The Days of the Week in French

Mastering something as essential as the days of the week in French may prove more practical than you think. Paris is always a good idea, but what if you miss your mardi reservation at the #1 restaurant in Paris because you show up on mercredi instead? We don’t want that to happen. That’s why it’s always best to dive into learning French by mastering the essentials first: how to say “hello”, “you’re welcome” and the days of the week.

If “a day” is un jour in French and “a week” is une semaine, it may also be useful to know that “the days of the week” is “les jours de la semaine”. Now let’s see how fast you can learn all seven days of the week en français.

Days of the week in French

The days of the week in French are:

Easy enough, aren’t they? If you are not completely sure about the pronunciation, here’s how you’d pronounce them in English:

• lundi – “lun-dee”
• mardi – “mar-dee”
• mercredi – “mare-creu-dee”
• jeudi – “zheu-dee”
• vendredi – “von-dre-dee”
• samedi – “sum-dee”
• dimanche – “dee-monsh”

Now repeat them a few times to make sure they stick and let’s move on to some context. Here are some useful French expressions related to time and the days of the week:

• un jour – a day
• aujourd’hui – today
• hier – yesterday
• avant-hier – the day before yesterday
• demain – tomorrow
• après-demain – the day after tomorrow
• Quel jour est-ce ? – What day is it?
• Quel jour tombe ton anniversaire cette année ? – What day is your birthday this year?
• On peut aller au restaurant jeudi. – We could go to the restaurant on Thursday.
• Je ne travaille pas le vendredi. – I don’t work on Fridays.
• hebdomadaire – weekly
• dans trois jours – in three days time
• le week-end – the weekend
• jours ouvrables – working days (Monday to Friday)
• du lundi au vendredi – from Monday to Friday
• Le mardi est le deuxième jour de la semaine. – Tuesday is the second day of the week.

Planning to spend an entire week in France? Dont stop at les jours de la semaine en français. French people are known to be proud of their language and heritage. Surprise them with your French skills and go beyond “Friday” in French with these 100+ French travel phrases. You’ll thank me later.

Usage rules

One more thing before you go. To make sure you are using your newly acquired French days of the week correctly, don’t forget that:

• the days of the week are not capitalized in French – unless, of course, they appear at the beginning of a sentence;
• the French week starts on Monday;
• days of the week are all masculine in French – this means you’ll always have to use masculine articles (le and un) and masculine adjectives when talking about the days of the week. For example, if you want to say “the last Friday of the month was rainy” in French, you say “le dernier vendredi du mois était pluvieux”;
• in contrast to le jour, la journée (which also translates to “day”) is a feminine noun that refers to a longer period of time during which something might happen. Jour, on the other hand, represents a precise moment, a unit of time. For example: “Je te rendrai visite dans la journée” (“I’ll visit you during the day”) is different from “Je t’appelle dans deux jours” (“I’ll call you in two days”).

From 0 to conversational in French

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