Hello Everyone,

In today’s lesson we will see how Japanese people indicate months.

What month is it?

The word  月 ( がつ ) [gatsu] is the word meaning /month/ in Japanese.

Note: You may already have noticed the kanji 月 in the word 月曜日 ( げつようび ) [getsuyo~bi] /Monday/. This kanji is the kanji for the Moon ( つき ) [tsuki] and is additionally used for Monday – the Moon day – and months, because months were aligned on lunar cycles in ancient times. Be cautious also not to mix the pronunciations げつ[getsu] / がつ[gatsu].

To ask “What month are we in?” in Japanese, we use similar structure as the one used to ask time or day of week:

Months

Then indicating months in Japanese is really easy. A month name in Japanese is the month number followed by 月 ( がつ ) [gatsu] /month/. Therefore all you have to know is how to count from 1 to 12, and the word 月 ( がつ ) [gatsu] /month/:

一月	いちがつ	ichi gatsu	January
二月	にがつ	ni gatsu	February
三月	さんがつ	san gatsu	March
四月	しがつ	shi gatsu	April
五月	ごがつ	go gatsu	May
六月	ろくがつ	roku gatsu	June
七月	しちがつ	shichi gatsu	July
八月	はちがつ	hachi gatsu	August
九月	くがつ	ku gatsu	September
十月	じゅうがつ	ju~ gatsu	October
十一月	じゅういちがつ	ju~ichi gatsu	November
十二月	じゅうにがつ	ju~ni gatsu	December

Points to notice here are the pronunciations for 4 (し and not よん) and 7 (しち and not なな), and the shorter pronounciation for 9 (く and not きゅう). Isn’t it simple? OK, let’s practice now.

Exercises

Find the translation:

That’s it for this lesson. Next time we will discover days of month.
Bye!
Stéphane