Days of the week in Korean: the seven 요일 in Hangul, hanja and IPA

Sun, moon and five elements: what the Korean day names mean

Read the hanja under each word and the system appears. 月 is the moon and 日 the sun; the remaining five characters, 火 fire, 水 water, 木 wood, 金 metal and 土 earth, are the five elements of East Asian cosmology, and each one also names a planet in Chinese astronomy: the fire star is Mars, the water star Mercury, the wood star Jupiter, the metal star Venus and the earth star Saturn. Put in order, the Korean week is the same sequence of seven lights that gave Latin its dies Lunae and dies Martis, translated into a different science.

The second half, 요일 (曜日), is constant. 曜 means a shining body and 日 a day, so 월요일 is literally the day of the moon's light. Wiktionary traces 요일 as a spelling borrowed from Japanese 曜日; the Korean words are the Japanese weekday names read with Sino-Korean sounds, character for character.

That borrowing is young. Wikipedia's article on the Korean calendar notes that the traditional calendar had no weekdays at all, and that the Gregorian calendar was adopted on 1 January 1896 under Gojong. Festivals such as Seollal and Chuseok still follow the lunar calendar, while work, school and the days of the week in Korean everyday life follow the solar one.

Pronunciation: where the romanisation and the sound part ways

Hangul spells each syllable in its dictionary form, but speech links them. When a syllable ends in a consonant and the next one begins with the silent letter ㅇ, the consonant moves across. 월요일 is spelled wol-yo-il and pronounced [wʌ̹ɾjoiɭ], close to woryoil; 목요일 sounds like mogyoil and 금요일 like geumyoil. The Revised Romanization writes these linked forms, so the table shows woryoil and not wolyoil.

The ㄹ of 월 and 일 changes with its position: a flap, much like the tt in American English butter, between vowels, and a clear l at the end of a word. Every name finishes with that final l, so all seven days of the week in Korean end on the same light [l] sound.

화요일 is the one that surprises learners. The h before w is often softened to a puff of air, and the IPA [ɸwa̠joiɭ] records that. Two other contrasts matter: 수 has an aspirated s, and 토 a breathy t that keeps it apart from a plain 도.

Using the days of the week in Korean sentences

To say that something happens on a day, Korean adds the particle 에 after the name: 월요일에 means on Monday. In speech the particle is often dropped when the meaning is clear, but writing keeps it. Topic and contrast use 은 or 는 instead: 금요일은 바빠요, Friday (as for Friday) I am busy.

Asking the day is 오늘은 무슨 요일이에요?, what day of the week is it today?, with 무슨 meaning what kind of. The formal version, 오늘은 무슨 요일입니까?, is the example Wiktionary gives under 요일. The answer simply names the day with the copula: 화요일이에요.

Habits use 마다, every: 일요일마다 교회에 가요, I go to church every Sunday. For a range Korean puts 부터 after the first day and 까지 after the last, so 월요일부터 금요일까지 is Monday to Friday, the line on many shop doors and office notices.

Next and last come before the day: 다음 주 화요일 is Tuesday next week and 지난주 토요일 last Saturday, built on 주, the word for week.

Weekdays, weekends and where the week begins

Two Sino-Korean words split the week. 주말 (週末, jumal) is the weekend, literally the end of the week, and 평일 (平日, pyeongil) is a weekday, an ordinary day; 주중 is a synonym for the working week.

Which column comes first depends on the calendar. The Unicode CLDR locale data that phones use sets Sunday as the first day of the week for South Korea, so a phone calendar in Korean typically opens on 일요일 and runs to 토요일. The table above starts on Monday to match the rest of this site and the ISO 8601 count.

On printed calendars and timetables the full names give way to the single syllables 일 월 화 수 목 금 토. The same short forms appear in brackets after dates: 10월 9일 (목) reads 9 October, Thursday. Since 일 also means day and one, the bracket is what tells a reader that the syllable stands for Sunday.