The Number System
The Spanish number system works basically the same as English’s, just with different words of course. Numbers 1-15 have distinct names, as do all the numbers in increments of ten (twenty, thirty, forty, etc.).

Numbers 16-19 and 21-29 are single word contractions and the numbers after that are the ten increment number+and (y)+any number 1-9. You’ll see how it works below.

The Numbers in Spanish
0 – Cero
1 – Uno
2 – Dos
3 – Tres
4 – Cuatro
5 – Cinco
6 – Seis
7 – Siete
8 – Ocho
9 – Nueve
10 – Diez
11 – Once
12 – Doce
13 – Trece
14 – Catorce
15 – Quince

And here we start our contractions:
16 – Dieciséis (Diez+y+séis)
17 – Diecisiete
18 – Dieciocho
19 – Diecinueve

20 – Veinte
21 – Veintiuno
22 – Veintidós
23 – Veintitrés
24 – Veinticuatro
25 – Veinticinco
26 – Veintiséis
27 – Veintisiete
28 – Veintiocho
29 – Veintinueve

30 – Treinta

And here we switch to using ‘y’:
31 -  Treinta y uno
32 -  Treinta y dos
33 -  Treinta y tres
34 – Treinta y cuatro
35 – Treinta y cinco
36 – Treinta y seis
37 – Treinta y siete
38 – Treinta y ocho
39 – Treinta y nueve

The rest are done the same as treinta:

40 – Cuarenta
41 – Cuarenta y uno
42 – cuarenta y dos…

50 – Cincuenta

60  – Sesenta

70 – Setenta

80 – Ochenta

90 – Noventa

100 – Cien

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All there really is for you to do is to memorize the words. What better way to practice the numbers than by glancing at your clock now and then to say to yourself the time in Spanish? You can also practice with license plates, addresses and street numbers as you drive about.

If you are learning Spanish just for fun and have no intention of visiting a Spanish speaking country then how to tell time in Spanish is just something interesting to play around with. If, however, you do intend on visiting a Spanish speaking country you could find yourself in a great deal of confusion if you are unclear on how time is expressed in Spanish.

So let’s alleviate that confusion and learn how to both ask and answer the question – ¿Qué hora es?

Asking the Time
As you may already know, to ask what time it is, you can simply say ¿Qué hora es? You may also hear ¿Qué hora tiene usted? (literally ‘what hour have you?’).

Time Vocabulary
In order to understand or give an answer you will already need to know the numbers in Spanish. Assuming that you already do, other important vocabulary includes:
minutos – minutes
y media – half past
menos – minus
un cuarto – a quarter
menos cuarto - a quarter before
y cuarto – a quarter after
en punto – can mean many things, but here we’re using it to mean exactly or on-the-dot

There are other helpful words regarding time, but let’s start with these ones.

Answering the Question with ‘to be’ -  Ser
To formulate your answer to ¿Qué hora es? you will use ‘ser’, the ‘to be’ that is always used to express time. If you’re a little foggy on what exactly ‘ser’ is, check out To Be or Not to Be in Spanish.

The form ‘es’ is uesed to refer to one o’ clock and ‘son’ to refer to all other times:
Es la una. – It is one o’ clock.
Son las ocho. – It is eight o’ clock.

Why ‘the’?
The feminine definite article is placed before the given time regardless of the number because it is referring to the unspoken feminine ‘hora’ and again for one o’ clock the singular ‘la’ is used and for all others the plural ‘las’.

So when you say ‘Son las nueve.’ you are essentially saying ‘It is the ninth hour.’

The Basics Around the Clock
Now we know the basics of how to tell time. As long as the time is on the hour, we’re good to go. We can tell someone that ‘Son las cuatro.’ (It is four o’ clock.) or we could use one of our new vocabulary words and tell them ‘Son  las cuatro en punto.’ (It is four o’ clock exactly.).

But what if it’s not four o’ clock exactly? What if it’s four o’ two? You already have the vocabulary for that  – just add ‘y’ (and) and then the minutes:
Son las cuatro y dos.

Four fifteen can be expressed in a couple of ways. One is ‘Son las cuatro quince.’ (cuatro quince=four fifteen) or ‘Son las cuatro y cuarto.’ (It’s a quarter past four).

The same is true of four thirty, which can be expressed as ‘Son las cuatro treinta.’ (cuatro trienta=four thirty) or ‘Son las cuatro y media.’ (It’s half past four.)

