Dates – Week – Month

Days and months in French

In French, we use cardinal numbers to talk about the date. The exception to this is the first of the month, here we use the ordinal number le premier.

In contrast to English, days and months are not capitalised in French, they are written with a lowercase letter.

How to say the date in French

To say the date in French, we usually use the following order:

☞  day (in numbers) + month (in letters) + years (in numbers).

To say the complete date, we use the article le.

Examples:

On est le 1^er janvier mars 2020.

On est le 22 janvier 2022.

The day of the week comes after le and before the date.

Example:

Le mardi 9 octobre 2022.

We introduce the months with the preposition en or the phrase au mois de.

Examples:

On est en novembre 2022.

On est au mois de mai 2023.

The year is always introduced by the preposition en.

Example:

On est en 2023.

In spoken French, there are two ways to say the year:

Example:

1990 = mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-dix

or: dix-neuf cent quatre-vingt-dix

Asking about the date

Today’s date

Quelle est la date aujourd’hui ?  What’s today’s date?

More informal:

Nous sommes le combien aujourd’hui ?

On est le combien aujourd’hui ?

Some other date

Quelle est la date de ton anniversaire ?  What date is your birthday?

Quel jour est-ce que vous arrivez ? What date are you coming?

Note: the only possible translation of “what” here is the interrogative adjective quelle