French grammar · Beginner
French Expressions and Conventions: Time, Dates, and Everyday Phrases
Some things in French are fixed by convention rather than grammar: how to tell the time, how to say a date or a year, how to talk about the weather, and how to say where you live. Each one uses a set phrase that won't reward literal translation from English.
What it is
These are the patterns you need on your first day in France and that no conjugation table covers. Weather takes il fait, time takes il est, and dates put the day before the month with a plain cardinal number.
Il est huit heures et quart. Il fait beau. On est le 3 mai. — It's a quarter past eight. The weather's nice. It's the 3rd of May.
How to spot it
Look for impersonal il. French uses it as a dummy subject for weather, time, and necessity, where English uses it or there.
- Il est trois heures. — It's three o'clock.
- Il fait froid. — It's cold.
- Il y a du vent. — It's windy. (literally: there is wind)
- J'habite à Lyon. — I live in Lyon.
French uses the 24-hour clock in any official context: a train at 20h15 leaves à vingt heures quinze. In casual speech, du matin and du soir do the job of am and pm.
Expressions & Conventions Quick Reference
Telling the time
| Time | French | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 3:00 | Il est trois heures. | heures is always plural after one |
| 3:15 | Il est trois heures et quart. | or trois heures quinze |
| 3:30 | Il est trois heures et demie. | demie agrees with heure |
| 3:45 | Il est quatre heures moins le quart. | counted back from the next hour |
| 12:00 | Il est midi. / Il est minuit. | no article, and demi doesn't agree: midi et demi |
| 20:15 | Il est vingt heures quinze. | 24-hour clock, official contexts |
All 10 expressions & conventions lessons
These lessons cover the conventions that make you sound like you've actually been to France: telling time both casually and officially, saying dates and years, describing the weather, and the fixed phrases built around habiter, aimer, and faire.
- Telling Time — French tells the time with il est plus a number plus the word heure or heures, which can never be left out. Past the half hour it counts backwards from the next hour with moins, and it replaces twelve o'clock with midi and minuit.
- Years — A French year is read as a plain number with no word for year inside it: 1995 is mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-quinze, and 2026 is deux mille vingt-six. The preposition for a year is en, and French keeps two separate nouns for the concept: an for a counted year, année for a year as a stretch of time.
- Dates — A French date runs article, number, month, year, with no comma and no word for of: le 14 septembre 2026. Every day of the month is a plain cardinal number except the first, which is le 1er. Months are never capitalized, and numeric dates always put the day before the month.
- J'habite à + City — To say where you live, French uses habiter plus a preposition chosen by the kind of place: à for a town or city, en or au for a country, chez for someone's home. J'habite à Lyon covers everything English packs into I live in Lyon, and the same present tense with depuis covers I have lived there for years.
- Weather Expressions with Il Fait — French describes the weather with the impersonal il fait: il fait beau, il fait froid, il fait du soleil. Faire covers adjectives and temperatures, il y a covers things you can see like fog and clouds, and rain and snow have verbs of their own: il pleut, il neige.
- Telling Time: AM and PM — French has no equivalent of am and pm. When the hour could be misread, it adds du matin, de l'après-midi, du soir, or de la nuit after the time. In writing, and in anything official, it switches to the twenty-four-hour clock instead: 7 h for 7 am and 19 h for 7 pm.
- Aimer: Loving and Liking — Aimer means both to like and to love, and which one it is depends on the object. In front of a thing it means to like or to be fond of, and it needs a definite article: j'aime le café. In front of a person it means to be in love, which is why adding bien or beaucoup makes it weaker rather than stronger.
- Telling Time: The Basics — On an ordinary clock face, French adds minutes up to the half hour and subtracts them after it: quatre heures dix, quatre heures et demie, cinq heures moins vingt. The little word et appears only before quart and demie, and moins le quart is the one phrase that keeps an article.
- How Dates Are Expressed in French — Said out loud, a French date is a chain of plain numbers: le trois mai mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-quinze. Nothing links the parts, the year is read as one whole number, and the preposition depends on what you're naming: le for a day, en for a month or a year, au for a century.
- S'appeler: Saying Your Name — French gives a name with the reflexive verb s'appeler, literally to call oneself: je m'appelle Claire. The reflexive pronoun changes with the subject (me, te, se, nous, vous) and the spelling doubles its l in four of the six forms. Comment vous appelez-vous ? is the formal question, comment tu t'appelles ? the informal one.
Expressions & Conventions FAQs
- How do you tell the time in French?
- Start with il est, give the hour, then the minutes: il est trois heures dix. Past the half hour, French counts back from the next hour using moins: il est quatre heures moins dix means ten to four.
- Does French use am and pm?
- Not as such. Officially French uses the 24-hour clock, so 8pm is vingt heures. In conversation you add du matin, de l'après-midi, or du soir: huit heures du soir.
- How do you say a date in French?
- Day before month, with a cardinal number and no ordinal ending: le 3 mai, le 21 juin. The one exception is the first of the month, which uses the ordinal: le 1er mai. Months are not capitalized.
- How do you talk about the weather in French?
- Most weather uses il fait plus an adjective: il fait beau, il fait froid, il fait chaud. Precipitation gets its own verbs (il pleut, il neige), and wind and fog use il y a: il y a du vent.
- How do you say where you live in French?
- Habiter takes à before a city and en, au, or aux before a country depending on its gender: j'habite à Lyon, j'habite en France, j'habite au Canada. Habiter can also drop the preposition entirely before a city, as in j'habite Lyon.