Before reading on, try answering the question in the title: How do you ask for the time in French?
Is your answer: Quelle heure est-il?
In French textbooks, “what time is it?” is often given as quelle heure est-il? The problem is that you’ll rarely hear anybody say that. People might sometimes write that, but it would pretty stilted if you said that in a conversation.
In a scene from Les Parent, Louis is sleeping in bed. It’s 9 o’clock in the morning. His wife Natalie walks in and encourages him to get up. Louis asks: Il est quelle heure?
Now that sounds more natural.
In fact, you’re likely to hear it pronounced as:
Yé quelle heure?
This isn’t the way you’d want to ask a complete stranger on the street for the time, though. It’s too direct, too informal. Instead, you could say something like: Excusez-moi (monsieur), vous avez l’heure (s’il vous plaît)?
Louis said something else in this scene that you’ll find very useful: He asked what the weather was like in an informal way. You can read about this in entry #157.
[This entry was inspired by the character Louis in Les Parent, “Black Zak,” season 3, episode 17, Radio-Canada, Montreal, 21 February 2011.]
Thanks! 🙂