To ask the time in German, say Wie spät ist es? A full hour is Es ist drei Uhr. For half hours and quarters, German counts toward the next hour, so halb vier is 3:30 and Viertel vor vier is 3:45. Use um for appointments — um acht Uhr — and the 24-hour clock for timetables, where 14:30 is vierzehn Uhr dreißig.
Published 9 November 2026
By Gora Academy · Editorial policy
Telling the time is one of the first things you can actually do with a new language, and German rewards a little study here because it handles two things differently from English. It counts half and quarter hours toward the hour that is coming, not the one that has passed, and for anything official it uses the 24-hour clock. Learn those two habits and the rest is just numbers.
There are two everyday questions, and they mean the same thing. Wie spät ist es? — literally “How late is it?” — is the most common. Wie viel Uhr ist es? — “What o’clock is it?” — is equally correct. To ask about a specific event you reach for um: Um wie viel Uhr? (“At what time?”). Every answer starts with Es ist … (“It is …”).
For a whole hour, say Es ist + the number + Uhr, where Uhr means “o’clock” (literally “clock”). So Es ist zwei Uhr is two o’clock and Es ist zehn Uhr is ten o’clock. One o’clock is the exception worth memorising: it is Es ist ein Uhr, with ein and no -s, even though the number on its own is eins. You hear the bare number only when “o’clock” is understood: Es ist eins.
Here is the everyday spoken system at a glance, built around three o’clock:
| Clock | Everyday German | Literally |
|---|---|---|
| 3:00 | Es ist drei Uhr | three o’clock |
| 3:05 | Es ist fünf nach drei | five past three |
| 3:15 | Es ist Viertel nach drei | quarter past three |
| 3:30 | Es ist halb vier | half (toward) four |
| 3:45 | Es ist Viertel vor vier | quarter to four |
| 3:50 | Es ist zehn vor vier | ten to four |
This is the single biggest stumbling block for English speakers. In English “half” looks back: British “half four” is 4:30. In German, halb looks forward — it names the hour you are halfway toward. Halb vier is literally “half (on the way to) four”, which is 3:30. So halb acht is 7:30, halb eins is 12:30, and halb zehn is 9:30. Read halb X as “thirty minutes before X o’clock” and you will never set an alarm an hour late.
Quarter hours use Viertel (“a quarter”) with two short prepositions: nach (“past”) and vor (“to / before”). Viertel nach drei is a quarter past three (3:15); Viertel vor vier is a quarter to four (3:45). A memory hook: vor has an o, like “to” and “before”; nach has an a, like “past” and “after”.
The same two words carry any number of minutes. Up to the half hour you count nach (past) the last hour; after the half hour you count vor (to) the next one. So 3:10 is zehn nach drei, 3:20 is zwanzig nach drei, 3:40 is zwanzig vor vier, and 3:55 is fünf vor vier. In this spoken style you do not add Uhr: say zehn nach drei, never drei Uhr zehn alongside the fractions. You will sometimes hear speakers anchor the awkward minutes to the half hour — fünf vor halb vier for 3:25, fünf nach halb vier for 3:35 — but the plain fünfundzwanzig nach drei is always understood.
In parts of eastern and southern Germany, and in Austria, you may meet a different quarter system that counts quarters into the coming hour. There, Viertel vier means 3:15 (one quarter of the way to four) and dreiviertel vier means 3:45 (three quarters of the way to four). It is perfectly logical, but it collides with the standard Viertel nach / Viertel vor most learners are taught: Viertel vier (3:15) and Viertel nach vier (4:15) are a full hour apart. If you are unsure which system someone is using, ask — or fall back on the unambiguous digital form below.
For anything official — timetables, opening hours, TV listings, a doctor’s appointment — German uses the 24-hour clock, and here you simply read the digits with Uhr between the hour and the minutes. 14:30 is vierzehn Uhr dreißig, 20:15 is zwanzig Uhr fünfzehn, and 9:05 is neun Uhr fünf. In this style you do not use halb, Viertel, nach or vor. Midnight is null Uhr (0:00) or vierundzwanzig Uhr; Mittag is noon and Mitternacht is midnight.
To pin an event to a time, use um (“at”): Der Zug fährt um acht Uhr (“The train leaves at eight o’clock”), Wir treffen uns um halb drei (“We’re meeting at 2:30”). For an approximate time use gegen (“around”): gegen Mittag, “around noon”. For a span use von … bis …: von neun bis fünf, “from nine to five”. Because the spoken 12-hour forms do not show morning or evening, add morgens, nachmittags or abends when it matters: um acht Uhr abends, “at eight in the evening”.
The numbers themselves are the foundation of all of this — if einundzwanzig or fünfzehn still slows you down, spend a few minutes on German numbers 1–100 first, and see German prepositions for how um, gegen and von … bis behave in a sentence.
Say each time out loud in the everyday spoken style, then check yourself.
Answers: (1) Es ist halb acht — remember halb points to the next hour. (2) Es ist Viertel nach sechs. (3) Es ist Viertel vor sechs — a quarter to six. (4) Um wie viel Uhr treffen wir uns? (5) achtzehn Uhr zwanzig — digits plus Uhr, no nach or vor. If those came out right, you can handle a train platform and a dinner invitation alike.