Days, Months & Dates
Days, Months & Dates
Days and months look reassuringly familiar in Dutch — until you notice they are written in lower case. English capitalizes every weekday and month name; Dutch treats them as ordinary common nouns.
Grammar Comparison
Grammar Comparison
Days and months are not capitalized
maandag, dinsdag, januari, februari
Monday, Tuesday, January, February
English capitalizes Monday and January as proper nouns. Dutch does not: maandag and januari are written in lower case anywhere but the start of a sentence. This is one of the most common mistakes English speakers make in written Dutch, and it is purely orthographic — the words are otherwise close cousins of their English counterparts, which makes the habit easy to forget.
op for days, in for months
op maandag, in januari, op 5 mei
on Monday, in January, on 5 May
The preposition split matches English closely — op ('on') for days and dates, in for months and seasons. Dutch adds one pattern English lacks: op maandag with no further marking can mean either 'on Monday' or 'on Mondays' as a habit. To make the habit explicit, speakers use 's maandags or op maandagen.
Dates use ordinal numbers, written without a suffix
de eerste mei, de derde juni — written 1 mei, 3 juni
the first of May, the third of June
Spoken dates use ordinals: de eerste (1st), de tweede (2nd), de derde (3rd), then mostly -de or -ste added to the number (de vierde, de twintigste). Written dates, however, take a bare numeral with no suffix and no 'of': 5 mei, not '5th of May'. The day always precedes the month, so 3-6 means 3 June — never 6 March.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary
- English
- Monday
- English
- Wednesday
- English
- Saturday
- English
- Sunday
- English
- January
- English
- May
- English
- the day
- English
- the week
- English
- the month
- English
- today
- English
- tomorrow
- English
- yesterday
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