Months in French (and How to Say Dates)

The twelve months in French

The twelve months in French are janvier, février, mars, avril, mai, juin, juillet, août, septembre, octobre, novembre, and décembre. They map one for one onto January through December, in the same order, so there is nothing to rearrange in your head. If you already know the English months, you know the sequence, and half the job is done before you start.

The good news for an English speaker is that most of these look familiar on the page. Septembre, octobre, novembre, and décembre are almost the English words with a small spelling change and a very different sound. Mars, avril, mai, and juin are short and quick to learn. The two that trip people up are février, which packs a lot into a few letters, and août, which is spelled in a way that gives no hint of how it is said. We'll deal with both below.

Here is the whole set laid out with the English month next to each one, so you can anchor the new word to the one you already have.

• janvier = January
• février = February
• mars = March
• avril = April
• mai = May
• juin = June
• juillet = July
• août = August
• septembre = September
• octobre = October
• novembre = November
• décembre = December

One small point of grammar that saves confusion later: the months in French are masculine. If you ever need an article, you say le mois de janvier, "the month of January," and you would describe a cold January as un janvier froid. You rarely put an article directly in front of a bare month, but when you talk about the month as a thing, it is masculine, and that decision is already made for you across all twelve.

How to pronounce each month

Pronunciation is where the months stop looking easy, because French spelling and French sound are two different worlds. The guides below use rough English syllables to point you in the right direction. They are a starting map, not a perfect recording, so treat them as a way in and then correct yourself against a native voice. The single most useful habit is to say each month out loud as you read it, not silently, because your mouth learns a sound by making it, not by seeing it.

A few sounds repeat across the list, so learning them once pays off many times. The letters "em" and "en" inside septembre, novembre, and décembre make a nasal "ahm" sound, where the air passes partly through your nose and the consonant almost disappears. The soft "j" in janvier, juin, and juillet is like the "s" in the English word "measure," never the hard "j" of "jump." And a final "e" is usually silent, which is why octobre ends in a soft "bruh" rather than a clear "bray."

• janvier → roughly "zhahn-vyay." Soft j, a nasal "ahn," and a light "vyay" at the end.
• février → roughly "fay-vree-ay." Three quick pieces. The trap is rushing the "vree" so it blurs into the "ay."
• mars → roughly "marss." One syllable, and unlike most French words the final s is pronounced here.
• avril → roughly "ah-vreel." The l at the end is clear and light.
• mai → roughly "may," close to the English word may or the sound in "met." Short and open.
• juin → roughly "zhwan," one nasal syllable. Soft j, then a "wan" that lives in your nose. This one takes practice.
• juillet → roughly "zhwee-yay." Soft j, a quick "wee," then "yay." The double l gives a y sound, not an l.
• août → roughly "oot" or "ah-oot." Both are correct and common. The final t is usually pronounced.
• septembre → roughly "sep-tahm-bruh." Clear "sep," a nasal "tahm," then a soft "bruh."
• octobre → roughly "ok-toh-bruh." Steady and even, with that soft final "bruh."
• novembre → roughly "no-vahm-bruh." The "vem" turns nasal into "vahm."
• décembre → roughly "day-sahm-bruh." The c before e is soft, so it is "say," not "kay."

The two worth extra time are août and juin. Août is strange because the circumflex over the u marks a letter that history dropped, so the spelling gives you almost no clue to the sound. Just accept that it is said "oot" or "ah-oot" and move on, because staring at the letters will not help. Juin is hard for a different reason: it is a nasal sound English does not have, so your instinct will be to say "joo-in" with a clear n, and that clear n is exactly what to avoid. Let the sound resonate in your nose and stop the word before your tongue finishes an n. If you want to go deeper on getting French sounds right in general, our guide on how to improve pronunciation covers the practice methods that make sounds like these stick.

Why French months are not capitalized

Months are not capitalized in French. You write janvier, not Janvier, and mardi 5 mai, not Mardi 5 Mai. This is one of the most common mistakes English speakers make, because in English we capitalize every month and every day without thinking, and the habit carries straight over. In French it is simply wrong outside of one situation.

The single exception is position. A month takes a capital letter only when it lands at the very start of a sentence, exactly as any other word would. So "Mai est mon mois préféré," meaning "May is my favorite month," capitalizes mai because it opens the sentence, not because it is a month. Move it into the middle of the sentence and the capital disappears: "Mon mois préféré est mai."