It is the same again for four forty-five, which can be ‘Son las cuatro cuarenta y cinco.’ (cuarenta y cinco= forty and five) or ‘Son las cinco menos cuatro.’ (It’s a quarter to five.).

Getting Precise
Now you can tell someone standing in front of you what time it is, but what if you need to express or understand the time an even is scheduled to occur? ‘Son las cuatro’ doesn’t tell you whether the event is happening in the morning or evening.

To do so we need to review how to say morning, afternoon and evening:
la mañana – Morning – and easily confused with el mañana, which is tomorrow.

The phrase ‘por la mañana’  could be used to say that something will happen in the morning, not at a specific time, but at sometime in the morning. On the other hand, ‘de la mañana’ is used to say that something is happening in the morning at a particular time. So for four o’ clock in the morning we would say:
Son las cuatro de la mañana.

la tarde – the afternoon

As with la mañana, ‘por la tarde’ refers to the afternoon in general, while ‘de la tarde’ is for a specific time, such as four in the afternoon:
Son las cuatro de la tarde.

la noche – the evening

Used the same as the two above so to say ‘It is eight o’ clock.’ you would say:
Son las ocho de la noche.

Some other general time related vocabulary includes:

The Future -
el mañana - tomorrow
mañana por la mañana - tomorrow morning
pasado mañana - the day after tomorrow
la semana que viene - next week
el sábado que viene – next Saturday
el año que viene – next year

The Past -
ayer - yesterday
anoche – last night
la noche anterior or anteanoche – the night before last
el sábado pasado - last Saturday
la semana pasada – last week
el año pasado – last year

Time Generalities -
durante el día – during the day
al mediodía – at noon
a la medianoche – at midnight

temprano - early
a tiempo – on time
tarde – late

alrededor de - around

Some Less Specific Ways of Expressing Time
Instead of being more precise, in some instances you may want to be more general. Instead of saying the exact time – four fifty-five, you could say ‘Son casi las cinco.’ (It’s almost five). With the same meaning you could say ‘Todavía no son las cinco. ‘ (It is not yet five.) or ‘Faltan cinco minutos para las cinco.’ (It will be five in five minutes.)

Ready to Test Your Knowledge of Time?
See how you score on our online Telling Time in Spanish test.

Free courses are also available at Loquella that help with both listening to and reading Spanish.

If you are looking for some realtime practice a fairly active Spanish chat room with lots of friendly folks is Espanglish Chat. The only thing to keep in mind is that it is a chat room and much like any English chatroom, you are going to encounter a lot of slang and typos. As long as you remember that there is plenty to be gained from practicing thinking quickly in Spanish.

The Basics of What the Accents Mean
If a word contains an accented vowel then the stress should be given to the marked vowel. If there is no accented vowel then it is the last syllable that is stressed unless the last syllable ends in a vowel, n or s, which is fairly common. In that case it is the next to the last syllable that is stressed.

The Part of the Accent in Spanish’s Four Pronunciation Classes
Spanish words can be broken down into four separate pronunciation categories – agudas, llanas, esdrújulas and sobresdrújula.

Words that are stressed in the last syllable, either because they end in something other than a vowel, n or s or because the vowel in the last syllable is accented, are called agudas.

The more common, next to the last syllable stressed words are called llanas. For a word to be a llana when the last syllable does not end in a vowel, n or s, the next to the last syllable needs to carry an accented vowel.

Esdrújulas are words that are stressed in the third to last syllable and sobresdrújulas in the fourth to the last. For both there needs to be an accented vowel in the respective syllable in order for the word to be classified as an esdrújulas or sobresdrújulas.

Accent Marks to Break Up Diphthongs
Accent marks are also used to break up vowels that should be pronounced separately, but which without the accent would look like diphthongs. If you have memorized all the Spanish diphthongs but come across an accented one – it’s not actually a diphthong and the vowels need to be sounded out separately as part of two different syllables.

Accents to Clarify Meaning
Last, but certainly not least, Spanish accents are sometimes used to clarify the meaning of words that are otherwise spelled the same, just as we have words in English that are spelled the same but pronounced differently.

Without the differing accents these words would be easily confused so never ignore the accents even if you think you already know how to pronounce the word – if the word you think you know how to pronounce doesn’t have an accent mark and the one you are looking at does, then it’s a different word. Just the little difference of a change of accent turns esta (this) into está (he/she/it is)

Changes in a Word’s Accent
You also need to watch out for a fact that a number of the words loose the accent mark with the addition of a syllable when they change to plural or switch gender.

