Spanish words for every day: days, months, numbers and greetings
Four sets of basic Spanish words, each on a page of its own: the seven days, the twelve months, the numbers and the greetings. Every page gives the written form, the pronunciation in IPA and the rules that trip learners up, such as lower-case month names or cien against ciento.
Spanish words by topic
Each page starts with a table of the words and then explains spelling, grammar, regional differences and common mistakes, with example sentences.
- 01Days of the week in Spanish: the seven names, IPA and usageMonday to Sunday in Spanish: lunes, martes, miércoles, jueves, viernes, sábado, domingo. All seven are masculine, written in lower case, and the Spanish week starts on Monday.
- 02Months in Spanish: the twelve names, pronunciation and writing a dateThe months in Spanish are enero, febrero, marzo, abril, mayo, junio, julio, agosto, septiembre, octubre, noviembre and diciembre. They are masculine, take no capital letter in running text, and in a date they follow the day: el 3 de marzo.
- 03Numbers in Spanish from cero to un millón: spelling rules and ordinalsCounting to ten in Spanish goes uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez. Beyond that the numbers in Spanish follow a small set of rules: one word up to twenty-nine, y between tens and units from thirty-one, and agreement in gender for one and for the hundreds.
- 04Greetings in Spanish: hello, how are you, goodbye, formal and informalThe basic greetings in Spanish are hola for hello, buenos días until about midday, buenas tardes in the afternoon and buenas noches after dark. Goodbye is adiós or, more often, hasta luego. Which form fits depends on the time of day, on the region and on whether the speaker says tú or usted.
How Spanish words are written
- españolSpanish Latin
- castellanoCastilian Latin
- ¿Qué tal?How's it going? Latin
Spanish uses the Latin alphabet with one letter of its own, ñ, as in año (year) and mañana (tomorrow). The Real Academia Española and the other academies of the language count 27 letters; ch and ll, once listed separately, are now treated as pairs of letters. The Spanish alphabet is set out letter by letter on the alphabets page.
Spelling follows pronunciation closely, which makes Spanish words easy to read aloud once a few rules are known. A written accent marks stress where the general rule does not predict it: miércoles, sábado, veintidós. Questions and exclamations open with inverted marks, ¿ and ¡, so a reader knows the tone of a sentence from its first word.
Speakers call the language español or castellano, Castilian, after the kingdom of Castile where it took shape. Both names are correct; which one people prefer depends on the country and on the setting.
Dates, numbers and greetings: what to expect
Spanish words for days and months are written in lower case, and the week begins on lunes, Monday. A date puts the day first: el 3 de marzo de 2026. The days of the week in Spanish and the months in Spanish explain the abbreviations, including the X that stands for Wednesday on calendars.
Numbers are regular after fifteen. Sixteen to twenty-nine are written as one word (dieciséis, veintiuno), higher tens take y (treinta y uno), and one and the hundreds agree with the noun in gender, so the language has un libro next to una casa and doscientos next to doscientas. The numbers in Spanish page also covers billón, which means a million millions.
Greetings follow the clock: buenos días in the morning, buenas tardes in the afternoon, buenas noches after dark. The choice between tú and usted, and in parts of the Americas vos, decides how the next sentence goes; the greetings in Spanish page lists the forms by register and region.
Where Spanish is spoken
Spanish is the official or national language of twenty countries. In Europe that is Spain; in Africa, Equatorial Guinea. The other eighteen are in the Americas: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Each country page gives its regions in Spanish and in any co-official language.
The basic Spanish words on these pages are the same everywhere; differences show in pronunciation and in informal speech. Where a region has its own form, such as setiembre for September or buen día for good morning, the topic page names it. To compare Spanish words with Portuguese, French, Italian and Latin, the Romance word list sets 243 of them side by side.
Questions about Spanish words
How many letters does the Spanish alphabet have?
27. It is the Latin alphabet of 26 letters plus ñ. Since the academies' Ortografía of 2010, ch and ll count as pairs of letters, not as letters of their own.
Is it Spanish or Castilian?
Both. Speakers call their language español or castellano; the two names refer to the same language, and preference varies by country.
Are Spanish words for days and months capitalized?
No. Days of the week and months are lower case in Spanish unless they begin a sentence or belong to a proper name.
Which Spanish words should a beginner learn first?
Greetings and numbers are used from the first day: hola, buenos días, gracias, uno to diez. Days and months follow as soon as dates and appointments come up.