This same lowercase rule covers more than months, which is worth knowing so the pattern feels consistent rather than arbitrary. Days of the week are lowercase too: lundi, mardi, mercredi. Languages are lowercase: le français, l'anglais. Nationalities used as adjectives are lowercase: un livre français, "a French book." The one place a capital does return is a nationality used as a noun for a person: un Français, "a Frenchman." For months, though, you never need to worry about that wrinkle. Months stay lowercase, full stop, unless they start the sentence.

Why does French do this when English does not? There is no deep reason you need to memorize. It is a convention, and French treats these calendar and language words as ordinary common nouns rather than proper names. The practical takeaway is small and easy to hold onto: when you write a French date, resist the reflex to reach for the capital. Lowercase looks wrong to an English eye at first, and it is correct.

How to say dates in French

A French date follows a single, reliable pattern: le, then the number, then the month. So the fifth of May is le 5 mai, read aloud as le cinq mai. The seventh of August is le 7 août, read le sept août. Learn that order once, le plus number plus month, and you can build any date in the calendar without a second thought.

Notice what French does not do here. It does not use ordinal numbers the way English often does. In English we say "the fifth of May" or "May fifth," using the ordinal "fifth." French uses the plain counting number instead: le cinq mai, literally "the five May." You do not say le cinquième mai. This actually makes life easier, because you only need the ordinary numbers one through thirty-one, not a separate set of ordinals. If your counting is shaky, our full guide to French numbers walks through them from zero upward, which is the foundation every date sits on.

When you write the month name out, the full date reads cleanly: le 14 juillet, le 25 décembre. When you add a year, it goes on the end: le 14 juillet 2026, read le quatorze juillet deux mille vingt-six. French says years the plain way, as full numbers, so 2026 is deux mille vingt-six, "two thousand twenty-six," rather than split into "twenty twenty-six" the way English sometimes does.

If you want to include the day of the week, it goes in front, and you can drop the le: mardi 5 mai, "Tuesday the fifth of May." You may also keep the le for a slightly fuller feel: le mardi 5 mai. Both are fine. Just remember the lowercase rule from the last section: mardi and mai both stay lowercase, so it is mardi 5 mai, never Mardi 5 Mai.

One more detail about the written form. French uses day, month, year order when it writes dates as numbers, so 05/03/2026 means the fifth of March, not the third of May. This is the opposite of the American month, day, year habit and matches most of the world. If a French speaker writes 04/06, they mean the fourth of June. Keep that order in mind when you read forms, tickets, and timetables, because a misread date can cost you a missed appointment.

Cardinal numbers, except le premier

The rule for the number in a date is short: use the plain cardinal number for every day of the month except the first, which uses the ordinal le premier. So the first of May is le premier mai, but the second is le 2 mai (le deux mai), the third is le 3 mai (le trois mai), and so on all the way to le 31 mai. The first is the only exception, and once you know it, dates become almost mechanical.

Premier means "first," and it is the same word you would use for the first floor or the first place in a race. In a date it is often written as 1er, with a small "er" raised after the one, so you will see le 1er janvier on calendars and signs. Read aloud, 1er is simply premier: le premier janvier for New Year's Day, le premier avril for April Fools' Day, which the French call the day of the poisson d'avril, the "April fish."

Everything after the first is refreshingly regular. You do not say "the second" with an ordinal, you say le deux. You do not say "the twenty-first," you say le vingt et un. The days climb as ordinary numbers: le deux, le trois, le quatre, right up to le trente et un for a thirty-one day month. Because you are reusing the counting numbers you already need for everything else in French, there is very little extra to memorize beyond that one word, premier.

A neat side effect of this rule is that dates give you a low-pressure way to drill your numbers. Every date you say is a small rehearsal of a number between one and thirty-one, wrapped in a real, useful sentence. Say your own birthday, say today's date, say the date of a holiday you care about, and you are quietly practicing counting without it feeling like counting practice at all.

Saying "in May": en mai and au mois de mai

To say that something happens in a given month, you have two clean options: en mai or au mois de mai. Both mean "in May." En mai is the short, everyday form you will hear most in speech. Au mois de mai means literally "in the month of May" and is a touch more formal or emphatic, useful when you want to be unmistakably clear about which month you mean.

