What you will be able to do
- Say and write any date and any clock time in the standard large-to-small order.
- Place a time expression before the verb, either after the subject or at the head of the sentence.
- Ask the time, the date and the day of the week with 几, and answer without using 是.
- Use 现在, 以前 and 以后, remembering that the last two follow their phrase rather than preceding it.
Chinese words in this text can be activated to show a dictionary gloss.
Time runs from large to small
A Chinese date starts with the biggest unit and narrows, step by step, without exception:
202683 èr líng èr liù nián bā yuè sān rì xīngqīyī shàngwǔ jiǔ diǎn bàn
Read that from the other end and you have half past nine on the morning of Monday 3 August 2026. Once you have the direction of travel, the system needs almost no memorising: everything else in this lesson is vocabulary hung on that one frame.
The date
- nián — year. The digits are read out one by one, not as a number: 2026 is èr líng èr liù nián.
- yuè — month. A number plus , and there are no month names to learn: yīyuè, bāyuè, shí'èryuè.
- rì / hào — day of the month. is what a form or a newspaper prints; is what people say. on paper, bā yuè sān hào across a table.
- xīngqī — week. xīngqīyī is Monday and the count runs to xīngqīliù for Saturday. Sunday breaks the pattern: xīngqītiān in speech, xīngqīrì in writing. There is no .
The clock
- diǎn for the hour, fēn for the minute: sān diǎn shí fēn.
- Two o'clock is liǎng diǎn, because is a measure word. is wrong.
- bàn is half past: qī diǎn bàn. yí kè is a quarter: bā diǎn yí kè.
- For fewer than ten minutes past, insert líng: jiǔ diǎn líng wǔ fēn.
- chà, short of, comes first: chà wǔ fēn shí diǎn — five to ten.
- The part of the day goes in front of the hour, never after it: zǎoshang qī diǎn, shàngwǔ jiǔ diǎn, zhōngwǔ shí'èr diǎn, xiàwǔ sān diǎn, wǎnshang bā diǎn.
Keep apart from xiǎoshí and apart from fēnzhōng. and tell you a position on the clock; and measure a length of time. is three o'clock, sān ge xiǎoshí is three hours.
Where a time expression sits
This is the rule that rescues the most sentences. A time word comes before the verb — either straight after the subject or at the very head.
- 。 Wǒ míngtiān qù. — I am going tomorrow.
- 。 Míngtiān wǒ qù Běijīng. — the same sentence with more weight on tomorrow.
- 。 Wǒmen bā diǎn shàngkè. — Our class starts at eight.
is not a slightly clumsy sentence. It is not a sentence.
, ,
xiànzài is now. yǐqián and yǐhòu are before and after, and unlike the English words they follow the phrase they measure from.
- chīfàn yǐqián — before eating.
- sān diǎn yǐhòu — after three.
- 。 Yǐqián wǒ bú huì shuō Hànyǔ. — Standing alone at the head, means in the past.
Asking
- ？ Xiànzài jǐ diǎn? — What time is it?
- ？ Jīntiān jǐ hào? — What is the date?
- ？ Jīntiān xīngqī jǐ? — What day is it?
All three take jǐ rather than , because hours, dates and weekdays are small numbers with a known ceiling. And notice what the answers do without: 。 Jīntiān xīngqīyī. A date or a weekday works as its own predicate, so can be dropped — and usually is.
How to work through it
One direction, seven unitsread
Read the opening string 2026年8月3日星期一上午九点半 aloud, slowly, naming each unit as you pass it. Then say today: year, month, day, weekday, part of day, hour. Do not translate from your own language — build outwards from the year.
The calendar and the clockvocabulary
Eight cards. 年, 月 and 号 are one system and should be learned together; 点 and 分钟 belong to the clock and are easy to confuse with 小时. 现在 and 以前 are the two ends of a line you will keep referring to.
The time goes before the verbsentence
Say each sentence twice, once with the time after the subject and once with it at the head: 我明天去北京。 / 明天我去北京。 — 我们八点上课。 / 八点我们上课。 Then say aloud why 我去明天 is impossible.
Catching a time on the first hearingaudio
Ten short recordings: five clock times, five dates. Write each one in digits before you check. Listen for the part of the day first — it arrives before the number and tells you whether nine means morning or evening.
几 for the small numbers, and no 是quiz
Ten items. Half ask you to choose between 几 and 多少 for hours, dates and quantities; half ask you to decide whether a sentence needs 是 at all, since 今天星期一 does without it.
Fix a meetingspeaking
Two roles. One asks 你今天下午有时间吗？ and proposes a day and an hour; the other refuses once, gives a reason with 我…以后有时间, and proposes another. Finish with both of you repeating the agreed time back in full: weekday, part of day, hour.