Basic dates: Dates

💬 With days and time words, prochain usually comes after the noun: mardi prochain, la semaine prochaine, le mois prochain.

💬 Dernier also comes after the day here: mercredi dernier = last Wednesday. The same pattern works with other days: lundi dernier, jeudi dernier.

💬 With semaine, prochaine adds an extra e because semaine is feminine. Compare le mois prochain but la semaine prochaine.

💬 Ce becomes cette before a feminine singular word, so you get cette année. You will see the same pattern in cette semaine.

🇫🇷 In France, people very often also write and say week-end in the singular and week-ends in the plural, even though it comes from English.

💬 The final s in mars is pronounced, unlike many French final consonants. The same is true in mars when used in a date like le trois mars.

💬 Juin is pronounced as one quick syllable, roughly (zhwan), not like two separate parts. It can feel close to juillet, so listen for the shorter sound.

💬 The final t in juillet is silent. It sounds roughly like (zhwee-yay).

💬 The little hat in août does not change the sound much for learners; the main thing is that the final t is pronounced. Say it roughly like (oot).

💬 For dates, French usually uses premier only for the first day of the month: le premier janvier. After that, ordinary numbers are more common, like le deux février.

💬 This is understandable, but in everyday French dates people usually say le deux février, not le deuxième février. Only le premier is commonly used as an order word in dates.

🇫🇷 In real life in France, dates are normally read with plain numbers after the first: le premier mars, le deux mars, le trois mars. Using deuxième, troisième and so on sounds more like a teaching pattern than everyday usage.

💬 In everyday dates, French usually says le trois mars rather than le troisième mars. After le premier, plain numbers are the normal pattern.

🇫🇷 If you hear a date aloud in France, expect le trois mars, le quatre avril, and so on. Full order words like troisième are much less usual for calendar dates.

💬 For dates, everyday French usually uses the number itself: le quatre avril, not le quatrième avril. Premier is the main exception for the first day.

💬 In normal date reading, French prefers le cinq mai over le cinquième mai. This plain-number pattern is the one to reuse for most dates.

💬 French dates usually use plain numbers after the first, so le six juin is more natural than le sixième juin.

💬 In everyday dates, say le sept juillet rather than le septième juillet. The special form is mostly just le premier for the first of the month.

💬 For calendar dates, the usual everyday form is le huit août, not le huitième août. After the first day, think plain numbers.

💬 In dates, French often uses le + number + month: le neuvième septembre, le dix octobre. In everyday French, you'll also very often hear cardinal numbers for dates, especially after the first: le neuf septembre, le dix septembre.

💬 The months stay lowercase in French: octobre, not Octobre. That's true in dates too: le dixième octobre.

💬 Watch the vowel clash in onzième novembre: French keeps both words separate rather than gliding them together in English style. Also, novembre ends with a sounded r, not a silent ending.

💬 French date phrases usually don't use of: le douzième décembre, literally 'the twelfth December,' not 'the twelfth of December.' You can reuse that pattern with any month: le cinq mai, le vingt août.

💬 The accent matters: année with é means 'year.' Without accents, annee is just a misspelling, and the double n helps mark the vowel before it as the a sound in année.