’s not necessary but it’s always nice to be polite

(Return To: The Full List of All The Japanese Lessons)

Today’s Vocabulary

何時 (いつ) – When

夏 (なつ) – Summer

遅い (おそい) – Slow

一昨年 (おととし) – Year before last

午前 (ごぜん) – A.M (Morning)

食べ物 (たべもの) – Food

口 (くち) – Mouth

入る (はいる) – To Enter

Today’s Immersion Videos

It is taking me time to find/add more immersion videos. This section will be updated shortly!

Go To The Next Lesson: Day 24 – Using じゃない (Janai) – Not