Time

Today we are going to talk about some time expressions:
Diǎn-o’clock
7:00 – qī diǎn
9:00 – jiǔ diǎn
Please try: 11:00, 5:00, 12:00
Fēn – minute
7:10 – qī diǎn shí fēn
9:25 – jiǔ diǎn èr shí wǔ fēn
Please try: 10:20, 3:40, 12:55
Bàn – half
7: 30—qī diǎn bàn or qī diǎn sān shí fēn
Kè – quarter
7:15 – qī diǎn yī kè (one quarter)
How about 7:45 then?...... Yes, qī diǎn sān kè (three quarters)
Note: Bàn for half you can use anywhere, while kè for quarter is only used for time expressions
2:00, you can say “èr diǎn”, it is understandable, but not accurate, we’d better say “liǎng diǎn”. As before all measure words, 2 will be pronounced as “liǎng”. (Please refer to the next blog for more about measure words).


Days of the week
Xīng qi (shing chee)-- week
We consider Monday as the first day of the week, so Monday is “ xīng qi yī”, so:
Tuesday – xīng qi èr
Wednesday – xīng qi sān
Thursday – xīng qi sì
Friday – xīng qi wǔ
Saturday – xīng qi liù
Sunday – xīng qi qī ?? Sorry, we have some change here, as you can see if we keep counting till the seventh day of the week, it would be “xīng qi qī”, but there are two “qī” together, doesn’t sound good, so we change “qī” to “tiān”, so Sunday is “xīng qi tiān” . “tiān” means “sky; heaven”.
I believe that most of people know “ xīn tiān dì”, “tiān” means “sky”; “dì” means “earth”, so between the sky and earth, is the world, and “xīn” means “new”, so “xīn tiān dì” means “new world”.

Nián – year
And you just need to read the digits of the year, for example, this year 2008 is read “èr líng líng bā nián”.

Yuè – month
Similar like the days of the week, January is the first month of the year, so:
Yī yuè – January
Èr yuè – Feburary
Sān yuè – March
Sì yuè – April
……
So keep counting till shí èr yuè – December
Logic and easy, isn’t it, I still remember that it took me a lot of time remember the twelve English words for these 12 month.

Hào – literally means “number”
Yī hào, means “the number 1 day of the month”
October 1st, is “shí yuè yī hào”

In Chinese the time expression follows the rule: from big to small, or from general to specific. It will be year-month- day. For instance, October 3, 2008, is “ 2 0 0 8 nián 10 yuè 3 hào”
You may notice that all the time expressions we talked about above are related to numbers, so it is very important to add “nián, yuè, or hào’’ after the numbers to show what time you are talking about.

Also, similar as time expression, the address in Chinese follows the same rule: from big to small, so the address should be: China, Shanghai, ** district, **Road, No. **, Building **, Room**.