French words for every day: days, months, numbers and greetings
Four sets of French words that every learner meets in the first week: the days, the months, the numbers and the greetings. Each page gives the spelling, the IPA pronunciation, the abbreviations and the grammar that goes with them.
How French words are written
- françaisFrench Latin
- bonjourhello Latin
- quatre-vingtseighty Latin
- aoûtAugust Latin
French uses the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet and adds accents and two ligatures. The acute appears only on e (é), the grave on a, e and u (à, è, ù), the circumflex on all five vowels (â, ê, î, ô, û), the diaeresis on e, i, u and y (ë, ï, ü, ÿ) and the cedilla under c (ç). The ligatures æ and œ are written as single letters, as in cœur, heart. The full set with every letter name is in the French alphabet table.
Accents in French words change the sound or tell two words apart. Ou means or and où means where; a is has and à is to. The circumflex often marks a lost s of older spelling, as in août, whose Old French form was aoust. Since the spelling rectifications of 1990 the circumflex on i and u is optional where it separates no meanings, so both août and aout are correct.
Four pages of basic French words
Each topic page lists the words in a table with IPA and notes, explains their spelling and grammar, gives example sentences and covers the forms used in Belgium, Switzerland and Quebec.
- 01Days of the week in French: lundi to dimanche, IPA and abbreviationsThe days of the week in French are lundi, mardi, mercredi, jeudi, vendredi, samedi and dimanche, from Monday to Sunday. They are masculine nouns, written with a small letter, and they take an -s in the plural: les lundis.
- 02Months in French: janvier to décembre, IPA, abbreviations and datesThe months in French are janvier, février, mars, avril, mai, juin, juillet, août, septembre, octobre, novembre and décembre. All twelve are masculine and written in lower case, and in a date the day comes before the month: le 14 juillet 1789.
- 03Numbers in French from zéro to milliard: spelling and pronunciationNumbers in French run un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix for one to ten. Above sixty France counts in twenties, soixante-dix for 70 and quatre-vingts for 80, while Belgium and Switzerland say septante and nonante.
- 04Greetings in French: bonjour, salut, au revoir, IPA and regional useBonjour is the greeting in French for almost every situation in the day, bonsoir takes over in the evening, and au revoir says goodbye. Friends switch to salut, and the choice between tu and vous decides how every other phrase is built.
Dates, numbers and greetings: what to know first
Days and months are common nouns in French and take no capital: lundi, janvier. A date runs day, month, year, le 14 juillet 2026, and only the first of the month is an ordinal, le 1er mai. The French week starts on Monday, and all seven weekday names except dimanche end in -di, a trace of the Latin dies.
Numbers are the part of French that surprises most learners. Up to sixty the system is decimal, then France counts in twenties: soixante-dix is seventy, quatre-vingts eighty and quatre-vingt-dix ninety, while Belgium and Switzerland use septante and nonante. In figures French writes a decimal comma and a space between thousands, 1 234,5.
Greetings depend on the time of day and on tu and vous. Bonjour serves from morning to evening, bonsoir after dark, salut among friends. Choosing tu or vous shapes the rest of the conversation, from comment vas-tu to comment allez-vous.
Where French is an official language
French words are part of daily official life on four continents. In Europe French is an official language of France, Belgium beside Dutch and German, Switzerland beside German, Italian and Romansh, Luxembourg and Monaco. In the Americas it is one of the two official languages of Canada and shares that status with Haitian Creole in Haiti.
In Africa French is official in Senegal, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d'Ivoire and Cameroon, where it stands beside English, among others. Each country page gives the country's name in French next to its other official and national languages. The word for French itself, français, appears in nearly a hundred other languages on the page French in different languages.
Questions about basic French words
Which French words should a beginner learn first?
Greetings, numbers, days and months: bonjour, au revoir, un to dix, lundi to dimanche and janvier to décembre. They appear in every conversation about time, prices and appointments, and the four pages here list them with pronunciation.
Why do French words have accents?
Accents show how a vowel is pronounced, é or è, or keep apart two words that are otherwise spelled alike, such as ou and où. The cedilla in ç gives c the sound s before a, o and u.
Do French words for days and months take capitals?
No. Lundi, mardi and janvier, février are written in lower case unless they begin a sentence. A holiday name such as le 11 Novembre is the exception.
How do you say hello in French?
Bonjour during the day and bonsoir in the evening. Salut is the informal hi among friends.