Months in French: all 12, and how to write the date

Months in French are easy to learn if you know English, because most look close to the English word. The harder part is writing the date: no capital letters, 1er for the first of the month, and a few set abbreviations. This page gives all 12 months with a sound guide and recordings, then the Québec language office rules for dates. For the numbers in a date, read Numbers in French. For the sounds, see French pronunciation practice, and to keep the words in memory, French flashcards.

Source for the rules: Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF), Banque de dépannage linguistique, pages with no date shown.

What are the months in French?

There are 12 French months, and each is written with a lowercase first letter. The OQLF says so in its model for a letter date: the month name takes no capital [1]. The abbreviation column below is the OQLF’s usual abbreviation, and a dash means the OQLF says the name is too short to abbreviate [2]. The “Sounds like” column is a rough English guide for beginners, not a phonetic standard. Capitals mark the stressed syllable.

The word for “month” is le mois. Keep the plural in mind too: les mois is the same spelling as the singular.

How do you say July in French?

July is juillet. The OQLF’s usual abbreviation is juill., and its three-character code, used for example on product packaging for expiry dates, is JUL [2]. To say the first of July, you write le 1er juillet. The OQLF writes the first of the month as 1er in its own examples, such as le 1er janvier 2021 and Montréal, le 1er février 2019 [3][5].

How do you say June in French?

June is juin. It is one of the four names the OQLF calls too short to abbreviate, with mars, mai and août [2]. Its example for a full date is le 24 juin 2023 [4]. Take care with the sound: juin and juillet both start with the same “zh”, but the first ends in a nasal vowel and the second does not.

How do you say August in French?

August is août, with a circumflex on the u. The accent stays in the OQLF’s capital-letter code AOÛ, which the OQLF says keeps its accents [2]. Like juin, mars and mai, it has no usual abbreviation, because it is too short [2].

How do you say February in French?

February is février, with an acute accent on the first e. The OQLF’s usual abbreviation is févr. and its three-character code is FÉV [2]. A full date in the OQLF’s examples looks like le 1er février 2019 [5].

How do you write a date in French?

Write the day as a number, then the month in lowercase letters, then the year, with le in front: le 2 décembre 2024 [4]. In running text and in letters the date is preceded by le [5]. In a letter, the place and date go on one line, separated by a comma, with the month in lowercase and nothing abbreviated: Trois-Rivières, le 16 décembre 2022 [1].

The OQLF’s model lines have no comma between the day, the month and the year: le 9 janvier 2022 [1].

If you add a weekday in running text, le goes before the weekday, not before the number: le vendredi 1er janvier 2021 [3]. In programs and calendars the OQLF generally drops le and puts the weekday first: Mercredi 1er janvier 2025 [5].

The last two rows come from the OQLF’s page on joining dates [3]. When two dates share a month and year, the OQLF writes the month and year once: le 4 et le 5 mars 2021 [3].

How do you write a date in numbers only?

For tables, schedules and forms, the OQLF allows an all-numeric date: four digits for the year, two for the month, two for the day [4]. The order runs from largest to smallest, which matches an ISO standard, and a single-digit month or day gets a leading zero [4]. So 24 June 2023 can be 2023-06-24, 2023 06 24 or 20230624 [4]. The OQLF prefers the four-digit year so the year, month and day cannot be mixed up [4].

In a letter or a normal text, though, the OQLF says to write the month in letters: le 2 décembre 2024 [4]. A date with a month and a year only follows the same pattern, so September 2025 can be 2025-09 [4].

How do you say year in French?

A year is written in figures in most texts, such as en 1996 [6]. The OQLF keeps words for legal and solemn texts, where it gives deux mille vingt for 2020 [6]. For a period over several years, join the figures with a hyphen, not a slash: l’année financière 2024‑2025 [6]. The OQLF also lists the form l’an 2021 [6].

French has two words for “year”, an and année. This page does not cover when to choose one over the other, so check a dictionary or a language-office page before you rely on a rule.

Try five questions on the rules above.

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Common mistakes

• Capitalizing the month. English writes July, French writes juillet [1].
• Writing 1 instead of 1er for the first. The OQLF’s examples write the first as 1er, as in le 1er janvier 2021 [3].
• Abbreviating a date in a letter. The OQLF says the place and date are not abbreviated: le 18 janvier 2022, not le 18 janv. 2022 [1].
• Adding a comma inside the date. The OQLF’s model has none: le 9 janvier 2022 [1].
• Looking for an abbreviation of mars, mai, juin or août. They are too short to abbreviate [2].
• Writing the numeric date in day-month-year order. The OQLF order for all-number dates is year, month, day [4].
• Relying on a month list from a blog, including this one. The language office updates its pages. Compare the page’s own date with the date at the top of this one.

See also: weather and seasons in French.

See also: happy birthday and holidays in French.

Sources