Telling Time

I tend to hate learning numbers in other languages (I felt the same about telling time in Spanish, back in high school), but this is a useful lesson, so I'll buckle down and do it. The main difficult part about it is remembering the exceptions for counting minutes. Otherwise it's fairly intuitive.

There are two counters to use when telling time in Japanese: 時 for hours, and 分 for minutes. When reading any time, the format is [hour] 時 [minutes] 分. Of course, if it's an even time then I don't have to add the minutes portion, and if it's a half hour, I can say 半.

今は、三時ですよ。
It's 3 o'clock now.

四時半です。
It's 4:30.

今は、十時四十五分です。
It's 10:45 now.

午前 and 午後 are used for AM and PM respectively, though Japan uses a 24-hour clock more often. But to specify AM or PM, it has to come before the time, not after like in English.

午前九時半ですよ。
It's 9:30 AM.

午後十一時に十分です。
It's 11:20 PM.

When discussing time, we often need to specify intervals, as well. If I want to say "The party will go from 8:00 until 10:30, then I have to use the particles から and まで. In this case, they come after the given time.

授業は十時から十二時半までですよ。
Class is from 10 to 12:30.

毎朝いつまで寝る？
Until when do you sleep every morning?

In Tae Kim's practice sentences, there's a lot of particles where I don't quite understand the usage. I think I'll just have to keep reading and practice writing things with relation to time to better understand when to use them and how to connect various parts of my sentences.

Credit goes to Tae Kim's lesson seen here.