Telling the time

天 (tiān) is a day. It is also the sky, and later the weather, and it is the character doing most of the work in this session.

今天 (jīn tiān) is today. 昨天 (zuó tiān) is yesterday. 明天 (míng tiān) is tomorrow. Learn 天 and three of the most frequent words in the language come nearly free.

Dates run large to small

Chinese orders dates from the biggest unit down: year, then month, then day. 2026年8月 is August 2026, in that order, and it never varies.

The day itself uses 号 (hào), which means number: 八号 is the eighth. In writing you will also see 日 (rì), which is the formal equivalent and the same character that means sun.

Months are simply numbered. 一月 is January, literally month one. There are no month names to learn at all, which is one of the genuine kindnesses Mandarin does a beginner.

Two words for hour

小时 (xiǎo shí) is an hour as a DURATION. Three hours of work is 三个小时.

点 (diǎn) is an hour on the CLOCK. Three o'clock is 三点.

They are not interchangeable and the mistake is immediately audible. English uses hour and o'clock for the same split, so the distinction is familiar even though the words are not.

时间 and 时候

时间 (shí jiān) is time as a quantity: 没有时间 is to have no time.

时候 (shí hòu) is time as a moment or occasion, and it almost always appears inside a longer structure: 的时候 means when, at the time that. 我小的时候 is when I was small.

Reaching for 时间 where 时候 is wanted is one of the commonest intermediate errors, and it is worth noticing early: if English would say when, you probably want 时候.

Always and never

一直 (yī zhí) is continuously, all along. 总是 (zǒng shì) is always in the sense of habitually. 永远 (yǒng yuǎn) is forever, and it is the strong one, reserved for things that genuinely do not end.