Days and Dates in Chinese

Days of the Week

Sunday is the 7th and last day of the week. But instead of saying “星期七(week seven)”, we say:

星期天

xīnɡqī tiān

Sunday

星期日

xīnɡqī rì

Sunday

jīntiān shì xīnɡqī jǐ?

今天是星期几？

What day is it today?

To answer the question, the sentence follows this pattern:

jīntiān shì …

今天是 …

Today it’s …

In spoken Chinese, “星期” is often replaced by “礼拜（lǐ bài）”, which also has the meaning of “week”.

jīntiān shì jǐ yuè jǐ hào？

今天是几月几号？

jīntiān shì duō shǎo hào？

今天是多少号？

To answer the question, the sentence follows this pattern:

jīntiān shì …

今天是 (…年…月…号)。

yī jiǔ jiǔ jiǔ nián bā yuè yī rì

一九九九年八月一日

Aug. 1, 1999

èr líng yī wǔ nián èr yuè shí sì rì

二零一五年二月十四日

Feb. 14, 2015

In Chinese, you tell dates from big unit to small unit, thus the order year-month-day.

In Chinese, 日（rì）and 号（hào）have the same meaning, but 号 is more often used in spoken Chinese.

About “year”, you read the numbers on each digit separately instead of reading them as a whole. E.g. 2015

Days and Dates in Chinese