Why do we say "Qué hora es" instead of "Qué hora está"?

Question

I was taught that *está* is used in certain contexts meaning a temporary state (like emotion). Isn't "time" always temporary in that it is constantly changing? If so, why don't we use *está* instead of *es*?

Answer 1

In Spanish the verb to be has two meanings. Ser and estar.

In this case referring to the time you have to use ser. For time (it) the verb ser conjugation is es. So the correct way is ¿Qué hora es?

some people also use ¿Qué horas son?

Answer 2

Personally, I think is not grammatically correct to say " Que hora estamos", because we are not in the hour, we are not in location with the time. Don't get confuse with regional Spanish in many country of Latin America and the Caribbean . I know what are you saying about that the time is constantly changing , but when you say : What time is it? no one answer, we are over 3PM, the answer it is 3PM, or we are are at 3PM. Same thing is Spanish.

So the answer is " ¿Que hora es?", rather than ¿Que hora estamos?.

Espero que te ayude esta respuesta!