Japanese Vocabulary - What Time Is It?

To date, we've learned a lot of numbers related vocabulary. We've covered numbers in general, the months of the year and the days of the week, which are all numbers related topics. Building on these, this post will teach you how to tell time in Japanese.

Like previous vocabulary posts, I'll be introducing some new kanji. For the kanji, remember, the katakana is for the On reading (音) and the hiragana is for the Kun reading (訓). If you have no idea what I mean by On or Kun, make sure to read my post on How to Read Kanji. And, as always, I will be providing the kanji based readings for telling time followed by the kana and English translations for those who can't read kanji yet.

時 Time, Hour, Opportunity

音：ジ　訓：とき

Common Compounds

一時 いちじ、いっとき one o'clock, for a time

時間 じかん time, period

時々 ときどき sometimes


分 Minute, Part, Divide, Understand

音：ブン、フン 訓：わ（ける）

Common Compounds

十分 じゅうぶん、じゅうぷん ten minutes, enough

自分 じぶん oneself

半分 はんぶん half


Hours of the Day

一時 いちじ 1 O'Clock
二時 にじ 2 O'Clock
三時 さんじ 3 O'Clock
四時 よじ 4 O'Clock
五時 ごじ 5 O'Clock
六時 ろくじ 6 O'Clock
七時 しちじ 7 O'Clock
八時 はちじ 8 O'Clock
九時 くじ 9 O'Clock
十時 じゅうじ 10 O'Clock
十一時 じゅういちじ 11 O'Clock
十二時 じゅうにじ 12 O'Clock


Minutes of the Hour

一分 (いっぷん) 0:01
二分 (にふん) 0:02
三分 (さんぷん) 0:03
四分 (よんぷん) 0:04
五分 (ごふん) 0:05
六分 (ろっぷん) 0:06
七分 (ななふん) 0:07
八分 (はっぷん) 0:08
九分 (きゅうふん) 0:09
十分 (じゅっぷん) 0:10


Notes

For minutes attach -分 to the standard set of numbers. Please note that 分 is pronounced differently depending on the number. Based on what I've picked up randomly, as I haven't looked into the reasoning thoroughly, this stems from the evolution of the language and the desire to make common words easier to pronounce. This leads to things like いっぷん instead of いちふん or ろっぷん instead of ろくふん and so on. They are all similar sounding, but typically drop a syllable or use a dakuon version of ふん to make them flow off the tongue easier. Try saying each with the 'normal' readings for numbers we learned previously followed by the correct version and you'll see this for yourself.

Also, to say any other minute number, simply use the minutes for one to ten and apply the basic counting system we learned in the numbers vocabulary post.

0:25 would be two tens, five minutes or 二十五分 (にじゅっごふん)
0:41 would be four tens, four minutes or 四十一分 (よんじゅっいっぷん)
0:59 would be five tens, nine minutes or 五十九分 (ごきゅうきゅうふん)

If you wanted to know the exact time of day, with hours and minutes, you simply combine the hour and minute numbers from above.

12:45 - 十二時四十五分 (じゅうにじよんじゅっごふん)
06:15 - 六時十五分 (ろくじじゅっごふん)
09:30 - 九時三十分 (くじさんじゅっぷん)

Finally, you can use A.M. and P.M. to signal if it's morning or afternoon by using ごぜん for A.M. and ごご for P.M. They are listed before the time and would be read in English as A.M. 7:30 instead of the normal 7:30 A.M.

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