Days of the week in Italian: lunedì to domenica
The days of the week in Italian are lunedì, martedì, mercoledì, giovedì, venerdì, sabato and domenica. They take no capital letter and the week starts on Monday. The first five end in an accented -dì, an old word for "day", and are named after the Moon and four planets. In Italian film and television dialogue the one said most is venerdì.
The seven days
| English | Italian | Say it | Named after | Per million words |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | lunedì | loo-neh-DEE | the Moon (Luna) | 31.9 |
| Tuesday | martedì | mar-teh-DEE | Mars (Marte) | 24.3 |
| Wednesday | mercoledì | mer-ko-leh-DEE | Mercury (Mercurio) | 17.6 |
| Thursday | giovedì | jo-veh-DEE | Jupiter (Giove) | 23.8 |
| Friday | venerdì | veh-ner-DEE | Venus (Venere) | 43.5 |
| Saturday | sabato | SAH-ba-to | the Sabbath | 41.3 |
| Sunday | domenica | do-MEH-nee-ka | "the Lord's day" | 38.2 |
The last column is how many times the word is said per million words of Italian subtitles, with and without the accent added together.
The accent matters. It tells you the stress is on the last syllable: lunedì is loo-neh-DEE, not LOO-neh-dee. The two weekend days have no accent and are stressed earlier, SAH-ba-to and do-MEH-nee-ka. Subtitles often leave the accent off; in careful writing it is always there.
Where the names come from
Treccani's dictionary gives each weekday as a Latin phrase: lunedì from "day of the Moon", martedì "day of Mars", mercoledì "day of Mercury", giovedì "day of Jupiter" and venerdì "day of Venus". It explains that each planet was once believed to rule the first hour of its day.
Italian shows the planets more plainly than any of its neighbours, because the Italian names of the planets are right there in the words: Marte, Mercurio, Giove, Venere. Sabato comes from the Hebrew shabbat, through Greek and Latin, and domenica from Latin for "(day) of the Lord". The same planets are in the Spanish and French days.
How to use them
- No capital letter. Oggi è lunedì, "today is Monday".
- "On Monday" is just lunedì, with no article and no word for "on": Ci vediamo venerdì, "see you on Friday".
- "On Mondays" is il lunedì, or di lunedì. The article turns one Monday into every Monday: Il lunedì lavoro, "On Mondays I work".
- Six are masculine and one is feminine. Domenica is feminine, so it is la domenica for "on Sundays" and domenica scorsa for "last Sunday".
- The days in -dì do not change in the plural: i lunedì. The other two do: i sabati, le domeniche.
- "This", "next", "last": questo giovedì, giovedì prossimo, giovedì scorso.
- The weekend is il fine settimana, and Italians also say il weekend.
Which day do Italian films say most?
Venerdì, at 43.5 per million words, just ahead of sabato and domenica. Mercoledì is last at 17.6, well under half as often. 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
- Che giorno è oggi? — What day is it today?
- Oggi è martedì. — Today is Tuesday.
- Lavoro dal lunedì al venerdì. — I work from Monday to Friday.
- A sabato! — See you on Saturday!
- La domenica non lavoro. — I don't work on Sundays.
The days are in the most common Italian words, and the Italian course, Verbavia (our own course), teaches them with dates and times, free on the web. Counting comes next: numbers 1 to 100 in Italian.
The other half of any date is the month: months of the year in Italian.
Sources
- Treccani, Vocabolario on line: lunedì, martedì, mercoledì, giovedì, venerdì, sabato and domenica: the origin of each name and the belief about the planets.
- 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.