几点了(jǐ diǎn le) - what time is it? in Mandarin

几点了 (jǐ diǎn le) is the everyday way to ask "what time is it?". 几 (jǐ) asks "how many", 点 (diǎn) is "o'clock", and the sentence-final 了 (le) marks it as a question about right now, so the three words together read literally as "how many o'clock has it become".

It is more natural than the bookish "现在几点" (xiànzài jǐ diǎn, "now, what time"), and it is what a Mandarin speaker actually says when checking the time with a friend, a shop assistant, or a stranger in the street.

Drop the 了 (le) and 几点 (jǐ diǎn) on its own still works as "what time", but it reads as a fragment rather than a full question, the way "time?" sounds clipped next to "what time is it?" in English.

几点了 (jǐ diǎn le) also works tucked inside a longer sentence, as in 你知道现在几点了吗 (nǐ zhīdào xiànzài jǐ diǎn le ma), "do you know what time it is now?", where it sits as the object of 知道 (zhīdào, "to know").