🇫🇷 French Days of the Week
Learn and practice french days of the week with Web Speech API. Click the play button to hear the correct pronunciation.
How to pronounce the French days of the week
French weekday names are short but contain three nasal vowels and a dropped e, which is why they often sound nothing like their spelling. Read the transcriptions before using the audio buttons above.
| French | IPA | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| lundi | /lœ̃.di/ | Nasal /œ̃/; many speakers now merge it with /ɛ̃/ |
| mardi | /maʁ.di/ | Uvular /ʁ/ made at the back of the throat |
| mercredi | /mɛʁ.kʁə.di/ | Two uvular r sounds; the hardest of the seven |
| jeudi | /ʒø.di/ | /ʒ/ as in measure; rounded /ø/ |
| vendredi | /vɑ̃.dʁə.di/ | Nasal /ɑ̃/; v really is /v/, unlike Spanish |
| samedi | /sam.di/ | The middle e is normally dropped entirely |
| dimanche | /di.mɑ̃ʃ/ | Nasal /ɑ̃/ and a final /ʃ/ |
The nasal vowels are the real difficulty
Three of these words contain a nasal vowel, and English has none. A nasal vowel is not a vowel followed by
n: the n is not pronounced at all. Instead the soft palate lowers during the vowel so that air
flows through the nose and mouth at the same time. If you can hear an /n/ at the end of lundi
or vendredi, you are producing two sounds where French has one.
A practical way in: say English song and stop before the final consonant, keeping the vowel resonating.
That resonance is what you need for /ɑ̃/.
Grammar rules English speakers get wrong
- No capital letters. French writes lundi, never Lundi, in the middle of a sentence.
- No preposition for "on". On Monday is simply lundi. Je pars lundi means "I'm leaving on Monday".
- The article flips the meaning — the opposite way round from Spanish. Bare lundi means one specific Monday; le lundi means every Monday. Le musée est fermé le lundi means the museum is closed on Mondays.
- All seven are masculine: un lundi pluvieux.
- The week starts on Monday, so French calendars run lundi to dimanche.
Where the names come from
French keeps the Latin dies element as the suffix -di, whereas English puts day in the same position: lundi is the moon's day, mardi Mars', mercredi Mercury's, jeudi Jupiter's and vendredi Venus'. Dimanche breaks the pattern because it comes from dies Dominicus, with the element moved to the front, and samedi derives from sabbati dies.
Useful phrases for practice
- Quel jour sommes-nous ? — What day is it?
- Aujourd'hui, c'est jeudi. — Today is Thursday.
- À samedi ! — See you on Saturday!
- Je travaille le mercredi. — I work on Wednesdays.
- La semaine dernière / la semaine prochaine — last week / next week.
- Le week-end — the weekend, borrowed directly from English.