When you start off learning Spanish, one of the first vocabulary sets you’ll come across will be the days of the week in Spanish. It makes complete sense to learn this early on during your in-person or online Spanish courses, as the days of the week are very important and commonly used in all kinds of speech, plus there are only seven words to learn here!
Unlike some other Spanish vocabulary sets, however, how to say the days of the week in Spanish is quite different to English. That said, there are still some really smart tips to help you remember which day is which, and that’s what we’ll go through right here, in this handy guide to remembering the days of the week in Spanish.
Without further ado, let’s outline the days of the week in Spanish in order, starting off with Monday. So, the English-to-Spanish translations for the days of the week are as follows:
In terms of the pronunciation, keep in mind that Spanish is a phonetic language and that almost every word is pronounced as it’s written. In other words, you say what you see. That is generally true here for how to say the days of the week in Spanish, with the one slight exception being with “jueves”, which should be pronounced like “hweh-behs”.
If you’re studying in person, such as through IH Madrid’s Spanish courses in Madrid, you’ll learn these words before long by practising with fellow students in a fun environment. It’s also easy to learn the days of the week in Spanish at home, thanks to a couple of helpful tricks.
One trick is to remember that all the Spanish words that end in “-es” are weekdays, while the ones ending in “-o” are on the weekend. That’s a good way to start, while there is no shortage of songs for Spanish children that will get the days of the week in Spanish in order stuck in your head. Another trick that many students use is to change the settings on a device they use every day, so that the Spanish word for that day will appear first thing in the morning.
Now that you know how to say the days of the week in Spanish, the next step is to fully grasp how to use these words. Not only are the words different in the Spanish language, but they are also used slightly differently in written form.
For example, you might want to know are days of the week capitalised in Spanish and the answer is no, they aren’t. This is the main difference between using the days of the week in Spanish and in English, as they aren’t capitalised in Spanish, unless used at the beginning of a sentence.
If you’re taking Spanish lessons, you’ll also know that nouns are either masculine or feminine, so you might be wondering which category the days of the week in Spanish fall into. The answer here is that all seven of the Spanish days of the week are masculine, so you would write either “un lunes” or “el lunes”, depending on whether you’re talking about a Monday or the Monday.
Finally, you might wish to know about the proper abbreviations for the days of the week in Spanish. Here, we’ll outline the shortened versions and the one letter versions too, with the most unusual one being that “miércoles” is “X”.
With a little bit of practice, you’ll master the days of the week in Spanish in no time, and be ready to move on to the next sets of vocabulary in your Spanish learning journey!
