The days of the week. They don’t contain “day” in French like they do in English. They all end with “di”, except one that starts with “di”. Confusing?
To properly plan your next trip to a French-speaking country, you will need to know a few basic French words, including the days of the week in French, as well as the months in French. Lucky for you, this guide will teach you how to write the date in French so you can get all your planning done in the blink of an eye.
Were you looking for lines to use on a French date? Fret not, just tell us the date… oh, right, you don’t know how to… bear with us, you’ll learn how to say the date in a flash!
Days of the week in French
Let’s get started with les jours de la semaine (the days of the week).
| English | French | Pronunciation |
| Monday | lundi | lawn-dee |
| Tuesday | mardi | mar-dee |
| Wednesday | mercredi | mare-cray-dee |
| Thursday | jeudi | jew-dee |
| Friday | vendredi | von-dre-dee |
| Saturday | samedi | sam-dee |
| Sunday | dimanche | dee-monsh |
They all end with “di”, except “dimanche” which starts with it. Easy, right? And let’s be honest, mercredi is easier to spell than Wednesday. Now you can spell the days of the week, you should probably learn the days of the month too…
Months of the year in French
Les mois de l’année (the months of the year) are all you need to complete the date.
Once you know the days and the months in French, all you’ll need to learn are the numbers in French! And there are many of them. So many, we can’t count them, but we did our best at listing them – you only need 31 of them for the date anyway!
| English | French | Pronunciation |
| January | janvier | jahn-vee-ey |
| February | février | feh-vree-ey |
| March | mars | mars |
| April | avril | ah-vreel |
| May | mai | meh |
| June | juin | jew-ahn |
| July | juillet | dee-monsh |
| August | août | ooht |
| September | septembre | sep-tahn-bruh |
| October | octobre | ok-toh-bruh |
| November | novembre | no-vahn-bruh |
| December | décembre | deh-sahn-bruh |
The spelling is fairly similar, don’t you think? The hardest will have to be juillet, but we believe in you: you can do it. Do you want to know more about the months in French? Look no further.
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How to write the date in French
Writing the date in French is easy, but there are a few minor differences from English that should be noted. The first major difference is capitalization. Unlike in English, the days of the week and months are not capitalized.
The second big difference that leads to a lot of confusion is the order: the French date format is the same used by all European countries. The day and month are inverted compared to the American format. The date is written from the smallest unit to the largest, from day to month to year.
Online and on forms you will often see the French date format written as DD/MM/YYYY. That means that if your birthday, or anniversaire, is on January 15, 1995, you would write 15/01/1995.
Pretty simple, isn’t it? Soon you will be on your way to telling the time in French!
Some more basic date vocabulary
A quick run-down of the common words related to date and time:
- une seconde : a second
- une minute : a minute
- une heure : an hour
- un jour : a day
- une semaine : a week
- un mois : a month
- un trimestre : a trimester
- un semestre : a semester
- une année : a year
- une décennie : a decade
- un siècle : a century
- un calendrier : a calendar
How to ask and say the date in French
When asking for the date in French, it’s common to say “we are” (“nous sommes” / “on est“) and to respond in turn.
Here are a few examples:
- Quel jour sommes-nous aujourd’hui ? / What day is today?
- Quelle est la date d’aujourd’hui ? / What’s the date today?
- Aujourd’hui, nous sommes jeudi 1er mai. / Today is Thursday, May 1st.
- Note #1: the first day of the month is the only day referred to as an ordinal number (first / “premier“) rather than cardinal number (one / “un“) in both writing and speaking.
- Note #2: in less formal context, it’s also fine to swap “nous” with “on” (“on est le premier mai” vs “nous sommes le premier mai“).
When asking for the date, you can also use this base question and add variations as necessary.
- C’est quand ton anniversaire ? / When’s your birthday?
- C’est le 25 décembre. / It is December 25th.
- Aujourd’hui, c’est vendredi. / Today is Friday.
- You might have noticed that le can be a bit tricky: sometimes you use it, sometimes you don’t. You don’t need to use le when mentioning the day along with the date, as you can see above with jeudi 1er mai. You do, however, need to include the le when simply speaking or writing about the date: le 15 mai 2015 or le 25 janvier 1996.
Also, the preposition en is used when referring to the month or the year of an event.
- You might have noticed that le can be a bit tricky: sometimes you use it, sometimes you don’t. You don’t need to use le when mentioning the day along with the date, as you can see above with jeudi 1er mai. You do, however, need to include the le when simply speaking or writing about the date: le 15 mai 2015 or le 25 janvier 1996.
- Je suis né en novembre. / I was born in November.
- Je suis née en 1985. / I was born in 1985.
Now you are ready to learn more about expressing time in French… but maybe another day!
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