Question about time in french?

Question

i was given a french hmwk n i need help.

1st example given in the sheet was:
13:00 Quelle heure est-il?(what time is it?)
Answer: Il est treize heures.

Now I know "heures" means "hours" but when it comes 2 this question:
Translate the following to english:
Il est quatorze heures: ___________________

shouldn't it be : It is 2 O'clock instead of It is 2 hours?

Help?

Answer 1

Well, that's what it means: it is 2 o'clock.
Remember, when you use a different language, it is often impossible to translate word by word. Certain phrases mean certain things, and e.g. in French, hours and o'clock in this case turn out to be 'heures' the same thing.

Answer 2

What you wrote is "it is 14 o'clock" to answer your question, yes heures is literally 'hours' but is taken to mean that is a certain time 'o'clock' when used in a sentence like that. by the way, 'it is 2 o'clock' is 'Il est deux heures', but 1300 in 24 hour time is 1 o clock. it doesn't make sense that the example would say it is thirteen hours. maybe thirteen hundred hours as they say in the military.

Answer 3

Actually, the word "heure" not only means hour, but it also means o'clock. So, the correct response is indeed o'clocl. However, the answer to your question would be 13 hours/o'clock or 1 o'clock p.m. (not 2 pm).

Answer 4

Actually, the correct answer would be 2 p.m.,unless you are using military time, which, we, as a whole, do not. Therefore, if you answered 2 o'clock, that could be misconstrued to be either 2 a.m. or 2 p.m. Since it is "quatorze heures", it is 2 p.m.

Answer 5

In French, and many other European languages, the word for hours is used to tell what time it is. There is no literal translation for o'clock in French. Basically, what you are saying is it is 14 hours, which in reality makes sense because 14 hours have passed in that day.