Telling The Time | Learn German for Beginners | Lesson 09

Learn how to tell the time in German! This lesson will give you all the tools you need to read a German clock, talk about the time and make sure you never get confused again when talking to a native speaker!

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[rewboss]

I'm going to add something here, but it's likely to be confusing for beginners. If you're just starting out learning German, you might want to give this comment a miss.

Many Germans -- in many parts of Germany, especially the former GDR, most Germans -- do not use the "viertel nach" and "viertel vor" system for the quarter hours. Instead, they say "viertel drei" to mean 2.15, and "dreiviertel drei" to mean 2.45.

This basically extends the idea of saying "halb drei" to mean 2.30 -- the system then works like this:

zwei Uhr -- 2.00
viertel drei -- 2.15
halb drei -- 2.30
dreiviertel drei -- 2.45
drei Uhr -- 3.00

The problem for people visiting Germany is that the "viertel nach zwei" system is the one taught in German classes, but the "viertel drei" system is the more prevelant system, and the older. "Viertel nach zwei" was only used in north and west Germany until after WW2, when it started to spread to other regions -- this explains why the former GDR uses "viertel drei" almost exclusively -- this, of course, includes important tourist destinations like Berlin and Dresden. Other tourist regions, like Bavaria and the Black Forest, tend to be in places where "viertel drei" is the more common variant. It's quite a shock when you manage to put together your polite textbook "Entschuldigen Sie, können Sie mir sagen, wieviel Uhr es ist?" only to be met with "Dreiviertel fünf".

Still, foreign visitors can take solace in the fact that lots of Germans don't know, or don't understand, "dreiviertel drei" and have to have it explained to them.

[CHILNOFF]

Hallo. Ich bin siebzehn Jahre alt. Und ich bin Schüler in Japan.

I'm going to German in a few days as a exchange student from japan.
So your videos are really nice help to learn German.

Herzlichen Dank!!!

[seamonkeysarereal]

we just learned about this on friday :) your lessons are a great way to reinforce what i learn in class! i'll be sure to let the teacher know about your channel

[gammon]

Why can this guy explain it to me in 3 minutes but it takes my teacher an hour?

[colettebyrne]

Hola!  :)  I've learnt more German in the last month from your videos than I ever learnt in a year at school (many years ago!)  So thank you so much! :)  

I just need to practice it now... at the moment I just walk around the house repeating phrases!!!  I have no one to speak German to!  :) xxx

[rhubarb]

Very helpful, enjoyable and easy to understand

[samarneson]

I love this video and am very excited to show it to my students!

[joncheung]

I love your lessons, they are really helpful!!

[Pakopakoy]

Great and very educational video. Thanks for sharing !!

[jiru]

...And this taught me the subject way better than my German teacher who taught us in class for 2 years

[tari-starremichael]

OMG thank you soooo much! other videos that people do to help you learn german they either pronounce it differently or its not very clear but you are perfect at doing it and you have really helped me!! I WILL watch all of your videos!! thanks!

[CallMeKell]

Love your videos..but can't stop seeing Tom Syndicate in gosh

[daniel_eyes]

Danke sehr! Your vid really helps me a lot!
I want to be Germanized as soon as I can :)

[Calico]

You should do another vocabulary lesson, but with countries!

[mewforever]

Another awesome lesson ^^ I always wondered about telling time :)And  I like how we can read along to the correct German language phrase, it makes learning a lot easier using visual aids and sentences, i am a visual learner and this helps alot, thanks again for the awesome lesson :) keep 'em coming :)

[gyuyongjeong]

It's always joyful to watch your videos. They're really helpful. I wanna ask you one thing; Is it correct to say "Es ist viertel nach dreizehn" to say "It is quarter past thirteen?" Little bit confused about how the 'quarter' is used when saying 'pm' ;(

[akarinsiri]

I think there's a mistake... I could be wrong but go to 2:28 and 10:30pm is put as Est ist halb elf. Shouldn't it be Est ist halb dreiundzwanzig because the 10:30 is pm so it becomes halb 23:00?

I know he said it refers back to the 12-hour time but how does it work then if Germany normally uses 24-hour time?

[xhindivant]

Ok. When I visit Germany int he future I will make sure to have my watch on ALL the time! LOL

[BuayaGuy]

I always had a lot of trouble with the <halb Uhr> and a few of the other ones that were significantly different from English...I can do the basic time stuff though :)

[farrelramadhani]

Thank you very much!! You look like aaron paul though:p