by Erin McGann
Updated on October 15, 2024
How to say the months and dates in German
Surely you just, well, say the months or dates in German? Ah! Think for a moment how you say the date where you’re from. Even in English, in the US people say the date in one way and in the UK they order it differently. So let’s have a look at how to say and write the date in German.
Firstly, there are the days of the week in German, which look quite similar to the English ones:
Monday – Montag
Tuesday – Dienstag
Wednesday – Mittwoch
Thursday – Donnerstag
Freitag – Friday
Saturday – Samstag
Sunday – Sonntag
It’s worth noting that in some parts in the eastern and northern regions of Germany, Samstag is Sonnabend, literally the eve of Sunday. If you’re like me and get Dienstag and Donnerstag mixed up (ask me about the time I showed up to the doctor on a Tuesday instead of a Thursday), a friend told me this neat trick – Dienstag is shorter, so it comes earlier in the week.
Again, quite similar to the English month names are the months in German:
January – Januar
February – Februar
March – März
April – April
May – Mai
June – Juni
July – Juli
August – August
September – September
October – Oktober
November – November
December – Dezember
German speakers use the day-month-year ordering of dates, whether they are writing them out or using only numerals. When you write out the full month name, you put a full stop after the number of the day to denote that it’s an ordinal (1st, 2nd, 3rd) – for example, 22nd July would be 22. July. When you say that out loud, it would be zweiundzwanzigste Juli. Much like English, the first few ordinals are irregular:
First – erste
Second – zweite
Third – dritte
Fourth – vierte
Fifth – fünfte
Sixth – sechste
Seventh – siebte
Eighth – achte
Ninth – neunte
Tenth – zehnte
And so on, adding a ‘–te’ to the end of the number. After 20, zwanzig, the ending becomes ‘-ste’, like the above example of ‘zweiundzwanigste’. I pretty much avoid having to talk about anything that has an ordinal in the thirties, because ‘dreißigste’ is a tongue twister for me.
However, this changes depending on the preposition. If you were to say, ‘He came on the first of May’, that would be ‘Er kam am ersten Mai‘, notice the ‘en’. This ending change follows for all the ordinals. If we started a sentence and used the definite article, for example: ‘The first of May is usually warm’, it would be ‘Der erste Mai ist normalerweise warm‘.
The year is broken into two parts in German for dates before the year 2000. For 1735, you would say 17 35, ‘siebzehn fünfunddreißig’. Notice there is no ‘und’ between the two sets of numbers, and this is the same way we manage these dates in English as well. Once you’re after 2000, it changes. The year 2020 is not how we would say it in English, twenty twenty, but two-thousand twenty, zweitausendzwanzig. It’s worth noting here that if you write out the year in words, it is not capitalised.
If you’re writing out the date, German speakers use full stops between the days, months, and year, when you’re writing it out in numerals: 22.07.1977. No dashes, slashes or anything else. When you use the month written out, there is no comma after the month and before the year: 22. Juli 2020.
Now you just have to practise saying your birthday over and over again, and you’ll have it ready to go next time you’re at the doctor’s office!
