Vocabulary: It's a date

One of the things that is useful when learning a language is to be able to talk about the time and date. In this post, we look at how to talk about the months of the year.

In France, the year is divided into four seasons: Winter, Spring,  Summer and Autumn, much like most of the Northern Hemisphere. The calendar is divided into twelve months, and each season is approximately three months long. 

Here are les mois (the months) and les saisons (the seasons) as they fall in France:

Hiver- Winter

Image: Liam Franklin

Décembre-December

Janvier- January

Février-February

Printemps- Spring

Mars-March

Avril-April

Mai-May

Été-Summer

Juin-June

Juillet-July

Août-August

Automne-Autnumn

Image: snader.deviantart.com

Septembre-September

Octobre-October

Novembre-November

Now, to start talking about the date. 

In French the date is usually written shorthand in the following order:

la date/le mois/l'année - date/month/year

For Americans, this might be a little confusing but those of us who already use this system shouldn't have too much trouble, so long as we know our French numbers.

If you want to talk about the date, you can use some of the following phrases (adapted for the actual date at the time of course!):

Aujourd'hui, nous sommes le 13 (trieze) fevrier 2013 (deux mille trieze) - Today is the 13th (thirteenth) of February 2013 (two thousand and thirteen).

* notice the literal translation is 'Today we are' rather than 'Today is' *

Mon anniversaire est le 20 (vingt) octobre. - My birthday is on the 20th of October.

*notice that French skips the use of 'on' and 'of'*

C'est le premiere Janvier. -It's the first of January.

*you may have noticed that usually, French uses numbers instead of rankings to designate the date, i.e. 13 instead of 13th. The exception to this rule is the 1st day of the month, when premiere (1er), meaning first (1st),  is used in place of un (one). *

For more information on taking about dates and times, check out this page on French Today which explains some of the more complex rules nice and clearly.