How to express dates and times in French?

There are many ways to ask for the date in French, because there are various ways of asking questions in French. You can ask using an impersonal question, like the English “What’s the date?” with quel(le) est(what is [formal]) or c’est(what is [informal]), or by using a personal question, which would literally translate to “What day are we?” These personal questions are formed using the subject pronouns nous(we) or on(one, we).

You can answer these questions by repeating part of the question or by just giving the date.

• Answer 1:

  (Nous sommes/On est) le 20 mars.

  (We are) March 20th.

• Answer 2:

  C’est le 20 mars.

  (It is) March 20th.

Now you know how to ask for the date, so let’s see how dates work in French!

When expressing the full date for yourself, you’ll include the day, number, month, and year. A full date is given as follow:

You can of course omit some of these elements above. For instance, when you give your date of birth, you don’t usually mention the day of the week. Le(the) precedes the day of the week OR the day of the month when the day of the week is omitted.

If the day of the week and day of the month are omitted, the article le is replaced by en(in)

Let’s now have a look at all the elements of the date individually!

The days of the week in French are lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi, and dimanche. For the days of the week, the weekdays all end in -di, except "Sunday," which starts with di!

When indicating the part of the day during which something will be done, use the prepositions dans or en:

• dans + moment of the day

  Dans can be used with la matinée(the morning), l’après-midi(the afternoon), la soirée(the evening).

  On arrivera dans la matinée.

  We’ll arrive in the morning.

• en + [début(beginning) / milieu(mid-) / fin de(end)] + moment of the day

  On se voit en fin d’aprèm !

  Let’s meet up late in the afternoon!

  ↳ Aprèm is short for après-midi.

The months in French are janvier, février, mars, avril, mai, juin, juillet, août, septembre, octobre, novembre, and décembre. Months are introduced by the preposition en. French students often struggle with the pronunciations of mars(March) and août(August), so pay attention to the pronunciation tips next to them!

If you want to specify the part of the month during which something is happening, you can do that using a long phrase (like “in the middle of the month of March”) or by using a shorter phrase (like “mid-March”). Why choose one over the other? They are both standard French, so it’s really up to you!

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There are two ways to read out the year in French, but the modern way consists of reading a year like a French cardinal number, starting with the thousands, followed by the hundreds, and so on. If you are interested in the old(er)-fashioned way, head over to our French dates and times reference sheet!

Years can be introduced by the phrase en l’an…(in the year...) or just by the preposition en(in). It is not likely that you’ll need to write the date in letters but, just so you know, dashes are needed between each word.

• C’était en quelle année ?

  What year was that in?

• En mille-neuf-cent-quatre-vingt-dix-huit.

  In 1998.

• Ce n’était pas en (l’an) deux-mille ?

  Wasn’t it in 2000?

What about BC, AD, and centuries? Traditionally, French people prefer to use Roman numbers to write about centuries, but Arabic numbers are now becoming popular, as well. Centuries are introduced by the preposition au, and the regular ordinal French numbers are used when saying them out loud.

To write the date in French, remember to write the day of the month before the number of the month, unlike how the date is written in English:

You are all set for dates! You can do some of our activities to practice saying dates in French or keep reading to learn how to tell the time in French!

To ask for the time in French, you can ask the question in several different ways:

To give the time, you can use il est + time or just give the time.

A specific time is introduced by the preposition à(at) to ask or say at what time something is happening.

• À quelle heure commence le cours ?

  At what time does the class start?

• À 10h00.

  At 10am.

Now it is time to study how to read and give the time!

In French, the 24-hour clock is used in airports and train stations, by the media, and when booking appointments in order to avoid confusion. You don’t usually need to clarify whether it is am or pm with the 24-hour clock.

Reading a 24-hour clock time is straightforward: simply read the numbers you see and add heure(s)between the hours and minutes.

The 12-hour clock is very popular and used when speaking in French. People usually round to the nearest five minutes. If it is a matter of minutes, use the 24-hour clock!

• ❌

  Je partirai à sept heures vingt-deux du soir.

  I’ll leave at 7:22pm.

  ↳ If it’s a matter of minutes, use the 24-hour clock instead!

• ✅

  Je partirai à la demie / à sept heures et demie.

  I’ll leave at half past / at half past seven.

  ↳ The 12-hour clock is better for vague times.

Are you ready to master the 12-hour clock?! Let’s start with the hours. For 12 am and 12 pm, there are special terms: minuit(midnight) and midi(midday). For all other hours, you can just use the number!

To give a time on the 12-hour clock with any other number of minutes, you’ll follow different rules depending on whether you’re more or less than 30 minutes into the hour:

• For a number of minutes less than 30, you’ll just say the hour and then the regular French numbers for the number of minutes.

• For a number of minutes past the half-hour mark you’ll need to do some math! Don’t worry, it’s not too hard! Just say the hour for the next hour and follow that with how many minutes remain until you reach that hour.

  For example, if the time is 5:40 am, you’ll do some subtraction and say, Il est six heures moins vingt(It’s twenty to six→ [lit.] It’s six hours minus 20)

Here’s a visual that will help you remember all of that!

Let’s take a look at some examples in context!

• Il est déjà minuit !

  It’s already midnight!

• Je me suis réveillé à trois heures du mat’.

  I woke up at 3 am.

  ↳ mat' is short for matin

• Je me suis couchée à onze heures moins le quart.

  I went to bed at quarter to 11 pm.

  ↳ It is understood the action would be in the evening, so we don’t need to add du soir.

Because the 12-hour clock is not very precise, you can add vers(around), pile(sharp), or the poetic phrase et des poussières(or so→ [lit.] and dust).

Here, we are going to see where the American and French ways of talking about time meet! In both languages, 15, 30, and 45 minutes can be read with numbers or using the 12-hour vocab as shown below:

Let’s wrap up this article by mentioning times of the year: l’hiver(winter), le printemps(spring), l’été(summer), l’automne(fall). All seasons in French are masculine.