Definite and Indefinite Articles in Hindi
While on the subject of definite and indefinite articles, it should be addressed that the Hindi language does not have articles like the English language does. There are some words, such as एक (one), which can act in a similar way to an indefinite article if it is essential to the meaning, but it typically is not.

It is of course necessary to add articles when translating from Hindi to English, but when going from English to Hindi the articles are of no concern.

Definite and Indefinite Articles in Amharic
There is also no indefinite article in Amharic. A singular noun by default can be assumed to be indefinite, but as with Hindi, if there is a need to emphasize that the noun is indefinite, አንድ -and (one) can be used as in ‘a (one) tree’ – አንድ ዛፍ – and zaf.

There is also not a definitive article, but there is a definitive suffix – ኡ (u). To say ‘the tree’ you would write ዛፉ – zafu. The only exception would be if the definite suffix was following a noun, in which case ው (w) is used as with ‘the river’, written as ወሳው – wesaw.

But just because a word ends in ኡ (u) doesn’t necessarily mean that the definitive article is being indicated. That suffix can also be indicating the third person possessive so additional markers are sometimes needed to indicate the definitive article, especially with feminine nouns.

If you are working with a noun phrase like ‘the little tree’, the definitive suffix would be attached to the adjective ‘little’, not to the noun ‘tree’. The definitive article is always added to the first word in a noun phrase regardless. The suffix can be attached to nouns, adjectives or quantifiers.

For more detailed information on definitive articles and possessives in Amharic, read Dorothee Beermann and Binyam Ephrem’s article ‘The Definite Article and Possessive Marking in Amharic‘, from which the Amharic examples used here were taken.

Articles are one of the easier portions of English grammar, but in German the articles do not remain constant but change depending on the gender of a word and what case it is being used with.

The Definite Article in German
When singular the form of the definite article varies according to the gender of the noun it is modifying and what case that noun is in. In the plural the definite article is the same for all genders and only varies with the case.

There are a great many hints that can be found in a word to give you a clue as to whether it is feminine, masculine or neuter but the surest way is to look up new words in the dictionary and memorize their gender.

The form of a word that is listed in the dictionary is the nomative case – used when the word is the subject of a sentence. While their are exceptions and other cases where the cases are used, in general the accusative case is for direct objects, the genative for possessives and the dative for indirect objects.

In general the definite article in German is used in the same cases that you would use it in English. The common exceptions are:

• When expressing a noun in an abstract idea – Harper Collin’s German Concise Dictionary uses the example ‘Das Leben ist schön’, meaning ‘Life is wonderuful’.
• When using someone’s gender in combination with their proper name – ‘der Frau Amsel’.
• Sometimes with proper names in casual context or for emphasis.
• When referring to a masculine or feminine country or district – ‘die Schweiz’, meaning Switzerland
• For seasons – ‘der Winter’ and months of the year (except after seit/nach/vor)
• To refer to dinner or lunch
• When saying the name of a road
• To refer to parts of the body or clothing in cases where English would use a possessive adjective (his, her, my, etc.). In cases where clarification is needed about who the part belongs to, the reflexive pronoun or a dative case noun is used.
• To say ‘each’, ‘per’ or ‘a’ when talking about the price of something or when saying something like ‘they cost’, which would be ‘die kosten’
• As a demonstrative (that)
• In a variety of everyday expressions, which just need to be memorized when you come across them

The Singular Definite Article:

The Plural Definite Article:

Be aware that in some cases the definite article is combined with other words such as ‘zu’ and ‘in’ for combination like ‘zum’ and ‘im’. If it seems as if a definite article should be in the sentence that you are looking at, but you can’t find it and don’t recognize a short word before the noun – it may be a combined form of the definite article and a preposition.

The Indefinite Article in German
The indefinite article works the same as the definite in that it changes with the gender of a noun and the case that it appears in. There is no plural version of the indefinite article.

The indefinite article is used the same in German as it is in English except that it is not used when referring to things like a person’s profession, religion or nationality.

The Indefinite Article:

The peculiar thing about the indefinite article in German is that there is a separate form to use when you are saying things like ‘no’, ‘not a’, ‘not one’ or ‘not any’. If you want to say that an object or person is not something you will want to use the negative form of the indefinite article, which is declined the same as the positive form.

