In this unit we will learn the words for the days of the week in Spanish, the months in Spanish and then how to combine them to express the date. In Spanish, the date is always written with the number first and the addition of a “de” or an “el” in the format: The number (day) + de + month + de + year.
Need to schedule an appointment, plan a meeting or organize a party? If so, you need to know how to express the date in Spanish!
Days of the Week (Los Días de la Semana)
Let’s start with the days of the week. In Spanish, semana means “week.” Spanish has a few different rules about the week than in English.
- Days of the week are never capitalized in Spanish unless they start a sentence (much like the word yo, unlike English “I”)
- Spanish calendars begin on Mondays, not Sundays.
| La semana (the week) |
| lunes | martes | miércoles | jueves | viernes | sábado | domingo |
| Important difference: In Spanish, the numeric date order is day / month / year (as opposed to the English version which is month / day / year). This can lead to some confusion with the shorthand date format, so this difference is important to be aware of! example: April 29, 2021 English shorthand: 4/29/21 Spanish shorthand: 29/4/21 example: October 3, 2019 English shorthand: 10/3/19 Spanish shorthand: 3/10/19 (which looks at first glance like the English shorthand for March 10th!) |
The Months of the Year (Los Meses del Año)
Now let’s talk about the months in Spanish. The months in Spanish are also written without being capitalized (unless found at the beginning of the sentence) just as we saw with the days of the week. They are:
| enero | febrero | marzo |
| abril | mayo | junio |
| julio | agosto | septiembre |
| octubre | noviembre | diciembre |
| Many of the months in Spanish are cognates. Remember these are words in Spanish that look like a word in English and have the same meaning. *Not all words that look alike are cognates. Click here to read about false cognates. |
Date Pattern:
Now that we have these pieces, let’s talk about how to express the full date in Spanish. Our word order will always be:
DAY OF THE WEEK + NUMBER + “DE” + MONTH + “DE” + YEAR (in speech you will also hear: el sábado 25 de diciembre)
example: Saturday, December 25, 2021
= sábado, 25 de diciembre de 2021 (dos mil veintiuno)
example: Sunday, July 4, 2021
= domingo, 4 de julio de 2021 (dos mil veintiuno)
example: Wednesday, September 23, 2020
= miércoles, 23 de septiembre de 2020 (dos mil veinte)
*example: Tuesday, February 1, 2022
= martes, primero de febrero de 2022 (dos mil veintidós)
*Note that when saying the first of the month, the actual word for “first” is used instead of the numeral. In Spain, “uno” is also common (el uno de febrero).