MODULE 3 DAILY LIFE AND TALKING ABOUT LOCATION, DATE AND TIME

OVERVIEW

This module introduces the essential questions in basic Spanish conversation

on telling time. It focuses on how to have a conversation on telling time, date and
location. It also discusses the basic rules on telling time and date in Spanish. In this
module, you will be working in pair to make the conversation in Spanish become
meaningful.

OBJECTIVES: At the end of the this module, you should be able;

1. Memorize the questions and answers on talking about location date and time;

2. demonstrate the how to talk about location, date and time;

3. construct and present Spanish conversation on talking about time.

Dealing with Dates

Dates are important parts of everyday life (in more ways than one!). To write out dates
in Spanish, you have to practice the days of the week, the months of the year, and
numbers (see the preceding section).

Expressing the days of the week

If you hear ¿Qué día es hoy? (What day is it?), you should respond with Hoy es . . .
(Today is . . .) and then provide the name of one of the days listed here:

English Spanish
Monday lunes
Tuesday martes
Wednesday miércoles
Thursday jueves
Friday viernes
Saturday sábado
Sunday domingo

REMEMBER THIS

1. Unlike the English calendar, the Spanish calendar starts with Monday.

2. Here are two more guidelines for talking about days of the week in Spanish:

Unless you use them at the beginning of a sentence, you don’t capitalize the
days of the week in Spanish:
Lunes y martes son días de vacaciones. (Monday and Tuesday are vacation
days.)
 You use el to express on when referring to a particular day of the week and
los to express on when the action occurs repeatedly:
No trabajo el sábado. (I’m not working on Saturday.)
No trabajo los sábados. (I don’t work on Saturdays.)

Naming the months of theyear

If you hear ¿En qué mes . . .? (In what month . . .), someone is asking you in what
month a certain event takes place. We pro- vide the names of the months in Spanish
in the following list:

English Spanish
January enero
February febrero
March marzo
April abril
May mayo
June junio
July julio
August agosto
September septiembre (or setiembre)
October octubre
November noviembre
December diciembre

ALSO REMEMBER THIS

1. Like days of the week, the months aren’t capitalized in Spanish:

Junio y julio son meses agradables. (June and July are nice months.)

2. Along with the months, you may also want to talk about the seasons of the
year. In Spanish, the seasons are masculine except for la primavera (the
spring):

el invierno (the winter) la primavera (the spring) el verano (the summer)

el otoño (the autumn [fall])

Making a date

If you want to ask a passerby or an acquaintance about the date, politely inquire
¿Cuál es la fecha de hoy? (What is today’s date?) The person should respond with
Hoy es . . . (Today is . . .) and then use the following formula to express the correct
date:

day + (el) + cardinal number (except for primero) + de + month + de + year

The following is an example translation, using this formula:

Sunday, April 18, 2010: Hoy es domingo, el dieciocho de abril de dos mil diez.

Now that you have a handy formula, you need to know a few more details about
writing dates in Spanish:
You express the first day of each month with primero.
You use cardinal numbers for all other days:
el primero de enero (January 1st)
el siete de enero (January 7th)
Use el to express on with Spanish dates:
Partimos el once de octubre. (We are leaving on October 11th.)

In Spanish, you express years in thousands and hundreds, not only in hundreds:

1492: mil cuatrocientos noventa y dos (fourteen hundred ninety-two)

In Spanish, when dates are written as numbers, they follow the sequence
day/month/year, which may prove confusing to English speakers — especially for
dates below the 12th of the month. You write February 9th as 2/9 in English, but in
Spanish it’s 9/2.

When speaking of dates in everyday language, the words and expressions that
follow may come in handy:

English Spanish English Spanish

a day un día day before Anteayer
yesterday
a week una semana yesterday Ayer
a month un mes today Hoy
a year un año tomorrow Mañana
in en tomorrow morning mañana por la
ago hace Tomorrow afternoon Mañana –por la
tarde
per por Tomorrow night Mañana por la
noche
During Durante A week from today De hoy en ocho
Next Proximo (a) Two weeks De mañana en
dos semana
Last Pasado Within one (two) Dentro de un
weeks (dos) semanas
Last (in series) ultimo
Eve La vispera

IT’S A DATE

Translate the following dates into Spanish:

1. January 9,2014 _____________ 6. June 12,

1896_______________
2. February 14, 1999 _____________ 7. July 10, 1979 ________________
3. March 2, 1978 _______________ 8. September 8, 1768 ___________
4. April 12, 1954 __________________ 9. October 18, 2006______________
5. May 3, 1980____________________ 10. November 19, 1981 __________
MAKE MY DAY

Tell the days. Write the day in Spanish.

1. New year in 2020 falls on _________ 4. All Saint’s day falls on __________
2. Christmas in 2020 falls on _________ 5. Cinco de Mayo falls on _________
3. Independence day in 2020 falls on _________

TELLING TIME

Knowing how to understand, speak, and write time-related words and phrases is a
must for anyone who’s studying a for- eign language and planning to put these studies
to use (to do some traveling one day, for instance).

If you hear ¿Qué hora es? (What time is it?), someone wants to know the time. You
should start by responding with the following:

Es la una + 1 o’clock hour or Son las + any time after 1.

To express the time after the hour (up to and including half past the hour), use y (and)
and the number of minutes. Use menos (less) + the number of the following hour to
express the time before the next hour (after half past the hour).

You can also express time numerically (as shown in the third example here):

Es la una y media. (It’s 1:30.)

Son las cinco menos veinte. (It’s 4:40.)
Son las cuatro y cuarenta. (It’s 4:40.)

If you want to discuss at what time a particular event will occur, you can use a
question — ¿A qué hora . . . ? — or answer with A la una or A las + any time after
1:

¿A qué hora vienen? (At what time are they coming?)

A la una. (At 1:00.)
A las tres y cuarto. (At 3:15.)

The following chart shows how to express time after and before the hour:

Time Spanish
1:00 la una
2:05 las dos y cinco
3:10 las tres y diez
4:15 las cuatro y cuarto or las cuatro y quince
5:20 las cinco y veinte
6:25 las seis y veinticinco
7:30 las siete y media or las siete y treinta
7:35 las ocho menos veinticinco or las siete y treinta y cinco
8:40 las nueve menos veinte or las ocho y cuarenta
9:45 las diez menos cuarto or las nueve y cuarenta y cinco
10:50 las once menos diez orlas diez y cincuenta
11:55 las doce menos cinco or las once y cincuenta y cinco
noon el mediodía
midnight la medianoche

When expressing time, the words and expressions we present in the following table
may come in handy:

English Spanish English Spanish

a second un segundo in an hour en una hora
a minute un minuto in a while dentro de un
rato
a quarter of an hour un cuarto de hora until ten o’clock hasta las diez
an hour una hora before nine antes de las nueve
a half hour media hora after seven o’clock después de las
siete
in the morning (a.m.) por la mañana since what ¿desde qué hora?
in the afternoon por la tarde since eight o’clock desde las ocho
in the evening por la noche one hour ago hace una hora
at what time? ¿a qué hora? Early temprano
at exactly nine o’clock a las nueve en punto late tarde
at about two o’clock a eso de las dos late (in arriving) de retraso

WHAT TIME IS IT?

1. 9:00 ___________________ 6. 8:45 ___________________

2. 12:17 __________________ 7. 10:30 __________________
3. 7:47 ___________________ 8. 6:15 ___________________
4. 5:03____________________ 9. 2:46 ___________________
5. 3:20____________________ 10. 11:22__________________