Cantonese Days of the Week: Learn the Simple Pattern (With YouTube Examples)

Look, if you're learning Cantonese and stressing about memorizing seven completely different day names like you did in English (Monday after the moon, Saturday after Saturn... what?), I've got good news.

The word for week in Cantonese follows the most logical system you'll ever see. Once you learn the pattern, you've basically mastered all the days of the week. No weird mythology, no planets, just simple numbers.

The Basic Pattern: How to Say the Days of the Week in Cantonese

Here's how it works. Take the word for "week" — 星期 (sing1 kei4) — and add a number from 1 to 6. That's it. This is the core vocabulary you need for talking about weekdays in Cantonese.

Notice the pattern? Monday is the first day, not Sunday. Makes sense when you think about how workweeks actually function. The word 星期 combined with these numbers creates a system that's perfect for beginners — way easier than English.

Sunday: The One Exception Every Learner Needs to Know

Sunday breaks the pattern. Instead of saying seven (星期七 — which sounds logical but is totally wrong), you say either:

Both work fine, though 星期日 is more common. The character 日 (jat6) means "day" or "sun," while 天 (tin1) means "sky" or "heaven." Just don't ever say 星期七. That's not a thing in Cantonese, and native speakers will instantly know you learned this five minutes ago.

This Sunday exception exists because the seven-day calendar came to China through Western influence in the 1800s. Before that, the Chinese language used a ten-day cycle. When the Western calendar arrived, Sunday got special treatment as the "day of rest" rather than just "week seven."

The Casual Alternative Word for Week in Cantonese: 禮拜

星期 is your safe, standard choice. But in casual conversation with friends and family, a lot of Cantonese speakers use 禮拜 (lai5 baai3) instead. Same exact pattern:

The word 禮拜 literally means "worship" and comes from when Western missionaries showed up. Local Cantonese speakers noticed these foreigners worshipped every seven days, so the term extended to mean the weekly cycle. It's one of those common words that shows how the language evolved through cultural contact.

Here's the thing though: 禮拜 sounds too casual for professional settings. If you're emailing your boss or talking in a business meeting, stick with 星期. Save 禮拜 for chatting with friends over dim sum.

How Native Speakers Actually Use These Cantonese Words

Cantonese puts the day directly before the verb. No prepositions needed. Here are some real conversational phrases:

The structure feels natural once you practice it with real content. No need to memorize grammar rules — just see how people actually speak. If you want more examples of how Cantonese sentence structure works, check out whether Cantonese is a language or dialect — that post breaks down some interesting differences from Mandarin.

Week in Chinese vs. Week in Cantonese: What's the Difference?

Cantonese shares the same written characters with Mandarin Chinese, so if you've already learned Chinese days of the week, you'll recognize everything here. The pronunciation differs, but the logic is identical. Both use the same word 星期 for "week."

The main difference is Mandarin pronunciation versus Cantonese pronunciation. In Mandarin, Monday is "xīngqī yī," while in Cantonese it's "sing1 kei4 jat1." Same characters, different sounds. This is actually helpful if you're learning both — you can read the same calendar or schedule in either dialect.

Similar simple number patterns show up in Japanese and Korean too, though they use different base words. Asian languages generally make this stuff way easier than English does.

Cantonese Pronunciation Tips for Days of the Week

Cantonese has six tones, and yeah, they matter. The good news is that 星期 and 禮拜 stay consistent across all the weekdays, so you're really just focusing on pronouncing the numbers correctly.

The one that trips people up is Sunday. Remember that 日 (jat6, meaning "day") has a low falling tone, while 一 (jat1, meaning "one") has a high level tone. So Monday (星期一) and Sunday (星期日) sound different even though they use similar-looking characters.

The number in each day name carries meaning and tone:

If you're worried about pronunciation, learning from real video content where you hear native Cantonese speakers actually using these words helps way more than drilling pronunciation charts. You start to internalize the patterns naturally. YouTube has tons of Cantonese content where you'll hear these days referenced constantly — especially in vlogs about weekly routines or planning videos.

Learn Cantonese Days Through Real Content, Not Just Lessons

Here's what doesn't work: staring at a dictionary or translation app with a list of days and trying to memorize them through pure repetition.

What actually works: encountering these words repeatedly in real contexts. When you're watching Cantonese video content and someone says 我星期六冇時間 ("I'm not free Saturday"), you're not just learning vocabulary. You're learning how real people schedule their lives, make plans, and turn down invitations.

That's where Migaku comes in. Instead of drilling flashcards with random sentences or sitting through boring lesson videos, you learn from actual Cantonese content — movies, TV shows, YouTube videos, whatever you're into. The browser extension lets you look up words instantly while you watch, and it automatically creates flashcards with real context.

When you see 星期三 (Wednesday) in a drama where someone's stressed about a midweek deadline, or hear 禮拜日 (Sunday) in a conversation about weekend plans, those days stick in your brain differently. You're not memorizing abstract words from a calendar. You're learning how Cantonese speakers actually use them in conversational settings.

The app syncs everything, so you can review while commuting or waiting in line. The spaced repetition system makes sure you see these words at the exact right intervals to remember them long-term. And because everything comes from real content you chose, you're actually engaged instead of bored out of your mind.

If you want to learn Cantonese from content you'll actually enjoy watching, give Migaku a try. There's a 10-day free trial, so you can see if it works for you.