🇨🇳 Chinese Days of the Week
Learn and practice chinese days of the week with Web Speech API. Click the play button to hear the correct pronunciation.
Chinese weekdays are numbered, which makes them unusually easy
Mandarin builds the days of the week from one word plus a number. Learn 星期 xīngqī ("week") and the numbers one to six, and you have six of the seven days immediately. There is no vocabulary to memorise beyond that.
| Characters | Pinyin | Tones | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| 星期一 | xīngqīyī | 1–1–1 | Monday (week-one) |
| 星期二 | xīngqī'èr | 1–1–4 | Tuesday (week-two) |
| 星期三 | xīngqīsān | 1–1–1 | Wednesday (week-three) |
| 星期四 | xīngqīsì | 1–1–4 | Thursday (week-four) |
| 星期五 | xīngqīwǔ | 1–1–3 | Friday (week-five) |
| 星期六 | xīngqīliù | 1–1–4 | Saturday (week-six) |
| 星期日 / 星期天 | xīngqīrì / xīngqītiān | 1–1–4 / 1–1–1 | Sunday |
Sunday breaks the pattern: there is no 星期七. Instead you use 日 rì ("sun", more formal and common in writing) or 天 tiān ("day", more common in speech).
Three words for "week"
- 星期 xīngqī — the standard form, usable everywhere.
- 周 zhōu — more formal and common in writing and broadcasting: 周一, 周二. Sunday is 周日.
- 礼拜 lǐbài — colloquial and very common in southern China and Taiwan: 礼拜一, 礼拜天.
All three take the same numbers, so learning one pattern gives you all three sets.
The pronunciation points that matter
Tones carry meaning. 星期 is first tone on both syllables — high and level, held steady rather than rising or falling. English speakers tend to let the pitch drift down, which turns a first tone into something closer to a fourth.
The third tone on 五 wǔ dips low and then rises. In connected speech it is often produced as a low tone without the rise, which is normal and correct.
日 rì uses a retroflex approximant quite unlike an English r: the tongue tip curls back without touching, and the vowel is a buzzing sound made in the same position.
The apostrophe in xīngqī'èr is not decorative. It marks the syllable boundary so the word is not read as xīng-qī-er with a rhotic ending.
Useful phrases for practice
- 今天星期几？ Jīntiān xīngqī jǐ? — What day is it today?
- 今天星期三。 Jīntiān xīngqīsān. — Today is Wednesday.
- 星期六见！ Xīngqīliù jiàn! — See you on Saturday!
- 我星期一上班。 Wǒ xīngqīyī shàngbān. — I work on Monday.
- 周末 zhōumò — the weekend.
- 上个星期 / 下个星期 shàng ge xīngqī / xià ge xīngqī — last week / next week.