TELLING THE TIME IN ARABIC

In our daily lives time is a very important component, we normally use time when making plans, appointments, and travel arrangements. To have the knowledge to tell time in Arabic will facilitate all of our activities when it comes to communicate it to the native or non native Arabic speakers. In this article we are going to cover the introduction to telling the time. Let’s start first with some vocabulary on the subject of time.

Here are our examples:

The process of telling the time will also be affected depending on the kind of Arab country a person is planning to visit, sometimes you will see either the 12-hour clock is used or 24-hour clock is used, or in some places people prefer to use both depending on the situation. In all cases the following is important to keep in your mind:

AM in Arabic is translated as Sabaahan/ صباحا

PM is Arabic is translated as masaa’n / مساءً

If you want to ask someone ‘What time is it in Arabic,’ you should either say:

1. Kam assaa’ah?  الساعة كم What time is it?

2. Kam assaa’ah al’aan? الآن الساعة  كم What time is it now?

It is recommended to use the second version this is because the word (كم) in Arabic is frequently used in interrogative phrases to ask about the price of something. In this case, kami as-sa’ah? Might easily be understood as if you were asking about the price of the watch itself ("How much is the watch?”). By using the additional word (الآن) which means ‘now’ in English, makes clear that an individual is asking the person about the current time and not the price of the watch.

² Telling the time in Arabic is one of the easiest thing an individual can master in his/her life, this is because Arabs use ordinal numbers with hours, except one o’clock, as follows below:

² To say the time in the past situation. The natives use و/ wa/ "and” which normally comes after the hour, so "half past two” in Arabic would literally be "two o’clock and a half”/  الساعة الثانية والنصف

² If you want to say "to” in Arabic, the native speakers use إلا / illa which comes after the hour, so "quarter to three” in Arabic would literally be "three o’clock less a quarter” / الربع إلا الثالثة الساعة

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