Home › Vocabulary › Days, months and seasons

Days, months and seasons in Dutch

The days of the week, the twelve months and the four seasons are among the first things worth memorising in Dutch — you need them for every appointment, date and schedule. One rule to internalise straight away: unlike English, Dutch does not capitalise days, months or seasons unless they start a sentence.

The days of the week

All seven days are de-words. The Dutch week starts on Monday (maandag), so maandag is the first working day and the weekend is Saturday and Sunday.

Every day ends in -dag (“day”), so you really only need to learn the first part of each word. The -dag ending has a soft g that sounds like the throaty Dutch g. Related words: de week (week), het weekend (weekend), de dag (day), doordeweeks (on weekdays).

“On Mondays”: the 's-form

To say something happens every Monday, Dutch uses a fixed pattern: 's maandags, 's dinsdags, and so on. The 's is a shrunken old genitive (“of the”). Two are irregular: Wednesday and Saturday drop the apostrophe and just add -s.

For a single specific day you use op: op maandag (on Monday). To pin something to this coming Monday, say aanstaande maandag or komende maandag.

The months of the year

The month names are close to English and Latin, so they are quick to learn. They are all de-words, though you rarely need the article. Remember: no capital letter.

The four seasons

Seasons are all de-words. To say “in summer” use in de zomer; spring, autumn and winter follow the same pattern.

Spring and autumn each have two words. De lente and de herfst are the everyday terms; het voorjaar (“the fore-year”) and het najaar (“the after-year”) are common in weather forecasts and business calendars (de najaarscollectie, the autumn collection).

Writing and saying dates

Dutch dates run day, month, year, with the month in lowercase and no ordinal ending on the day when spoken with the month: you write and say 6 juli 2026, read aloud as zes juli tweeduizend zesentwintig. For the day numbers and years, see Dutch numbers.

Note the idiom De hoeveelste is het? for asking today's date — there is no neat English equivalent. And Dutch marks a birthday with the adjective jarig: Ik ben jarig means “it's my birthday.”

Today, tomorrow, yesterday and the rest

This small set of time words comes up constantly and does not follow the day/month pattern, so learn it as a block.

Watch out for a false friend: morgen means both “tomorrow” and “morning” depending on context, and morgenochtend is “tomorrow morning.” In Belgium you may also hear 's anderendaags for “the next day,” but the words above are standard everywhere.