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By Emily MonacoEmily Monaco Last updated:

Complete Guide to Days of the Week in French [Plus How to Memorize Them!]

Knowing the days of the week in French is a basic but super-important skill.

After all, you don’t want to show up to your mardi doctor’s appointment on mercredi, do you?

So in this post, you’ll learn not only the days of the week, but also practical ways to learn and use them—from mnemonics, to planning your week, to songs, how to use them in sentences correctly and much more.

Contents

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What Are the French Days of the Week?

Knowing the days of the week in French will make talking about your day, daily and weekly routines, weekend plans and many more meaningful conversational topics instantly easier.

So we won’t just learn how to say each day, but we’ll also look at some memorization tricks and vocabulary related to them next.

But without further ado, here are the days in French:

How to Remember Days of the Week in French

Lundi — Monday

Lundi is an easy one. The French word for moon is lune. Like in English, Monday (moon day) is devoted to the moon.

Mardi — Tuesday

Mardi is named for the Roman god of war, Mars.

But since Tuesday is named for the god Tyr in English, chances are this won’t help you too much—unless you’re particularly well-versed in Norse mythology.

Instead, remember the holiday Mardi Gras (“Fat Tuesday”), which many know given the famed celebration in New Orleans.

Mercredi — Wednesday

Mercredi is similar to mardi in its etymology: It’s the day of Mercury, the Roman god of financial gain, commerce and eloquence.

You could try to remember that Mercury—as the communicator between the mortals and the divine—is kind of halfway between worlds, just like mercredi is halfway through the workweek.

Jeudi — Thursday

Jeudi is once again named for a Roman god, this time Jupiter. In English, Thursday is named after Thor.

Another easy way to remember jeudi is to know the word jeux (play).

Until 1972 in France, primary school students didn’t go to school on Thursdays. It was used as a day for play, or jeux. In 1972, this was switched out for Wednesday.

Vendredi — Friday

Vendredi is named after Venus, a Roman goddess.

If you know your Roman mythology, you might know that Venus is the goddess of love and beauty—nothing easier than remembering that Friday is all about love and beauty, right?

Samedi — Saturday

Samedi isn’t associated with a god, unlike in English, where Saturday is named for Saturn.

In French, samedi comes from the Latin sambati dies, which means “day of Sabbath.”

Even if you don’t know too much Latin, you can remember that Sabbath and samedi start with the sound “sa,” and Saturday is the Sabbath day in the Jewish tradition.

Dimanche — Sunday

Dimanche is also not named for a Roman god, but rather from the Latin dies dominicus, meaning “the day of the Lord.”

Because Sunday is the day of the Sabbath in Christianity, this translation makes a lot of sense.

How to Use Days of the Week in French

  • Capitalization: Capitalization is generally less common in French than in English. The days of the week are a good example of this, as you don’t capitalize these in French. Thus, days of the week should be written as lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi, and dimanche.
  • Start of the French week: In France, the week begins on Monday, or lundi—another deviation from the English-speaking world.
  • Gender: In French, all days of the week are masculine.
  • Prepositions and days of the week: Unlike most French words that always require a preposition, days of the week usually don’t. For example:

    Mardi j’irai au supermarché (On Tuesday I will go to the supermarket) is the grammatically correct phrase. When le precedes a day of the week, it is used to generalize every Monday, Tuesday, etc.

    So, Le mardi j’irai au supermarché (Every Tuesday I will go to the supermarket) has an entirely different meaning.

  • French abbreviations: Just like their English counterparts, abbreviations for French days are pretty intuitive. 
    • Lun — Mon.   
    • Mar — Tues.
    • Mer — Wed.
    • Jeu — Thurs.
    • Ven — Fri. 
    • Sam — Sat.
    • Dim — Sun. 

Vocabulary for Talking About Days of the Week

Here are some more useful words and phrases for talking about the days of the week:

Faire le pont refers to public holidays that fall on Tuesdays or Thursdays.

In France, it’s customary to (either officially or unofficially) transform these holidays into four-day weekends by taking the day off on the intervening Monday or Friday.

In doing so, you “bridge” the gap between the holiday and the weekend and get an extra day of R&R!

There are many words like this where the literal meanings might not make sense until you understand the influence French culture has on it.

Using an immersion learning program like FluentU can help with this: it uses short, authentic videos (like movie trailers and news reports) to expose you to French as it’s really used by native speakers.

Each video has interactive subtitles and other learning tools, so you can learn new words in context while also watching entertaining content. FluentU is available as a website or iOS and Android app. 

Practicing French Days of the Week

  • Plan Each Week in French

    If you’re still using a paper planner, you can easily buy one in French instead of English, which you can sometimes get in office supply stores or always online.

    Personal Planner is a great planner you can order online that lets you choose the language it’s in and the design.

    If you’ve switched to the web for your planning needs, it’s even easier: Change your Google Calendar’s language settings to French.

    You can also switch the settings on your cell phone, desktop computer calendar and even on your television.

  • Set The French Days of the Week to Music

    There are some great days of the week songs that can work as mnemonics, like “Chanson des jours de la semaine” (québécois) and “Les jours de la semaine” (simple and melodic!).

    My French teacher used to sing the days of the week to us to the tune of “Frère Jacques.” 20 years later, it still sticks—sometimes the simplest techniques are the best ones.

    Use this song or another catchy tune—the alphabet song also works, but so could your favorite pop song.

    You can also try using online videos, like this one, which isn’t a song but does get you involved in naming the different days of the week in French and answering simple questions, like which day comes before which.

 

Just remember that practice makes perfect, and soon you’ll be using the French days of the week like a pro.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

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