The pattern is identical for all twelve months, which makes this easy to generalize. In January is en janvier or au mois de janvier. In August is en août or au mois d'août, where de shortens to d' before the vowel sound. In December is en décembre or au mois de décembre. Pick whichever feels natural in the moment. For casual conversation, en plus the month is almost always what you want.

A few examples to see it working inside real sentences:

• Je pars en vacances en juillet. = I'm going on holiday in July.
• Mon anniversaire est en mars. = My birthday is in March.
• Il fait froid en janvier. = It's cold in January.
• Nous déménageons au mois de septembre. = We're moving in the month of September.

You can also point at the edges of a month rather than the whole thing, which comes up constantly when you make plans. "At the beginning of May" is début mai or au début du mois de mai. "At the end of May" is fin mai or à la fin du mois de mai. "In mid-May" is à la mi-mai. These short forms, début mai and fin mai, are extremely common in speech and worth adding early, because "I'll see you at the end of June," je te vois fin juin, is the kind of thing you actually say to people.

The four seasons in French

The four seasons in French are le printemps for spring, l'été for summer, l'automne for autumn, and l'hiver for winter. They pair naturally with the months, so it is worth learning them in the same breath. Spring covers roughly mars, avril, and mai; summer covers juin, juillet, and août; autumn covers septembre, octobre, and novembre; and winter covers décembre, janvier, and février.

Saying "in" a season has one small twist that catches learners out. For three of the four seasons you use en, but for spring you use au. So it is au printemps for "in spring," and then en été, en automne, and en hiver for the other three. The reason is sound: printemps begins with a consonant, while été, automne, and hiver begin with a vowel sound, and French prefers en before those vowel starts. You do not have to understand the reason to use it, but the pattern is easy to remember once you notice that spring is simply the odd one out.

• le printemps = spring → au printemps = in spring
• l'été = summer → en été = in summer
• l'automne = autumn → en automne = in autumn
• l'hiver = winter → en hiver = in winter

Pronunciation notes for the four: printemps is roughly "pran-tahn," with two nasal sounds and a silent final ps. Été is a clean "ay-tay," two bright syllables. Automne is "oh-tonn," and the m is silent, which surprises people. Hiver is "ee-vair," with a silent h at the start, since French h is almost never pronounced. Like the months, the seasons are masculine, except that l'été and l'hiver hide their article behind the vowel, so you cannot tell gender from the l' alone; both are in fact masculine.

Seasons give you another easy speaking rep. Try describing what you do across the year: au printemps, je fais du vélo (in spring, I ride my bike); en été, je vais à la plage (in summer, I go to the beach); en automne, je lis beaucoup (in autumn, I read a lot); en hiver, je reste à la maison (in winter, I stay home). Four short sentences, and you have practiced all four seasons plus a handful of common verbs.

Useful date phrases and questions

Knowing the months and the date formula is only useful if you can ask and answer real questions with them. These are the phrases that come up over and over, the ones worth having ready so you are not building them from scratch mid-conversation.

To ask what today's date is, you have a formal option and a casual one:

• Quelle est la date aujourd'hui? = What's the date today? (neutral and clear)
• On est le combien aujourd'hui? = What's the date today? (casual, very common in speech)
• Quel jour sommes-nous? = What day is it? (asks the day, sometimes the date too)

To answer, you lean on the date formula and often on the day of the week:

• Aujourd'hui, c'est le 7 août. = Today is the seventh of August.
• On est le 7 août. = It's the seventh of August. (matches the casual question)
• C'est vendredi. = It's Friday.

Birthdays are probably the single most common reason a beginner needs a month, so these earn their place early:

• C'est quand ton anniversaire? = When's your birthday? (informal)
• Quand est votre anniversaire? = When is your birthday? (formal or plural)
• Mon anniversaire est le 12 mars. = My birthday is the twelfth of March.
• Je suis né en juin. = I was born in June. (a man saying it; a woman says née)

And a scattering of everyday scheduling phrases that put months to work:

• À partir de septembre = starting from September
• jusqu'en décembre = until December
• le mois prochain = next month
• le mois dernier = last month
• tous les mois = every month
• au début de l'année = at the beginning of the year

If you learn nothing else from this section, learn the birthday exchange and the casual "on est le combien?" You will use both within your first real French conversation, and being able to fire them back without hesitation feels like a genuine small win. To see how phrases like these fit into a wider plan for actually speaking, our guide on how to learn French puts vocabulary like the months in its proper place beside pronunciation and daily practice.

