Expressing Time: Phrases for Hours in the Day

大家好！
I'm starting a series on how to express time and dates. Most of my Chinese textbooks lumped all the time-related concepts together in one chapter, which can get confusing. So I'll break these up a little and explain them in more detail.

Let's start with some handy words to know when expressing the time of day:
Vocab
early morning (like until 10 or 11 AM)              早上                      zǎo shàng
morning (from about 10 to 12)                          上午                      shàng wǔ
noon （from 12:00 to 1:00 PM)                       中午                      zhōng wǔ
afternoon (from 1:00 to 6:00 PM)                     下午                       xià wǔ
evening  (6:00 on)                                             晚上                      wǎn shàng
hour                                                                    点                        diǎn
minute                                                                 分                         fèn
half (as in, half hour)                                            半                        bàn
and quarter (as in, quarter of an hour)                   刻                         kè

Notice the repeat of the word 午. This character can mean noon by itself. The 上 means up, but it can also mean 'before'. 下, then, would mean down and 'after' 早 means early, so 早上 forms 'early morning'.
What about 中？ This character means middle, so 中午 is literally middle of the noon. This also makes sense when you think about the name of China: 中国。 国 (guo) means country or kingdom. So China is, literally, the 'middle kingdom'. So cool!

Anyway, translating time between Chinese and English is fairly straightforward.  There's just one difference: the Chinese always express units of time (and also locations) from largest to smallest. (year, month, day, etc.)  So 'the 7th of may, 2012' would read '2012 may the seventh' in Chinese. Or, “2:30 tomorrow afternoon” would read “tomorrow afternoon 2:30”

The general setup for a phrase expressing time in Chinese would run:
(general time expression)+（hour)+ 点 + (minute) + 分。

The general time expressions are those that say what portion of the day you're talking about- morning, afternoon, etc.   So a few examples of these phrases would run like this:

Four in the afternoon
下午四点

Seven in the morning
早上七点

Six thirty at night
晚上六点半

Ten forty five in the morning
上午十一点三刻

 Twelve in the afternoon
中午十二点

Notice that the corresponding times to 'morning', 'afternoon' etc. are fairly loose; therefore, if you're setting a time at exact noon (12:00) you would need to specify both the general time expression 中午 and the exact hour 十二点.

Use in Sentences: 
Keep in mind that time phrases come before ANY OTHER phrase in the sentence (location, verb, or otherwise). The only words that can go before the time are the subject.
For example:

我晚上八点睡觉。
I will go to bed at eight o'clock tonight.
Here's the sentence broken up by phrase:
   我            晚上八点         睡觉‘
(subject)      (time)         (verb phrase)

There's only one other place to put the time phrase: at the very beginning, even before the subject. Use this if you want to emphasize the time (I'm going to bed at EIGHT tonight, versus tonight I'm going to bed at eight).

Here's how the sentence would read with the emphasis on the time:
晚上八点我睡觉。

Asking what time it is:
现在 几点？ (right now how many hours?) (xiàn zài  jǐ diǎn )
现在是八点半。 （right now it is eight thirty) （xiàn zài shì bā diǎn bàn）

Other Time Words in Chinese: 
There are a few other words that are used in Chinese to talk about time. However, they are used in different situations.

时间 is more of a general term. Rather than being in sentences that talk about an exact time on the clock, 时间（shí jiān） is used to talk about having time, or how long something took to do.

时候 is also more general. This is used to talk about a time when something else was happening. For example:
When I am eating...
我吃饭的时候....
By attaching 时候 to the verb phrase, you can make the verb phrase a time and provide a context. Note that you always need to have a 的 between the verb and the 时. You do not, however, need a word that corresponds to 'while' in English. You can go straight into the second verb:
我吃饭的时候， 他看书 。
while i am eating, he reads a book.
时候 can also be used one other important way: asking people what time something will happen.
For example:
What time do you eat?
你什么时候吃饭？


That's all for now!  Next time, we'll learn days of the week and how to talk about what date it is.
再见！
Sophie Sino