Telling the time in Dutch (half, kwart, over, voor)

To ask the time in Dutch you say Hoe laat is het? (What time is it?), and to answer you start with Het is… (It is…): Het is drie uur. (It is three o'clock.) Most of the system is straightforward, but the half hour works differently from English and needs care.

Give the full hour as a number plus uur (hour), and build the minutes around the nearest hour or half hour with over (past), voor (to), kwart (quarter) and half (half). You need the cardinal numbers up to thirty for this.

1. Full hour: number + uur. Het is zeven uur. (It is seven o'clock.)
2. Quarter past: kwart over + the hour. kwart over drie (a quarter past three, 3:15).
3. Quarter to: kwart voor + the next hour. kwart voor vier (a quarter to four, 3:45).
4. Minutes past the hour: number + over + the hour. tien over drie (ten past three, 3:10).
5. Minutes to the hour: number + voor + the next hour. tien voor vier (ten to four, 3:50).

The half hour points forward to the coming hour. half + a number means half an hour before that number, so half drie is 2:30 (halfway to three), not 3:30. This is the one place where Dutch and English disagree.

The five and ten minutes on each side of the half are counted from the half, not from the whole hour: vijf voor half drie (five to half-three) is 2:25, and vijf over half drie (five past half-three) is 2:35.

• To ask the time: Hoe laat is het? (What time is it?) or, more politely, Weet u hoe laat het is? (Do you know what time it is?)
• In everyday speech Dutch uses the 12-hour clock with the over/voor/half system above. To make clear which half of the day you mean, add 's ochtends (in the morning), 's middags (in the afternoon), 's avonds (in the evening) or 's nachts (at night): zeven uur 's avonds (seven in the evening, 19:00).
• Timetables, screens and official times use the 24-hour clock, read as number + uur + minutes: 15:20 is vijftien uur twintig, 20:45 is twintig uur vijfenveertig.
• For an approximate time use rond (around) or ongeveer (about): Ik kom rond acht uur. (I'll come around eight.)

English speakers read half drie as 3:30, because English "half three" means half past three. In Dutch half always looks ahead to the next hour, so half drie is 2:30 and half vier is 3:30. To get 3:30, name the coming hour (vier), not the current one. The same logic drives the times just around the half: tien voor half vier (3:20) and tien over half vier (3:40) both count from 3:30, not from a whole hour.