A full reference table

Here is everything in one place: each month in French, its English match, a rough pronunciation, and a sample date so you can see the word doing real work. Treat the pronunciation column as a rough guide to say out loud, then refine it against a native voice.

A couple of the sample dates are worth a note, because they are real fixtures on the French calendar and hearing them in context helps the month stick. Le 14 juillet is the French national day, sometimes called Bastille Day in English. Le 1er mai is a public holiday. Le 25 décembre is Christmas, Noël. Le 11 novembre marks Armistice Day. You do not need to memorize the holidays, but tying a month to a date you already recognize gives the word a hook to hang on, which is exactly how vocabulary sticks.

Memory tips for the months

The months are a small, closed set of twelve items in a fixed order, which makes them ideal for a few simple memory tricks. You are not learning an open-ended pile of vocabulary here, you are learning a short list that never changes, so a little structure goes a long way.

Start by leaning on the ones that are nearly free. Septembre, octobre, novembre, and décembre are so close to English that you only have to relearn the sound, not the whole word. Mars, avril, mai, and juin are short enough to grab in a single pass. That leaves you with really only a handful that need genuine effort: janvier, février, juillet, and août. Spend your attention there rather than spreading it evenly across twelve, because most of the twelve barely need it.

A few concrete techniques that work well for a fixed list like this:

• Chant the order. Say all twelve in sequence, out loud, as one flowing line, several times a day. Order gives you free recall: once "juin, juillet" is a reflex, you never lose July, because June pulls it along.
• Tie each month to a real date. Anchor février to a birthday, juillet to le 14 juillet, décembre to Noël. A month attached to a date you care about is far stickier than a month floating alone.
• Group by season. Learn them in fours: spring (mars, avril, mai), summer (juin, juillet, août), autumn (septembre, octobre, novembre), winter (décembre, janvier, février). Four small groups are easier to hold than one line of twelve.
• Notice the sound families. The four "bruh" endings (septembre, octobre, novembre, décembre) rhyme, and the three soft-j months (janvier, juin, juillet) share a start. Grouping by sound makes the pronunciation stick faster.

Whatever technique you use, the delivery method that beats all others is spacing your practice out and saying the words aloud rather than reading them silently. A minute of months every day for two weeks will bury them far deeper than an hour crammed into one sitting. If you want the reasoning behind why short, spread-out, spoken reviews outperform cramming, our guide on what spaced repetition is explains the method in full, and it applies perfectly to a small fixed list like the months.

Practicing months and dates out loud

Reading this page will teach you the months. Saying them in a real conversation is a different skill, and it is the one that actually matters. There is a familiar gap between recognizing a month on a list and producing it smoothly when someone asks you a question and waits for an answer, and the only way across that gap is to practice speaking, not just reading.

You can start alone, and you should. Say today's date out loud every morning: aujourd'hui, c'est le [number] [month]. Say your birthday, your family's birthdays, the date of your next trip. Narrate your year through the seasons: au printemps je fais ceci, en été je fais cela. Ask yourself the casual question, on est le combien aujourd'hui?, and answer it. Each of these is a tiny rep that trains your mouth to produce a month under something closer to real conditions. For more ways to build this habit on your own, our guide on how to practice speaking a new language alone is full of routines you can drop the months straight into.

What solo practice cannot give you is the two-way pressure of a real exchange: an unexpected question, a reply you have to understand on the spot, a follow-up you did not script. That pressure is exactly what turns a month from something you can recite into something you can use. It is also the part learners avoid, because grabbing a patient human partner just to drill dates feels awkward, and so they retreat into reading more lists instead, which quietly widens the very gap they are trying to close.

This is where an AI speaking partner earns its place. SPAIKING gives you someone to speak French with whenever you have a few minutes, so you can ask and answer real date questions out loud, hear a reply, and get corrected on your pronunciation as you go, all without any fear of being judged for fumbling août or juin the first ten times. You bring the months you learned here, and SPAIKING turns them into actual conversation. You can see how it works on the pricing page, or head back to the SPAIKING home page to start.

The plan, then, is simple. Learn the twelve months and the date formula from this page. Drill them out loud on your own for a few short sessions. Then use them in real spoken conversation as fast as you can, because that final step, saying "mon anniversaire est le 12 mars" to someone who answers you back, is what moves the months from your eyes to your mouth for good. Everything before it is preparation. The speaking is where it becomes real.