🇧🇷 Portuguese Days of the Week
Learn and practice portuguese days of the week with Web Speech API. Click the play button to hear the correct pronunciation.
Portuguese numbers its weekdays, and no other major language does
Spanish, French, Italian and English all name the weekdays after planets or gods. Portuguese is the exception: five of its seven days are numbered. The system comes from sixth-century liturgical Latin, where the days of Easter week were called feria secunda, feria tertia and so on, and Portuguese kept it when the other Romance languages reverted to the pagan names.
The counting starts from Sunday, so segunda-feira — literally "second fair" — is Monday. This offset is the single most confusing thing about the system for learners: quarta-feira means "fourth" but falls on Wednesday.
| Portuguese | IPA (Brazilian) | English | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| segunda-feira | /seˈɡũ.dɐ ˈfej.ɾɐ/ | Monday | Nasal /ũ/; final a reduces to /ɐ/ |
| terça-feira | /ˈteʁ.sɐ ˈfej.ɾɐ/ | Tuesday | ç is always /s/ |
| quarta-feira | /ˈkwaʁ.tɐ ˈfej.ɾɐ/ | Wednesday | qu before a keeps the /w/ |
| quinta-feira | /ˈkĩ.tɐ ˈfej.ɾɐ/ | Thursday | Nasal /ĩ/; qu before i loses the /w/ |
| sexta-feira | /ˈses.tɐ ˈfej.ɾɐ/ | Friday | The x is /s/ here, not /ʃ/ |
| sábado | /ˈsa.ba.du/ | Saturday | Final o is /u/ |
| domingo | /doˈmĩ.ɡu/ | Sunday | Final o is /u/ |
Two pronunciation rules worth learning immediately
Final unstressed o is pronounced /u/. Sábado ends in an oo
sound, not an oh sound, and domingo likewise. This applies across the whole language, so learning
it here pays off far beyond the days of the week.
Final unstressed a reduces to /ɐ/. The a at the end of
segunda and feira is a short, central sound closer to the vowel in English sofa than to a
full ah.
Grammar and everyday usage
- In speech, feira is usually dropped. Brazilians normally say na segunda, na terça, na quinta. The full form is common in writing and in formal contexts.
- The numbered days are feminine, because feira is feminine: a segunda-feira. Sábado and domingo are masculine: o sábado.
- "On Monday" is na segunda; "on Mondays" is às segundas.
- No capital letters, except at the start of a sentence.
- Hyphenated in full form: segunda-feira, not segunda feira.
Useful phrases for practice
- Que dia é hoje? — What day is it today?
- Hoje é quarta. — Today is Wednesday.
- Até sexta! — See you on Friday!
- Eu trabalho às segundas. — I work on Mondays.
- no fim de semana — at the weekend.
- semana passada / semana que vem — last week / next week.