The French months of the year: pronunciation, dates, and the calendar!

Good news:

That out of the way, let's get into how to say the French months, how to talk about dates and seasons, and a bit of grammar related to the French calendar. We'll also include audio samples and rough English approximations of key vocabulary words, as beginners often feel that there's at best a dubious relationship between French spelling and French pronunciation.

We'll talk about:

[Table] Les mois de l'année: Learn the months of the year in French (+ pronunciation notes)

We'll bust out a few example sentences in the next section. For now, just look through the table. If you're new to French, make a point to check out the audio recordings—while you'll likely immediately recognize all of the months (except perhaps for August), the way they sound may surprise you.

Also, note that months are not capitalized in French.

[Examples] The French months in sentences

The good news continues: in the same way as we say "in {month}", French people say "en {month}". Again, notice that the French months are not capitalized in these sentences.

As you can see, just like in English, the placement of time words is quite flexible in French. Your "en {month}" can go in the beginning of a sentence, at the end, or somewhere in the middle.

Other French vocabulary related to the calendar (seasons, dates, parts of the month)

Naturally, it's not enough to just know the months. They don't appear in isolation, after all!

Here's a hodgepodge of vocabulary and phrases that you'll likely use in tandem with the months.

Les saisons: How to say (and pronounce!) the seasons in French

We'll start with the seasons of the year. Note that, like the months, seasons are not capitalized in French, either.

While I hate to immediately contradict myself, when you say "in {season}", the "le" or "l'" from the above table will be dropped. Observe:

† Note: Yes, for whatever reason, Spring is the red-headed stepchild of French months. You use it with "au", despite the fact that you use all of the other seasons with "en".

How to refer to specific months or parts of the month in French

Here's some key phrases you can pair with the names of the months. To use them, simply replace {mois} with whichever month you'd like.

Example sentences:

† Note: Unfortunately, whether {mois} is preceeded by le, du, or au depends on what is happening in the rest of the sentence. That logic is beyond the scope of this blog article, but you may read about it (in French) here.

Le # mois: How to combine days and months to say the date in French

In French, there's a fixed way to say the date:

This is very similar to English's "The # of {month}", but French speakers do not say "of", as you can see in these examples:

Important to notice here is that, with the exception of the first of the month (where they say premier), French just uses normal numbers to say the date: "the three february", not "the third of February"

Some grammar notes about months and dates in French

We've sprinkled a few grammar notes throughout the above sections. Here's a quick recap:

A simple way to learn the names of the months in French

We've got an entire post devoted to how memory works, but one simple thing worth knowing is that it's easier to remember things if we encounter them in contexts that somehow engage, move, or interest us.

While blog posts like these are useful as a reference, they're unfortunately not particularly moving. You probably won't remember many of the months just because you read through that list in the first section.

Instead, you'll find the months much "stickier" if you encounter them in the wild, in real French content.

For example, say you're watching Trois Personnes Célèbres on YouTube. You'll end up running into a sentence like this:

And if you're watching YouTube with Migaku, you can just click on those words to see what they mean:

Since you're learning the French months, you can go ahead and click the orange button in the top-right corner of the dictionary window. Doing so will generate a flashcard that looks like this:

Migaku automatically takes a screenshot and an audio recording, fetches the word you've selected and the sentence it appeared in, and turns it into a flashcard. From here, we'll periodically nudge you to review it, ensuring that you eventually remember it.

It's pretty simple, but that's the only "secret" there is to learning vocabulary. If you consume French content you enjoy, you will encounter new words in interesting contexts, and that real-life connection to French media will make the words easier to remember.

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So, you've learned the names of months and mastered the French calendar... but what now?

Huzzah! We're done. That wasn't too hard.

What makes learning French cool (and challenging) is that there isn't a set path from here. Where you go next is up to you! In fact, the golden rule of language learning is:

So now that you've got this boring stuff out of the way, go do something cool in French 💪