Telling Time in Russian: Asking the Time, Days of the Week and Seasons

You will learn

• to ask what the time is
• to understand the answer!
• to ask when shops, etc. open and close
• to talk about what you do on days of the week and at different times of the year
  and a little about what Russians do on their days off

An information bureau

Study guide

🔊 Dialogues: Asking & Telling the Time

1. What is the time?

2. Tanya is asking the time.

3. Now Tamara wants to know the time.

4. Tanya and Tamara have finished breakfast.

ой here an expression of consternation
уже already

Practice what you have learned

Before you begin these exercises, read the grammar section.

On your recording you will hear people asking the time. Listen very carefully then see if you can put the following times in their correct order.

2. Your turn to ask the time. Andrei will guide you.

A cafe’s opening hours
(In this strange picture the cafe works from Monday (ПН) till... Tuesday (ВТ)...)

🔊 Dialogues: Opening Hours & Timetables

5. Misha asks about the shop’s hours.

магазин shop, store
наш (fem. наша) our

6. Tanya wants to know why her train hasn’t arrived.

поезд train
наверно (or наверное) probably
опаздывать to be running late

Practice what you have learned

3. The signs below have fallen off their appropriate shops. Read the opening hours below then listen to your recording, and put the signs back in place.

4. The customers in the following dialogues all express indignation over shop timekeeping - unfairly, as it turns out. By listening to the recording, you should be able to say how long each customer will have to wait.

This shop is closed for repairs and gives address and phone number for details.

🔊 Dialogues: Days of the Week & Seasons

7. Misha describes a week during the semester.

8. What about vacation?

Practice what you have learned

5. Vera Stepanovna’s family always has enormous problems arranging a vacation together. If you listen to the snatches of conversation on your recording and then fill in the missing details below, you will know why.

6. In this exercise, you are a student talking about a normal week during the semester.

A newspaper cartoon. The banner says "I don’t understand anything"!

Который час? / Сколько сейчас времени? What is the time?

On the hour:

Когда...? when...?

To say ‘at’ a particular time, you simply put в in front of the number, e.g.:

в два часа at two o’clock

NB Here too endings change after numbers. After two, three and four, the ending is -a (genitive singular). From five onwards the ending becomes -ов (genitive plural). One o’clock is simply the word for ‘hour’ - час, and it doesn’t need an ending. Other masculine nouns have the same endings, take билет ticket and доллар dollar, for example:

один билет, один доллар
два (три, четыре) билета, доллара
пять (шесть, ...) билетов, долларов

One to thirty minutes past the hour:

For the first thirty minutes of any hour, Russians talk about so many minutes of the next hour. Here are some examples:

In everyday speech, instead of пятнадцать минут you’ll often hear четверть (a quarter): четверть шестого (a quarter past 5). And instead of без пятнадцати – без четверти: без четверти пять (a quarter to 5).

The ordinal numbers used in this way are:

The most important thing to remember is that Russian always looks forward to the next hour. Arriving exactly one hour late could be very inconvenient!

After the half-way point:

After the half-way point one says that it is so many hours minus the number of minutes, i.e.:

The number after без ‘without’ has a new ending - и. It is wise to be aware of this since the number can sound quite different.

If this all seems daunting, remember that you won’t necessarily ever need to use these times, just to understand them if you hear them.

Read and understand

7. Appointment books can bring order to one’s life, but they can also wreak havoc... Read the following notices then explain why Volodya seems to have got everything wrong.

8. The following snatches of conversation have all become jumbled up and make no sense. Using the pictures to guide you, put them in the correct order.

💡 Did you know?

Выходные дни (days off)

Stores are open on Saturdays and Sundays, but for the majority of Russian people the working week ends on Friday. Parents who scarcely see their child or children during the week will spend a lot of time with them on Saturday and Sunday. Despite the fact that both parents normally work, in a two-parent family the father will typically play with the children while the mother cooks, cleans and searches the shops for necessary items.

Since the late 1980s, there has been greater freedom of worship, and a marked religious revival, and many will take time to worship in churches, synagogues or mosques. Even in the big cities, people do not very often go to the theater, movies or concerts. There are obviously exceptions, but for most people it is difficult to obtain tickets (the very verb used, достать, means ‘to obtain with difficulty’, the information is out of date). Few would eat out in restaurants or cafes except on special occasions, chiefly because such places are scarce. Of late, more have opened, but these are often prohibitively expensive, or require payment in foreign currency. The lack of activities and places for young people to go is particularly sharply felt.

The large cities may often seem transformed on weekends. If at all possible, urban dwellers try to escape the city. Excursions into the forest to pick mushrooms or vitamin-rich berries are favorite occupations. Anyone who can, rents (or buys) a дача, a small vacation house out of the city. For the average person, this will be no more than a hut, with few conveniences, and it may take a long time to get to it by public transportation. Nevertheless, these dachas are much sought after.

We have talked exclusively about city dwellers. In numerical terms the number of visitors from the countryside and smaller cities more than compensates for those leaving the city on weekends. Although these visitors do sightsee, in general they come to the big cities in order to buy food, clothes, and other items not available at home.

And how it looks today:

Today weekends look very different. Stores, cafés and restaurants are open seven days a week, and getting tickets for the movies, theater or a concert is easy – most people simply buy them online through apps and websites. Eating out is no longer a rare treat, and you pay in roubles, almost always by card or phone. Keep in mind, though, that foreign bank cards (Visa or Mastercard issued abroad) currently do not work in Russia, as long as the sanctions on them have not been lifted – so bring cash to exchange or arrange a local payment method.

What hasn’t changed is the love of the дача. As soon as the weather allows, city dwellers head out of town – to a dacha, to the countryside, or into the forest to pick mushrooms and berries. Many still spend the whole summer at the dacha, gardening, having barbecues (шашлык) and relaxing away from the city. Winter weekends often mean skiing, skating or a trip to the banya (баня).

Your turn to speak

You will be a student finding his way around Moscow in the first part of this exercise, then you will have a chance to talk a little more about yourself. The following expressions will come in handy:

когда открывается...?
когда у вас перерыв?
каникулы начинаются / кончаются...
я люблю...
ходить в походы

FAQ