Months of the year

Twelve words the calendar lesson left out

You can already say le lundi and ask for la date. This lesson gives you the other half of a date: the month.

The months

Two things English speakers get wrong

First, months are not capitalised in French. janvier, not Janvier. Days are the same — lundi, not Lundi. Only the first word of a sentence takes a capital.

Second, months take en, not dans:

En janvier — in January. You may also hear au mois de janvier, which is a little more formal and means exactly the same thing.

Saying which month it is

The frame you already know from the days works here too:

Pronunciation traps

Août is the one to watch: most speakers in France say it as a single vowel, roughly oute, and the a disappears. Juin and juillet look alike on the page and sound nothing alike — juin rhymes with loin, juillet ends like ballet. And the -s of mars is pronounced, unlike almost every other final -s in French.