tiempo....el tiempo

Question

¿Cuándo es necessario usar el articulo (el) con tiempo? ¿Con referencia al clima o la hora? Yo sé hay una regla pero no lo recuerdo exactamente.

Answer 1

Good question. First of all, tiempo means both time and weather (climate) in Spanish. It is translated as tiempo, hora or clima, depending on the context.

I think, almost always, you would need to use an article, a pronoun or a preposition before the noun tiempo. Examples:

El tiempo en Madrid será nublado toda la semana. (article the)

Espero que Juan llegue a tiempo. (preposition on)

"Tiempo de vivir, tiempo de morir" (title of a book, the author decided not to use the article)

Dar tiempo al tiempo (this is an idiom meaning Patience is a virtue. As you can see, the first instance does not use the article and the second does (a/el--- al tiempo)).

"Tiempo de morir" (a movie, whose script was written by Gabriel García Márquez, does not use the article. However, a more recent novel of his, "El amor en los tiempos del cólera," does use the plural article los).

One confusion most English speakers have when translating the word time into Spanish is in the following case:

"It is time you went to bed," which should be translated as "Es hora de que te acuestes". Using tiempo here is simply an anglicism, which is commonly heard but not correct.

I hope this helps!

Thanks for the warning on tiempo vs hora at the end. I hadn´t run into that yet, but surely would have. - rogspax, Oct 24, 2012

Answer 2

Gracias por tu repuesta francobollo.

De nada. Un gusto poder ayudarte. - francobollo, Oct 24, 2012