BerlinWalk.com • German Language

Turn the dial, hear how Berlin says the time

Move the minute hand. The board shows the time the way it is written in Berlin, and the line below shows what somebody would actually say to you.

Drag the yellow knob around the dial. Yellow marks are where German jumps to the next hour.

On a board or a door
19:30
7:30 pm
What you hear
halb acht
neunzehn Uhr dreißig
Careful

The ones that catch people out

Written German time is a 24-hour clock. A door that says bis 18 Uhr closes at 6 pm, and a ticket for 20:15 is a quarter past eight in the evening. Spoken German switches back to twelve, which is where halb starts costing people an hour.