Mexican Spanish to Slovak: asking the time is more than a yes-or-no question
Me da su hora asks for information
The Diccionario del español de México includes ¿Me da su hora, por favor? among expressions asking the time. The speaker is requesting the clock reading, not asking the listener to transfer ownership of an hour. In Slovak, a literal giving construction could distract from the practical request. Identify the information sought before translating the visible Mexican Spanish verb and possessive.
The same dictionary records both ¿Qué hora es? and ¿Qué horas son?. Their singular or plural wording does not mean that one asks for one separate period and the other requests several periods. In the cited use, both ask for the time. The Slovak sentence should preserve that purpose rather than turn Spanish noun number into a new question about duration.
A question about knowing can really request the clock reading
A language-advice article in Kultúra slova discusses Viete, koľko je hodín? and Neviete, koľko je hodín?. It explains that these are not ordinary knowledge tests expecting only yes or no; their intended request is for the actual time. The apparent question about knowing is a way to ask for the information.
This provides a useful target-side comparison for Mexican ¿Me da su hora, por favor?. The surface verbs differ, but the conversational purpose can match. A translation need not preserve giving word for word if doing so loses the information request. Conversely, answering the Slovak question only with an affirmative about knowing can fail to supply what the Mexican speaker wanted to learn.
Negative wording is not equally suitable everywhere
The Slovak advice distinguishes stylistically neutral affirmative questions from negative forms that do not suit every communicative situation. It recommends affirmative wording for questionnaires offering yes/no answers. Thus the existence of a polite-sounding negative question is not permission to negate every translated Mexican question indiscriminately.
For a direct request for the time, an indirect knowledge question can serve the interaction. For a form asking a factual yes/no question, the respondent may instead need a transparent proposition with clear answer choices. Choose the target construction according to the task. The original Mexican courtesy formula and a standardized questionnaire do not necessarily benefit from the same kind of indirectness.
Other Mexican saber expressions may deny knowledge
The Mexican dictionary separately lists quién sabe and sepa among popular expressions indicating that something is unknown. These are different from a courteous question designed to elicit a clock reading. A remark meaning nobody knows when something will happen should not become an ordinary Slovak invitation to answer yes or no about personal knowledge.
For this pair, distinguish the information requested, the courteous framing, and the literal claim about knowing. Then decide whether the Slovak question should ask directly or indirectly. That preserves the difference between asking for the current time, testing whether someone knows something, and saying that an answer is unknown. It also prevents Mexican su hora from becoming either a possessive dispute or an unintended question about how many hours someone owns.
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