Days of the week in french

how many week days in the year

Count Monday through Friday. A common year has 365 days, which is 52 weeks plus one extra day. Fifty-two weeks already contain 260 weekdays. The leftover day adds one more weekday if it falls Monday through Friday, so a 365-day year has 260 or 261 weekdays.

A leap year has 366 days: 52 weeks plus two extra days. Those two extras can both be weekdays, both weekend days, or one of each. So a leap year has 260, 261, or 262 weekdays. There is no single number that fits every year. You need the calendar, not a slogan.

How many week days in the year is not the same as how many days are in a week. A week has seven named days. The year question is about how many of those days, across twelve months, are Monday to Friday. Weekends are samedi and dimanche in French; they are days of the week and they are not weekdays in this count.

French words for days of the week

French words days of the week, in order from Monday, are: lundi — Monday mardi — Tuesday mercredi — Wednesday jeudi — Thursday vendredi — Friday samedi — Saturday dimanche — Sunday The days of the week in French are not capitalised in ordinary sentences, unlike English. You write “le lundi” for “on Mondays” and “lundi” when you name the day. Week of the days in French still starts, in school and civil lists, on lundi, not on dimanche. That matches the ISO week. A US wall calendar that starts on Sunday is a different picture of the same seven names.

All seven names are masculine. You may see “un lundi de mai” for “a Monday in May.” You do not add a feminine ending. The article drops in many date lines: “lundi 3 septembre.” Time of day sits after the name if you need it: “mardi matin,” “vendredi soir.”

How to use the names

To say something happens every Tuesday, French often uses “le mardi.” To say it happens this Tuesday, it uses “mardi” with a date or “ce mardi.” “Aujourd’hui nous sommes jeudi” is “today is Thursday.” “Quel jour sommes-nous ?” is the question that expects one of the seven words.

Abbreviations exist (lun., mar., mer., jeu., ven., sam., dim.), but a learner is safer with the full word. Do not invent English-style three-letter codes and expect them to match a French planner. The planner will print the French names or the local short forms, not “Tue.”

English capitalises Tuesday; French leaves mardi in lower case until it starts the sentence. The day is the same. The ink is not. Once the seven words are in your mouth, the year-count is arithmetic you already have: name the year, see whether February has 28 or 29 days, see where January 1 sits, then add the leftover weekdays. The vocabulary does not change in a leap year. Only the tally of weekdays does.