Telling Dates and Times

About Time & Date

by Vidya Vimuti

​How to ask and talk about time

• When ​ When it's past the hour (up to 30 minutes) we say "past"

• ​ When it's before the hour (after 30 minutes past) we say "to"

​Example

​How to talk about dates

​When we say dates in English we use ordinal numbers. So for 1 January, we don’t say the cardinal number ‘one’ but we say ‘first’. And we say ‘the’ before the number followed by ‘of’. For example,

​

It’s the first of January.

It’s also possible to invert the month and day. For example,

It’s January first. 

In this case you don’t need to say ‘the’ and ‘of’.

​Naturally Speaking When We Talk about Time

1. ​It's seven o'clock in the morning.

2. ​It's quarter past seven in the morning.

3. It's half past two in the afternoon.

4. ​It's quarter to eight in the morning.

5. ​It's twenty-eight minutes to twelve.

Multiple Choice

It's twenty-eight minutes to twelve.

• 12.32

• 12.28

• 11.32

• 11.28

Multiple Choice

It's quarter past two in the afternoon.

• 14.30

• 14.15

• 02.15

• 02.4

​Here are numbers you will use

​From 13 to 19 we continue to add -th to create the ordinal numbers (thirteenth, fourteenth, etc.)

While from 21 to 31 the ordinal numbers end according to the ending of the second number. For example,

21 – twenty-first

22 – twenty-second

How to write the date​

​When we write a date we don’t need to add ‘the’ and ‘of’ as we do when we speak. For example:

It’s the first of January – speaking

It’s 1st January – writing

As you can see, you don’t need to write the number but we usually add the last two letters of the ordinal number. For example:

First – 1st

Second – 2nd

Third – 3rd

Fourth – 4th

How to say the year​

​There are two ways to say the year in English. Until the year 2000, every year was pronounced as two numbers. For example,

1485 – fourteen eighty-five

1750 – seventeen fifty

1900 – nineteen hundred

For the first years of previous centuries, we add ‘0’. For example:

1801 – eighteen o one

While for the first ten years of the 21st century, we use the word ‘thousand’. For example:

2000 – two thousand

2006 – two thousand six

​

​From the year 2010 onwards you can say two numbers again. For example,

2012 – twenty twelve

However, some people continue to use ‘thousand’ and say:

2012 – two thousand twelve

Open Ended

Write this date in speaking style "22/1/2003"

Open Ended

Write this date in speaking style "24/10"

Open Ended

How can we say this year in speaking "2021"?