Free Telling Time in Italian Worksheets

How the Italian clock worksheets work

Read the clock prints faces with two lines under each, where students write the time in words, and its title is the question they're answering: Che ore sono? Draw the hands puts the time in words over an empty face, and students draw the short hour hand and the long minute hand. Match clocks to times has six clocks, A to F, and six times in words, and students write the letter that matches. Digital to words gives a time such as 2:45, or 14:45 on the 24-hour clock, to write out in Italian. The Reference chart is a single page of time phrases with no answer key.

You choose the minutes (o'clock, half hours, quarter hours, every five minutes or any minute), the 12-hour or 24-hour clock and 6, 12, 18 or 24 clocks or times. On the 12-hour clock, the part of the day can be on or off, as in di mattina or di sera. Read the clock and Draw the hands print standard clocks, 12 to a page, or bigger ones, 6 to a page. Shuffle gives new times with the same settings, and the answer key matches the new sheet.

The faces are drawn by code, and the hour hand moves between the hours with the minutes, so at 2:45 it sits three quarters of the way to the 3. On an Italian 24-hour clock worksheet, a small inner ring shows 13 to 23 and 00. With the 24-hour clock or the part of the day on, the faces on Read the clock and Match clocks to times have a.m., p.m., noon or midnight under them. The sheets are black and white for photocopying.

How to tell time in Italian

Italian has two ways to ask the time: Che ore sono? and Che ora è? The Treccani dictionary calls both correct, and Che ore sono? is the one on the sheets. One o'clock is a single hour, so it takes è (“is”): è l'una, where l' is la shortened before a vowel. Every other hour takes sono (“are”) and le, as in sono le due and sono le tre. Noon and midnight take è and no le: è mezzogiorno, è mezzanotte. In punto (“on the dot”) is optional, so sono le tre is enough on its own.

The minutes go after e (“and”), so 3:10 is le tre e dieci and 2:21 is le due e ventuno. At 3:23 it's le tre e ventitré, and ventitré takes an accent at the end that tre on its own doesn't. Quarter past is e un quarto or e quindici, as in le tre e un quarto. Half past is e mezza or e mezzo, and both are correct. The Treccani dictionary calls e mezzo the more correct form, but e mezza is the one you hear most, so the sheets print le tre e mezza for 3:30.

After the half hour, Italian can count down to the next hour with meno (“minus”). That makes 2:40 le tre meno venti, 2:45 le tre meno un quarto, 2:50 le tre meno dieci and 2:55 le tre meno cinque. The sheets use meno for :40, :45, :50 and :55 and e for every other minute, as in le due e trentacinque for 2:35 and le due e quarantadue for 2:42. Counting up is correct too, and the quiz takes le due e quaranta, le due e quarantacinque and le due e tre quarti.

You can also say what's left before the hour. Un quarto alle tre and manca un quarto alle tre both mean 2:45, and mancano dieci minuti alle tre is 2:50. The Accademia della Crusca calls both un quarto alle tre and le tre meno un quarto correct, and un quarto alle tre is more common in Tuscany.

Noon and midnight follow the same pattern: mezzogiorno e mezza is 12:30, mezzogiorno meno un quarto is 11:45 and mezzanotte meno cinque is 11:55 p.m. È or sono goes with the hour you name, so 12:45 is è l'una meno un quarto and 2:50 is sono le tre meno dieci.

On the 12-hour clock, the part of the day goes after the time. Di mattina runs from about 5 a.m. to noon and del pomeriggio from noon to about 6 p.m. Di sera covers about 6 p.m. to midnight, and di notte is late at night, until about 5 a.m. For example, 9:00 a.m. is le nove di mattina, 3:00 p.m. is le tre del pomeriggio and 8:00 p.m. is le otto di sera. One o'clock can be l'una di notte (1:00 a.m.) or l'una del pomeriggio (1:00 p.m.), while mezzogiorno and mezzanotte need no part of the day.

The 24-hour clock is very common in Italy, on timetables and in shops and offices. It counts from 0 to 23 with le and gives the minutes as a number after e, so 14:30 is le quattordici e trenta and 21:15 is le ventuno e quindici. Midnight, 00:00, is mezzanotte, and 00:10 is le zero e dieci, or mezzanotte e dieci in everyday speech. The sheets print the minutes as a number on the 24-hour clock, though the quiz also takes le quindici e mezza for 15:30.

The Italian time phrases chart

The chart below gives the phrase for every five minutes past three, then one o'clock, half past one, noon, half past noon, midnight and a quarter to midnight. It also lists the parts of the day and some 24-hour examples. The Reference chart exercise prints the same phrases on one page.

Using the worksheets in class

Hand out the Reference chart with the first sheet, or project the phrase chart on this page. Start on the 12-hour clock with o'clock and half hours, where students meet è l'una and sono le due. Add quarter hours and meno next, and keep the 24-hour clock for after that. Press Shuffle between copies, and students sitting next to each other get different times. The answer key starts on its own page, so you can print the sheets without it.

If the numbers trip students up (quarantacinque, ventitré), the Italian numbers to words converter writes them out, and there are Italian verb conjugation worksheets for the verbs. Between lessons, the telling time in Italian quiz runs the same options on screen and explains every miss. If you teach Spanish or French too, the telling time in Spanish worksheets and the telling time in French worksheets print the same five exercises.

Frequently asked questions