Everyday vocabulary
Telling the time in Danish
Published 23 September 2026
If a Dane says halv tre, they mean 2:30, not 3:30. "Half three" in Danish is half way to three, and British English speakers, who say "half three" for 3:30, turn up an hour late. Here is the whole Danish clock: the half hours, the quarters, the minutes, and the one phrase that sounds like "this morning" but means tomorrow.
Asking
Hvad er klokken?
hvad er klokken is "what time is it?", literally "what is the clock?". The answer starts with klokken er or, more casually, den er: Klokken er tre, "it's three o'clock".
Full hours use the numbers you already know, with one quirk: one o'clock is klokken et, with et rather than en. If the numbers themselves are still shaky, start with how Danish numbers work; the clock only ever needs one to twelve, plus the minutes.
Half hours
Halv means half way to the next hour
Danish counts half hours forward. halv tre is half way to three, so 2:30. Halv ni is 8:30. German does the same (halb drei), and if you speak German you can stop reading this section.
Everyone else: when you hear halv, subtract one from the number that follows, then add thirty minutes. After a week of doing that on purpose, it turns automatic.
Vi ses halv tre means "see you at 2:30". If you take one thing from this page, take this.
Quarters and minutes
Over means past, i means to
Quarters work like English: kvart over tre is quarter past three, kvart i fire is quarter to four. Over is "past" and i is "to".
Minutes use the same two words: fem over tre is 3:05 and ti i fire is 3:50. Close to the half hour, Danes count from the half instead of the hour:
| Time | Danish | Literally |
|---|---|---|
| 3:05 | fem over tre | five past three |
| 3:15 | kvart over tre | quarter past three |
| 3:25 | fem minutter i halv fire | five minutes to half (way to) four |
| 3:30 | halv fire | half (way to) four |
| 3:35 | fem minutter over halv fire | five minutes past half (way to) four |
| 3:45 | kvart i fire | quarter to four |
| 3:50 | ti i fire | ten to four |
The 3:25 row is the one that looks worst on paper. Hear it once, fem minutter i halv fire, and it is just a rhythm.
The 24-hour clock
Timetables and appointments use all 24 hours
Trains, doctors, the kommune and every letter you get from them use the 24-hour clock, written with a full stop: 14.30. It is read as two plain numbers, fjorten tredive, with no halv and no over.
So the same moment has two names. A friend says halv tre; the booking confirmation says 14.30. Neither is more correct. One is talk, the other is print.
Parts of the day
I morgen is tomorrow
i morgen looks like "in the morning". It means tomorrow. "This morning", if it has already happened, is i morges. Mix these up and you will cheerfully agree to something a day early.
The rest of the day: morgen (early morning), formiddag (late morning), middag (noon), eftermiddag (afternoon), aften (evening), nat (night). I aften is "this evening", and i nat is either "tonight" or "last night", depending on the verb's tense.
Try it
Three times in thirty seconds
- 8:30. Half way to nine: halv ni.
- 6:45. Quarter to seven: kvart i syv.
- 3:25. Five minutes to half way to four: fem minutter i halv fire.
If you got the third one, the Danish clock has nothing left to throw at you. The levels page has texts full of everyday times (klokken otte, en halv time), read aloud with each word marked as you hear it. Hear times in real sentences
Hear Danish times as Danes say them
Everyday topics, read aloud, at your level. Or start the word list with the words Danish uses most.