After teaching English in Japan for many years, there is one sentence that I hear again and again:
“It took me one hour and a half to get here.”
Now, this sentence is perfectly understandable. No native English speaker would have trouble understanding it.
But it is not quite natural.
In English, we usually say:
“It took me an hour and a half.”
Why?
Because “hour and a half” works like a single unit of time.
Think of it like this:
✔ an hour and a half
✔ two hours and a half (less common)
✔ two and a half hours (best)
Examples:
It took an hour and a half to finish the movie.
The meeting lasted an hour and a half.
I studied English for two and a half hours yesterday.
Many Japanese students translate directly from
一時間半
which leads to “one hour and a half.”
Again — not wrong! Just slightly unnatural.
These small differences are exactly the kind of thing we practice in our conversation classes.
Learning grammar is important, but learning natural English is what makes conversation really smooth.
And who knows — maybe next time it will only take you an hour and a half to get here!
