The days of the week in French, and how to remember them.

The seven days, at a glance

Look at the endings before you learn anything else. Six of the seven days finish in -di, and the seventh, dimanche, opens with di- instead. That syllable is the Latin dies, "day". Everything attached to it is a name.

English did the same thing with a different set of gods, which gives you five free memory bridges. Monday is the Moon's day in both languages. Tuesday belongs to Tiw, the Norse war god, where French took Mars. Wednesday is Woden's, the messenger, where French took Mercury. Thursday is Thor's, the thunderer, where French took Jupiter. Friday is Frigg's, where French took Venus. Only the weekend parts company: Saturday kept Saturn while samedi went to the sabbath, and Sunday kept the sun while dimanche went to the Lord.

Three rules that surprise English speakers

Days are not capitalised. In French they are ordinary common nouns, like "table" or "chair", so they stay in lowercase wherever they land in a sentence: je pars lundi, never Lundi. They take a capital only when they happen to start a sentence. Months and the names of languages behave exactly the same way, so this one rule quietly cleans up a lot of your writing.

The week starts on Monday. French calendars, diaries, timetables and school planners all run from lundi across to dimanche. The weekend sits at the end of the week rather than being split across the two ends of it, which is worth remembering the first time you look at a French wall calendar and think the columns have been shuffled.

All seven are masculine. There is no feminine day: it is le lundi, le mercredi, le dimanche, and un samedi for "a Saturday". Handily, that is one gender list you will never have to memorise. (The week itself, la semaine, is feminine — but the days inside it are not.)

Lundi or le lundi?

This is the distinction learners actually get wrong, and it changes the meaning of the sentence completely. That little le is the difference between one Monday and every Monday.

The day on its own means one particular day — the Monday coming, or the Monday just gone. And French needs no word at all for "on":

Je pars lundi. — I'm leaving on Monday.
Il est arrivé mardi. — He arrived on Tuesday.
On se voit vendredi ? — Shall we meet on Friday?

Add le and it becomes a habit — something that happens every week, which English handles by making the day plural:

Je travaille le lundi. — I work on Mondays.
Le musée est fermé le mardi. — The museum is closed on Tuesdays.
Elle fait du sport le samedi. — She plays sport on Saturdays.

If you want to lean on the "every single one" part, say tous les lundis (too lay luhn-DEE) — literally "all the Mondays". It means the same as le lundi with a bit more emphasis behind it.

Saying what day it is

Seven nouns are not much use on their own. These are the words that put them to work.

To answer the question, French says "we are Monday": Nous sommes lundi, or the everyday version, On est lundi. It sounds odd in translation and becomes completely natural after about a day of using it.

That last row is a pattern worth stealing. À plus a time is how the French say goodbye with a plan attached: à demain (see you tomorrow), à samedi (see you Saturday), à la semaine prochaine (see you next week). And when you need to look backwards instead, la semaine dernière is last week.