Days, months and the date

Days and months: lundi to dimanche, janvier to décembre

The French week starts on Monday: lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi, dimanche. All seven are masculine, all end in -di except dimanche, and none takes a capital letter – lundi, not Lundi. The names come from the Roman planets: lundi is the moon (lune), mardi Mars, mercredi Mercury, jeudi Jupiter, vendredi Venus; samedi is the sabbath day and dimanche the Lord’s day. To say “on Monday”, French uses no preposition at all: Lundi, je suis à Paris. With the article, le lundi means every Monday: Le lundi, le magasin est fermé.

Lundi, Léa est à Lyon ; le samedi, elle est au marché.On Monday Léa is in Lyon; on Saturdays she is at the market.

The twelve months are all masculine and, like the days, written without a capital: janvier, février, mars, avril, mai, juin, juillet, août, septembre, octobre, novembre, décembre. Many look like their English cousins, so the work is in the sound: mars says its final s, août is pronounced “oot” (the a is silent), juin ends in the nasal of un, and the four -bre months end in a soft “br”. “In” a month is en: en mars, en juillet – or, more formally, au mois de mars. The year takes en too, and the number is read out in full: en deux mille vingt-six.

The date: le + number + month, and le premier

A date is le + the plain number + the month, with nothing in between: le trois mars (3 March), le quinze août, le vingt et un juin. No “of”, no “the third”: le trois de mars and le troisième mars are both wrong. The only ordinal is for the first day: le premier mai, le premier janvier. The day of the week goes in front, with or without le: lundi trois mars or le lundi trois mars. To ask the date: Quelle est la date aujourd’hui ? – and you answer with nous sommes or c’est: Nous sommes le douze octobre. In figures, French writes the day first: 03/03/2026.

Le quatorze juillet, c’est la fête nationale en France.The fourteenth of July is the national holiday in France.

Aujourd’hui, demain, hier – and Quel jour sommes-nous ?

Three words place a day: aujourd’hui (today – one word, with the apostrophe inside), demain (tomorrow) and hier (yesterday, said “yair”). They combine with the parts of the day you know: demain matin, hier soir, aujourd’hui à midi. To ask what day it is, French asks, literally, “what day are we?”: Quel jour sommes-nous ? – and the answer keeps the verb: Nous sommes samedi. In everyday speech c’est does the same job: Aujourd’hui, c’est samedi ; demain, c’est dimanche. Finally, two words for “year”, just as for jour / journée: an counts units – vingt ans – while année is the year as a stretch of time you live through: cette année, une bonne année. The other two units, la semaine (week) and le mois (month), have one form each.

– Quel jour sommes-nous aujourd’hui ? – Nous sommes vendredi, et demain, c’est le week-end !– What day is it today? – It’s Friday, and tomorrow is the weekend!