the days of the week in Japanese

Today we are going to meet the days of the week in japanese, understanding a little about how the Japanese calendar works. Let's start with the days of the week in abbreviated form, and then find out how the days of the week are written in Japanese more fully.

In addition, we will also learn about eight new kanji, increasing our japanese vocabulary.

Again, the purpose here is not to show how to learn the meaning and stroke order of kanji, but to try to improve our ability to read and understand word formation using Japanese symbols, more specifically weekday symbols. In japanese.

The days of the week in Japanese for short

Japanese weekdays are made up of eight kanji, but for now, let's focus on just seven of them: 日, 月, 火, 水, 木, 金 and 土.

In addition to the meanings you can see when you hover over the Japanese symbols above, these kanji can also take on the idea of days of the week in Japanese, but in abbreviated form.

In this case, when the context changes to the Japanese calendar or the days of the week, the Japanese symbols change their pronunciation and meaning.

Now, they will look like this: 日(nichi - sun - sunday), 月(getsu - mon - mon), 火(ka – tues – tuesday), 水(sui - wed - wednesday), 木(moku – thu – thursday), 金(kin - Fri - Friday) and 土(from – sat – saturday).

Days of the week in Japanese are usually written this way on calendars and diaries. As we can see, they do not represent the days of the week in Japanese completely, but only the first part of their names, forming an abbreviation.

See too:
Japanese Hiragana and Katakana Alphabet
Learn how to draw anime characters

How to learn the days of the week in Japanese

To make it easier to learn the days of the week in Japanese, I came up with some associations that I found interesting. Check it out:

日(nichi): Sunday is the day of 日 ( Sun ). Day to go to the beach, visit friends and relatives, have that barbecue and party a lot to recharge our batteries after a week of work.

月(getsu): Monday is the day of 月 (moon). After the party on Sunday, we spent the Monday sleepy as we went to bed late the day before and work turned out to be difficult.

火(ka): Tuesday is the day of the 火 ( fire ). Now we are more willing and we work with more fervor (strength) at work, providing a better quality service.

水(sui): Wednesday is the day of 水 ( Water ). Comes that “cold water bucket” because we realize that the weekend is still far away.

木(moku): Thursday is the day of 木 ( tree ). That's when ideas about what to do on the weekend begin to “grow”.

金(kin): Friday is the day of 金 ( gold ). A day to start the party with the people from work and get ready for the weekend that is about to start.

土(do): Saturday is the day of 土 ( Earth ). When many take time for themselves. We clean and tidy the house and prepare for the Sunday off.

Days of the week in full Japanese

This time we will need the kanji 日 to represent the idea of day and kanji 曜 to represent the week concept.

To form the days of the week in Japanese, just use the Japanese symbols for the day of the week, which we learned in previous topics, and add the word 曜日, which means day of the week.

Look at the table below:

One of the things that confuses many Japanese students is the fact that Japanese symbols change their pronunciation and meaning. A good example of this is the word 日曜日, where the same symbol 日 is pronounced two different ways in the same word (nichi and bi).

In some cases, we can also find weekdays written with only the first two kanji. This is common in calendars and diaries, when you want to write the days of the week more compactly.

What day of the week is it today in Japanese

This article would be incomplete if it didn't mention how to talk about the days of the week in Japanese. To get on with the subject, we're going to need the words 昨日, 今日, 何, and 明日.

Now we can form sentences like 今日は何曜日ですか.

Every sentence ending with the syllable か, indicates an interrogative sentence, or question. It works the same as our question mark ( ? ) and is widely used in the Japanese language.

Don't worry if you can't understand a lot about it right now, in later articles we'll talk about it in more detail.

Now look at the sentences below and try to understand without looking at the reading tips.

Question: 明日は何曜日ですか？

Reply: 明日は木曜日です。

Question: 昨日は何曜日でしたか？

Reply: 火曜日でした。

Question: 今日は何曜日ですか？

Reply: 水曜日です。

Kanji calligraphy exercise

Below are the Japanese ideographic symbols used in this article. Selecting the desired kanji, copy and paste them into Worksheet for Kana and Kanji Practice , a new window will open where you can view the printable file and practice Japanese calligraphy by covering the gray symbols and then trying to write yourself. Just print and practice.