The Italian days of the week are one of the first things you have to learn if you don’t want to create misunderstandings when talking in Italian and you need to arrange an appointment. So today we will help you learn them.
First of all, as you can see below, the days of the week are not capitalized in Italian.
- lunedì = Monday
- martedì = Tuesday
- mercoledì = Wednesday
- giovedì = Thursday
- venerdì = Friday
- sabato = Saturday
- domenica = Sunday
If you are interested in the exact pronunciation of the Italian days of the week, watch our video below. You will discover that lunedì, martedì, mercoledì, giovedì and venerdì have the stress on the last syllable (-dì), which is an ancient Italian word for “day”. Whereas with sabato, the accent is on the first syllable (-sa) and with domenica it is on the second syllable (-me).
The Italian names of the week come from Latin and are related to the names of the planets.
- lunedì is the day of the Moon – Luna
- martedì is the day of Mars – Marte
- mercoledì is the day of Mercury – Mercurio
- giovedì is the day of Jupiter – Giove
- venerdì is the day of Venus – Venere
- sabato is the day of Saturn – Saturno
- domenica is the day of the Lord, which in Latin is called Dominus
SOME USES OF THE ITALIAN DAYS OF THE WEEK
When we talk about one day in particular in which something happened or will happen we usually don’t use any preposition. For instance:
I’m going to a party ON Friday = Vado a una festa venerdì
However, we do use the preposition “a” for greetings:
See you on Saturday = A sabato
OTHER ITALIAN WORDS RELATED TO THE DAYS OF THE WEEK
When we refer to a 7 day-period we use the word settimana, which means “week”. So if you want to wish a friend a good week you will say:
Buona settimana! = Have a good week!
Other important words that you might need are:
- l’altro ieri = the day before yesterday
- ieri = yesterday
- oggi = today
- domani = tomorrow
- dopodomani = the day after tomorrow
If you want to learn Italian with Parlando Italiano, contact us and we will be very happy to help you.