Comparative Grammar 3.7. Telling Time & Describing the Weather in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, & French

In this comparative grammar lesson of Romance languages, we cover telling time & describing weather in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, & French. Telling time and describing the weather are fundamental language skills for any language learner.

Table of Contents

• Telling Time
  • Expressing Time in Hours
  • Expressing Minutes
  • Other Time Expressions
• Weather Expressions
  • Weather Expressions using the verb “to do”
  • Weather using Expressions meaning “there is/are”
  • Weather Expressions using the verb “to be”
  • Weather Expressions using a simple verb
• Level III – Elementary

Telling Time

Expressing Time in Hours

In Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French, the verb “to be” is used in the third-person forms to describe time.

In Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, the singular form of the verb “to be” is used for “one o’clock,” while other hours (from two to twelve o’clock) use the plural form of the verb “to be.”

In French, the singular form of the verb “to be” is always used, i.e., “il est” (it is).

Notice the use of the definite article in the examples above in both Spanish and Italian.

To ask what time it is, use the following expression, meaning “What time is it?” in English, or more literally: “What hour is it?” or “What hours are they?”

To ask “At what time …?”, we use:

Expressing Minutes

To express time in hours and minutes, we use the conjunction “and” in Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. In French, we simply add the minutes after the hour. For example:

If you want to say: it is minutes to a certain hour, e.g., “It’s five to ten,” we use:

The “15 minutes” and “30 minutes” can sometimes be replaced with “quarter” and “half,” respectively.

Other Time Expressions

The expressions “a.m.” and “p.m.” are not commonly used in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French, but you will hear people tell the time using the twelve-hour clock format and expressions like “in the morning,” “in the afternoon,” “in the evening,” or “at night.”

Here are some expressions that are used to express time with examples:

Weather Expressions

Describing the weather in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French often involves the use of some idiomatic expressions that make little sense if translated into English literally.

Here, we list a few common ways of describing the weather using some of these idiomatic expressions as well as other simple expressions.

Weather Expressions using the verb “to do”

Weather using Expressions meaning “there is/are”

Expression meaning “there is” or “there are”  are used in many weather expressions, such as:

Weather Expressions using the verb “to be”

We can also use the verb “to be” in the third-person singular form followed by an adjective to describe the weather.

Weather Expressions using a simple verb

One can also use a simple verb expression in the third-person singular form. Here are some examples:

Next: Adverbs

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