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Day 10 of 90

Days, months and dates

The calendar, and how to say when. About 10 minutes. Grammar: el lunes, and dates without ordinals.

Two small habits separate a natural date from a translated one. Spanish puts el in front of a day and puts the number before the month.

The days

None of them are capitalised, and the week starts on Monday.

lunes, martes, miércolesMonday, Tuesday, WednesdayLower case, always. Capitalising them is the clearest sign of an English speaker writing.
jueves, viernesThursday, Friday
sábado, domingoSaturday, SundayThe only two that change in the plural: sábados, domingos. The rest already end in s.
el fin de semanathe weekendLiterally the end of week. Singular, even though it covers two days.
Why it works this way

el lunes means on Monday and los lunes means on Mondays. Spanish uses the article where English uses a preposition, so there is no word for on in these sentences at all. Saying en lunes is a direct translation of English and it marks you immediately.

The months

Also lower case, and most of them you can already guess.

enero, febrero, marzo, abrilJanuary to April
mayo, junio, julio, agostoMay to August
septiembre, octubre, noviembre, diciembreSeptember to Decembersetiembre is also correct and common in Latin America.
en marzoin MarchMonths do take en, unlike days. No article.
Why it works this way

Days take el and no preposition, months take en and no article. The two rules are opposites and they sit next to each other, which is why learners mix them. el lunes, en marzo. Learn the pair together rather than separately and the contrast does the remembering for you.

Saying a date

Number first, then the month, and no ordinals.

el quince de marzothe fifteenth of MarchPlain quince, not a form meaning fifteenth.
el primero de enerothe first of JanuaryThe first is the one exception. el uno de enero is also heard.
¿qué día es hoy?what day is it today?¿a cuánto estamos? is the common way to ask the date in Spain.
hoy, mañana, ayertoday, tomorrow, yesterdaypasado mañana is the day after tomorrow, one word shorter than English.
Why it works this way

English uses ordinal numbers for dates, the fifteenth, the twenty second. Spanish uses plain cardinal numbers for everything except the first. So once you know the numbers from day five you can already say every date in the year, with one exception to remember instead of thirty one new words to learn.

The week starts on Monday

Every printed calendar in the Spanish speaking world puts lunes in the first column and domingo in the last. It matters more than it sounds: el primer día de la semana means Monday, and a weekend arrangement described as this weekend on a Friday means the two days that end the week you are already in, not the ones that start the next.

Carry these forward

Four lines from today that later days assume you know.

el luneson Monday
en marzoin March
el fin de semanathe weekend
¿qué día es hoy?what day is it today?

Check yourself

Eight questions. Finishing them marks the day done.

Question 1 of 8

On Monday is

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