Come on, this is all really easy…

Here they are: the days of the week in Spanish. All seven of them!

Don’t forget to include the accents in miércoles and sábado.

Moonday…

In English, the word ‘Monday’ is derived from the Latin for ‘Moon day’. The Spanish ‘Lunes‘ follows the same logic: ‘luna‘ is the Spanish word for ‘moon’.

Don’t use capitals for the days of the week

Unlike English, in Spanish we don’t use a capital letter at the beginning of the days of the week.

Don’t just take my word for it! Here’s what the Real Academia Española (The custodian of the Spanish language) has to say on the issue.

Exceptions to the rule about capital letters

However, when we are talking about certain special days, such as holidays, then we do use capital letters for the first letter of the day:

• Viernes Santo – Good Friday
• Domingo de Ramos – Palm Sunday

Santo = holy

Days of the week with the definite article.

In Spanish we usually put the definite article el before the day of the week.

• Nos vemos el lunes.
  See you on Monday.
• Tenemos el examen el miércoles.
  We have the exam on Wednesday.

In Spanish, all the days of the week are masculine (sorry ladies!), so it’s always el and never la.

Plural forms

You will often see days of the week used in their plural form.

• Trabajo todos los sábados este mes.
  I work every Saturday this month.
• Mi madre me llama los jueves por la mañana.
  My mother calls me on Thursday mornings.

Just remember to use the plural article ‘los’.  If the day of the week ends in ‘s’ (which is most of the days!) we don’t put an additional ‘s’ on the plural.

• el lunes -> los lunes
• el martes -> los martes
• el miércoles -> los miércoles
• el jueves -> los jueves
• el viernes -> los viernes
• el sábado -> los sábados
• el domingo -> los domingos

What a load of Wednesday!

Did you know that in Bolivia and some other Latin American countries, people use the word ‘miercoles’ as a polite subsititute for ‘mierda’ (shit)?

• ¡Miércoles! ¿Qué han hecho?
  Wednesday! What have they done?

Written abbreviations.

In written Spanish you may see the days of the week abbreviated. There is no general consensus on the exact form however. In my experience working with both Spaniards and Latin Americans the most common form is the two letter lowercase format.  However, when space is limited, for example in the calendar on your mobile phone, you’ll see the single letter abbreviations.

It’s all quite straightforward except for the single letter abbreviation for miércoles, which becomes ‘X’ to avoid any confusion with martes.

How to say and write dates

If you want to learn how to say and write dates in Spanish, then check out our class here.  We also have a separate class on the months of the year.

Spanish phrases

For simple Spanish phrases that you can start to use straightaway, visit our section, Basic Spanish Phrases.

Infographic

Here’s a free infographic with the days of the week in Spanish.