Lesson 05 · 6 min read
Days, Months, and Telling Time in Spanish
Talking about schedules means knowing the days, months, and how to say the time. Note that in Spanish, days and months are written in lowercase, unlike in English.
1. Days of the week
Days of the week are not capitalised in Spanish, unlike English. To say something happens on a particular day you use the article rather than a preposition: "el lunes" means on Monday, and "los lunes" means on Mondays, every week. There is no Spanish equivalent of the English "on" here.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| lunes | Monday |
| martes | Tuesday |
| miércoles | Wednesday |
| jueves | Thursday |
| viernes | Friday |
| sábado | Saturday |
| domingo | Sunday |
2. Months of the year
Months are also lower-case. Dates run day-then-month — "el 5 de mayo", the 5th of May — and the day is an ordinary number, not an ordinal, with the single exception of the first of the month, which is "el primero".
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| enero | January |
| febrero | February |
| marzo | March |
| abril | April |
| mayo | May |
| junio | June |
| julio | July |
| agosto | August |
| septiembre | September |
| octubre | October |
| noviembre | November |
| diciembre | December |
3. Telling the time
Use "es la una" for one o'clock and "son las…" for every other hour. Add "y" for minutes past the hour and "menos" for minutes to the hour.
| Spanish | English |
|---|---|
| ¿Qué hora es? | What time is it? |
| Es la una. | It is one o'clock. |
| Son las tres. | It is three o'clock. |
| Son las cuatro y media. | It is half past four. |
| Son las siete menos cuarto. | It is a quarter to seven. |
4. Telling the time the way people actually do
Spanish builds the clock around the hour, adding minutes with y up to the half hour and then subtracting them with menos on the way to the next. Two twenty is las dos y veinte; twenty to three is las tres menos veinte. Latin America often prefers faltan veinte para las tres, which is the same idea phrased as a countdown. The 24-hour clock appears on timetables, tickets and official notices, but people speak in twelve and add de la mañana, de la tarde or de la noche. Note that la tarde stretches until nightfall — around nine in summer Spain — so las ocho de la tarde is perfectly normal.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ¿Qué hora es? | What time is it? | Perdone, ¿qué hora es? — Excuse me, what time is it? |
| y cuarto | quarter past | Son las tres y cuarto. — It's quarter past three. |
| y media | half past | Son las nueve y media. — It's half past nine. |
| menos cuarto | quarter to | Son las cinco menos cuarto. — It's quarter to five. |
| en punto | on the dot | A las seis en punto. — At six on the dot. |
Common mistakes
en Lunes → el lunes
Spanish uses the article, not a preposition, and days are not capitalised. El lunes means on Monday; los lunes means every Monday.
Es la una y treinta y cinco → Son las dos menos veinticinco
Past the half hour Spanish usually counts down to the next hour with menos rather than up from the last one.
Son la una → Es la una
One o'clock is the only singular hour, so it takes es and la. Every other hour takes son las.