The Negative Indefinite Article:

That very fact can lead English speakers to a great deal of confusion when learning the articles in languages where the articles are modified depending on what word they accompany or what part of speech they occur in.

The definite article in English is ‘the’. It is used when referring to a particular thing and never changes. The indefinite article refers to general things and is ‘a’.

In English the indefinite article never changes as a result of the part of speech. It does however, change to ‘an’ if it is used in conjunction with a word that begins with a vowel.

If you wanted a specific book off a table you would use the definite article:
‘Please get me the book off the table.’

If you didn’t care what book someone got you, you would use the indefinite:
‘Please get me a book while you’re at the library.’

But you would use ‘an’ if the sentence was something like:
‘Please get me an old book from the library.’

That’s as much shifting as the articles do in the English language, but in other languages the articles can appear in a wide variety of forms.

For hard copy German dictionaries, the one I use is Harper Collins German Concise Dictionary, which is a good basic German to English/English to German dictionary. It also contains a rather thorough section on basic German grammar.

Just choose the language you are interested in hearing – you can also select between talk and music radio – and you will get a listing of a wide range of online stations that fit your selection. Just click on the station you want to listen to in order to go to that station’s website and listen.

The Amharic Number System
There are a lot of unique aspects to Amharic and one of those is the numbering system which works a bit differently than that of English. The biggest difference is that there is no zero in Amharic. That of course makes the writing of numbers such as 10, 20, 30 and so on a little interesting. But while the system of handling these numbers is different, it’s straightforward once you get the hang of it.

The lack of a representation for the number zero is not such a complication as it may sound like. Instead of writing the Amharic equivalent to 3 and 0 the number is expressed by a singular symbol that represents 30. Instead of 37 being written as a combination of the symbols of 3 and 7, it is written as a combination of the 30 symbol and 7.

We’ll get more into that in a minute. First let’s learn some Amharic numbers so that we have something to practice with.

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Typing Numbers in Amharic
The way the numbers are typed can vary from setup to setup, but in the case of the Keyman program Amharic numbers are typed by typing an apostrphe ( ‘ ) and then the number you want to express so ‘ + 2 = ፪.

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The Cardinal Numbers in Amharic:
Their Symbol, Spelling and Pronunciation

English    Numeric Symbol       Written Out      Pronunciation
1                 ፩                                      አንድ                       And

2                ፪                                       ሁለት                      Hulätt

3                ፫                                       ሦስት                      Sost

4                ፬                                       አራት                      Aratt

5                ፭                                      አምስት                   Ammïst

6                ፮                                      ሲድስት                    Sïddist

7                ፯                                     ሳባት                        Säbatt

8                ፰                                     ሲምንት                   Sïmmint

9                ፱                                      ዛጣኝ                       Zätäñ

10             ፲                                      ዐሥር                       Assir

20             ፳                                     ሃያ                            Haya

30             ፴                                     ሠላሳ                        Sälasa

40             ፵                                     አርባ                         Arba

50             ፶                                     አምሳ / ኃምሳ         Amsa / Hamsa

60             ፷                                    ሲልሳ / ሲድሳ           Sïlsa or Sïdsa

70             ፸                                    ሰባ                            Säba

80             ፹                                   ሰማንያ                     Sämanya

90             ፺                                    ዘጠና                         Zätäna

100          ፻                                    መቶ                          Mäto

1,000      -*                                  ሲህ / ሲ                    Sih / Si

*There is no symbol to represent 1,000 – the word ሲህ or ሲ is used to express that number.

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Using Numbers in Amharic
Now that we’ve seen the numbers, let’s look at how they work.
If you wanted to write 35 you would not just use the symbol for 3 (፫) and 5 (፭). Instead you would use the symbol 30 (፴) and 5 (፭) for ፴፭, which is pronounced sälasa ammïst.

The only one where the pronunciation changes from what the symbols would be separate from each other is 11-19 where the pronunciation of 10 (፲) changes from ‘assir’ to ‘asra’. For example, 18 would be expressed as 10 (፲) and (፰) for ፲፰ with the pronunciation of asra sïmmint.

To express a number like 482 you would write 4 (፬) 100 (፻) 80 (፹) 2 (፪) for ፬፻፹፪, pronounced aratt mäto sämanya hulätt. And so on.