It’s quite important to learn how to say dates and times correctly. So here we are.
Make sure you’re familiar with how Numbers work in Cantonese before reading on.
Dates 日期
2021 年 10 月 15 日
It is normal to say the year as a series of digits (二零二一) as opposed to one normal number (二千零二十一), because it’s easier to say in most years — think the 90s for example (一九九九年 as opposed to 一千九百九十九年). Of course, if the year is obvious then you don’t have to say the year.
Another point to be careful of in conversations is that the word
三月五號
5th March
Days of the week are also incredibly easy. The word
- 星期一: Monday
- 星期二: Tuesday
- 星期三: Wednesday
- 星期六: Saturday
The only special case is Sunday, which is 星期日. Be careful with
Advanced
In formal situations the word
- 週一
- 週二
- 週六
- 週日
Speaking of 週, the word
週末 is also used to cover the weekend (Saturday & Sunday).In casual conversations the word
禮拜 is very frequently used instead of 星期:
- 禮拜一
- 禮拜二
- 禮拜六
- 禮拜日
And for the weekend it’s 禮拜六日 which is just smashing 禮拜六 and 禮拜日 together really.
Days of the week goes after the date:
2021年2月13日，星期六
Sat., 13rd February 2021
The comma is optional but adding it would make the phrase just a little bit clearer.
The Time 時間
There are two main ways of telling the
The formal way
Here’s an example of this:
八
點 十三分
8:13
As you would expect, you say the hour first, followed by the word
四點零七分
4:07
Whilst this is how it’s mostly found in writings and formal speech it is important to know that sometimes the word
If we need to include ‘am’ or ‘pm’ into the time to make it even clearer we can use the words
- 上午七點十五分
7:15 am - 下午七點十五分
7:15 pm
There’s also
If we want to say something like ‘three o’clock’ exactly, then you need to drop the 分 part and, if you want a bit of formality in, add the word
三點正
Three o’clock (exactly)
Another special word that we need to know is
- 三點三十分
- 三點半
Again, 三點半 is usually preferred because it’s shorter and so takes less effort to say & write.
The informal way
Advanced
The easiest way to make the time expression more informal by using a variety of words in place of 上午 and 下午 we’ve seen earlier, depending on what time of the day:
| Word | Meaning | When to Use | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Morning | Between sunrise and noon (more often used before around 9am) | 朝早九點 | |
| Morning | Between sunrise and noon (more often used after around 9am) | 上晝九點 | |
| Afternoon | Between noon and sunset | 下晝三點半 | |
| Evening | The time when the sun is setting away | 傍晚五點 | |
| Night | Between sunset and midnight | 夜晚八點 | |
| Midnight | The hours around midnight | 半夜一點 | |
| Wee hours | Between midnight and sunrise | 凌晨三點 |
In a lot of cases there isn’t a clear cut as to when to use what (perhaps with the exception of not using 上晝 after noon and vice versa with 下晝) so don’t worry too much about this. You will get the feel of when to use what with practice.
In causal conversations you very rarely hear someone saying the time fully like what we’ve seen earlier with the formal way, unless they want to be really precious with their time. This is because saying the time in full can become a bit of a mouthful, especially for things like ‘quarter to twelve’ being 十一點四十五分.
So in everything conversations you would pretty much expect everyone to use the shorter, informal form for times that fit nicely into multiplies of five minutes. To understand this we need to have a look at a good-old analogue clock face (conventional ones). Here’s one from Ikea (definitely not sponsored):
When it’s five minutes past the hour, the hour hand would point to ‘1’ on the clock face. Ten minutes? That would be ‘2’. Cantonese uses this handy shorthand in place of the minutes with the help of the word
十一點踏九
11:45
Lit. 11 o’clock and minute hand on 9
And some people think even that’s too long and skipped out the 踏 as well. When you do that it becomes 十一點九, and this makes it much easier to roll off the tongue.
If the hour’s implied or not relevant we can even drop that as well, but you have to keep the 踏 in. At half past 踏半 is used, and on the hour 踏
A:
快啲啦 ！火車 踏五開啦。
A: Hurry up! Train’s going at twenty five past.
B:唔係 踏半開咩 ？
B: Isn’t it going at half past?
A: 邊個話㗎 ？坐唔到嚟架 火車，踏正前都未到啊 ！
A: Who said that? If we missed this train, we ain’t arriving before the hour!
Time Duration
Another thing worth knowing that’s related to time is to how to express time durations. Just like earlier, there is both a formal, proper way that covers all the scenario and an informal way that is used in everyday conversation to shorten things up.
The Proper Way
It is very similar to the formal time expressions earlier, but we just need a few more words for things like
- 四小時三十分鐘二十五秒
four fours, thirty minutes and twenty five seconds - 兩日五小時零七分鐘
two days, five hours and seven minutes
Because of the way we express the months for dates (五月 for May for example) if we way to say things like ‘five months’ we have to add the measure word 個 in front of 月:
- 五月
May - 五個月
five months
We can again use the word 半 at the end of the last division and a half of that on. But we need to be careful with where to put it though. Apart from 日 and 秒, the 半 is tagged after the number instead of the units with the help of the measure word 個 like the following examples:
- 三日半
three and a half days - 三個半小時
three and a half hours - 六個半分鐘
six and a half minutes - 兩小時十一分鐘二十秒半
two hours, eleven minutes, twenty and a half seconds
As 半 means ‘half’ on its own we can combine it with the hours to say things half a day, half an hour etc.
- 半日
half a day - 半小時
half an hour - 半分鐘
half a minute
The Informal Way (Advanced)
Advanced
Unless we are timing something very preciously it’s very unlikely you’ll need to specify something like ‘two hours and thirty seven minutes’ in everyday conversations, like telling how much time you still need to take on the bus to meet up with your friends. So Cantonese look to the analogue clock face once again for inspiration, and have come up with yet another scheme for duration that fit nicely into multiplies of five minutes.
The first clock-inspired thing here is changing the word for hours from 小時 to 鐘, which literally means ‘clock’. So one hour becomes 一個鐘 which can be taken to mean one clock’s worth of time. Half and hour also becomes 半個鐘 as expected from earlier.
The other clock-inspired change is swapping out the minutes 分鐘 entirely with one based on five minute divisions called 字. This is once again down to the fact that your typical analogue clock face is split into twelve lots of five - so say the minute hand is pointing 12 (ie. at the beginning of the hour), it would take five minutes for the minute hand to point to the next number (which is 1 in this case). In Cantonese that would be 一個字 — one “word“‘s worth of time. To help with wrapping your head around this idea here are some more examples:
- 三個字
fifteen minutes
Lit. three words’ (worth of time) - 七個字
thirty five minutes
Lit. seven words’ (worth of time) - 兩個鐘零五個字
two hours and twenty five minutes
Lit. two clocks’ and five words’ (worth of time)
Not to miss the party there’s also 半個字 for half a “word“‘s worth of time — two and a half minutes in other word. But then again, given that it is almost excursively used in settings where people aren’t looking for second-to-second precision people read this simply as ‘somewhere halfway between the 字s’:
A: 喂？你係邊度啊？套戲踏七開啦！
A: Hello? Where are you? The film’s starting at twenty-five to!
B: 慢慢嚟，仲有個半字就到。
B: Chill, I’m arriving in 7-8 minutes.
Note for ‘one and a half’ the 一個半 can be shortened to just 個半 instead, but you can only do this with the informal way.