Days of the week in French: lundi to dimanche
The days of the week in French are lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi and dimanche. They take no capital letter, they are all masculine, and the week starts on Monday. Six of the seven end in -di, which is the Latin word for "day", and the one said most in French film and television dialogue is vendredi.
The seven days
| English | French | Say it | Named after | Per million words |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | lundi | luhn-DEE | the Moon (Lune) | 30.3 |
| Tuesday | mardi | mar-DEE | Mars | 23.5 |
| Wednesday | mercredi | mair-kruh-DEE | Mercury (Mercure) | 17.2 |
| Thursday | jeudi | zhuh-DEE | Jupiter | 22.1 |
| Friday | vendredi | vahn-druh-DEE | Venus (Vénus) | 39.8 |
| Saturday | samedi | sam-DEE | the Sabbath | 37.7 |
| Sunday | dimanche | dee-MAHNSH | "the Lord's day" | 35.9 |
The last column is how many times the word is said per million words of French subtitles.
French puts a light stress on the last syllable, so every weekday ends on a clear -DEE. The first syllables of lundi and vendredi are nasal vowels: the n is not pronounced, and the vowel is sent through the nose. The j of jeudi is the s of English "measure".
Where the names come from
The -di is Latin dies, "day", and what comes before it is a planet or the Moon: lundi is the Moon's day, mardi Mars's, mercredi Mercury's, jeudi Jupiter's (Jove's) and vendredi Venus's. Samedi is the Sabbath day, from a popular Latin form of sabbatum. Dimanche is the odd one out: it comes from Latin dies Dominicus, "the Lord's day", with the "day" at the front where the others have it at the end.
Mardi is the Tuesday of Mardi gras, literally "fat Tuesday". Spanish and Italian use the same five planets, so the sets are easy to learn together: Spanish, Italian.
How to use them
- No capital letter. Nous sommes lundi, "it is Monday".
- "On Monday" is just lundi, with no article and no word for "on": Je pars lundi, "I'm leaving on Monday".
- "On Mondays" is le lundi. The article turns one Monday into every Monday: Le lundi, je travaille, "On Mondays I work". Tous les lundis is "every Monday".
- "This", "next", "last": ce jeudi, jeudi prochain, jeudi dernier.
- The weekend is le week-end, one of the English words French has taken in. In Quebec it is la fin de semaine.
- To ask the day: On est quel jour ? or, more formally, Quel jour sommes-nous ?
Which day do French films say most?
Vendredi, at 39.8 per million words, with samedi and dimanche close behind. Mercredi is last at 17.2. Of the days from Monday to Thursday, Monday is mentioned most.
Wednesday is the least-mentioned day in every language we counted; the comparison is in which weekday films mention most.
Learn them in a sentence
- Quel jour sommes-nous ? — What day is it?
- Nous sommes mercredi. — It is Wednesday.
- À vendredi ! — See you on Friday!
- Je travaille du lundi au vendredi. — I work from Monday to Friday.
- Le dimanche, je ne fais rien. — On Sundays I do nothing.
The days are in the most common French words, and the French course, Verbavia (our own course), teaches them with dates and times, with recordings, free on the web. Counting comes next, and in French it has a surprise in it: numbers 1 to 100 in French.
Sources
- Wiktionnaire, the etymology of lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi and dimanche.
- The counts are from OpenSubtitles 2018 (Lison, P. & Tiedemann, J., 2016, aclanthology.org) through Hermit Dave's FrequencyWords lists, content licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, github.com. They are computed by
scripts/frequency_screen.pyand printed from its output rather than typed.