Months and dates in Spanish
When you talk about when something happens, dates and months are essential. If you are translating directly from English, you might be tempted to capitalize month names, put the month before the day, or use ordinal numbers like "fifth" or "tenth".
Spanish handles dates a bit differently. Whether you are planning a trip in agosto or celebrating a birthday on the fifth of mayo, there are two simple patterns you need to know, and a few English habits you will need to leave behind.
If you want to say that something happens in a certain month, you just use the preposition en followed by the month. You do not need a definite article like el or la here. Also, notice that Spanish month names are always written with a lowercase letter.
Let us look at the first half of the year: enero, febrero, marzo, abril, mayo, and junio.
When you want to give a specific date, the pattern changes. You cannot just put the month first like you do in English. Instead, you use a very specific formula: the word el, the number of the day, the word de, and then the month.
Let us practice this formula with the second half of the year: julio, agosto, septiembre, octubre, noviembre, and diciembre.
There is one common mistake English speakers make with Spanish dates. In English, we use ordinal numbers for all dates, such as "second", "third", or "fourth". In Spanish, you must use regular counting numbers like dos, tres, and cuatro for dates.
However, there is one major exception. For the first day of the month, you can use the regular number uno, but it is also very common and perfectly correct to use the ordinal word primero.
Remember to keep your month names lowercase in Spanish. When talking about a month in general, use en followed by the month. When giving a full date, use el, the day as a regular counting number, de, and the month. Only the first day of the month can take an ordinal number.