Name: Telling the Time: British English
Uploaded: 2021-06-30T06:07:59.000Z
Duration: 3 min 54 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Today we're looking at 'How to tell the time'.

First of all, how do we ask what the time is?

So, if someone's asked you 'What time is it?' what are you going to say in response?

If the clock is on the hour then you can very simply say: 'It's three o'clock.' 'It's three o'clock.'

However, if you want to specify between morning or afternoon, then you can say 'it's three p.m.'.

'P.M.' is for any time between noon and midnight.

'A.M.' is for anytime between midnight and noon.

If the time shows anything between the hour and half past the hour,  we use the word 'past'.

So, did you notice, actually that the only thing that was slightly odd there was when we got to the quarter.

Sometimes we will say fifteen minutes past, but it's easy enough to say 'quarter past'.

Now, anything between the half past position, and back to the hour, we are going to look at 'to'.

Now we very rarely say 'fifteen minutes to'.

Now there are many variations in how you can tell the time.

Some people like to use the twenty- four-hour clock.

So instead of '6:30 p.m.,' you might get 'It's 18:30'.

And Instead of '5:25 a.m.' you might get 'It's 05:25'.

Just remember that in the beginning half of the hour we say 'past'.

In the last half of the hour we say 'to'.

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Telling the Time: British English

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