Before you start learning a new language, you need to learn its basic elements. In general, they include the alphabet and reading rules, knowledge of the score to ten, understanding of the main phrases of a greeting and a polite request, knowledge of the colors and days of the week.
Days of the week in Spanish
Just like in our language and in Spanish, every week begins on Monday. Her days are written with a lowercase letter. An important point in the Spanish language is the masculine and feminine gender of nouns, since the article used and the endings of the related adjectives depend on it. All days of the week in Spanish are masculine.
These days are called as follows:
- Monday - el lunes;
- Tuesday - el martes;
- Wednesday - el miércoles;
- Thursday - el jueves;
- Friday - el viernes;
- Saturday - el sábado;
- Sunday - el domingo.
Note that the definitive article of the singular masculine is used with all days and when translated into Russian, it means "in", for example, ella trabaja el sábado - it works on Saturday.
If you give the days of the week in Spanish with transcription, then they will read as follows:
- lunes - lunez;
- martes - martes;
- miércoles - Miercoles;
- jueves - hueves;
- viernes - bjernes;
- sábado - savado;
- domingo - domingo.
The days of the week in Spanish with pronunciation, as well as the seasons and months, can be seen in the next short video tutorial, where the girl details all the subtleties and features of Spanish phonetics.
Verb ser and plural
The peculiarity of using the days of the week in Spanish in the plural is that those words ending with the letter s completely retain their spelling, however, the article itself changes its form, for example: el viernes - los viernes, but el domingo - los domingos .
The Spanish verb ser (to be, to exist) is often used with the days of the week in sentences:
- ¿Qué día es mañana? - What day will be tomorrow?
- Mañana es viernes. “Tomorrow is Friday.”
When using the verb ser and its conjugations with the days of the week, two points should be noted:
- firstly, such sentences do not use the article,
- secondly, when indicating the future tense, the conjugation of the verb in the simple present tense is applied (in this case, es).
Where did the names of the days of the week come from?
About 60% of Spanish words have Latin roots, since this language belongs to the group of Romance languages. The days of the week are no exception. In turn, the ancient Romans, whose culture was based on the cultural achievements of the ancient Greeks, gave the days of the week the names of the most important celestial bodies, which they identified with the gods. As a result, the first five days of the week in Spanish bear the names of the gods of the Roman pantheon:
- lunes - Moon (goddess Selena in Greek mythology);
- martes - Mars (god of destructive war and struggle);
- miércoles - Mercury (god of trade and patron saint of merchants);
- jueves - Jupiter (father of gods and people, lord of thunder and lightning);
- viernes - Venus (goddess of love).
As for the remaining two days of the week, the word sábado comes from Hebrew “Shabbat”, which the ancient Jews designated the day when they rested from work, and the word domingo originates from Dominus - the Lord God.
The word semana - a week is borrowed from the Latin analog of septimana - that is, what a seven-day period means.
It is interesting to note that in Latin before the day of the week they used the additional word die, which literally means day. In the Castilian version of the Spanish language, as well as in the Aragonese and other regional languages of Spain, this word disappeared, however, in the Catalan dialect it is still used with the days of the week, only in the form of di.
Stable expressions with days of the week
Spanish, like any other living language, is very rich in various proverbs and aphorisms, which are stable expressions in the process of observing people about their surrounding reality and current events.
The following expressions involving the days of the week, which in their literal translation do not carry any meaning, should be remembered:
- hacer lunes - do not go to work on Monday due to the continuation of the Sunday holiday;
- dar a uno con la del martes - to salt and cheat someone;
- no ser cosa del otro jueves - this is what they say when they want to emphasize the lack of importance of something or anyone;
- no ayunarle a uno los viernes - do not trust anyone;
- la semana que no tiene viernes - the literal translation of this expression “a week without Friday”, into Russian is translated by the saying “after the rain on Thursday”;
- hacer sábado - literally "do or perform Saturday", that is, carry out general cleaning of the premises;
- salir con un domingo siete - speak nonsense and nonsense;
- hacer domingo - arrange a day off.
Five Reasons to Learn Spanish
- This language is very popular in the world and for 400 million people it is considered native. In addition to Spain, it is distributed on the South American continent, in some countries of Africa, the Philippines and the United States.
- Spanish is widely used in business.
- Knowing this language, you can enter Spanish universities and get a quality European education.
- Wide borders open for communication with other people.
- Spanish is easy to learn.