Beginner’s Guide: Days of the week in Spanish

One of the first things that beginners need to learn are the days of the week. They are useful for understanding the days that shops, restaurants and museums are open and closed. They are useful to make arrangements to meet up with friends, colleagues or relatives and days often come up in general conversation. They are therefore an essential part of any beginner learner’s vocabulary.

The days of the week in Spanish are:

lunes – Monday
martes – Tuesday
miércoles – Wednesday
jueves – Thursday
viernes – Friday
sábado – Saturday
domingo – Sunday

Things to remember when learning the days of the week:

They are not capitalised

Unlike in English the days of the week do not have capital letters.

They are masculine

The days of the week are all masculine so if you are using any article (el, los, un, unos) or an adjective with a day of the week you must use the masculine form.

For example, if you want to say “a rainy Tuesday” you would say “un martes llovioso”.

“El” is used to say “On” a day of the week.

e.g. El lunes = On Monday

“Los” is used to refer to multiple days:

Los lunes = On Mondays

Note: “On + a day” does not translate directly as “En + day”

A common mistake that beginners make is to use “En” to say “On” with a day of the week. In Spanish you must use “El”. To talk about more than one day, you change “El” to “Los”:

El jueves – On Thursday
Los jueves = On Thursdays

Also note that you don’t need to add anything to the day itself to make it plural – “jueves” stays as “jueves”. All you do is change “el” to “los”. However, you do add an –s to Saturday (sábado) and Sunday (domingo) as they do not end in –s.

El sábado – On Saturday
Los sábados – On Saturdays
El domingo – On Sunday
Los domingos – On Sundays

Other useful vocabulary:

Hoy – Today
Hoy es miércoles – Today is Wednesday

Mañana – Tomorrow
Mañana es jueves – Tomorrow is Thursday

Ayer – Yesterday

Por la mañana – In the morning
Por la tarde – In the afternoon/early evening
Por la noche – At night

Todos los … – Every …
Todos los días – every day

Anoche – Last night

Esta mañana – This morning
Esta tarde – This afternoon/evening
Esta noche – Tonight

La semana – the week
El fin de semana – at the weekend

La fecha – The date

Pasado – Last
El domingo pasado – Last Sunday

… que viene – next (Literally: that comes)
El sábado que viene – Next Saturday

Anteayer – the day before yesterday
Juan llegó anteayer – Juan arrived the day before yesterday

Pasado mañana – the day after tomorrow
Vamos a irnos pasado mañana – We are going to leave the day after tomorrow

Easy ways to learn the days of the week:

1) Change your phone settings to Spanish so you see the day and the date written in Spanish every day. If you find the idea of having all of your phone settings in Spanish you could start with just having a Spanish calendar.

2) Watch a catchy tune on Youtube to help you learn the days of the week. Find one you really like so that it sticks in your head making it much easier to memorise the days of the week.

3) Write the date down somewhere every day. By writing the date in full it will help you memorise the correct spellings as well as the days of the week and the months of the year. Even if you aren’t attending a class you could write the date as a daily diary entry or for your daily to do list.

4) Make up an acronym to memorise the day of the week so that each letter stands for a word. L M M J V S D.